Alexandra Sokoloff - Book of Shadows

Shelley was presently red-eyed, shaken, and crying copiously in the way that only teenage girls seem to be able to cry. Garrett’s micro-recorder was rolling on the coffee table in front of her. They were going to have to do a lot of fast-forwarding later.

“It’s s-so h-horrible,” she sobbed. It was, in fact, horrible, but Garrett could see Landauer straining to keep a semi-compassionate look on his face.

“Shelley, when Detective Landauer talked to you on the phone, you told him Erin had gone to the Cauldron club on Friday night. How did you know that? Did she tell you specifically?”

“She had a flyer for some party she left on her desk,” she sniffled.

An equinox party, Garrett thought. And Samhain is next, his mind continued, unbidden.

Shelley’s face crumpled. “It was him, wasn’t it? He killed her. That freak Jason.”

Garrett kept his voice neutral. “Why would you say that?”

“They said on TV it was satanic. He’s into all that.”

The damn media. It’s going to be hard to get any kind of uncorrupted version of the story.

Now that Shelley was wound up, she kept going. “And he was always hanging around. Following her. Texting her.”

The partners exchanged a glance. Nothing about that in the campus security file.

“Did she report this to the hall coordinator, or school officials?”

Shelley shook her head, sniffling. “I told her to. Erin never wanted to make waves, you know? That’s just not how she w-was…”

“Can you tell us what any of those messages said?”

She shook her head again. Garrett made a mental note to comb through Erin’s and Jason’s e-mail, not that he wouldn’t have.

“Shelley, did Erin say she was going with Jason on Friday, or did you see them leave together?”

“No, but why else would she go to a Goth club like that?” The partners looked at each other, not following. Garrett raised an eyebrow, and waited. Shelley’s voice rose, defensive. “That’s where his freak band plays.”

Garrett was trying to reconcile a massive logical contradiction. “But—if he was stalking her, why would she go at all?”

Shelley’s voice rose. “It was like—a spell. She was upset after she broke up with Kevin, and he just moved in on her, that’s all.”

Now Garrett was completely confused. He latched on to the most obvious point. “Erin broke up with Kevin?” Kevin Teague was the boyfriend.

“It was crazy. She wasn’t acting like herself at all.” Shelley un-crumpled an already soggy Kleenex, blew her nose.

“When was this?”

Shelley shrugged listlessly. “A couple weeks ago, I guess.”

“And did Erin start seeing Jason before or after the breakup?”

Now the girl flared up. “She wasn’t seeing him. He was hanging around, okay?”

Garrett increasingly felt lost in a miasma. “Did she tell you she felt threatened? Did she seem afraid?”

“Well, of course she was afraid. He’s a freak. ” She dissolved into sobs. “ I told her he was bad news…”

“I understand, Shelley,” Garrett said soothingly, tamping down his impatience. “We just need to know what actually happened. Did Erin go to Cauldron often?”

“ No. Never.” She folded her arms on her chest for emphasis.

“But you think she went with Jason on Friday night.”

“I could tell she was because she wouldn’t talk about it. She knows I can’t stand him.”

Garrett’s strong sense was that there was something more voluntary going on between Jason and Erin than Shelley wanted to admit. He sat back, trying to process, and looked at Landauer, who raised his hands and shot him back a look that clearly said, This one’s yours.

Garrett remembered his passing thought about fetish wear. “Was Erin dressed up when she went out to the club? Anything unusual?” He could see Landauer frowning his puzzlement on this one.

Shelley frowned, too. “Unusual?” Her voice registered disdain. “You mean Goth? That wasn’t Erin.”

Garrett wasn’t thinking Goth so much as leathers, fishnets, corsets. Despite what they already had on Jason Moncrief, he was fighting to keep his mind open to all possibilities. If Erin had been dressed like other patrons of the Cauldron club, it would have been easy to mistake her for a prostitute, and that could have made her a prime target for a trolling sex killer.

“How was she dressed, then?” he tried.

“I didn’t see her before she went out.”

Garrett thought for a moment, and suddenly threw a curve ball. “Did you know she was doing drugs?”

Through the tears, Shelley was immediately more alert—and evasive. “Not that I know of.” To the side of her, Landauer all but rolled his eyes. “ He was, though,” Shelley said ominously.

“You mean Jason?” She nodded emphatically. “How do you know?” Garrett pressed.

“He was always high. Laughing at things that weren’t funny… looking at you without ever talking. His eyes were weird all the time.” She shivered. “He just wasn’t right. ”

That’s looking like a consensus, Garrett thought bleakly.

“Shelley, have you seen Jason since Friday night?” he asked aloud. She shook her head. “He hasn’t come by the room?”

Shelley’s eyes widened in alarm at the thought. “No. He’s arrested now, though, isn’t he?”

“At the moment, yes, he’s in jail. Why? Did he ever threaten you?”

Her face darkened. “He looked at me. He knew I could see what he was, and he didn’t like it.” She crumpled into sobs again. “I told her. I told her…”

Garrett and Landauer were silent as they walked through the front entry of the dorm, onto the portico outside. Landauer lifted quizzical eyebrows, looked back toward the room. Garrett shook his head. “We’ll have to get a look at Erin’s text messages. Maybe there are e-mails. I wouldn’t buy into the stalking angle just on the roommate’s say-so. There was a lot of hedging going on there.”

Landauer tapped out a cigarette, brooding. Garrett stared across the campus green. His eyes stopped on the isolated church spire. It bothered him, for no reason he could name; some inescapable Catholic imprint, no doubt. “But I think she was being straight about Erin breaking up with the boyfriend. Wonder what he’s going to have to say about that?”

The boyfriend, Kevin Teague, lived in a campus-owned upper-classman house on nearby Overlook Drive.

Amherst had officially banned fraternities and sororities on campus in the eighties in an attempt to attract a more diverse student population, but no one would know it from looking at Campbell House. The sleek and sleepy young men who lounged on the deck chairs and tables on the front patio were classic preppies: jocks and business majors and future captains of industry. Or future felons , Garrett thought darkly, feeling the weight of the chip on his shoulder.

His eyes took in a litter of half-empty glasses and an abandoned kegger, remnants of what had obviously been a night of hard partying. The young men were quick to put together the presence of detectives with the morning’s headlines about Erin; Garrett and Landauer’s entrance caused a stir of whispers and stares.

Kevin Teague met them on the back deck, which was cluttered with a motley assortment of lounge chairs and more party detritus, including the faint smell of vomit toward one clump of bushes.

Teague was a type Garrett knew too well from his own high school and college sports days: genus jock asshole bastard. He was dark-haired, square-jawed, and sullenly handsome, his body sculpted by steroids no doubt pressed on him by a zealous daddy or coach or both, and he looked more hungover than grief-stricken. He slumped in a lawn chair, sipping coffee from a mug Garrett suspected was laced with some hair of the dog. Land took out his pack of Camels, but didn’t light up.