Trail of Dead (18 page)

He pulled his foot back in and closed the door again, holding back a sigh. It was never just easy, dealing with these people. It made him suddenly miss Runa, currently the only person in his life who was drama-free. “Won’t they find his name on the rental records eventually, anyway?”

“No,” Kirsten said. “Nobody associated with Beth Israel is on any paperwork here. It’s a company owned by another company kind of thing.”

He stared at her, and she dropped her arm. “Who owns this building, Kirsten?”

“We do,” she said, and when he raised his eyebrows she waved vaguely. “The Old World. Let’s just say it’s Dashiell’s equivalent in San Diego.”

Jesse felt the balance of power shifting between them. Kirsten now needed something from him as much as he needed information from her. He considered his options. “If you cover all of this up, the people who loved him will never have peace,” Jesse said finally. “You know that, don’t you?”

Tears trickled down her cheek, though she kept her expression neutral. “I know,” she said, her voice miserable. “But if we sent the human police after Olivia, it would only cause more dead bodies that couldn’t be explained properly. And some of them would be policemen.”

Jesse sighed. This went against every cop instinct he’d developed, but he knew she was right. He would just have to add this to the list of things he had to live with.

The cops on the scene didn’t have much information for Jesse, even when they were done teasing him about being pretty enough to be a Hollywood cop. Jesse didn’t bother explaining that he worked out of Southwest Los Angeles; he just blushed and gave them a made-up story about visiting a friend of his aunt’s who was concerned about the rabbi’s death. Jesse was used to the easy gallows humor that homicide cops usually adopted at crime scenes, but to his surprise the three cops seemed genuinely saddened by the murder. Rabbi Samuel had been well-known in the community, they said, and was a great supporter of San Diego PD. He had died of blood loss from a serrated cut across his throat, and there was a lot of blood missing. There were also several new bruises and broken fingers where Samuel had been tortured before his death.

When the senior officer’s radio burped out their new orders, Jesse thanked them and walked slowly back toward Kirsten, giving San Diego PD a chance to get out of there. Before he could fill her in on what he’d learned, however, a dark-red Town and Country van drove slowly into the lot, and Kirsten looked up and waved suddenly. “That’s Alice. She’s going to take us into the collection.”

“Is she a witch too?” Jesse asked. Kirsten shook her head.

The van pulled into a spot two down from Jesse’s sedan, and the driver rolled down her window. “Hey, Kirsten,” she called, in a flat Midwestern accent. She opened the door and climbed down, a fiftyish woman with forty extra pounds around her middle and iron-gray hair. Her eyes were rimmed red, and pink blotches had appeared on her craggy cheeks, but her jaw was set, and she gave Jesse a firm handshake. “Alice Weiss,” she said. “You must be the detective.”

“Jesse Cruz. Jesse.”

“And I’m Alice. Thank you for coming.” The older woman glanced nervously toward Kirsten. “Pardon my bluntness, Kirsten, but are you sure…this is okay? To take him in there?

Kirsten looked speculatively at Jesse for a moment, then nodded to Alice. “He’s okay.”

Alice accepted this without a word and began leading them toward a normal-size door between two of the garage doors. It opened onto a concrete staircase. “We’re on the second floor,” she explained, without turning her head. Through the door at the top of the stairs was a long concrete hallway, as bare and functional as a bunker. Which, Jesse realized, was exactly what it was. Halfway down the hall Alice stopped them at a heavy steel door with no window. Jesse couldn’t help but feel a little excited, as his imagination ran wild with thoughts of possible witch treasures: cauldrons and big, creaky books and stuffed ravens. He was a little disappointed when Alice flicked a light switch and the room burst into ordinary florescent lighting, illuminating an enormous single room with rows and rows of industrial metal shelving. The shelves were stacked with big plastic tubs in mismatched colors. They were the exact same kind that his mother used to store her Christmas decorations.

Kirsten had been watching his reaction, and now she gave him a bemused smile. “You were expecting the Ark of the Covenant?” she teased.

Jesse laughed and shrugged. “Maybe a little.”

“They’re meant to look boring,” Alice said helpfully. “We don’t add or remove things very often, but when we do it’s in these dull, plastic tubs. Who’d give them a second glance?”

