Alexandra Sokoloff - Book of Shadows

The DJ’s hands moved over the sound board in time to the music, making several minute adjustments to the sound levels as he spoke. “Yeah. A regular. Guitarist. Prepster gone bad.”

“Got a name?” Garrett found himself holding his breath. The DJ paused, then turned to the wall of posters behind him, pulled a glossy flyer down. Garrett took it, stared down at the photo image of four sullen, black-haired, black-clad musicians, shot from above in distorted fisheye, posed close, with faces raised skyward under a large inverted cross.

The DJ pointed to one of the pale, upturned faces. “Moncrief. Jason.”

Garrett made a quick phone call from the relative quiet of the restroom corridor. The DMV check gave Jason Moncrief’s address as Morris Pratt Hall, Amherst College. Erin’s dorm. The throbbing music segued into another dark piece with a ghostly Irish influence as Garrett found Landauer in the Cauldron crowd and filled him in, shouting over the banshee wail of violins and harmonica. He watched Landauer’s eyes take on a sudden gleam in the dark.

“What do you think?” Garrett shouted into his partner’s ear.

“Hell, yeah, let’s go,” Landauer shouted back.

Garrett looked up at the massive, Gothic clock face on the wall. It was already half past midnight and a good hour and a half drive up to Amherst, and it was too much to hope ( Too easy floated through his brain again) that they could make an arrest that night. But if there was even a remote possibility, they would do whatever it took. College students were apt to be up at all hours on a Saturday night, anyway, and there was much that could be useful about questioning a witness/potential suspect who had been awakened from a sound sleep.

The partners wound their way back through the gyrating crowd and ordered large coffees to go from the corseted bartender, who flipped Garrett a suggestive “Come again,” before they turned away from the bar and headed for the road.

The road to Amherst was a dark and misty highway, the thick forest an oppressive tunnel around them: nothing but the dark silhouettes of trees and the occasional roar of a big rig at this hour. At the wheel, Garrett swilled coffee and stared out the windshield at the reflecting center line, his only guide through the drifting fog. Landauer smoked cigarette after cigarette; Garrett could feel lung cancer taking root from the secondhand smoke, and thought for the ten millionth time that he had to put a stop to it, somehow, soon…

But not tonight.

He hit the window button and let the cool night air blow against his face.

Garrett had lived in Massachusetts his entire life, but had never been to the town of Amherst until a month ago, on a weekend trip with Carolyn when she’d been a guest speaker at the summer session. He remembered uncomfortably that the trip had not gone well. Amherst was Carolyn’s alma mater, one of the most prestigious and elitist institutions in the country. Garrett admitted to a chip on his shoulder about his education: a BA in Criminal Justice at the truculently blue-collar U Mass, Boston, and he was the first of his father’s side of the family to finish an undergraduate degree at all. Amherst was U Mass’s opposite in every way, a rarefied world Garrett had never been part of, and it grated on him to see Carolyn so obviously in her element, speaking as an intimate to the sons and daughters of the richest men in the state, taking her privilege as a God-given right. Garrett had made unfortunate quips about blue blood and silver spoons and consequently there’d been “no dancing,” as Elvis Costello used to snarl euphemistically, that supposedly romantic weekend.

Garrett suddenly remembered that Carolyn was expecting him sometime that evening, and grabbed for his cell phone. He got her voice mail and left an update that was more professional than personal, but utterly failed to fool Landauer, who waggled his tongue lewdly and pumped his hips like a spastic sixteen-year-old before lighting up yet another Camel and dropping his head back against the headrest, closing his eyes as he smoked.

Garrett punched off the phone and drained the last of his coffee, watching the signs for the Amherst turnoff and brooding about Carolyn and Erin. Both blond and beautiful, children of wealth—and now it seemed their best lead was, too.

Landauer suddenly spoke. “You know the part I don’t want to think about?” He crushed out his cigarette, stared out the passenger window into the rush of dark. “What’s he doing with the head and one hand?”

Garrett felt his stomach tighten. He didn’t want to know.

Sprawled on a hill overlooking the tiny, pastoral town, the college offered a breathtaking, panoramic view of blue sky and the Holyoke mountain range by day. But by night the campus was decidedly ominous, with turn-of-the-century lampposts beaming diffuse light through swirling fog, and footpaths gleaming in pale ribbons down the steep hills, under ghostly twisting trees.

Morris Pratt Hall loomed over a moonlit circle of lawn, a four-story nineteenth-century brick building. Farther up a hill a church spire stood oddly alone, a vaguely dangerous-looking needle with no church attached.

The detectives got out of the car and looked up through tree branches at the tall facade of the dorm. It was 2:00 A.M., but more than a dozen rooms on the side of the building they were facing were still lit up. Garrett started to shut his car door, then at the last moment, even though he was already armed, he reached into the backseat and grabbed the Taser that BPD issued all its officers, but which Garrett rarely carried. Landauer looked across the car roof questioningly and Garrett shrugged as he clipped it to his hip.

The dorm entry was startlingly opulent, with a three-story-high recessed archway over sweeping front stairs and a marble porch. The partners’ footsteps echoed under the archway as they climbed the steps. A sleepy hall coordinator in a flannel robe answered the buzzer. Garrett’s badge opened his eyes.

Jason Moncrief’s room was on the fourth floor, and according to the nervous, round-faced H.C., he had a private. The carpeted stairs smelled strongly of beer, as did the darkened fourth-floor hallway. Garrett and Landauer walked past closed doors, caught a whiff of pot from one room. Landauer rolled his eyes and feigned taking a monster toke, then pulled out his badge, lifted a meaty leg, and mimed the start of a kick to break down the door.

Garrett shook his head, but he understood that his partner was blowing off steam. There was a lot riding on the next few minutes.

They slowed as they approached the closed door of 410, Moncrief’s room.

He was up.

There was music coming from beneath the bedroom door. It was dark and screeching with unearthly violins and harmonica, and someone was playing live guitar along with the track. Garrett was startled to recognize the same music that had been playing when they’d left Cauldron. Immediately he dismissed the thought; the music was similar, that was all. But the eerie feeling of continuation remained.

Landauer leaned forward and rapped on the door. “Boston PD,” he called loudly. The partners listened as the guitar stopped mid-phrase. There was a quick soft scuffling in the room before the door was pulled open.

The young man facing them was musician-slim, with longish dyed black hair and an indolent and slightly androgynous sensuality—a languor that was possibly drug-related. He looked the partners over with an insolence that stiffened Garrett’s spine, but he forced down the reaction; the kid’s arrogance might well work in their favor.

“Boston PD. I’m Detective Garrett, this is Detective Landauer. Homicide Unit.”

Moncrief didn’t have any visible reaction to the “Homicide Unit” identification, but then again, his eyes were black basketballs. High on something, for sure. And that was useful, too.