When I got to the end, I picked up the scent of the werewolf, heading not into a room, but into the lobby. The trail was thick here, indicating he'd gone this way several times. A second-floor room, accessible only through the lobby. Maybe he liked waking up to the sunrise over a vacant lot. I looped back through the parking lot. Clay came out from behind the building before I could look for him.
"Upstairs," I said.
"See, darling? No one ever claimed mutts have brains."
I tossed the stereo receipt into the bushes and we headed for the front door. As we went into the lobby, Clay put his arm around my waist and started complaining about an imaginary dinner at a local restaurant. As he prattled, I saw the stairs to the left of the checkin desk and steered us there, nodding as he bitched about waiting twenty minutes for the dinner check. The show wasn't necessary. The desk clerk didn't even look up as we went by.
Upstairs, the trail stopped at the third door on the left. Clay grabbed the handle, twisted, and broke it with a muffled snap. As I kept an eye out for other motel guests, Clay waited to see if anyone inside the room responded to the sound of the lock breaking. When he heard nothing, he eased the door open. The curtains were drawn and the room was dark. A door down the hall opened. I pushed Clay forward and we slipped inside.
Clay checked the bathroom to make sure the mutt was gone, then pulled a quarter from his pocket. "Heads we lie in wait, tails we give chase."
"We should stay here," I said. "Check the place out, search for clues while we wait."
Clay rolled his eyes.
"Oh fine," I said. "Just flip the damned thing."
When it came up heads, I stuck my tongue out at him. His hand darted out to grab it, but I pulled it back in time.
"Next time you won't be so fast," he said, then looked around the room. "So what do you hope to find?"
"Anything to explain why we had two mutts in Bear Valley within a week. Aren't you the least bit concerned about that?"
"'Course I am, darling. But I'm sticking concern and curiosity on the back burner. Plenty of time to examine them both when the mutt's dead. I'm not waiting around for this bastard to go after you or the others while I try to find out what he's doing here."
"You think I'm stalling?"
"No, I think you're trying to make efficient use of time. That's fine. I'm just saying don't expect me to be too eager to riffle through dresser drawers while that mutt's roaming our streets."
"Then go watch out on the balcony or something while I search."
Clay didn't do this, of course. He helped me look, having simply made it clear that his heart wasn't in it. Mine wasn't either, but I know better than to pass up an opportunity. Besides, looking through this mutt's junk kept my hands and mind busy, leaving me little time to dwell on why we were tracking him.
Clay started in the bathroom. He was gone maybe ten minutes before he called out, "Here's the scoop. The guy uses hotel shampoo and hotel soap. He hasn't broken the seal on the conditioner. There's a Bic razor and no sign of a toothbrush, toothpaste, or mouthwash. So we're looking for a guy with split ends and a serious breath problem. Any of this helping, darling?"
I gritted my teeth against a reply. The walls were too thin for arguing. Besides, my own search of the main room hadn't turned up much more. I'd found two pairs of jeans, three shirts, and assorted socks and underwear, all of it previously worn and dumped on a chair for reuse. The Gideon Bible in the nightstand had been defaced with pentagrams and inverted crosses. Lovely. Also terribly unoriginal. I mean, if you feel compelled to scribble Satanic symbols on a Bible, the least you can do is draw stuff not found in every edition of Weekly World News. A very uncreative and obviously uninformed werewolf. He'd be in for a disappointment when he discovered werewolves were more likely to know a good recipe for beef Wellington than the recipe for a Satanic rite. In ten years, the devil had never contacted me with special instructions or even to say hello. Then again, neither had God. Maybe that meant they didn't exist. More likely, it meant neither was willing to take responsibility for me.
"Christ, you should see the stuff in there, darling," Clay said as he walked from the bathroom. "Aftershave, cologne, and musk deodorant. If we couldn't tell the mutt was new by the way he smells, we'd know it by the way he smells."
