Alexandra Sokoloff - Book of Shadows

It did seem like a dream come true, a perfect solve.

But now that they were out of the conference room Garrett was feeling alarm bells going off all over the fucking place.

Something wasn’t right.

The kid was seriously wrong, that was a fact. Violent and weird and into drugs that were off the charts even for a seasoned junkie. Opportunity and means, check. Into the occult, check. The numbers added up, and the number was 333: Current 333, to be precise, whatever the hell that was. But…

But.

Jason Moncrief might be a nutcase, but he was nineteen years old. Nineteen. For a moment Garrett recalled the look in Jason’s eyes as the guard led him away.

A kid. A terrified kid.

For all its grotesque crudeness, the murder of Erin Carmody was a sophisticated crime. A man’s crime, not a boy’s, even if that boy was wealthy and prestigiously schooled. The decapitation, the carvings, the disposal of the body—all were precise and controlled. Mature.

Which meant—what?

“He didn’t do it.”

The voice came from above him, female, and Garrett had drifted so far off into his own thoughts that he wasn’t sure he’d heard it, or that he was even awake.

When he did focus, he was startled to see a woman of perhaps thirty standing in front of his desk, tall and willowy, dressed in a longish skirt over high boots, and a fitted blouse, all of a vaguely equestrienne style that was perfectly fashionable, but on this woman the effect was palpably sensual, with a hint of Victorian perversity. She was as Black Irish as the Black Irish come: eyes and eyebrows and long thick hair like coal, a pale yet still slightly olive-tinged complexion, sculpted cheekbones and full dark mouth, lips berry red, almost purple, like lush grapes, like wine…

Garrett pulled himself back from highly inappropriate thoughts and tried to concentrate.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“I didn’t,” she said curtly. She was very edgy, holding herself stiffly. “I’m looking for the detectives handling the Erin Carmody killing.”

“That would be us,” Landauer offered, eager to get in on this. Garrett could see Palmer and Morelli, who had just arrived for the 8:00 A.M. shift, eyeing the woman from the coffee counter as well.

The dark woman looked the detectives over, one then the other, taking their measure, and Garrett felt her look go straight through him.

“I have information that might be pertinent to the case,” she said, finally. Garrett’s mind scanned through possibilities. Was she from Amherst? She was older than a college student, he was sure, but she might be a graduate student. She also looked like she could be a regular at that club, Cauldron; in fact, he had a nagging sense that he had seen her before—though surely he would have remembered.

“What information is that?” he said aloud.

“There are others.”

Garrett’s pulse spiked as he felt the pull of a real lead, real insight. “And how would you know that?” he asked drily, careful not to betray any excitement.

Again she hesitated; he sensed a strong reluctance to speak. “I dreamed it.”

Garrett’s excitement deflated. A loony toon. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Landauer untensing in his chair as well.

“You dreamed the murder,” Garrett said.

“I dreamed three,” she said, and loony toon or not, the tone of her voice compelled him. A weary look crossed her face. “Look, it’s what I do.”

“You dream,” Landauer said, insolently innocent.

She turned to look at him. “Among other things,” she agreed, without expression.

“So you’re a psychic,” Garrett said, to deflect the storm he could feel brewing. The department had used the input of psychics in the past; the concept wasn’t unheard of, but certainly Lieutenant Malloy had never approved that kind of input, and Garrett had never seen or heard of any particular success, himself.

This time the woman didn’t pause. “I’m a witch. That’s with a W,” she said pointedly to Landauer.

Again, Garrett heard the Mexican mechanic’s hoarse voice in his head: Bruja. And again, he felt a prickling at the back of his neck.

The woman was watching him. Garrett realized that she was still standing. He rose and indicated the chair that she had been ignoring. “Please sit down—let me get some information here,” he said, reseating himself and reaching for a report form. After a moment she sat, her back straight as a dancer’s.

“Your name?”

“Tanith Cabarrus.” Garrett could feel Landauer’s eyebrows raising across the aisle. She spelled it and Garrett wrote the alien-sounding words.

“Address and phone?”

“411 Essex Street, West, Salem, 01970.”

Garrett sat back in his chair, trying to keep his face neutral. Salem. It figured. All the New Age loons in the state congregated in Salem, milking tourists looking to be titillated with gruesome stories of the town’s famous witch trials. Garrett was feeling his lack of sleep as a building irritation, coupled with the increasing doubt that anything constructive would come out of this odd interview. Still, it wasn’t hard to look at Tanith Cabarrus.

“And occupation is…” he trailed off, reluctant to say the word. She looked fleetingly amused.

“You can put down that I own a bookstore.”

Garrett glanced up at her. “Do you?”

“Yes, I do.”

She was young to own her own business and Garrett had to admit it gave her a bit more credibility. “So why don’t you tell us what you know?” he suggested. He was expecting her to describe vague details from a dream, so what came next threw him.

“It was a ritual killing. The killer cut something into her body, here.” She put her hand on her abdomen, under her breasts.

Garrett and Landauer were wide awake, now. In fact, they were speechless. Garrett’s mind was racing: had details of the crime scene been leaked? But by whom? A worker at the dump, a cop, the family?

Then she added, “And I think…” She paused and her eyes went distant and cold. “He took her head.”

“You got a name for us? Address? Identifying details?” Landauer drawled, feigning boredom.

She looked at the big man. “Do you dream addresses, Detective? That’s a pretty advanced technique, as dreamwork goes. I’ll have to get your secret out of you, sometime.” She turned back to Garrett before Landauer could muster a response. “I didn’t see him. Just a shadow.”

“How do you know it was a him, then?” Garrett asked sharply.

She gave him a withering look. “Surely you know women don’t do this kind of thing, Detective. ”

She happened to be right, but he didn’t care for the imperious tone. “Anything else?” he asked, his voice brittle.

“Yes.” She looked across the desk, directly at him. “That boy you arrested didn’t do it.”

Again he felt as if the earth had shifted under him. “How do you know we arrested someone?”

She arched her eyebrows. “It’s all over the morning news.”

Garrett remembered the students with their damned camera phones. These days onlookers couldn’t wait to sell their footage to CNN. They’d have a circus on their hands, now. And the main act was sitting right in front of him.

“So if he didn’t do it, who did?”

Her gaze grew cloudy. “Someone older than that boy. And powerful.” Her dark eyes rested on his. “And sick,” she said bleakly. “Very sick.”

“You dreamed all this.” Garrett’s voice sounded thick to his own ears.

“I had three dreams. Actually, one dream, three times. On these dates.” She took a pocket calendar from her bag and removed a Post-it, which she handed across the desk to him. She had written three dates: