Book of Shadows by Alexandra Sokoloff Page A

do we still need to get done, here?”
    “Moncrief’s car. Check with Jeffs if there’s any student interviews we should know about. And we’re out of here.”
    Garrett nodded. “I want to talk to the other members of the band, too,” he said abruptly. But they were not Amherst students; he’d already run DMV checks.
    He turned to survey the room again. The red leather-bound book was still lying on the bed beside it, unopened, and he made another move to reach for it—
    “Detectives.” Both of them turned toward the terse voice behind them.
    Sergeant Jeffs was standing in the doorway, an intent look on his face. “I’ve got someone you’re going to want to talk to.”

Chapter Twelve

    Garrett recognized the round-faced, curly-haired hall coordinator from the night before (
God . . . just the night before . . .
). The partners sat in Kurt Fugate’s one-bedroom apartment on the ground floor, his perk for managing the building and all its student residents. Jeffs stood against the wall, watching.
    Fugate was a senior, older than their other interviewees, but so far the most nervous; he was mature enough to be suitably shaken by Erin’s death. He sat in an armchair, relating what he’d told Jeffs. “All these rooms are supposed to be double occupancy. Jason only had a single because his roommate requested a transfer. Urgently.”
    Seated uncomfortably on the futon couch, Garrett had a sudden flash of Jason’s stretched-out face, the wolfishly lolling tongue . . .
    Fugate swallowed coffee from a school mug and continued. “Bryce came to me to request the transfer. He wouldn’t give any specific reason—he really didn’t want to talk about it at all. But he said he didn’t want to stay another night.” He glanced at Jeffs, back to Garrett. “If you ask me, he was scared.”
    “Scared how?” Garrett pressed.
    Fugate looked at him straight on. “He had a suitcase with him when he talked to me. He really wasn’t going back up there.”
    Garrett glanced at Landauer. “But he wouldn’t give any details.”
    The hall coordinator shook his head. “No. Sorry. He didn’t want to talk about it.”
    “No problem. We’ll be speaking to him.” Garrett made a note, then looked up. “Did you know Jason yourself?”
    “Only by sight. There are 120 kids in the hall, it’s a new school year . . . I just hadn’t gotten to know everyone.”
    “Did Erin Carmody ever complain to you about being stalked?”
    The young man looked horrified. “God, no. I would have—done something.”
    Garrett nodded thoughtfully, and met Landauer’s eyes, while he said aloud to Fugate, “Thanks. You’ve been a huge help.”
    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