No experienced werewolf would be caught dead wearing cologne, at least not if he had a functioning olfactory system. The very smell of himself would drown out all other scents, making his nose useless. I don't even use scented hand soap. Finding unscented women's toiletry products wasn't easy. The cosmetics industry seemed obsessed with making women smell like anything but themselves. And we piled the stuff on with no regard for achieving a uniform masking smell, layering herbal shampoo on baby powder deodorant on lilac soap on the latest fragrance from Calvin Klein. When I had the misfortune to get stuck in a full elevator early in the morning, the overpowering clash of scents could leave me with a headache until noon.
After checking out the window, Clay walked to where I was sifting through the bedside trash can.
"I'd offer to help," he said. "But you seem to have things under control."
"Thanks."
"Have you checked under the bed?"
"Can't. The frame's solid to the floor." I used the hotel pen to push aside a used Kleenex. I won't say what it had been used for, but werewolves don't contract cold and flu viruses.
"I'll check under the mattress," Clay said.
I'd forgotten that. Werewolves often carry fake ID and stash the real stuff someplace like under their mattress.
"No ID," Clay said. "Just this scrapbook. I don't suppose you want that."
I jumped up so fast I conked my head on the giraffe-neck lamp. Clay grinned and held a blue book out of my reach.
"Mine," he said, grin broadening. Holding it out of my range, he leafed through a few pages, then curled his lip and tossed the book on the bed. "On second thought, it's all yours. Happy reading, darling. I'll stand guard by the window. Give me a synopsis later."
I took the book and sat on the edge of the bed. It was a photo album, the type with plastic film you can pull back from the pages and stick pictures underneath. Instead of photos, the mutt had filled this album with newspaper clippings. Not random clippings, but ones following a specific theme: serial killers. I flipped past page after page of articles, seeing some faces that were familiar--Berkowitz, Dahmer, Bundy--and others I didn't know. Not only were all the clippings about serial killers, but they all contained one key element, something the mutt had highlighted--a number: the number of people murdered. He'd even color-coded the stats, yellow highlighter for the number of people the killer claimed to have killed, blue for the number of bodies found, and pink for the number the authorities believed he was responsible for. In the margins, the mutt had written notes, tallying and comparing numbers like a fan compiling stats for some macabre sporting event.
About halfway through the book, the articles stopped. I was about to close it when I realized there were more clippings near the back. I flipped through the blank pages and came to another article. Unlike the others, this one didn't deal with statistics. In fact, it didn't even name the killer. The article, dated November 18, 1995, from the Chicago Tribune, simply stated that the body of a young woman had been found. The next article gave more details, telling how she'd been missing for over a week and appeared to have been held captive during the intervening time, before being strangled and dumped behind an elementary school. I flipped through the next few pages. Three more women found, all following the same pattern. Then one escaped, telling a horrifying story of a weeklong ordeal of rape and torture, held captive in the basement of an abandoned house. The police had traced the house to Thomas LeBlanc, a thirty-three-year-old medical lab technician. However, when it came time for the woman to identify LeBlanc, she couldn't. Her attacker had only come to her in the dark and had never spoken. Furthermore, LeBlanc had been out of town on business the week the third woman went missing. In a newspaper
photo, LeBlanc could have passed for Scott Brandon's older brother, not in any real physical resemblance but in the complete banality of his face, well-groomed, blandly handsome, and completely unprepossessing, your quintessential Wall Street WASP, features stripped of any ethnicity or interest. The face of the serial killer next door.
Despite an extensive investigation, the police were unable to come up with enough evidence to charge LeBlanc. In the last Tribune article, LeBlanc had packed his bags and left Chicago. Even if the justice system hadn't been able to convict LeBlanc, the people of Illinois had. Although that was the last article from Chicago, the scrapbook didn't end there. I counted six more clippings from the past few years, tracing a path of missing women through the Midwest to California and looping back up the East Coast. Thomas LeBlanc had been on the move. The last clipping was dated eight months ago, from Boston.
