Book of Shadows

by Alexandra Sokoloff

  When Garrett moved back through the sheeting, Tanith was sitting against a concrete column, her hands over her face. She quickly lowered them and sat up as he stepped in.

  “What the hell was that?” he said, low.

  “He is being watched,” she said bleakly. “I’m afraid the healing drew his attention.”

  “Whose attention?” Garrett demanded.

  “You know,” she said quietly. “Choronzon. And the one who serves him.”

  The wind breathed between the columns, stirring the white cement powder into dust devils. Garrett felt another wave of paranoia that this was all some elaborate con, set up by the two of them.

  He said in a harsh whisper, “This doesn’t add up at all. How could that man”—he stabbed his finger in Roland’s direction—“how could he possibly have been both places—just happen to be there when the killer is picking up the girl—then again when he disposes of her body, in a whole different place . . . maybe as much as a day later?”

  Tanith was silent in the dark. She finally raised her head and spoke. “But that’s rational thinking, and we’re not dealing with the rational. Roland had—has—a connection with Amber. He was looking for her and he found her. It’s not rational. He didn’t do it rationally. He did it by intention. He wanted to find her and he did.”

  Garrett stared at her. “That’s . . .” He shook his head, laughed in disbelief.

  She smiled tightly. “I know that’s not how you think the world works. But the mentally ill are sometimes extremely psychic. They sense, they intuit, they see things that we can’t. He’s telling you the truth as he knows it.”

  She stood from the floor and stepped to the silk circle. She stooped to pick up a candle, and as she extended her arm, Garrett had a glimpse of dark stains on the white sleeve that had not been there before.

  He strode toward her and seized her arm, turning it over to look at it. The sleeve of her blouse rode up above her wrist with the movement, and Garrett saw ragged dark gashes, fresh blood in her pale flesh.

  He had a flash of her staggering backward in the circle . . .

  “What are these?” he demanded.

  She pulled her arm away. “You don’t believe it, do you? So don’t believe.”

  Garrett’s mind was racing. The cuts were still wet. She could have done it herself when I took Cutler back to his bedroll. Classic con artist trick.

  Tanith shook her head as if she understood what he was thinking. She glanced toward the wall of plastic sheeting. “I can’t leave him here, it’s not safe anymore.” Her eyes moved to the darkness beyond the purple circle. “I’m going to take him to Arlington. Even when they have no beds they can sometimes find a bed.”

  He looked at her, wondering how she would know the policies of a mental institution. She smiled wryly. “This line of work, you need to be able to refer clients to what they need. Believe me, Detective Garrett, I can tell mental illness from possession.” Her face shadowed. “But Choronzon causes mental chaos. If Roland chanced to meet the demon, the encounter may well have affected his mind.”

  Behind her, the plastic sheeting rippled like water in the wind.

  Tanith took a step toward him, looking into his face. “Will you go to the Channel?” Their eyes met and Garrett felt the heat between them, felt it in every cell of his body, and for a moment, neither of them moved. Garrett’s mouth was dry. Then he nodded.

  “Be careful,” she said softly.

  Chapter Thirty

  “He put her on a chain and sunk her down, down, down.”

  In the dark of night, Garrett strode on the concrete path of the HarborWalk, with the Channel glimmering beside him. His breath showed in the cold, misty air. His emotions were still roiling from the—whatever it was that had just happened—and he felt a powerful drowsiness that he recognized as partly denial.

  Tanith’s voice echoed in his head. “Be careful.”

  He snapped himself into focus, looked around him to stay alert.

  In daylight the HarborWalk was a popular tourist destination, and in warmer months joggers and lovers strolled beside the water in the evenings, drawn by spectacular views of the lights of downtown Boston and their sparkling reflections in the dark water.

  But after the restaurants and cafés closed, the area turned ominous, with large parts of it still under construction and detours that jogged through too-deserted streets. A cold wind off the Channel made Garrett pull his coat tighter around himself; the crescent moon was an icy shimmer in the water.

