Book of Shadows

Chapter Five

It was, as always, a relief to take the elevator up from the basement lab, to escape the whine of bone saw and queasy sight of exposed organs. The smell, of course, remained. Garrett and Landauer left the brick building on Albany Street and stopped at a liquor store for a lemon, squeezed juice into their nostrils, tearing up at the acid bite—but they were looking at a long night and the sting of lemon was better than the stink of death.

The Homicide Unit of Schroeder Plaza, with its new computer terminals and desks grouped into work pods, always looked to Garrett more like a law firm than a police station, especially at night when there were fewer detectives to break the illusion of corporate order. Landauer immediately took his Camels and cell phone outside to set about tracking down Erin’s roommate and boyfriend. Garrett threw his jacket over a chair and jumped on his computer to fill out the VICAP form to check the national FBI database of violent crimes for similar murders. He was sure in his bones that this was not a onetime killing, and there were so many distinctive signature aspects that there was a chance—a chance—they could get lucky and find a documented trail of crimes. The problem was, Garrett wasn’t feeling very lucky.

The night hush of the detectives’ room settled around him as he called up the VICAP database. Typing the details of the murder into the computerized form made his skin prickle uncomfortably again. Decapitation, removal of the left hand, black candle wax, ritualistic carvings, belladonna…

And consensual sex?

Garrett frowned at the incongruous piece of the puzzle, and sat, staring past the computer, wondering. Then, only half-aware that he was doing it, he picked up a pen and scribbled notes.

Not raped? Someone she knew? Willing participant in ritual?

He paused and looked down at the luminous senior portrait of Erin Carmody on top of his case file… then threw down his pen, shaking his head.

A prom queen like that, involved in black magic? You’re dreaming. Edwards is right—the sex was probably postmortem.

A hundred and eighty-eight gruesome questions later (Was the binding excessive, i.e. more than necessary to control the victim? Were objects inserted into body orifices?) he finished the VICAP report by typing in a request for a profile evaluation and sent the document, then pulled up the NCIC database to generate a list of missing persons. There were twenty-six females between the ages of sixteen and thirty recently reported missing in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Erin Carmody was the logical primary focus of the investigation, but if they could not pick up a trail around Erin, they might be able to find someone else missing under similar circumstances.

Garrett printed out the Missing Persons list and added it to the murder book, the binder that would hold all the official reports and photos and notes on the Carmody case, then sat back in his creaky chair for a minute, looking down at the enlarged crime-scene photo showing the carvings in Erin’s torso, the numbers. The deep feeling of unease swept over him again.

He sat abruptly forward toward the computer and called up Google. He typed 333 into the search box and looked over the list of entries that came up:

He started to scroll, speeding through pages and pages of 333 addresses and phone directory listings interspersed with links to various university classes:

In a word: nothing. Garrett clicked back on the search box and tried:

This time the search results were cryptic, but more promising:

Garrett hunched forward and started clicking through links, only to be confronted with a mind-numbing series of Web sites, newsletters, articles, and message board forums, some graphically illustrated with demonic images, pentagrams, borders of crackling flames; some complete with ominous mood music; all laced with unfamiliar terminology: Chaos Magic, Golden Dawn, Aleister Crowley, Sigils. Bizarre bits of text jumped out at him as he skimmed the sites:

Garrett sat back, feeling as if he needed a serious shower.

A voice above him barked, “Hey. Dreamboy.” Garrett started, looked up to find Laudauer grinning down at him. “Talked to the roommate up in Amherst. She says Erin was on her way out to a club on Kenmore Square last night.” Landauer gave him a look of sly triumph. “Get this. The club’s called Cauldron.”

835 Beacon Street, Kenmore Square. The neighborhood was shady, with junkies and crack whores lurking in the shadows of the three-story building: a warehouse, with its few windows painted black from the inside and no identifying signage. An enormous bouncer hovered at the door with beefy bare arms crossed, dressed in a black hood and studded leathers like a medieval executioner. Garrett and Landauer flashed tin at him and walked past the DRESS CODE ENFORCED sign into the castlelike gloom of Cauldron. They stood in the black-lit entry hall with the pulse of synthesizers throbbing through them, blinking as their eyes adjusted to the dark. The walls around them were a bloody red; the ceiling two stories above was crisscrossed with ghostly lengths of white cheesecloth. Black leather booths and a few counters with high stools ringed the walls; the booths were framed in iron with heavy crimson drapes, some of which were already drawn across the entrances, creating cocoons of privacy. Four huge black columns sectioned off the packed dance floor; dozens of heavy linked chains hung from the ceiling, surrounding the dancers in a cagelike cube. The dense crowd of young patrons was costumed to the hilt; makeup ran down their sweating faces like black tears as they undulated inside the chains.

