Alexandra Sokoloff - Book of Shadows

Dark blue Camaro.

There were no license plates noted; the list was only the office manager’s recollection of the cars she had let through the gate that day.

Garrett stared into space, then pawed over the scattered files and notepads on the table. He stopped still… lunged forward and seized one battered notebook: his scribbled notes from Tanith’s session with the Dragon Man.

He paged back and stopped again—on the partial plate number the Dragon Man had given her: TOR 9.

And he had a sudden, shocking vision of the plate that he had seen in the flying dream: TOR 963.

One call to the DMV later, and one to the Pine Street landfill office, and then Garrett was in the shower, under water as hot as he could get it, trying to steam the cobwebs out of his head.

He dressed, and finally felt steady enough to call Landauer. “I’ve got something weird,” he said into the phone.

“What else is new?” came the inevitable response.

Garrett didn’t laugh.

Landauer sighed through the phone. “Ah, fuck.”

Forty minutes later Land was slouched on Garrett’s sofa, legs sprawled, staring down at a sheet of paper. “Let me get this straight. Dragon Man gave you the partial plate number.”

“Yes,” Garrett said. He did not mention his own sighting of the plate in the—dream. “And that dark blue Camaro on that page, with license plate TOR 963, is registered to a John McKenna, who was employed at the Pine Street landfill until June fourteenth, when he failed to show up for work and never came back.” He didn’t say it aloud, but if Tanith was right about three victims, that had been just a week before the first killing.

The partners looked at each other silently from opposite sides of the room. “Whaddaya know…” Landauer said softly. “He got a sheet?”

Garrett shook his head once. “Not to speak of. A drunk and disorderly last year, pled out; one DUI five years ago. High school dropout. Spotty employment history, mostly manual labor. But a homeowner,” he added. “Out in Lincoln. Not married.”

Laudauer raised his eyebrows. “So he’s got himself some privacy.”

They sat with it. Garrett’s eyes strayed to the printout of Mc-Kenna’s DMV photo: a red-bearded, stocky, hard-bitten man of forty-three. “A lost soul. Alone in the world,” Tanith’s voice whispered in his head.

Landauer rubbed his jaw. “We’ve got a suspect in custody. Charged.”

Garrett lifted his hands. “Could be nothing. We pay him a visit.”

Landauer weighed it, nodded. “Okay, Rhett. It’s your rodeo.”

Lincoln, Massachusetts, was a rural town in Middlesex County, west of Boston. The brilliance of the autumn leaves on the trees lining the highway made the journey feel like driving into a painting. Red and gold and amber and orange leaves swirled across the road in front of the Cavalier, giving Garrett an uneasy stabbing reminder that Halloween was mere days away.

McKenna’s employee file contained a note that McKenna had not returned several phone calls made by the office manager to inquire after his whereabouts, and that there had been no machine to leave a message on. There still wasn’t, when Garrett tried the number himself. But according to the phone company the bills were still being paid, on auto-pay, as were the other utilities. His phone records would have to be subpoenaed for recent activity, but all indications were that McKenna was MIA.

Landauer drove, as Garrett was still shaky from the lingering effects of belladonna. They did not speak for some time, while Landauer navigated west out of the city and onto Highway 2.

As much as Garrett was trying not to think, the cattails along the side of the road kept reminding him of the crossed stalks of corn bound to the columns of Tanith’s store. He felt his face tighten and his gut roil with doubt, and he must have sighed or grunted because Landauer glanced over at him questioningly.

Garrett shook his head. “Maybe this is all wrong. Cabarrus is a con artist. The fraud conviction. You were right: she’s been trying to insert herself into the investigation from the start.”

Landauer was a beat slow in answering. “Except that we both know women don’t kill like that.”

“I’m not so sure.” Garrett’s words tasted as bitter as they sounded. “This isn’t an ordinary woman. These weird rituals she does. The drugs. These young ‘clients’ of hers, coming in for spells. There’s no telling…” He stopped, staring blankly out at the cattails. “I never had any clue what she was capable of.”

Landauer looked out the side window. After a moment he said, “You notice anything about me, last couple weeks?”

Garrett looked at him, not understanding.

Landauer waited. When Garrett said nothing, Land reached forward and slid open the ashtray in the dash. It was empty. It took Garrett a moment to register the significance.

Landauer met his eyes for a moment, looked back at the road. “When was the last time you saw me with a butt in my hand?”

Garrett’s mind raced wildly back through the last few days. But he’d seen Landauer with a cigarette, dozens…

No, he realized. Holding a cigarette. Not lighting it. Not smoking it.

“I haven’t had one since she walked into the office that day,” his partner said, not looking at him. “Fuck knows I’ve tried. I just can’t.”

Now Garrett forced his mind back to the day in the bull pen: Landauer taunting Tanith: “Show me. Put a spell on me…” Tanith pulling the dagger from her blouse and cutting her finger… Landauer licking her blood…

His partner was speaking again, his gaze fixed out the windshield. “I never thought anything could make me quit. Now, I don’t want it. Can’t do it. She says, ‘You’re done’—and I am.”

Garrett stared at his partner. “So what are you saying?”

“I’m sayin’ whatever she is, it’s not all bad.” He shrugged. “I’m never gonna repeat this to another living soul, but she mighta saved my life.” Then his face darkened. “If you ever say a word to Bette, so help me, I’ll kill you dead.”

Garrett sat back against the seat and looked out at the flashing autumn colors of the trees, a blur of reds and oranges and ambers, like fire, like flight.

The isolation of the town was an ominous factor, not a point in McKenna’s favor. A quaint Main Street gave way to old farm-style houses along a rural road with the distances between them growing larger and larger as the detectives drove on.

McKenna’s house was outside the limits of what there was of the town, which a green-and-white population sign put at 9463. Landauer turned off a paved road to follow a dirt road through a barrier of trees that opened into what used to be farmland. The partners squinted through autumn sun at the house, an old Cape with paint peeling off the clapboards, a sagging porch. A junked car rested on its rims in the yard, and wind rustled through the elms, sending leaves swirling down like golden rain. As the partners got out of the car, Garrett saw a sludgy pond off the side of the house, and a shed with weathered, unpainted siding and double doors padlocked together. There was no sign of the dark blue Camaro.

The grass around them was knee-high and Garrett found himself scanning for…

Burned footprints…

He shook off the image, wondering what he thought he was doing.

As the partners started up toward the house, no dogs barked to warn of their approach, and there were no signs of any other animals, or people, or a working car or other vehicle, either. Rumpled curtains were drawn at all the visible windows.

The porch steps creaked under Landauer’s bulk, a somehow ominous sound. He reached out for the doorbell. Surprisingly, the chime worked. The partners stood in the slight breeze as they waited in silence. Dry grass crackled in the fields around them. Garrett felt his stomach churn again, but it could have been the lingering effects of belladonna. The house didn’t feel occupied… and yet something was—