Alexandra Sokoloff - Book of Shadows

Garrett looked Teague over surreptitiously, noting a certain brutality in the linebacker hands, the square jaw. No way this guy would have been happy about being dumped, Garrett thought. Even though he probably had plenty of his own on the side.

He opted for a formal, subservient approach. “I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Teague.” As he’d expected, Teague didn’t bother to offer his first name instead.

“I can’t believe it,” he said, and looked over the lawn. “I can’t believe it.”

“You don’t mind if we tape this, do you?” Garrett took the micro-recorder from his jacket pocket. Teague’s eyes flicked at him warily, but he nodded assent. Garrett turned it on and identified himself and Landauer and the witness.

“Mr. Teague, when was the last time you saw Erin?”

Teague frowned. “Maybe Monday or Tuesday.”

“Not on Friday?”

“We had an away game. Connecticut.”

“I see,” Garrett said. “What about the last time you talked to her on the phone?”

Teague shrugged. “I don’t remember. “

“This week? Last week?”

“Season just started. Doesn’t give me a lot of free time.”

“I see,” Garrett repeated. “And Jason Moncrief?”

Teague looked at him sharply. “What about him?”

“You didn’t know him?”

“No. I mean, everyone knew who he was. He was kind of hard to miss.” Teague’s lip curled as he said it. Garrett silently noted the past tense.

“Hard to miss in what way?” he asked pleasantly.

“In a dipshit psycho way.”

Landauer and Garrett looked at each other. Land nodded something that looked like agreement. He held an unlit cigarette in his hand.

“So when did Erin break up with you?” Garrett asked, still pleasantly.

Surprise, then anger, flared behind Teague’s eyes. “It was mutual,” he said sullenly.

“I asked when,” Garrett said, not so pleasantly.

“Two weeks,” Teague ground out, and his gaze was murderous.

Two weeks. About the time Jeffs got an anonymous tip about Jason, Garrett noted to himself. “And she was seeing Jason Moncrief at that time.”

“Yeah. She was seeing him.” Teague’s tone added, “Bitch.”

“Odd that she didn’t tell her parents,” Garrett mused. “Her father was under the impression that you two were still an item.”

Teague smiled without humor. “I don’t know anything about that. I wasn’t keeping track of her.”

“Did you ever go to the Cauldron club, Mr. Teague?” Garrett asked. At the deck railing, he could see Landauer frowning at him— What gives?

“Why the hell would I go there?” Teague looked from one detective to the other.

“You weren’t there on Friday night?”

Teague stood, knocking over his coffee mug. “Look—you said you had questions about Erin. It’s shitty that she’s dead. But I’m not going to sit here and get interrogated. I was at a game with a whole team of guys. Talk to them. Talk to the coach. Erin was out with that freak and he killed her. If you have any more questions for me, you can ask my lawyer.”

“Pretty fast to lawyer up,” Garrett said softly as they walked back out to the car past the growing front-patio audience of ersatz frat boys.

Landauer looked at him. “A, these prep mommies and daddies teach their baby preps to scream for lawyers before they can walk. And B, you were coming at him like a suspect. ’Sup with that?”

Garrett didn’t know himself what he was trying to prove. “All I know is, that is not a guy who would be happy to have his girlfriend stepping out with a musician. And I don’t think the timing of that anonymous tip was a coincidence. I bet you a hundred right now, Teague made that call.”

“So then Teague kills Erin and carves satanic mumbo jumbo into her to frame Moncrief?” Landauer was skeptical. “I got a twenty says his alibi’s bulletproof. Asshole does not equal murderer.”

When the partners got back to Morris Pratt Hall, the white crime-scene van was parked outside. Inside the dorm, wide-eyed students stared from where they were corralled in the lounge as the detectives walked by the open double doors toward the elevators.

The lead criminalist, Lingg, a wiry, bespectacled scientist of mixed Asian descent, met them on Erin’s floor, with his young, tom-boyish assistant— Jenny? Jerri?— hovering behind, pulling a wagon filled with boxes and equipment. Lingg informed them that the team had already photographed and lasered for prints and vacuumed for hair and fiber that might tie Jason to Erin, then he indicated the open door of a room halfway down the hall. “It’s all yours. Flag anything you want us to bag, and we’ll start on the suspect’s room.”

The partners donned paper booties at the doorway and surveyed the room. Shelley was right about one thing: there was nothing remotely Goth about anything in Erin’s clothing or belongings. It was a college girls’ room, overwhelmingly decorated with floral linens, sparkly pillows, cute knickknacks, all of the highest quality without reflecting anything particularly unique or artistic about the taste of the inhabitants. Garrett and Landauer moved into the room like giants into a dollhouse, snapping latex gloves onto their hands.

“Make a wish,” Landauer said, meaning: What would you most like to find in this search?

Garrett thought for a moment. “The cell phone.”

Landauer snorted. “Good luck.” Of course Erin would have had it with her; it had likely been dumped by her killer, and it would take them days to get phone records.

Landauer gravitated toward the closet. There were two of them, both surprisingly large for the size of the room. Garrett’s eyes grazed the dresser and bed table. There was a stuffed school mascot, a jewelry tree, family photographs in both elegant silver and novelty frames. Garrett felt anger rising. This life, Erin’s life, had just begun. She never had a chance.

He forced down the emotion, forced himself back into processing mode, continuing his survey of Erin’s belongings.

Along with the family shots there was still a photograph of Kevin Teague on her dresser, which Garrett noted with interest. Keeping up appearances? Unwilling to let go? Or had she been involved with both boys at once?

He moved for the desk, zeroing in on the main thing he was looking for: Erin’s laptop. Of course, it was also top of the line. Garrett sat down at the desk to turn it on. These days, the key to a teenager’s life was in text: the text messages on smart phones and the e-mails and AIMs and Facebook and Twitter and MySpace pages. This generation was in constant communication with itself, and that could be of enormous help in this case. But as Garrett hit keys, he found the laptop was password-protected, and did not have an automatic log-on programmed in, meaning they’d have to get Erin’s password from AOL, or have a tech break it. Garrett guessed Erin would not have wanted to risk her roommate snooping; he got the distinct feeling that would not have been an unreasonable concern with Shelley.

He flagged the computer for Lingg to take and got up from the desk to scan the bookcase. The books on the shelves were mainly business textbooks and about a dozen classics from what was clearly an Intro to English Literature class. But Garrett also noted an Introduction to Astronomy textbook. So Jason wasn’t lying about that: they had a class together.

The CDs were predictable, sweet and lightweight pop: Snow Patrol and The Fray and John Mayer and Jack Johnson and Natasha Bedinger, but Garrett scanned through every title until he found what he was looking for.

Current 333 . Jason’s CD.