  It makes no sense. Why would the killer chance leaving her in such an open area?

  The water, he answered himself. In some part of his mind he knew it had something to do with the water. The elementalness of it. Earth, Air, Fire, Water. He put Erin in the dirt and he wanted Amber in water.

  Garrett wasn’t sure what exactly he was looking for, but the good news was Binford Park, the spot the Dragon Man had named, was tiny, just half an acre of landscaping beside the waterfront, with a pergola and an unobstructed view of one of the wider sections of the Channel.

  The concrete path along the waterfront was edged by a low concrete seawall, with a chest-high black iron railing. Garrett stopped at the railing and looked over it. The water was ten feet below where he was standing. Waves lapped against the wall.

  “He put her on a chain and sunk her down, down, down.”

  What are you doing here, anyway? he asked himself. If he dropped Amber’s body in the water, then you’ll need a dredging crew to find it.

  Garrett knew he was looking at one of the deepest parts of the Channel. Before Binford Park was constructed, almost half a million cubic yards of dirt had been excavated from the area, creating a gigantic casting basin that was used to construct huge concrete sections of tunnel, which were then floated into the Channel and submerged in a trench as part of the “Big Dig.”

  No, there’d be no finding a body here without a diving crew. If there’s even anything left to find. Garrett had seen what marine animals do to human remains. There’d be no flesh left by now, and the bones would have separated and been carried out by the tide.

  But the Dragon Man’s words kept running through Garrett’s head:

  “He put her on a chain and sunk her down, down, down.”

  “He put her on a chain.”

  Garrett leaned out over the metal railing and looked down the blocky stone wall below him. And down by the waterline he saw what he had been looking for, something he had apparently remembered from—he didn’t even know what—published photos of the HarborWalk construction, or some previous trip to explore the new pathways.

  There were thick metal rings embedded into the stone, every ten feet or so, along the seawall.

  Garrett began to walk the path, stopping every ten feet to look at each metal ring. With every step his dread increased.

  At least there won’t be any burned flowers, he thought, looking around him at the concrete path and stone wall. It did nothing to quell his anxiety.

  A dozen rings down the walkway he saw what he was looking for: a chain hooked to the large metal ring below him.

  “He put her on a chain . . .”

  Garrett felt cold wind on his neck, and he whipped around, looking behind him. Nothing but darkness, the wash of streetlamps.

  With bile rising in his throat, Garrett scanned the wall below him. It was constructed of huge rough blocks, which jutted out unevenly, providing narrow ledges and footholds.

  Garrett jumped the railing and eased himself down the rough rock wall, feeling for footholds. He stopped on a ledge two feet above the surface of the water and knelt to look down on the iron ring and the chain linked to it. It was not soldered, but attached by a thick, open hook. Garrett reached into the icy, lapping water and pulled up on the chain. There was some give, so he pulled up enough slack to release the hook, then wrapped the chain twice around his wrist and started the climb back up the wall. The chain grew taut as he reached the iron railing. Garrett clamped the
hook on the metal handrail, hoisted himself over the railing, and then braced himself on the fence to haul the chain up. It was a sickly, heavy weight and he had to strain at it.

  He’d pulled up thirty feet of chain when it finally surfaced: a thick black rubber bag, the size of a small sleeping bag, attached to the chain, with water weight at least two hundred pounds; Garrett was unable to lift it farther.

  Then again, he didn’t want to. Despite the encasing rubber and the cold air, he could smell it from ten feet above.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Fog rolled across the Channel as the men gathered on the concrete walkway in the first gray light of dawn: Landauer, Medical Examiner Edwards, the uniforms securing the scene, all postponing the inevitable. No one likes a floater. Even if this one wasn’t technically floating. They knew what they were in for when Edwards unzipped the bag: a nightmarish stew of bones floating in white adipocere, slippery as soap, but with an unsoaplike, unbearable stink.

  Edwards stood looking down at the bag. “Can you estimate a date of death?” he said to Garrett, finally.

