Malediction: An Old World Story (2 page)

My life had gotten really chaotic after that—a group of vampires had been intent on kidnapping Sam’s daughter Charlie—and I’d never followed up. Now Sam herself was pointing me back toward Cruz. Why?

I swung my legs over the side of the bed and looked at the clock. Ten in the morning. I’d been asleep for all of three hours. Great. I went over to the small desk in my bedroom to look for Cruz’s LAPD business card. He wasn’t a cop anymore, but he’d handwritten his cell phone number on the back.

I shuffled papers and books around for twenty minutes, and even went through the trash can next to the desk, but I couldn’t find it. I cursed loudly enough to wake several of the dogs. I spun around and glared at them. “Which one of you ate the business card I need?”

Like a choreographed move, the dogs swiveled around to look at each other before turning back toward me and tilting their heads with cluelessness. I sighed. “Okay, you’re right. It
does
sound like more of a cat offense.”

I turned on my old laptop and brought up the automatic reply message I’d received back when I’d tried to email Cruz at the LAPD. The wording was just as opaque as I remembered: “The employee you’ve contacted is no longer with the Los Angeles Police Department” and then some boilerplate language about different LAPD divisions and services that might help me instead.

I grabbed my cell phone off the nightstand and called the specific station where Cruz had worked. I was transferred around a few times, but I gritted my teeth and hung in there, identifying myself and repeating my request to every new person. After nearly thirty minutes, I finally got on the line with an actual captain named Miranda Williams, who said she was sorry for my loss and hoped I was doing well.

The solicitation threw me a little. I never expect good manners out of Los Angeles. “Um, thank you,” I said awkwardly. “I’m actually calling because I’m trying to get a hold of Jesse Cruz. I tried emailing him, but I got a bounce-back message saying he no longer works for the LAPD.”

“Yes, I’m afraid Jesse has left us for greener pastures,” Williams confirmed, and there was real regret in her voice. “But as I’m sure you know, we have positively identified your sister’s killer, so the case is considered closed.”

“Because Henry Remus is dead,” I said flatly. Remus was the serial killer who’d murdered Sam.

“Yes, ma’am. And
his
killer is now serving her time at the California Institution for Women, here in Corona. I’m sure Jesse told you that as well.”

I blinked, trying to remember the details from my last visit to LA. The news had flown around so quickly: Sam was missing, Sam was dead; they found the killer, the killer was dead. It was hard to process much after that, and I’d never given much thought to the question of what had become of Remus’s killer. I remembered thinking I should drive over to the jail and shake her hand, but not much else.

“Was there a trial?” I asked. “For the woman who killed Remus, I mean.” I would have been happy to testify that she’d done the human race a serious favor.

There was a long pause and a shuffle of papers as Williams looked for the information. “Petra Corbett. No, there was no trial. She claimed it was self-defense, that Remus came after her the way he did your sister and the others.”

“And she still went to prison?” I asked.

“For fifteen years, yes. We only had her word about the self-defense, and she did try to cover up Remus’s death by desecrating the body to make it look like a canine attack.” She cleared her throat, indicating that the matter was closed. “At any rate, is there something
I
can help you with, Miss Luther?”

Her voice was kind, and I found myself liking her. “I would still really like to speak to Jesse Cruz,” I pressed on. “I understand why you wouldn’t want to give out his number, but is there any way that you could call him and ask him to get in touch?”

I was all ready to argue or plead, but Williams readily agreed to call Jesse. I hung up the phone feeling as if I’d accomplished something.

There was no chance of going back to sleep, so while I waited for Cruz to call me back, I went online and looked up newspaper articles about the case. Ten months earlier, after Petra Corbett was arrested and the papers went nuts, I had gone on a self-imposed media blackout, which was easier than it sounds given that I live in Boulder and the murders were in LA. At the time, I figured that obsessing over the details wouldn’t bring Sam back, and, more importantly, I hated seeing my sister’s name in print, always attached to the word “victim.” That wasn’t how I wanted to think of her, or how I thought she should be remembered.