The two detectives moved through the roar of the crowd, reeling at the assault of pulsing music, lasers, and flickering silent German Expressionist films projected on several walls, with their crooked buildings and monstrous shadows. Young people dressed in leather, chain mail, even dragon wings, milled and drank and slouched on large black cubes. A stocky long-haired blond man at one of the tall tables was completely naked, his entire body painted bright blue. A young woman with candy-apple red hair sidled by them, wearing only strips of wide red vinyl tape across her breasts and pelvis.

Garrett heard Landauer mutter beside him, “Freak, freak, freak-azoid…” Garrett looked at his partner and saw equal parts of lust and loathing on his face. He himself could feel the throb of the music through his body, down to his pelvis, an insistent, sexual pulse.

His own taste in music ran to classic rock, on the Irish side: U2, the Pogues, Van the Man, of course the Stones, who were Irish in spirit. But he’d always been drawn to the haunting music of The Cure, whose dark and driving “M” he recognized playing now.

As he paused to listen, the pounding of the music turned into something else, a feeling of… import, almost of being watched. Garrett turned in the crowd, staring through the flashing lights and flickering projections…

Landauer nudged his arm, breaking the spell, and nodded toward the long oval bar. The partners split up, moving to opposite sides. Garrett stepped between two bar stools, his eyes taking in a banner above the mirror advertising an upcoming SAMHAIN PARTY—Bands All Night, Costume Contests. The corseted magenta-haired barkeep gave him a bold and appreciative once-over before Garrett leaned across the bar and flashed his badge, forcing himself to keep his eyes well above her pushed-up breasts.

“Boston PD,” he shouted, and put Erin’s photo on the glossy wood. “Did you see this girl in here last night?”

The bartender squinted with raccoon eyes, shrugged. “Wearing what?” she shouted back.

Garrett looked over the room, the wildly costumed patrons. The bartender had a point; their own parents wouldn’t know them. He glanced down at the blond girl in the photo and had a moment of disconnect. What was a girl like Erin, a textbook preppie, doing in a place like this to begin with?

It seemed highly unlikely, yet he knew well enough that teenagers and college students had worlds of secrets they kept from their parents, and even the closest families might have no clue what was going on with their progeny.

Another thought occurred to him as he looked back at the corseted bartender, her lush breasts lifted and displayed as if on a plate.

Was Erin also dressed in some kind of fetish wear last night? Did the killer mistake her for a prostitute, an easy victim? Hookers and runaways were the number one choice of target for sexual predators and serial murderers; they were easy to grab and almost never missed. And Cauldron was in a notoriously bad neighborhood, the perfect stalking ground for an opportunistic killer.

Or was the killer right here in the club with her?

As Garrett thought it, he felt again the unmistakable sensation of eyes on the back of his neck, someone watching him. His whole skin prickled, and he whipped around to stare into the undulating crowd.

Dozens of alien-looking faces gazed back at him expressionlessly, a congregation of the damned.

The sense of presence was strong, but any watcher was perfectly camouflaged in the masses; everyone in the room looked capable of ritualistic murder.

Garrett shook his head and turned back to the bartender, who shot him another lazily inviting look. He ignored the look, and with more difficulty the breasts, as he took back Erin’s photo, then turned and scanned the room more slowly, his head vibrating with the music. His gaze stopped on the DJ booth and the shadowy dreadlocked figure working in the cold blue light of an overhead spot. The black-haired young man behind the turntables was half Johnny Depp, half vampire, with an Elizabethan shirt open to his waist and a silver pirate skull around his neck. His cool mascaraed eyes didn’t miss a trick as he surveyed the dance floor from the elevated booth.

Garrett started across the floor, and the music segued into an eerie set of guitar chords, with ghostly lyricless vocals layered on top… the haunting opening of “Gimme Shelter”… as familiar to him as a prayer and as incongruous and as fitting in the setting as any song he could imagine. The dancers around him slowed their feet, swaying hypnotically to the dreamlike spell of the music. After a moment Garrett kept moving, weaving through writhing couples who turned slowly to look at him with pale, painted faces as he made his way forward. He approached the stairs and lifted his gaze to the sound booth. The booth was plastered in band flyers and posters; Garrett’s eyes flicked over unfamiliar names: Incus. Scissorkeep. Nitzer Ebb. Rasputina. There were a few he recognized: Siouxsie and the Banshees, Christian Death, Sisters of Mercy, Ministry.

DJ Depp’s eyes grazed over Garrett, and though it was more than clear Johnny Boy knew a cop when he saw one, Garrett gave him the obligatory “Boston PD” and badge routine, shouting over the music. The DJ nodded, and looked over the photo that Garrett extended. Garrett gave him a beat to take Erin in, and asked, “Was she here this week?”

The DJ didn’t hesitate. “Last night. Vanilla, but good dancer.”

Garrett felt a rush of anticipation at the sudden, unexpected break. “Was she with someone?”

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.”