Dead Spots (Scarlett Bernard #1)(3)
I drove south on the 405 highway as fast as I dared, three miles over the speed limit, but I was still another fifteen minutes late to meet Dashiell. La Brea Park closes at sunset, so the actual entrance driving to get into the park was chained and locked. As I pulled up to the gate, he materialized out of the shadows, a fortyish-looking vampire in impeccable black pants and a deep-green cashmere T-shirt. His dark-brown hair was a little mussed, and his blandly handsome face looked dangerously angry. I was definitely in trouble.
I parked the van at the curb and rolled my window down, turning the engine off. Dash took a few steps toward me, but stayed well out of my ten-foot radius.
“You are late,” he stage-whispered. “Our situation has grown more complicated.”
No point in groveling. “I’m sorry. Tell me what’s happening.”
“I got a text message from a private number and came to see for myself,” he said shortly. “There are three bodies ahead; they have been torn apart. There is blood, so I do not think it was the vampires. Perhaps one of Will’s people.” Vampires, as a rule, don’t waste blood. Will is the head of the local werewolf pack. The werewolves in Los Angeles occasionally run around in the parks that close at sunset. LA is one of the rare cities where the Old World creatures share territory more or less in peace, though when push comes to shove, Dashiell is in charge. Witches and werewolves aren’t immortal, after all. It’s an uneasy peace, darkened by preceding centuries of tension, and it works best when everyone sticks to their own kind. Usually the vampires take care of vampire business, and the wolves take care of wolf business, but there is some overlap, especially when the perpetrator is unknown.
“What’s the complication?”
“A jogger ran through here two minutes ago, and she saw the bodies. You have only a few minutes before the police arrive.” He pointed toward a nearby clump of trees. “Go.” And just like that, he vanished.
I grabbed my duffel and sprinted toward the trees, fumbling to pull out a flashlight as I went. In cases where there’s a time crunch, you have to prioritize, and priority one would be the bodies. There would still be evidence without bodies, but the police couldn’t do much with a few bloodstains outdoors in a public park. I raced through the trees, trying to avoid roots and rocks, and stopped dead a quarter mile in, where I found a small clearing that had been painted red.
Chapter 2
I stared. I’ve seen dead bodies before, of course, and plenty of blood, but this was...very different. At first it just looked like meat, like one of those movies where the monster is blown to bits and the pink pieces fall down everywhere. Except, this time, the monster was actually people. I counted heads and came up with three. Their bodies had been carved open at the stomach, and the insides were pulled outside. All four limbs had also been separated from each body, though there was way too much blood for me to determine which had come first, the evisceration or the dismemberment. The limbs sat in a pile in the center of the clearing, with the body cavities and body insides stretched around them like petals on a flower. It was almost a pattern, and I suddenly thought of the squares on a patchwork quilt. The smell of blood—and other things—was overpowering, even to my human nose, and I realized that the blood was everywhere. Splattered on the scrubby little plants, the tree trunks. I saw enough spilled blood to wonder if the killer had deliberately hit every artery. Maybe he had. Fear suddenly wobbled in my stomach. I tried taking a woozy step forward, but the shock made it feel as if I were slogging through gelatin.
That was my first big mistake: I hesitated. My kind of crime scene cleanup is all about moving quickly—not only are you generally in a hurry, but you never want to take too much time to think about what you’re looking at. This, however, was the worst scene I’d ever been to, and I probably stared for a full minute, though I wasn’t exactly aware of the time passing. Finally, without taking my eyes off the carnage, I slid a hand into my duffel’s outside pocket and pulled out a heavy garbage bag, the thickest Hefty has ever made.
I had just pulled apart the bag’s folds, ready to snap it open, when a cop ran into the clearing from the opposite side. Suddenly, my head cleared and time sped back up.
“Police!” he hollered, gun pointed at my chest. “Show me your hands!” I let the garbage bag flutter to the ground and obediently raised my hands to shoulder height. He was young, around thirty, and Latino—and very handsome, even for LA. Under his leather jacket, I saw that his badge swung on a chain at his neck, just like the cops in movies. His gun barrel never strayed from me as he glanced about the scene and then swore in Spanish, his face paling to a sickly gray.
“Did you do this?” he demanded bluntly, and I just shook my head.
“Are you the only one?” I said stupidly, my tongue still thick.
“The rest are coming. Don’t you move.” He began to circle around the gore, stepping carefully on the scrubby grass. “Easy, now.”
He reached slowly for the handcuffs on his belt, and I realized for the first time the kind of trouble I was in. Even if I could convince the police that I wasn’t the murderer, I would be on their radar forever. My reputation for discretion would be ruined, if it wasn’t already, and I would probably lose my job. I took an automatic step backward, and then three things happened at once: I heard the first sirens, the cop opened his mouth to scream at me, and the werewolf burst into the clearing between us.