Book of Shadows (12 page)

They were in luck: Bryce Brissell was on campus, working in the scene shop in the theater building, just a few buildings away. There was building going on in the dim space backstage, muffled hammering and sanding and sawing from the scene dock and the costume shop, and the smell of paint.

Bryce was tall, pale and gangly, almost two-dimensionally thin, with a long shock of diagonally cut, dyed auburn hair that kept falling into his startlingly green eyes.
Contacts,
Garrett thought. The boy wore his sexuality on his sleeve. He even gave Garrett a furtive look as he folded himself into a battered armchair in a grouping of sprung sofas and davenports in the curtained wings backstage. It didn’t take much prodding for him to open up about Jason. He pulled out clove cigarettes, prompting Landauer to dig out his own Camels, and articulated for the micro-recorder, everything with a dramatic delivery and fluttering hands that Garrett could feel grating on Land without even having to look at him.

“I left because I couldn’t live with him,” Bryce said, taking a nervous drag on his cigarette. “It was the black magic. At first I thought he was just posing—the whole death metal thing, yada yada, scary scary. But he just got more and more into it. I knew he was doing rituals in the room. At first I could tell because of the candles, nothing but black. He got into using different bizarro oils, I think for spells. He had all those creepy books—I swear, I didn’t even
like sleeping in the same room with them.” Bryce looked off toward the curtained wings. A single ghost light on a tall pole shone on the stage like a torch, a halo of light. “And then things started to go really weird,” Bryce said softly.

“Weird how?” Garrett prompted.

Bryce paused, and the reluctance suddenly seemed genuine. “There were these smells in the room, even when he wasn’t there,” he said slowly. “Like, burning. I could feel these—drafts—even when the windows and door were closed. And sounds. I would wake up in the middle of the night because there was this whispering.” He stopped, frowned. “Babbling. Like a lot of voices all at once, on top of each other. But there was no music playing, no TV, no iPod, nothing. He’d be sitting cross-legged on the bed, just him, staring into space . . .” Bryce shivered, and Garrett thought of Jason’s black, dilated eyes. “And then he’d look at me . . . and his eyes . . . his eyes were so empty.”

Despite himself, Garrett felt a chill. Bryce exhaled smoke and touched his lip before he continued.

“Okay, and I do props, right? And I’d been collecting some stuff for a bill of one acts: Pinter, Beckett, Ionesco. Well, one night I was studying alone in the room and I heard a phone start to ring behind me. Not a cell phone, but one of those old-time phones, a Sultan?” He looked at the detectives and lowered his voice.

“It was the prop phone. It was ringing in the closet. But it was a
prop phone
. No cords. No wires.”

Garrett and Landauer eyed each other, and Bryce stiffened at their obvious skepticism. “I swear to God, it’s true. That’s when I packed up, right then and there. Whatever he was into, I wasn’t going to live in the same room with it.”

“So you felt in danger?” Garrett suggested.

“
Yes,
I felt in
danger,
” Bryce said, affronted. “What do you think I’ve been saying?”

Garrett tried to steer the interview back to something solid. “Did you ever see Jason with Erin Carmody?”

Bryce shook his head, hair flopping.

“She never came to the room?”

“Not that I knew of.”

“Did Jason ever speak about her?”

“No. It’s not like he talked a lot, though. Mostly he acted like I wasn’t there. He was always off on his own trip.” Bryce stared off toward the stage and shivered. “My dad was batshit that I moved off campus and lost the whole semester deposit. But look what happened.” He looked at the detectives with wide eyes. “What if I’d stayed?”

As they walked out the dark hall toward the red light of the
EXIT
sign, Garrett looked to Landauer, who was tapping out a cigarette. “What do you think?”

Landauer grimaced. “Drama queen. Literally.” He widened his eyes like an ingénue. “ ‘The phone was
ringing
in the
closet,
’ ” he said, fluttering his hands as he mimicked Bryce’s voice. He dropped the lisp. “The phone is definitely the only thing in the closet.”

“If you’re finished—” Garrett began.

“I’m makin’ a point, here,” Landauer growled, holding up a warning finger.

“Which is?”

“Moncrief doesn’t like having a gay roommate and he hazes Tinker Bell till he leaves. Moncrief’s a musician. Sound effects: babbling voices, ringing in the closet.”

Garrett stopped and looked at his partner, who stood with the unlit cigarette in his hand. He had the strong feeling Landauer was trying to explain away something he didn’t want to look at.
But we both saw it, Land: Jason’s stretched-out face and black basketball eyes. We heard that rasping, inhuman voice . . .

Garrett suddenly felt the hair on the back of his neck rise, the same absolute sensation of being watched that he’d experienced at Cauldron.

He turned sharply and stared into the dark of the hall.

They were alone, nothing in the corridor with them but the glowing red patches of the EXIT lights.

Get a grip,
he told himself.
Get some sleep.

Land was staring at him, and he shook his head. “Maybe you’re
right. Maybe Jason was hazing him. I don’t know what to think. I think I’m too tired to think.”

“You and me both,” Landauer admitted. He looked back toward the stage with a frown. “But something’s hinky about that story and I don’t like it. I don’t like any of it.”

Outside the theater building, they saw the media had found them. Microwave-dished vans from different news stations dotted the campus, shooting atmospheric footage. Jeffs’s officers had established a no-media zone around Morris Pratt Hall, but news choppers hovered above, shooting from the air what they could not get from the ground. Garrett stood and watched as a suited reporter with a fresh haircut and a mike chased down a couple of backpacked students.
Everyone in the continental U.S. knows Jason Moncrief killed her, by now. Signed, sealed, delivered.

The partners met Lingg and Jenna in the parking lot at the side of the dorm, where they were processing Moncrief’s car, a black late-model Mustang hardtop convertible. The kid was no pauper.

