The Beast (22 page)

"Speaking of clothes," I said. "I need to get dressed."

Jessica nodded and waved me off with her spoon. "See ya."

I dressed with feverish excitement. The plan was to go back to Snow's house and look at the files he had on the killer. Simon's memory had made it look like there was a wall covered in newspaper clippings and photos, but the memory wasn't clear enough to give me a detailed image to go off of.

I pulled on a pair of loose jeans, a top that was meant to be tight but was now flowy, and a pair of white socks. Maybe trying on clothes wouldn’t be a nightmare now that I had a werewolf metabolism. At least until I got to the price tag. I all but skipped down the hall back into the living room.

"You got a text from Simon," Jessica said, waving my phone around.

I took it and read it. "No. I'm not going."

No? I looked at the last message I'd sent him, three days old, asking if he liked lamb.

I started to respond, but couldn't think of anything to say. I didn't need him to go with me. I knew the house by sight thanks to his memory, I knew that Officer Snow would be out, and I knew what I was looking for.

"What are you going to do?" Jessica asked, as though reading my thoughts.

"I'm still going," I said. "I'll just be back a little earlier."

"Oh, yay, you should come shopping with me!" she said. "You desperately need new clothes."

I looked down at myself. I tried not to pay too much attention, but she was right. I looked horrible in the ill-fitting clothes. I’d have to face the nightmare sooner or later. I smiled. "Yeah, when I get back we should do that. I can always use a friend in the dressing room."

She beamed up at me and I left to go visit Officer Snow's house. I did just as Simon had, I knocked on the door. When no one answered, I tried the doorknob.

Locked.

It didn't matter much, a window was cracked and I easily pushed it open and shimmied inside. I followed the path Simon had taken to the upstairs room full of files and notes and pictures. It looked like it belonged in a TV show. Snow was the obsessed detective, bent on catching the killer. The problem was that he didn't seem to have anything useful. He had more blurry cell phone pictures of me, but the best one had apparently been sold to the newspaper. He had other officer's notes, which only seemed to confirm what the media already knew.

I found the notes about Sandra's death. They were so cold and clinical, like she was never a person at all, like she was born a piece of meat with a head.

The doorknob turned behind me.

With a speed I didn't know my human form possessed, I darted into a closet across the room.

The door opened and Snow's voice called out. "Police. Come out with your hands up."

I pressed myself against the wall, trying to be as small as possible. I could hear the blood rushing in my ears and every breath sounded as loud as a scream. Officer Snow moved in the room, touching the papers I had touched.

Then it went quiet. I held my breath and didn't even blink for fear he would hear it and I would get caught. When I couldn’t hold it any longer, I opened my nostrils, expanded my throat, and exhaled as slowly and quietly as I could. Footsteps came closer and my heart pounded against my chest. I couldn't even think of a reaction if he did catch me. What would I do? Fight? Run away? Put my hands up? Would that be the moment I learned how to transform on command?

The closet door opened. It took half a heartbeat for him to see me and raise his gun. I had faced vampires, werewolves and killers, but in that moment his gray-green eyes over the barrel of his pistol were the most frightening thing I'd ever seen.

"I know you," he said.

Wide eyed, I shook my head slowly, raising my hands.

"Yeah, you're the friend of the last victim. The one we had to throw out of her house. Step out of the closet, Jade."

My pulse raced when I stepped out, palms still facing him. He grabbed one hand and turned me around, somehow cuffing me in the process. I wondered how often he practiced that move, and how much less frequently he got to use it.

"Come on," he said, roughly pushing me back to the hall, down the stairs and out the front door. He didn't have a patrol car. Instead, he put me in the passenger seat of his ten year old coup and strapped the seatbelt across my lap. He climbed into the driver's seat and started the car.

"What were you doing in my house, Jade?"

I said nothing.

"I don't know why I asked. I saw what you were going through. I don't suppose you have any information to add?"

I gave a tiny head shake. Tears blurred my vision. They were a mix of embarrassment over getting caught and being reminded of Sandra's death. All the confusion I felt over the last few months: losing my job, my home, my best friend, starving children in Africa. Everything came crashing down all at once, and it was all leaking out quietly in Officer Snow's car.