She took off down one row, beckoning for them to follow. Jesse paused to look at the label of one of the tubs next to him. It said only
Romanian artifacts, 1753
. The tub on the shelf above it read
Japanese artifacts, 1752
. He caught up with Alice and Kirsten, glancing at the labels along the way. They were all similarly worded.

Kirsten must have noticed the puzzled look on his face. “They’re vague like that on purpose,” she explained. “Even the year is just the year that each object fell into the hands of the witches, not when the object was created.”

“Are they all Jewish artifacts?”

“No,” she said. “But most of the Jewish artifacts the witches control are here.”

“Is there a directory?” Jesse asked. “An index of all the boxes?”

Alice shook her head without stopping. “Not here, anyway,” she called over her shoulder. “You can see why the vampire needed Samuel’s help to find the right place.”

The place may have looked pedestrian, but it was huge. Alice threaded them through rows and aisles with no hesitation, and Jesse was grateful she was there. “I’ve been thinking about that,” Jesse said, “about Olivia needing his help.” He told them, with as little detail as possible, what the cop outside had said about Samuel suffering before death. “Why would Olivia have to torture the rabbi instead of just pressing his mind?” Jesse asked. Before either woman could answer him, Jesse remembered what Kirsten had said about canceling out magic. “Wait, was he a witch too?”

Kirsten and Alice exchanged an uneasy look that Jesse couldn’t interpret, and Kirsten said, “No. There are a handful of male witches, but Samuel wasn’t one of us. He was considered a
Friend to the Witches.” The way she said it made it sound like a title, but Jesse didn’t push it for the moment.

Alice stopped abruptly, pointing forward. “Here,” she said unnecessarily. Jesse saw the mess right away: several tubs had been enthusiastically dumped on the ground. Shards of broken glass were scattered on the ground like sequins, and Jesse squatted down and saw bits of dried herbs and battered books mixed in with other unidentifiable wreckage. He looked up at Kirsten, whose face was stricken. “I didn’t move anything,” Alice volunteered. “I wanted to clean up, but you know…I watch TV.”

Jesse nodded absently. He was staring at the wreckage, wishing Glory was there to help him understand what he was looking at. There were definite trails in the glass, like Olivia had dragged Samuel back toward the door when she was finished. They weren’t neat, though, so Jesse thought Samuel must have been struggling.

“So Olivia was just torturing him for the hell of it?” Jesse asked. “I know she’s nuts, but that seems sort of risky, given how public Beth Israel is.”

“It’s possible,” Kirsten said hesitantly.

He straightened up to meet her eyes. “But…?”

She sighed. “The witches keep certain things private. Certain things we can
do
, I mean. One of those is to create protection amulets.” She gave Alice a meaningful look, and the heavyset woman pulled a long chain out of her button-down shirt. Jesse saw a locket at the end of the chain, in the shape of a stylized Star of David. She held it in her palm as Jesse stepped forward to get a better look, but he instinctively knew not to touch it.

“Alchemy again,” he said, looking at Kirsten.

The witch nodded. “Alice, like Samuel, knows about and deals with this repository,” she said. “The handful of humans who know have protection amulets. They cannot be pressed by vampires, nor can they be turned.” Her face was grim. “Although they can be killed, as you can see.”

“Would Olivia have known about these?”

Kirsten bit her lip again, thinking. “Probably not,” she said at last. “I created these myself, and I’m very careful about who knows about them. Honestly, I’m not even sure if Dashiell knows about these. It may have frustrated Olivia, that she couldn’t press Samuel, which might be why this was so violent.” She stared at Jesse, and he got the message.
Keep it to yourself.

Alice put the locket back under her blouse, shifting nervously from one foot to the other. Jesse realized
he
was making her nervous by being there. She wasn’t used to outsiders, and she had said she wanted to get the mess cleaned up. Jesse took one more look around and stood up. “We should let you get back to work,” he said kindly to Alice.

Her shoulders slumped in relief. “There’s so much to do,” she murmured, distractedly. “I need to call his brother and sister-in-law in Montana, and speak to the board…” She headed back up the aisle in the direction of the door, still muttering under her breath. Kirsten gave Jesse a questioning look—
did you get what you came for?
—but he just shrugged and tilted his head to follow Alice. He didn’t want to talk in front of the older woman in case there were things she wasn’t supposed to know.