"Shit," Clay said, making me jump. "No way. No fucking way. Drop the book, darling. You've got to see this."
I hurried to the window. Clay held the heavy curtain back just enough for me to look out. An Acura had pulled into a spot near the lobby doors. Three men were walking away from it. When I saw the man heading from the driver's side, I wasn't shocked to see the face that had stared out from the Tribune article--Thomas LeBlanc, looking not nearly as well-groomed as he had in his photo. Of course, Clay didn't recognize him or even know from this distance that he was a werewolf. It was the other men who'd caught his attention. Karl Marsten and Zachary Cain, two mutts we both knew very well.
"Marsten and Cain? What the hell are they doing together?" Clay said. "And who's the other guy? He must be the one."
"Logan's killer," I said. "Thomas LeBlanc. We have to get out of here."
"Whoa," Clay said, holding his ground as I tugged him toward the door. "We're not going anywhere. This is what we came for, darling."
"We came to kill one mutt. One inexperienced mutt. Three against two is bad enough but--"
"We can handle it."
"With no sleep or food in twenty-four hours?"
"We could--"
"I can't."
Clay stopped there. He was quiet for a moment.
"If you stay," I continued, "then I stay. But I'm in no shape for a fight. I'm exhausted and hungry and my arm is screwed up from the dog bite and Brandon."
I was hitting below the belt, but I didn't care. I'd say whatever it took to get us out of that room. Clay's expression changed, first uncertain, then resolute.
"Okay," he said. "We bolt. Is there still time ... ?"
"The balcony. We'll have to lower ourselves down. No jumping."
"Your arm?" He looked down at the scabbed-over wound. We heal fast and it felt fine, but I wasn't about to admit that. Not now.
"I'll live," I said.
Clay strode to the balcony, shoved the drapes aside, and slid the door open. "I'll go first and catch you if your arm gives out."
He was over the railing before I got out the door. I swung one leg over the ledge, then looked back into the room and saw the photo album on the bed. I should have grabbed it. There would be more clues there, more to help me get to know Thomas LeBlanc. Rule one of hunting: know your prey.
"Be right back," I called to Clay over the railing.
"No!"
I grabbed the book from the bed just as a card key slid into the door lock.
"It's not working," an unfamiliar voice said through the door. "The green light should come on."
I lunged from the bed to the balcony, tripping over a pair of underwear and nearly flying headfirst out the sliding door. As I was swinging over the railing, someone tried the door, found it open, and gave it a shove. I dropped to the ground. Clay wasn't there to catch me. When I turned, I saw him racing to the lobby door. I started to shout his name, thought better of it, ran and tackled him instead. We tumbled to the concrete just outside the first-room door. The photo album flew from my hands, knocking him hard under the chin.
"Whoops," I said. "Sorry."
"You almost sound like you mean it," he growled, holding the book aloft in one hand. "You went back for this? For this?"
"I needed it."
He muttered something under his breath. I couldn't hear what he said and probably didn't want to. We were still lying on the sidewalk, me atop him. I lifted my head to listen. Someone walked out onto the balcony in LeBlanc's room. I heard the railing groan as the person leaned over it, looking out across the parking lot. We were hidden beneath the balcony.
"Shhh," I whispered.
"I know," he mouthed.
He shifted under me, hands moving to rest on my rear. It wasn't an uncomfortable position to be in--not that I wanted to be there, given the choice, but ... Oh, never mind.
"You gave me a scare," he whispered.
He moved one hand to the back of my head, pulled me down, and started to kiss me. I closed my eyes and kissed him back. After all, if we had to lie on the sidewalk outside a hotel, we should at least be doing something that might explain why we were lying on the sidewalk, right? After a moment, Clay's eyes flickered to the right and narrowed.
As I pulled back, he slid from under me and focused his glare on something behind us. The woman who'd been watching us argue earlier was back in her doorway, this time drinking a Diet Coke as she took in the show.
"Would you like some popcorn with that?" Clay said, getting to his feet and brushing himself off.