"I'm not going to press charges," he said. "I do have some idea what you're going through, you know. I want you to know that if you come up with anything, you can come to me. We can work together on this."

I nodded, hot tears sliding down my chain and wetting my stone pendant.

"But if I ever catch you in my house again, I will shoot you."

I nodded again, fresh tears of relief spilling out.

We pulled into the police station and he dug through his center console for a moment and pulled out a little square foil packet. At first I thought of a condom, even though it would have been so horribly out of place. He ripped it open and pulled out a white square. It was a wet wipe, the kind you get from a barbecue joint, and he swept it over my cheeks and carefully under my eyes.

I got the warm feeling I used to get as a kid when someone did something nice for me.

He gave a smile that was somewhere between admiration and pity, and the warm feeling was gone. I didn't need pity.

"There," he said. "I mean it about working together. When you get out of here, I want you to call me if you get any leads. Don't do something stupid. Next time you're likely to get yourself killed."

I nodded.

When Snow got out of the car, I noticed the picture hanging from his rearview mirror. It was him, in front of a lake, with his arm slung around the shoulders of another man, who had his other arm around a woman with wild brunette hair and gray-green eyes. They were all holding pint glasses up.

The man was familiar, the hunter, Snow’s cousin. I couldn't place the woman, whose face was obscured by a cap, before Snow opened the door and pulled me out of the car. Everyone seemed to recognize him, even out of uniform, and no one questioned him until we got to the front desk.

"How can I help you, Officer Snow?" the pretty but bored looking reception girl asked. I noticed that she was an officer, not a receptionist, and I looked again. Nothing about her screamed "cop".

"Caught her trying to break into an ex-boyfriend’s house," Snow lied. "I figure a night in the tank would help her sober up and cool off."

"Well, aren’t you just the Good Samaritan?" Officer Perry teased him. "Alright, go ahead and take her back. Need processing?"

"No," he said. "I think she learned her lesson. We won't see her here again, will we?"

I dropped my head and shook it, hiding a manic smile. He was lying for me, covering for me. I broke into his house and it wasn't even going to be on record that I'd ever been arrested. He led me to a tiny cell and opened it up. A larger uniformed man took over from there. Through a series of silent nods, they seemed to communicate everything they needed to say. Before he left, Snow handed me a card with his name and phone number on it. On the back, his cell phone number was scribbled in blue pen.

"Just in case.”

The bigger officer shut the door and locked it, and that was it. I was in a cage, alone. At least I still had my phone and all my stuff. The cell had horrible reception, but eventually I got a text out to Jessica and Simon that Officer Snow arrested me and I would be out by morning.

What felt like hours later, I got a response from Jessica. "Be safe in there. I'll come pick you up in the morning, just call me."

I didn't hear from Simon.

In the morning, a large officer, not the same one from the night before, released me without a word. He pointed toward the exit when I looked confused.

The station was buzzing. Some officers seemed somber and silent, some were quietly mumbling to each other in hurried voices. Everyone was moving.

The male officer at the reception desk barely looked up at me through red eyes when I left.

The whole thing made me very nervous and I found myself turning Officer Snow's card over and over in my hand when I called Jessica.

"On my way," she said with a yawn.

She arrived a few minutes later, in pajama pants and a tank top. "Hey."

"Hi." I climbed in.

We were halfway home before she said, "So what did you do?"

I flushed. "I, uh… I broke into his house."

She laughed. "You what?"

"Yeah… I thought he had some information about Sandra's death that I didn't."

She stopped laughing. "Did he?"

I shrugged. "Nothing that I didn't already know."

"Well, that's good," she said. She threw both hands over her mouth and then threw them both back onto the steering wheel. "That's not what I meant! I mean that it's good that you didn't get, you know, really arrested. Oh, honey, I wish that he had something on Sandra's killer. I mean, the cops are doing everything they can but that's not much, is it? I mean there aren't even enough of them to go around for all the normal stuff."

"Yeah," I said. "I know it wasn't a mountain lion."

I couldn't tell her how I knew that. I couldn't tell her that there was no mountain lion where Sandra had been killed. Not for a long time.

She nodded. "I know. Hey, should we pick up breakfast? You didn't even eat dinner last night, did you? I killed the last of the cereal already."