I had some distance now, though, and I managed to force myself through most of the articles, which turned out to be a
lot
of material. Since the bodies were never found and Petra Corbett had accepted a plea deal rather than going through a big public trial, I hadn’t expected to find many articles. But the
LA Times
had run a whole series on the case, complete with an editorial speculating on what Remus might have done with the bodies—I was happy to ignore that one—and a long profile of Jesse Cruz, hero cop.

I skimmed the profile, which revealed that my sister’s murder wasn’t the only high-profile case Jesse had caught. The year before, he’d been involved in catching the guy who’d killed those people at La Brea Park, a major case that Sam and I had actually discussed on the phone a couple of times. Was that why Cruz had left the force? Because he’d seen too many awful murders? At the same time, the LAPD was enormous. Wasn’t it kind of strange that one cop solved both those cases?

Unless it was an Old World connection
? Sam’s suggestion that Cruz knew more than he was letting on seemed to support that, but if there
was
a connection, what could it be? He wasn’t a vampire; I’d seen him during the day. Male witches were rare, but possible. Or I supposed he could be a werewolf, though I knew very little about them.

All of a sudden I felt silly. A werewolf cop? That sounded ridiculous. Maybe I was completely wrong about Cruz being part of the Old World. What evidence did I even have, aside from an offhand comment his friend made about me and Sam’s cryptic message?

As if on cue, my phone rang. I didn’t know the number, but it had a Los Angeles area code. “This is Lex.”

“Hi, Ms. Luther. It’s Jesse Cruz.” He sounded guarded. I couldn’t really blame him. “I understand you were looking for me.”

I sat back in the chair, suddenly unsure of where to start. Humans were not allowed to know about the supernatural, so if Cruz
wasn’t
part of the Old World, I would be putting him at risk if I revealed anything about it. But how the hell was I supposed to get a straight answer if I couldn’t explain my reason for asking the question? “Hi, Detective,” I said, intentionally using his old honorific. “Please call me Lex. And thanks for calling me back.”

“I’m not a detective anymore, actually. But you knew that.”

“I was kind of surprised to hear the news. Would you mind if I asked what you’re doing instead?”

There was a long pause, and I suspected he was trying to think of a nice way to blow me off. Instead, he just asked, “Is there something I can do for you, Lex?”

Oh, fuck it. Frontal assault. “You could tell me how my sister really died.”

2. Jesse

Jesse Cruz was already having a crappy day.

The studio was shooting overnight in Vancouver and they kept calling him with the most inane little questions. Would a punk kid still hold a weapon sideways like a 90s gangster, or was that trend over now? What about an older gangster, one who might have been raising hell in the 90s? What kind of automatic weapon would a retired cop on a pension have on hand to combat a home invasion?

And so on. Jesse had to come up with an answer for every single inquiry. He’d gotten smarter about that, though: during his first month as a police consultant, he’d given careful consideration to every request, asking any number of follow-up questions. Does the weapon have to be automatic? Is he right-handed or left-handed? Does he have access to illegal stuff? Does it have to be American-made? But that tactic seemed to just confuse and irritate the producers, and by the second month, Jesse had finally realized that they didn’t actually care if the answer was
right
, or even all that plausible. They just wanted to be able to say, “Oh, we asked the consultant, and this is what he approved.” Then if the fan message boards complained about authenticity, some PA could go on and write, “The hero cop of Los Angeles signed off on this, so pipe down and go back to jacking off in your mom’s basement. Oh, and please keep watching the show!”

Now he just gave them his best guess, and they ran with it like it was scripture.

Jesse arrived at the studio at 9:30 feeling tired and irritable, not to mention frustrated by the way his cell phone wouldn’t stop ringing. If it wasn’t the producers on the Vancouver team, it was yet another junior agent asking for a lunch meeting. Right after the Henry Remus case, Jesse had gotten calls from all the heavy-hitters, wanting to buy the rights to the life story of the young cop who’d caught two serial killers in less than two years. The big fish finally petered off after six months of
no’s
, but the baby agents were still circling him like hyperactive puppies. He’d changed his cell phone number twice, but somehow they kept finding it.