When they were almost to the door, Kirsten stopped in her tracks. “Wait,” she said urgently. “I have to check one other thing.”

Alice called a question after her, but Kirsten had spun on a heel and was hurrying down one of the labyrinthine corridors. Alice looked at Jesse, but he just turned and followed along in the witch’s wake. Kirsten completely ignored both of them, scanning the tub labels and hurrying from one shelf to the next. Finally she found the tub she wanted and ripped it from the chest-high shelf. Jesse made a move to help her lift it, but she shook her head without looking at him. Dropping it on the floor with a hollow thud, she tore the lid off and looked inside. Jesse leaned forward to see, but the only thing in the tub was three empty glass jars. There was
nothing overtly special about them—in fact, Jesse thought, he had seen similar jars at Target. But when he looked up at Alice, she was as pale as she’d been when Jesse told them about Samuel’s injuries. He opened his mouth to ask, but Kirsten had sagged down on the floor next to the tub, head in her hands. “We’ve got a problem,” she said to the concrete floor.

Jesse touched her shoulder, trying to be patient. “What is it? What was in the jars?” he asked gently. He peeked at the side of the tub, but the label just said “Spices.” No date, no country.

Kirsten looked up at the two of them, and from the corner of his eye Jesse saw Alice shaking her head
no
. Kirsten’s gaze landed on him as she pulled herself up using one of the shelves as balance. “I’ll tell you in the car,” she said to Jesse, and Alice’s eyes widened.

“Kirsten, you can’t—”

“I can,” Kirsten interrupted. “Thank you for all your help, Alice. Please let me know when Samuel’s funeral arrangements have been made, so I can come pay my respects.” Her tone was crisp and formal, and Alice shrank back as if reprimanded. Jesse felt sorry for the woman but still had no idea what was happening. He clenched his jaw, trying to keep his questions until they got to the car.

I claimed a table in the back of a coffee shop near Dashiell’s house, Kalista’s Koffee, and then spent the first few minutes trying to reorganize the papers into a more or less chronological timeline of Olivia’s life. I scanned through the early stuff—there wasn’t a lot that Will hadn’t already touched upon. There was, however, a transcript of an interview with Olivia’s husband, Scott Powell.

Interviewer: Mr. Powell, what can you tell me about your marriage to Olivia Richards?

Powell: I really don’t think I should be talking to you. I think you should go. She can’t find out where I am, you see?

Interviewer: Mr. Powell, I promise you, there is no reason for Olivia to ever know that you and I spoke. This is purely for background information regarding a sensitive employment position.

Powell: You mean like with the government or something?

Interviewer: Something of that nature, yes.

Powell: Is it a shrink thing—I mean, a psychiatry job? Because you should know she was asked to leave the program.

Interviewer: Is that how you two met, at graduate school?

Powell: At first, yes. I was getting my doctorate in computer science while she was working on her PhD.

Interviewer: Did anything about her strike you as odd, when you first met?

Powell: No…I mean, except for the fact that she was interested in me. She was—is—gorgeous, you know? So I figured she might just be into my family’s money…

I skipped ahead a few pages, past Scott Powell’s description of their early life together, when he thought she was perfect. I already knew about Olivia’s ability to seem perfect. The investigator Will had hired was pretty good—he was able to get Powell past his fear of being found within a few minutes. Or maybe he’d just realized that Scott Powell was
dying
to talk to someone about his ex-wife.

Investigator: You said you “woke up” to what she was doing. What did you mean by that?

Powell: It was like…she’d been training me, the whole time we were together. Changing who I was. At first I figured, well, a lot of guys feel like that when they get married. But this wasn’t just, like, buying me new clothes or making me get a haircut. A few months after the honeymoon, she was sort of…isolating me. She cut off my contact with my family, with my friends. She didn’t want me going anywhere without her—I worked from home, even then, so I was expected to be with her twenty-four hours a day, every day. If I tried to resist, she got real quiet, like I’d broken her heart, or she ran guilt trips, or she used…you know.

Investigator: Sex?

Powell: Yeah. It was like she had a box of tools, and she pulled out whichever one she needed to keep me in line…