  “August first,” Garrett said with certainty. Landauer looked at him, but said nothing.

  Edwards shook his head. “Then my strong suggestion is we have the bag transported to the lab without opening it, and freeze it for several hours before we proceed with an examination.”

  “A-fucking-men,” Landauer mumbled.

  “There’s one thing I need to know first,” Garrett said, unable to wait, although he would have staked his life that he knew the answer already. He stepped toward the wet black bag and the other men drew back.

  “Hold the zipper up with one hand,” Edwards instructed. So nothing would spill out, he meant.

  Garrett held his breath as he stooped to unzip the bag slightly.

  But one brief and horrifying glance into the grisly soup was all he needed. The liquefied corpse was missing its head.

  “So were you plannin’ to fill me in, or do you have a new partner, now?” Landauer’s voice was genuinely bitter through the sarcasm and Garrett squirmed inside with guilt as they faced off in the detectives’ bureau. Out the windows behind them, the sky wept a dismal gray rain.

  “It was the Dragon Man,” Garrett said. “I stayed with him for a while when I dropped him off. Some of what he said in the car made sense. He came up with Binford Park, and that he saw a man drop Amber in the harbor. So I . . . followed up,” he finished lamely.

  “That nutball strung enough words together for you to find a body chained up like that,” Landauer said flatly. “That’s what you’re going to tell Malloy.”

  “There was no head,” Garrett said softly. “And Jason was in Saratoga with the band that night. He’s got three alibi witnesses.”

  “Aww, fuck this.” Landauer batted one of the rolling desk chairs with one meaty hand; it careened, crashing into a desk. “That’s where you’re going with this? Moncrief is innocent?”

  “What if he is?”

  “What if she’s covering for him?”

  This stopped Garrett, and Land moved in for the kill. “Do you not remember Frazer’s profile? ‘A lone occult practitioner’? ‘The killer will often attempt to insert him or herself into the police investigation’?” Landauer glared at him like an angry bull. “She came to us, bro. You ever asked yourself what she wants out of this?”

  Someone cleared his throat from the doorway and the partners turned to see Detective Morelli standing against the jamb. “Lieutenant wants to see you.”

  ______

  Garrett stood at the conference table in front of a stony lieutenant and an even stonier Carolyn. He tried to keep his face, his voice, everything about him noncombative.

  “Edwards says the pelvic bones indicate the victim was a young woman, in her teens or early twenties,” he said. “Amber Bright was reported missing on August second, and she was seventeen years old. She was booked for solicitation in January but the ID and name she gave in intake were false. We are presently attempting to identify her; we have her booking photo in the NCIC database. The decomposition of the body we found is such that it’s impossible to fix a time or date of death, but Edwards estimates a month or more. The decomposition is also too advanced for us to know if there were carvings in the torso, but the head is missing, like Erin Carmody’s—”

  “What about the hand?” Malloy demanded.

  “Neither hand was taken,” Garrett answered. “But there are three things that tie the two murders together so far: the missing heads, the age and sex of the victims, and the dates of the murders.”

  “How the dates?” There was an edge in Carolyn’s voice.

  Garrett turned toward her. “Erin Carmody was killed on September twenty-one, the autumnal equinox, which is a pagan holiday. Amber Bright disappeared on August one, which is also a pagan holiday called Lammas. Both holidays are celebrated in the satanic tradition as well, and we’ve already established a satanic connection.”

  Garrett paused, steeling himself internally, before he continued in the most neutral voice he could muster. “On the night of August one, Jason Moncrief was in Saratoga Springs at a band gig. He drove ten hours that day in a car with his three bandmates, then was onstage with them from 8:00 P.M. to midnight; he remained in the bar with the band until closing, and then slept in a motel room with the three other band members before they drove back to Boston the next day.”

  The silence coming from Carolyn and Malloy was so thick Garrett could feel himself starting to choke on it. Landauer wouldn’t look at him.