When he’d seen Miranda’s name on the caller ID, Jesse had been relieved: here at last was someone he enjoyed talking to, and who wouldn’t want anything from him. Except as it turned out, she
did
sort of want something from him, and now all of Jesse’s best efforts to avoid talking about the Henry Remus case were blowing up in his face.

Tell me how my sister really died.
If Allison Luther only knew how impossible that was. While he groped for an answer, Jesse closed his eyes, trying to picture her face: youthful, sort of innocent-looking, but with a hardness born of experience. She could play an angel in a movie, if not for her nose, which had been broken at least once. The nose, along with her broad shoulders and tightly muscled limbs, gave the impression of serious strength. He’d only met her briefly, but her features were seared into his memory: the cleft chin, the little widow’s peak on her forehead. Those bright blue eyes. He had nightmares about those eyes, only in the dreams they were open and staring, covered in a white film. Lex wasn’t an exact copy of her fraternal twin sister—the woman whose body Jesse had disposed of—but their eyes were the same.

The images unnerved him, and he opened his own eyes and said carefully, “Ma’am—sorry, Lex—do you have some reason to believe there’s new information about your sister’s murder?”

“Yes, I do.”

“May I ask what that is?”

There was a brief pause. “Let’s call it an anonymous tip.”

Her voice was certain, confident, and it puzzled Jesse. What the hell could that mean? Someone had called her and told her there was more to Samantha Wheaton’s death? Jesse quickly ran through the short list of the people who knew about the cover up. He trusted his brother, of course, and Scarlett. Dashiell and Will would sooner kill the entire LAPD than release secrets about Old World crimes. Who else was there? Lizzy Thompkins? Last time he’d talked to Scarlett, she’d said Lizzy was guarded by other werewolves around the clock, but maybe it was possible.

Still, it wasn’t like he could talk about it. “I’m sorry, Lex, but I can assure you that we got the right man. And the right woman.”

“Maybe you did,” she said, her voice cooling. “But I didn’t get the full story. And I think I deserve it.”

Did she? He thought of all his nightmares, and decided that even if he had been allowed to say anything about the Old World, it was better for Lex’s mental health not to hear it. “I don’t know what to tell you,” he said finally.

“Why don’t you start by telling me about your friend? The one who knew I wasn’t human.”
 

Who knew I wasn’t human
. Jesse considered that for a second. “Back up. Let’s say for the sake of argument that I believe you’re not human. That you are, in fact, a witch.”

“Okay, let’s.” She sounded unsurprised.

“
I’m
still human. If you are what I think you are, you’ll understand why I can’t just jump in and answer all your questions.”

“If you can’t answer them,” she said slowly, “that means my sister’s death
was
supernatural.”

Oh, goddammit. He’d walked right into that. “Look,” he tried, “I’ve told you everything I can about Samantha’s murder. I’m sorry.”

“Okay, fine.” It sounded like her teeth were gritted with irritation. “If you won’t give me answers, I’ll come out there and find someone who will.” The line went dead.

Jesse looked at his phone with alarm. “Well, fuck.”

He glanced around the production office, but no one was trying to get his attention at the moment, so he dialed his sometimes partner Scarlett Bernard. They hadn’t seen much of each other over the last ten months.
Which is pretty much what happens,
Jesse thought wryly,
when you get dumped for some other guy.
Scarlett had a new life now. She was getting more respect in the Old World, starting to call some of her own shots, plus she had her boyfriend Eli and her teenage assistant Corry. Jesse, on the other hand, wasn’t even a cop anymore. She had no reason to contact him.

And it was probably better that way. He’d gotten any number of invitations to lunch or coffee from actresses and assistants since starting this job, but he’d turned them all down. He wasn’t ready—not just because of Scarlett, but because of … well, everything. The Remus case. The things he’d done to try to stop the killer were nearly as bad as the murders themselves. At least Remus had an excuse for his insane behavior.

Scarlett answered on the second ring. “Bernard.”

Right, she didn’t have his new phone number. Stupid of him to forget to give it to her. “Hey, it’s me,” he said.

There was a pause, and for a second Jesse thought she didn’t recognize his voice.
That
would hurt. But then she said, “Hey, Jesse. Long time no see. What’s going on?”