Alexandra Sokoloff - Book of Shadows

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.

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—”