Alexandra Sokoloff - Book of Shadows

“What’s inside it?” Garrett asked Tufts.

“A mix of herbs—”

“Belladonna?” Garrett demanded.

“No belladonna,” said the criminalist. “Mostly common garden herbs—maybe a bit more common if you’re a witch! Mugwort, hensbane, dragon’s breath… and tobacco.”

Garrett stared at him. “Tobacco.”

Tufts shrugged. “And hair.” He opened a manila envelope, and removed a glassine bag. “Dirty blond, curly.”

Now, in the hospital room, Garrett looked at his comatose partner… dirty blond curls crushed against the pillow.

She’d made a voodoo doll, or whatever a witch would call it.

And yet, the tobacco in the doll…

In his head, Landauer’s voice came to him, unbidden. “I haven’t had one since she walked into the office that day. Fuck knows I’ve tried. I just can’t.”

Either way, she owed Garrett some answers, and he was going to get them.

He had an entirely different reason than the rest of the police for wanting to find Tanith. Whether or not she had put Land into the coma, she was the most likely person Garrett knew to be able to get him back.

And time was running out.

Palmer and Morelli had a whole new crime scene’s worth of evidence to process. Garrett knew they’d be doing exactly what he’d be doing: tracking the missing McKenna, questioning his neighbors and the managers and owners and workers at the landfill, seeking out family; while they collected lab reports on the blood samples and eye, looking for matches with Amber and Erin and trying to determine the identity of whoever’s blood was on the third altar and in the handprint on the front door.

But they would be looking at all that evidence through the prism of Malloy’s directive: to keep their focus on Jason Moncrief as the killer. And beyond that, Garrett knew Carolyn would fight not to have any other murders tied into the Carmody case. Garrett had not seen her since she had hurled Tanith Cabarrus’s arrest file at him that day, but he knew how her mind worked, and he had watched the song-and-dance the department was doing for the media to keep McKenna out of the papers. Trying to prove another murder would muddy the solid case the state had against Moncrief. Carolyn was not about to fall into the trap of bringing new charges that might jeopardize her existing case.

All of which meant that key evidence could be overlooked for political expedience.

Garrett sat holding his partner’s calloused hand while his mind raced through possibilities. He didn’t believe McKenna was a victim. The former foreman had intimate knowledge of the landfill, its entrances and routines, making it a natural dumping ground for him. He had an isolated house, perfect for the kinds of rituals (Garrett’s mind shifted away from dwelling on the particulars) that someone had been doing in that cellar. And Tufts had let Garrett in on the fact that books and printouts on demonology, including volumes by the ubiquitous Aleister Crowley, had been found in McKenna’s house. He fit Dr. Frazer’s profile of the “Self-Styled Satanist.”

Palmer and Morelli would no doubt try to question Jason to determine whether he had any kind of connection with McKenna, and also to try to pin down a connection with Tanith. Evidence at McKenna’s house would be cross-matched with hair, fiber, and DNA taken from Tanith’s house and shop, and from Jason’s room and car.

Yes, Palmer and Morelli would be doing it by the book. The problem was, they didn’t have time for the book. Even expedited, DNA reports took a minimum of two weeks and it was October 28. Which meant just three days before Halloween…

Samhain, Garrett’s mind whispered.

“Samhain is the eve, when those who love the lost will grieve. Three to die to do the deed…”

They didn’t have time for DNA.

And there was another unease that Garrett didn’t even let himself look at too closely. He’s holding them, she’d said. Their souls are trapped.

He looked at his partner, attached to machines by tubes.

Trapped.

But Garrett had an idea of how to find her.

According to her psych file from McLean State Hospital, Teresa Smithfield, a.k.a. Tanith Cabarrus, had been released to one Selena Fox after she was discharged from that institution in 2000. Garrett had no idea whether or not Palmer and Morelli had decided to follow up, but his own calls to the DMV and the credit reporting companies and searches on AutoTrack turned up no such person as Selena Fox, so he doubted the other detectives would have spent much time with it. They had other things on their plate.

Garrett knew that the other detectives were following McKenna’s trail, so he headed in the opposite direction, out of the city and off the map: to Salem. An absurd little chant looped through his head as he made the drive: Takes a witch to catch a witch.

All that damn rhyming of the rituals. He couldn’t get away from it. But the theory behind the taunting little homily was sound, he thought. The witch community seemed tight-knit.

So he strode again through gusting wind and swirling leaves on the Essex pedestrian walk, toward the witch souvenir shop he’d gone into by mistake on his first trip up to visit Tanith.

The day had been warm, Indian summer, but the slanting light was most definitely autumn, with long evening shadows beginning to creep across the cobblestones of the mall, shifting cerily with the wind. As Garrett walked the mall it was impossible not to note the explosion of Halloween decorations. Now, upward of seventy-five percent of the people around him were already in costume, and the shops were festooned with lights, pumpkins, black cats, the cornstalks lashed to lampposts and pillars. The sight made Garrett cold, despite the warmth of the evening.

The same beshawled proprietor was at the counter of the shop at the heart of the mall, and she looked him over with that same greedy interest before her smile curled cynically. “Back so soon? I told you you didn’t want anything to do with Tanith Cabarrus.” News of Tanith’s wanted status had hit the papers. Garrett imagined it had caused quite a stir in the small Salem community.

“You were right about that,” he agreed neutrally. “It’s someone else I’m looking for now, though. Selena Fox.”

There was an uneasy flicker in the witch’s eyes. She looked away. “I can’t help you.”

“Well, you see, I think you can,” Garrett said. He kept his voice casual, but there was an edge.

She shook her head. “I have no idea where Selena is. She hasn’t lived in Salem for some time. But I can tell you this. If she wants to talk to you, she’ll find you. And if she doesn’t, you won’t.”

Garrett looked at her, startled. She gazed at him intently—no, not at him, but somehow a bit above him, and to the sides. “Are you sure you don’t want a reading? Your aura doesn’t look good.”

Garrett had to bite his tongue. “I bet it doesn’t. Thanks anyway.”

Though he knew it was pointless, he drove by Book of Shadows. The shop was itself a shadow against the darkening sky and there was yellow police tape crossed on the door.

For no reason that he could think of, he got out of the car and moved up on the sidewalk to stand just before the porch stairs.

The cornstalks were still lashed to the porch columns, and Garrett wondered briefly what Palmer and Morelli and the other officers had made of that.

There was a stirring of wind, and then he felt an unsettling sense of presence behind him, the visceral sensation of being watched. Garrett turned quickly—

—to see a flash of pale skin, a shock of fiery red hair, as a slight, agile figure darted toward the bushes beside the house, heading straight on toward the thick hedge. Garrett tensed and reached automatically for his weapon, before he remembered that it was in lockup at Schroeder; he’d had to turn it over.