  “I hope you’re not suggesting that Jason Moncrief has an alibi for this murder, Detective,” Malloy said, and his voice was like ice. “You said the decomposition was too advanced to fix a date. You’re only assuming the date, from the word of a prostitute.” In his mouth the word had the force of biblical condemnation. “Further, you haven’t even identified the corpse as Bright’s.”

  Garrett kept his face and voice steady. “I think there are too many similarities to ignore—”

  Malloy spoke over him. “I might add that the witness who you say led you to discover this second body is suspect at best. Quite frankly I’m still unclear on the thought process that led to these conclusions.”

  Garrett could feel heat in his face. “The witness has been sleeping across from the park where Amber Bright made her last phone call—”

  Malloy interrupted him again. “All you have is speculation. Work the cases, Detectives. No assumptions. And I don’t want to see any premature speculation in the media. This will not turn into a circus, do you understand me?”

  “Understood,” Landauer said stiffly.

  Garrett escaped the room to the corridor. He felt wrung out by the meeting, but when he heard the clicking of high heels on the floor behind him he knew the ordeal wasn’t over. He turned to see Carolyn striding toward him.

  “What are you trying to do?” It was rage in her voice—quiet, controlled, checked—but rage nonetheless.

  “I’m trying to make sure we have the right guy locked up. I’m trying to make sure the real killer isn’t still out there. I’m trying to do my job,” Garrett said evenly.

  “Don’t you dare suggest that I’m not,” she said, with that tightly reined anger.

  “I would never do that,” Garrett said.

  She walked a few paces in agitation. “I just don’t understand where this is coming from. We have a perfect case.”

  Garrett summoned all the calm he had. “But what if it’s wrong? These are seventeen-, eighteen-year-old girls being killed, Carolyn. All I want is the right guy off the street.”

  “No matter what it does to us?” Her emphasis was slightly on the “us.”

  He felt a sick twist in his stomach. “I hope I just heard you wrong,” he said softly.

  She shook her head in sheer disbelief. “I don’t think I know you at all.”

  “Maybe you just never bothered to look,” he said, staring into her face. Her eyes widened . . . and then narrow
ed in fury. But Garrett no longer cared. He turned to walk away from her. As he reached for the handle of the EXIT door, he saw Landauer standing at the end of the corridor, watching them.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  A bar was his first impulse. His second impulse came before the third shot of Jameson’s, before he was moved to start screaming along with the Drop Kick Murphys on the jukebox, although the raucous soundtrack continued in his head once he’d poured himself into his car.

  And once again he was on the road to Salem.

  It was dumping rain by then, raining so hard it was difficult for him to drive, and at one point he pulled off the road, staring out past his frantically beating wipers at the downpour, wondering if it was simply madness to continue.

  He closed his eyes and had a vision of Tanith’s hands on the Dragon Man—so gentle—and so in command.

  He opened his eyes and pulled back onto the road.

  The shop was dark, as was the second story of the house. He stood dripping and freezing on the porch and rang the bell several times, while rain blew around him in gusts. There was no stirring from within.

  He used the excuse of the whiskey to justify to himself what he did next.

  He had a passable talent for breaking and entering, and not just as part of his police training. There was a time in his life, as with many teenage boys of a certain neighborhood and from a certain socioeconomic stratum, when he could just as easily have fallen on the wrong side of the law-and-order equation.

  He picked the lock in under a minute and was inside the door.

  In the dark the shop had a medieval apothecary look, with its thick glass jars of herbs and powders and the cases of crystals and wands. Outside, the rain thundered down, and a crack of lightning illuminated the room for a moment in ghastly grayish light.

  Garrett’s heart was beating fast, and he felt a rush that he knew was familiar to criminals; the powerful effect of dominance, of conquest. He understood what he was doing was not merely immoral but also stupid in the extreme, but he continued anyway, walking noiselessly past bookcases with their mysterious volumes, on to the starry velvet curtain in the back. He stepped through into the reading room, with its lingering redolence of incense and concentrated darkness.