"It's a free country," the woman replied.
Now, if Clay had little patience with humans in general, he had even less with humans who invaded his privacy and could only manage the lamest of comebacks. His jaw hardened and he stepped past me. He stopped, back to me, facing the woman. It only took a second. Her eyes widened, she stumbled back, and the door slammed, locks clicking into place. Clay hadn't said anything. He'd just given her "the look"--a stare of pure malevolence that never failed to send humans scurrying. I tried to perfect the look once. When I thought I had it down pat, I'd tested it on some jerk who'd been coming on to me in a bar. Instead of scaring him off, it'd only set his engines revving at full throttle. I learned my lesson. Women can't do malevolence.
By now, whoever had been on LeBlanc's balcony was gone. Their next step might be to come outside for a closer look, since Marsten and Cain would be able to smell that Clay and I had been in LeBlanc's room and would probably assume we hadn't been gone long. I prodded Clay forward. As we skirted along the sidewalk, staying close to the building, I crossed my fingers and hoped the mutts didn't come outside. Not that we couldn't get away. We could. But Clay wouldn't. If they came out and saw him, he wouldn't run.
We got around the building and slipped away without being seen. The walk to the car was a quick one. Less than twenty minutes later we were on our way back to Stonehaven for reinforcements.
CHAPTER 13
SYNCHRONOUS
"Absolutely not," Jeremy said, getting up from his chair to walk to the fireplace.
We were all in the study. The others had been waiting for us. Clay and I sat on the couch, Clay perched on the edge ready to bolt the second Jeremy said we could go after the mutts. Nick stood beside Clay, fingers tapping against the sofa back, equally anxious, but taking his cues from Clay. Peter and Antonio sat across the room. Both looked angry at the news, but they remained composed, awaiting Jeremy's decision with the greater control of age and experience.
"I can't believe you're asking," Jeremy continued. "I made it clear that I didn't want this, but you took off anyway. Then Elena calls to say you're just scouting out news about last night and somehow you end up--"
"It wasn't intentional," I said. "We came across his trail. We couldn't pass up the opportunity."
Jeremy gave me a look that advised me to shut my mouth before I dug myself in deeper. I shut it.
Jeremy walked back to his chair, but didn't sit. "No one is going after these three tonight. We are all exhausted and upset after last night, especially you two. If I hadn't trusted Elena's word when she called, I
would have been down there this afternoon hauling the two of you back here."
"But we didn't do anything," Clay said.
"Only for lack of opportunity."
"But--"
"Yesterday we had one mutt in town. Today, he's dead and three more have shown up. Not only that, but of those four, we have Karl Marsten and Zachary Cain, two mutts who would be enough of a problem individually."
"Are you absolutely sure it was Marsten and Cain?" Antonio asked. "Of any two mutts I could imagine ever teaming up, those two rank right at the bottom of the list. What could they possibly have in common?"
"They're both mutts," Clay said.
"My guess would be that they haven't teamed up," I said. "Marsten must have something over Cain. A definite leader-follower relationship. Karl wants territory. Has for years."
"If he wants territory, he has to join the Pack," Jeremy said.
"Fuck that," Clay spat. "Karl Marsten is a thieving, conniving son-of-a-whore who'd stab his father in the back to get what he wanted."
"Don't forget the new recruits," I said. "Brandon and LeBlanc are both killers. Human killers. Someone--probably Marsten--found them, bit them, and trained them. He's creating an army of mutts. Not just any mutts, but ones who already know how to hunt, to kill. Know it and like it."
Antonio shook his head. "I still can't picture Marsten behind this. Parts of it, yes. But this thing about creating new mutts, it lacks ... finesse. And recruiting Cain? The man's an idiot. A first-rate heavy hitter, but an idiot. The chances of him screwing up are too high. Marsten would know that."
"Who the fuck cares!" Clay said, exploding from his seat. "We've got three mutts in town. One of them killed Logan. How can you sit around discussing motivation and--"