“Yeah. After that car accident case last month, remember?”
Sitting up now, Jesse gritted his teeth. The car accident in question had been part of the Olivia Powell investigation, nearly two weeks earlier, but he’d agreed to help Scarlett destroy crime scenes only a few days ago. The cardinal vampire was playing the long game. Typical. “How could I forget,” Jesse said wryly. “But I can’t come in right now, Glory. I’m on leave.”
“Just trust me, okay?”
A thought pinged in his tired brain. “Was it a woman? Mauled, or scratched, or something like that?”
“No,” her voice had lowered, and he could just picture her cupping one hand around the receiver. “Not a woman.”
Probably not the nova, then. “Glory . . . ,” he complained. “I’ve had about two hours of sleep, and I’m on leave anyway—”
“Hang on,” she interrupted, a new tone in her voice. “There’s someone here who wants to talk to you.”
There was a muffling on the phone, and then another familiar voice said, “Hey, Jess.”
All trace of sleepiness vanished when Jesse heard his ex-girlfriend on the phone. “Runa?” he said stupidly, like they were playing This is Your Life.
“Yeah. Listen, you gotta get down here.”
“I’m supposed to be off,” he said, hesitation in his voice now. Runa Vore was a witch who had taken a job as a crime scene photographer, partly in order to get closer to Jesse. Things had been deeply awkward between the two of them since he’d learned who she really was and broken up with her, so if she was willing to talk to him now . . . Jesse kicked off the covers and started for his dresser.
“Who’s in charge of the scene?” he asked, wedging the phone between his ear and shoulder so he could dig for clothes.
“D1s McHugh and Bine,” she replied, and Jesse almost whistled. He’d heard of McHugh, a veteran Homicide Special detective who was a couple of pay grades above Jesse. Bine must be his partner. Homicide Special usually took the really weird cases, so it was possible that their presence was just a coincidence. It was also possible, though, that Dashiell had gotten Homicide Special assigned to the case to prove to Jesse that he could. “Bine’s a friend; I’ll get you in,” she went on, urgency in her voice. “I’m texting the location. Hurry up.”
She hung up the phone, and Jesse went to get his gun.
Chapter 24
For a moment Jesse thought Runa’s text was a prank. Leaving a dead body—or in this case, two—at a graveyard seemed too much like the beginning of a joke. Something about cutting out the middleman. But she wouldn’t do that, and so ten minutes after the phone call had ended Jesse found himself driving toward Evergreen Cemetery.
Jesse had been there once as a kid, for the funeral of one of his mother’s cousins. It was enormous, nearly seventy acres, but, although it was the oldest graveyard in LA, it lacked the star power that drove tourists to Hollywood Forever or Forest Lawn. There were some historical heavyweights among the three hundred thousand graves, but what was local history compared to global celebrity, especially in Los Angeles?
He followed his phone’s GPS instructions to the ornate concrete pillars that marked the entrance to Evergreen, showing his badge to one of the two uniformed officers guarding the gates. Passing through, he headed toward the island of bright lights and activity he saw in the south end of the graveyard, winding past row after row of silent graves.
At last, Jesse arrived at the end of a long trail of department vehicles parked on the right side of the road. All of the police activity was on his left, marked by crime scene tape circling enormous metal spotlights on tripods. The bulk of the cemetery that Jesse had just driven through lay beyond the bodies. He pulled the sedan over as far as he could behind a patrol car that was still flashing its red and blues, probably to discourage curious onlookers who might otherwise wonder if the bright spotlights indicated a film shoot.
As he approached the closest uniformed officer, Jesse registered the unusual size of the cordoned-off area. It was enormous, more than twice as big as what Jesse was accustomed to. He could hardly see the bodies themselves, fifty yards away behind a throng of technicians in overalls and booties. But there were definitely two of them, which was all Runa had mentioned. Why cordon off so much area if the bodies were way over there?
He reached the first cop outside the caution tape, a pear-shaped African American woman with Waters stenciled across her right breast. “Sir—” she began, but he showed her his badge. She didn’t move to lift the tape, shaking her head slightly.
“Detective Cruz from Southwest robbery-homicide,” he said, in case she was having trouble making out the words. The spotlights weren’t doing much at this distance. “You from Hollenbeck?” he asked, naming the nearest division station.
“Yes, sir. But they want as few people within the tape as possible,” she explained, with professional pity in her voice. Jesse had used the same tone many times. It’s not my rule, sir, the boss just makes me enforce it. Lowering her voice, Waters added, “There’s blood all over the place.”
That explained why the technicians had cordoned off so much of the cemetery. They would want to collect samples of all the blood. Jesse nodded, hoping Runa had done whatever she needed to do to get him in. “I’m looking for Runa Vore, the photographer. She asked me to come.”
Waters nodded, no expression on her face, and automatically turned her head away to speak into her microphone in a low inaudible voice. Jesse had done that plenty of times too and wasn’t offended. She listened for a moment and said to Jesse, “She’s coming to get you.”