"No," I said. "I'll go out after I shower. I need to take care of some things anyway."

"Okay." After a while, she said "So, I know the timing for this is really bad but I was thinking that we could invite Jack and Cole over, for old time's sake. Do a Sandra style party, watch her favorite movies and look at old pictures or something. I didn't know her for that long, but the two of you are like the best friends I've ever had and I really miss her."

"Me too," I said. "It's a good idea. We shouldn't stop hanging out together just because she's not here anymore. Maybe it will be…"

What? Closure? I couldn't close the door on Sandra. A new beginning? Wasn't that the same thing?

"Good," I finished.

"Great," she said. "I'll find out when everyone is free and I'll get some of her favorite stuff going. I know she loved that fish wine. What's the brand called?"

I smiled. "FISH."

She smiled her wide, beautiful smile and nodded. "Yeah. We need some of that. Beefcakes is at the groomer. Are you going to be okay if I go shopping right now? Do you need anything else?"

"No," I said. "Thank you so much already."

She gave me a hug scented with industrial power strawberry body wash. She went into her room to change while I started the shower. She popped her head into the bathroom before she left.

"You sure you don't need anything?"

"I'm sure."

The warm water seemed to agitate my thoughts. The buzzing police station, and something else. Jessica had apparently showered, then put pajamas on, then took Beefcake to the groomer, all before coming to pick me up? She didn't smell like dirty dog, even though he always basically mauled her in a panic when it was time to go to the groomer or the vet. To him, they were practically the same thing. I couldn't put my finger on why it bothered me, so I stopped thinking about it.  I started to make a mental list of the movies we should watch in Sandra's honor instead.

Feeling clean and refreshed, I remembered that my car was still parked down the street from Snow's house. I put on my running shoes, noticing that they would have to be replaced soon. I'd put a lot of miles on them in a short amount of time.

I ran to Snow's street, and even though I had parked on the street behind his, I stopped to stare at the scene in front of his house. Three cars and two vans in front of his house blocked off the street. People in and out of uniforms walked all over his lawn and in and out of his front door.

No,
I thought.
No, don't be dead.

I took my cell phone and Snow's card out of my pocket and dialed.

chapter 24

Officer Kubretzki caught my eye as he stepped out of the house and sat down.

"Hello," Snow's voice said on the phone. My heart leapt before he said, "Sorry I missed your call, leave a message."

"Hey," I said. "It's me. I don't have anything but… I want to make sure you're okay. I want to make sure that you didn’t go and… do what you warned me not to."

I hung up and watched Kubretzki. He put his head down, rubbed his face with his hands, and stood up again before anyone could approach him. He had the look of a man who was tired of being asked if he was okay. It was the same look I wore for a week after Sandra’s death. I still wasn’t okay.

Kubretzki watched me cross the street to my car. On the way home I tried Snow's cell phone again. It rang through to the voicemail again. I stopped at a grocery store, even though I wasn't hungry. It was still too early in the morning for fresh deli food, so I bought a package of day old chicken and a container of green juice and nervously devoured both on the way home while I tried Snow's number one last time. Straight to voicemail.

I got home and started to wear a hole in carpet with my pacing.

A little after noon, there was a knock at the door.

Kubretzki stood outside, looking very upset.

"Jade Greene?" It wasn't a question. "We'd like to bring you in for questioning."

"For what?" I asked, stepping outside. That wasn’t really a question either.

"For the murder of Officer Snow." Seeing that I wasn't about to resist, he motioned to the car.

"Okay," I said. "Let me just text my friend so she knows where I am."

He had a hand casually poised, ready to snatch his gun out if anything other than a cell phone materialized from my pocket. I sent a message to Jessica and Simon that I was going in for questioning and to come get me and promised to call if anything went wrong.

I put the phone back in my pocket and got into the back seat of the car.

He didn't say anything on the way to the station, and maintained his silence until we were in an interrogation room with a female officer. It was exactly like in the movies, but with more scuff marks. I was surrounded by cinderblock walls, a door on one, a one-way mirror on another, a camera in the corner, and a lonely table in the middle of it all.

"Where were you last night, Jade?" Officer Kubretzki asked.

"I was here," I said.

