Chapter 1

She was a poem composed of flesh and blood.

Idle as day's end, Maggie Gerard stood under the ancient Willow that leaned over the slow-flowing water of Boston's Public Garden. She plucked at the sagging leaves, dropping broken bits into the rippling pond.

A late-summer breeze fluttered her cotton dress. With an embarrassed smile, Maggie soothed the ruffled skirt and fingered her blonde locks back from a face bright with life and the seductive innocence of youth.

The sun dipped, and the day retired in a scent of folding flowers. The moon rose as a silver ball drawn straightaway up an invisible ladder. Maggie sighed. Her delicate breath floated along the water's edge, where a joyless figure crouched in the lengthening shadow of Lagoon Bridge. A derelict in tattered rags, this driftwood of society muttering through cracked, bitten lips and a black beard streaked with white and matted with dirt, thick as a nest of worms.

Rocking on buckled legs, the vagrant watched the girl through watery eyes that stabbed outward with a red-rimmed vileness. Hate dredged from a bottle and poured into a soul sunk lower than the setting sun.

Who are we tonight, Cooper Reid? Who are we tonight?

"Tonight," Reid answered the voices in his head, "we are Tam O'Shanter, of whom Robert Burns wrote. 'Scarcely had he Maggie rallied when out the hellish legion sallied.'"

A spirited choice, Cooper Reid. It befits our purpose.

"Our purpose?" mumbled Reid. "My purpose."

The skulking shadow drew a worn leather notebook from inside his frayed winter coat, as out of season and out of place as the man himself. Eyes closed, precious pages pressed to his chest, he recited from memory.

Beyond the valley of rejection
Mayhem finds no objection
Deep in the mountains of madness and murder
The sheep huddle 'round their herder
What need had he of moon or lamp?
This dark and desperate troubadour tramp.

Your words, offered the voices.

"The work of a soured soul," Reid snapped as he restored the book to its pocket.

The moon, it is important to you.

"It is the light by which I do my best work."

Look! She comes to us, the one called Maggie. The Lamb to the Shepherd.

"Alas, no, the lamb to the slaughter."

Pulling at the bowed branches of the drooping Willow, Maggie stepped from under their emerald embrace. She walked the path winding under the granite bridge—a dark tunnel sheltering a black menace.

The warm summer wind slackened and drew still. The crickets ceased clicking, and a croaking bullfrog fell silent. Maggie entered the underpass. Gloved hands drove from the darkness. They stifled her scream, dragging her beneath the concealing cement. With a single, savage twist to her neck, Maggie died.

The offended moon slouched behind a cloud; blackness reigned, and the invisible voices that lived in the head of Cooper Reid sang the words of Robert Burns.

'Now, wha this tale o' truth shall read,
Ilk man and mother's son, take heed,
Whene'er to drink you are inclin'd,
Or cutty-sarks run in your mind,
Think, ye may buy the joys o'er dear,
Remember Tam o' Shanter's mear.'