Lingg turned away from the car with a grin. “Happy New Year, Detectives. We found Erin’s phone. Under the passenger seat. And more semen and blood traces in the back.”

Slam dunk.

In his oddly maternal way, Lingg suggested that Jenna drive the Cavalier back to Boston so Garrett and Landauer could catch an hour’s nap in the CSU van, and the partners gratefully accepted, each taking a piece of the floor in the back. Garrett folded his suit coat under his head and lay back with his eyes shut. He was nearly dead, yet his mind was racing, cataloguing.

•
An eyewitness putting Erin and Jason together mere hours before her murder

•
Blood and semen on Jason’s jeans

•
The ceremonial objects under his bed, including a dagger like—if not identical to—the one that killed her

•
Erin’s phone in Jason’s car

•
Blood and semen in Jason’s car

•
The leather book with its ominous and incriminating symbols

•
Eyewitness testimony that Jason was disturbed and disturbing

At this rate the lab would find traces of Erin’s blood on the dagger, Moncrief would give them a full, voluntary confession and agree to a plea, and they’d be closing the book on this one within the week. A dream case. All the glory and none of the hassle.
And what was so wrong about that?

“There is no grace, there is no guilt . . .”

Garrett spoke aloud to his partner from where he stretched on the floor of the van. “I was wrong. You were right. It’s the kid.”

For a moment he thought Landauer was already asleep. Then his voice came, disembodied, from the other side of the van. “This is a weird one. It baffles the fuck out of me.”

Garrett said slowly, “Yeah.”

And then they were out.

The nap was lifesaving, and both detectives were able to shower and change into spare clothes in the locker room of Schroeder before once again convening in the conference room with Malloy and Carolyn. Normally Malloy would not have shown hide nor hair on a Sunday, his church day, but apparently the Carmody name trumped God, and of course time was of the essence.

As Garrett began to list the evidence, he knew they had the charges nailed just by watching Carolyn’s and Malloy’s faces.

“The DJ at Cauldron puts Erin and Jason together just hours before her death. Erin’s roommate says Jason was obsessed with her and was out with her that night. Erin’s missing cell phone was found in Jason’s car. We have a pair of jeans taken from Jason’s room which have traces of blood and semen that we believe DNA tests will match to Erin and Jason, confirming they had sex that night, and there are similar traces in Jason’s car. We have a CD from Jason’s band that contains the symbols and numbers that were carved into Erin’s torso. We have three student witnesses willing to testify to Jason’s unbalanced mental state. And we have a whole collection of occult ritual objects from a lockbox under Moncrief’s bed, including a dagger like the one used to kill Erin.
It’s being tested for blood residue right now. The rest of it—well, none of it looks good.” He passed out photos of the ceremonial objects.

The silence was electric as Carolyn and Malloy looked over the photos. Garrett and Landauer held each other’s eyes over the table.

“This is very strong,” Carolyn declared, looking up. Her face was shining. “Very strong. We should have zero trouble getting a grand jury to hand down an indictment. When will we have DNA results?”

Garrett was the complete professional as he answered her. “The lab will be able to tell us unofficially within two days. The full report will take a couple of weeks because of corroborative tests. But we can match blood type, and the semen taken from Erin’s body was from a secretor, so we have the blood type on that as well.”

“That’ll work,” she said, writing. “How soon can you get me a charging package?” She looked to Malloy, and Malloy raised his eyebrows at the detectives.

Garrett and Landauer looked at each other, calculating. A charging package was a daunting document: a presentation of all the evidence, lab reports, witness testimony, photos, and evidence lists that the DA’s office needed to file charges. It would also be used in negotiations with Moncrief’s attorney, to show them how strong the case was and apply pressure for a plea. The partners were painfully light on sleep to begin with, but the nap in the CSU van and the shower had helped.

Landauer was already thinking out loud. “All the lab tests have been expedited. We should be getting results throughout the evening—print matches from the car, the blood screens . . .”

Garrett added, “The phone records will take a while, but we’ve got the call logs from the cell phones, and the IT guys should be able to open the computer files on both laptops . . .” Then he frowned. “I’d like to be able to talk to the other band members, too.”

“Do you really need those witness accounts to make a preliminary case?” Malloy interrupted, with an edge.

Garrett weighed it, conceded, “Probably not. But, Lieutenant, if we could get in to see Moncrief tonight, we might just be able to get
the whole thing out of him. Especially with the stuff we found under the bed—”

“It’s not going to happen,” Carolyn said. “Moncrief’s family has hired Merrill James.”

There was no need for her to elaborate. James was one of the two top defense attorneys in the state, a celebrity lawyer for celebrity cases.

“Obviously they know we’re going to be charging Moncrief with Erin’s murder,” Carolyn continued. “James has already gotten a technical restraining order stating that no law enforcement official can question Moncrief unless James is present. And James hasn’t been returning calls today—I’ve tried.”

They all sat, absorbing this news.

Malloy narrowed his eyes toward the detectives. “We have twenty-eight hours left on the initial forty-eight-hour hold for the assault on a peace officer arrest. Can we get a charging package together in time to arrest him again for Erin Carmody’s murder before he’s released on bail?” His voice seemed curtly challenging, but then again, it always did.

“We can do it,” Garrett said.

“You got it,” Landauer agreed.

“There’s another thing, and this is important.” Carolyn put her manicured hands flat on the table. “The office has directed me to go for a no-bail hold, and of course I agree. So we need the charging document to reflect that Moncrief is either a flight risk or a danger to the community, preferably both.” She nodded toward Landauer. “Now, the attack on Detective Landauer goes a long way toward ‘danger to the community,’ but can you build from there?”