They looked at each other, then looked at the mirror with a meaningful look. "We don't have any record of that," the female cop said. She wasn't wearing a name badge.

"It wasn't on the record," I said, realizing how that hadn't worked out to my advantage after all. "I was seen, though. I'm sure I'm on cameras and stuff. Officer… Officer Perry was at the front desk. She saw me. And whoever was opening and closing cell doors."

"You were arrested last night?" Kubretzki asked.

"No! Well, kind of-."

"Were you arrested?" the female cop asked. I really wished she had a name. I could only think of her as Lady Cop or Bad Cop, and neither of them made me very sympathetic toward her.

"Snow took me here because I… I was drunk and I was threatening to break into my ex's house," I lied.

They both looked at me again, then each other.

"Am I under arrest?" I asked. I don't know why the question came out.

"If you leave this room before we're done, you will be," Lady Cop said. "We have enough to charge you with the murder."

"So why don't you?" I asked carefully. I was trying very hard not to sound defiant, but I wanted to know.

"Because we're after the truth," Kubretzki said. "Not a pair of wrists to throw in cuffs."

Bad Cop leaned forward. "So tell us the truth. Did you do it?"

"No!" I shouted, backing away like she was a scorpion. He was nice to me, how could they think that I would kill him? I took a breath, reminded myself that this was their job. "No," I repeated. "I didn't do it."

"You have the most motive," Bad Cop said, swaying like she knew something I didn't.

"What motive do I have?" I asked, perplexed.

"Me and him were kind of bearers of bad news to you," Kubretzki said.

"We have footage of you attacking him at the morgue," Bad Cop chimed.

"Yeah? Do you also have footage of my hugging him for like an hour? He had just shown me my best friend’s dead body. He was a good guy, I wouldn't want him dead."

"You acted very erratic when we came to you about the house," Kubretzki said.

"Officer Snow said that you hit on them both, and when that didn't work you got violent."

"If yelling is violence, then that's news to me. I also apologized and complied. They came to kick me out of my dead best friend's house. It was a little emotional for me."

"And you say he arrested you last night," Kubretzki said.

"He wasn't on duty last night," Bad Cop said.

"Well that explains why he wasn't in uniform and why he brought me here in his personal car."

"Would you like some coffee?" Bad Cop asked. "Soda? Water?"

"No, thank you."

She left the room anyway.

"Is she going to check out my story?" I asked. Kubretzki nodded. "I'm not lying. He arrested me in his street clothes and brought me here in his car. He even… He wiped the tears off my face for me before he brought me in. I didn't have anything against him. He’s the only one who even came close to knowing how I felt."

Kubretzki nodded. All the fight in the room had left with Bad Cop.

"What's her name?" I asked. "The other officer. She wasn't wearing a name badge."

"Snow.”

The picture in Snow's car jumped into my head. Snow, his cousin, and a woman. Bad Cop seemed a far cry from the happy, wild haired brunette in the photo, but she did have the same gray green eyes.

"His sister?"

Kubretzki nodded.

Female Snow came back into the room with three mugs of coffee.

"Something about your story doesn't check out," she said.

"Did you talk to Officer Perry? The pretty, young looking one? Or whoever was opening cells last night? I was here!"

"We confirmed that you got here, but no one can say when you were released, or even if you were released. Since none of it was official, we don't have anything but memory to go by."

"There must be cameras! It had to have happened after he… after. Everyone was acting weird. That's why no one remembers me. Why would I matter?"

"You called him this morning," she said.

"I did. Why would I call him if I knew he was dead?"

"Why did you have his number?"

"He gave it to me last night. He told me to call him if I needed anything."

"And what did you need?"

I opened my mouth and closed it. "I just wanted to see if he was okay."

"Why wouldn't he be?"

They both leaned toward me then, intently waiting for my answer.

"I- I don't know."

"Why were you in his house?" she asked.

"I- he invited me. He thought that showing me the stuff he had on The Beast would help ease my mind."

"When was this?"

"Yesterday."

"What time?" The questions were coming too fast.

"I don't remember."

"Was it in the morning, afternoon, evening, night?"

"Afternoon," I said. "Evening."

"So, would you say around seven? Eight?" I could smell the trap, but I couldn't avoid it.

"I don't know. Probably around that time."

"You see, Miss Greene, this is the part of your story that doesn't check out. My brother was out of town until eight. I was in his house from four to six. I talked to him after that and he specifically told me that he had to go out as soon as he got showered and dressed. He had a very important dinner appointment. He told me where his reservations were and this morning I found out that he was late for that dinner. So either you were in his house without permission while he was out or you were invited right around midnight. And I think you know the difference between afternoon, evening, and midnight."

I let out a breath. I was caught. "Okay," I leveled. "Here's the thing. I was there without permission at first. The door was locked though and when he got there we talked and he let me in."

She gave me her swaggering smile. "I forgot to mention that I picked him up from the airport and brought him home. I watched him unlock the door and go inside. You weren't there."

"I was hiding."

"You were inside," she hissed. "The sooner you own up to it, the sooner we can move on and get back to work catching the killer. You probably
were
here when it happened, but that doesn't mean that you were working alone."

The tears that were waiting for their chance to fall rolled down my face. "Why would I kill a cop who was really nice to me? He gave me his number after I looked through his stuff and told me that we could work together if I thought of anything."

"What did he warn you not to do?"

"What?"

She produced a tape recorder and played the voicemail I had left for Snow that morning.

"What does that mean?"

"He told me…” I dropped my head and sighed. I was trapped. “He said not to do something stupid and get myself killed."

"And now he's dead."

I nodded, afraid to say anything else and let my stupid mouth betray me again.

Someone knocked and opened the door. Kubretzki went out, came back and motioned for Female Snow to leave the room.

"You can go," he said to me. "Thank you for your cooperation."

I mumbled something on the way out that meant “I hope you catch him soon” but didn’t sound like much of anything at all.

Simon stood in the lobby and he immediately wrapped his arms around me, enveloping me in his warmth. I projected the whole thing to him all at once and he returned thoughts about finding out that I wasn't being interrogated properly. I wasn't supposed to be picked up at all. The detectives were really angry when Simon had showed up, asking how long my interrogation would take. They were forced to release me, but I got the feeling that I would be watched for a while anyway, just in case.

We moved outside, where we could be less of a spectacle, and I withdrew. "Where have you been?"

"I've been at all of the murder sites. I've been tracking the victims and their families. I've been investigating."

"Did you come up with anything?"

"I only know that I'm missing something. None of the murders seem linked. It's like there really is a wild animal out there, picking off whoever happens by. The problem is that some of the people- like Sandra- had no business being where they were when they were killed. I mean, she was on the way to San Francisco, right? She’s not the type to stop for a quick night hike on the way. Before the killings in the news there were three homeless guys that look like they were killed the same way, but no one has actually connected them to the Beast killings.”

"So they were like practice?"

"I think so," he said.

"I wish I could share this with Snow," I muttered.

"You barely knew him."

"I barely know you, too, but I trust you."

“Yeah, but you’ve been in my head.” He pulled me close. "Come on, let's get you home. Jessica is playing the part of Sandra tonight and she will be furious if we're late to her party."

I smiled.

At home, Jessica was wearing one of Sandra's old aprons and holding a casserole dish with one of Sandra's ugly rooster pot holders. It was a strange sight. I was a little nostalgic, a little proud, and a little angry. No one could replace Sandra, not that Jessica was trying to, she just didn’t have her own stuff so we used Sandra’s.

"Oh, good, you're here!" she said to me. "You too, Simon."

"Need any help?"

"Oh, god, yes! Can one of you set the table and one of you open the wine? Jack and Cole will be here any minute. I don't know how Sandra managed this kind of thing all the time."

I smiled. Sandra always started a day early. But she did manage well, and even had the forethought to do her hair and makeup before putting the finishing touches on everything else. She had party planning down to an exact science.

Just as I set down the last place setting, the doorbell rang. Jack and Cole wore nearly identical apprehensive smiles on the other side.

"Hi," they said.

"Hi," we answered.

Jack kissed Jessica on the cheek, handed her a bottle and kissed me on the cheek. His eyes were red. Cole kissed Jessica on the lips and then hugged me. Simon got awkward handshakes from both.

Jessica whipped the apron off when she noticed Jack staring and poured us each a big glass of wine. "I think we're going to need a lot of this," she said.