Ben shot a startled look over his shoulder and declared a staccato string of expletives that ended with “I really don’t need this shit.”
With a quick jerk, he yanked the passenger door of the vehicle open and shoved me at the opening as he ordered, “Get in.”
“Hell no!” I exclaimed. “They want a story, I’ll give them a story!”
I shuffled back and sidestepped him as he reached for me again. I don’t know how I pulled it off, but I somehow feigned a quick shift in position that left my friend grasping at air and me skirting quickly around him and the open door. The television reporters were almost upon us, and I was aiming myself toward them with fire in my throat and a vitriolic commentary on my tongue.
Before I managed to take a second step, however, the front of my coat laminated itself to my chest and forced the air from my lungs. I could no longer feel the ground beneath my feet, and my stomach fluttered with the butterflies of momentary weightlessness as I literally arced backward in flight. I stumbled once more to the ground, remaining upright only by the grace of the large hand that was twisted into the back of my coat.
I was stiffly swung in a shallow half circle, and after that I didn’t see much of anything other than the seat of the van rushing headlong toward me. I twisted and fought to step upward into the vehicle as I was propelled at it and in the process raked my shoulder hard against the frame. The door was already being slammed behind me as I fell in a twisted heap with my torso lying across the engine cover. Toward the rear, I heard the side door groan in a discordant harmony with my own as it was quickly forced open. The rush of activity was instantly followed by Felicity climbing in and slamming the opening shut.
I pushed myself up from the shadows and into a sitting position, twisting in the seat as I rose. The stark lights now filled the interior of the Chevy from the front and sides as video cameras were brought to bear on it. I squeezed my eyes tightly shut and twisted my head, throwing up my hands to shield my face, but I still saw spots from the brief glance into the man-made suns.
We were parked outside the cordoned area of the crime scene proper, and therefore, fair game. Now that I had called down their unrelenting attentions upon us, we had become the main course.
The muffled exterior noise jumped in amplification as the driver’s side door of the van opened, and a chaotic mix of voices began ricocheting around us.
“I said, NO COMMENT!” I heard my friend shout over the unintelligible questions as he folded his large frame in through the opening and levered the door shut.
The intensity of the clamor was once again suppressed, but the beams of garish light still sliced through the shadows. If they were to be denied a sound byte then they were intent on fighting like a pack of wild dogs for the best clip of video.
“Thanks, Rowan,” Ben snarled at me with thick sarcasm in his voice as he thrust his keys into the ignition and started the van. “Thanks a whole hell of a lot. Just what the fuck did you think you were doing?!”
“Giving them what they want!” I barked in return.
“Have you lost your goddamned mind?! Where the hell do ya’ think that’s gonna get ya’?!”
“Someone has to tell them what’s going on.”
“That’s for the public relations officer to handle, not you.”
“I’m talking about that bitch upstairs! Someone’s got to tell them what she’s doing!”
“Don’t you get it?!” he declared, thumping his fingertips against his forehead and gesturing angrily. “Have you suddenly gone stupid on me or somethin’? You run off at the mouth about Albright, and you’re screwed! Like it or not, in this situation, you’re the odd man out. They’ll spin the whole fuckin’ thing to make you look like a freak, and the way you’re actin’ right now it wouldn’t be hard!”
It took a moment for what he said to sink in, but I knew he was correct. I was as out of control as I had ever been.
“I’m sorry,” I exclaimed. “But there was no call for what she did. It was a power play, and you know it.”
“Yeah, it was,” he admitted as he pulled the gearshift down into drive and pounded his fist twice on the horn before letting off the brake. “I told ya’ how she was…” He took a moment to direct an exclamation toward the windshield. “Get outta my way you friggin’ asshole, or you’re gonna get run over! Jeezus!”
My friend twisted the steering wheel and nudged the vehicle slowly forward through the group of reporters and camera operators as they began parting. As he brought the van around and rotated the wheel back toward center, he shot me a quick glance.
“Listen, Kemosabe, I had no idea that was what she had planned, but it doesn’t surprise me. I told you what she thought of ya’.”
“But that whole exercise was done for no other reason than to get under my skin.” I asserted.
“Uh-huh,” my friend grunted. “That’s how she plays the game.”
“Well, her rules suck.”
“Aye, but that doesn’t matter,” Felicity said from behind me. “She succeeded in exactly what she set out to do. Look at yourself, then. I’ve never seen you lose your temper like this.”
“Yes you have,” I shot back as I turned in my seat to face her. “You just don’t remember it because a sick sonofabitch had you drugged up on Rophynol.”
“Aye,” she answered with an uncharacteristic hardness in her voice. “He did at that, but I remember more than you know, Rowan Linden Gant. More than you know.”
As she slumped back in her seat, she continued to stare at me with a cold fire in her jade green eyes. I knew at that moment that I had flipped the wrong switch.
I hoped my chosen deities were listening.
* * * * *
In keeping with the theme set forth by Lieutenant Albright, the security guard at the Saint Louis City Medical Examiner’s office had been phoned about our impending arrival. He let us in while on his way out the door to grab a smoke. He had been instructed to tell us to wait in the lobby until she arrived. Another tactic on her part, obviously, but there was nothing we could do. The door that led farther into the building was locked. I knew, because I succeeded in raising Ben’s anger a notch by ignoring his vehement instructions not to check it.
Remnants of the recent holiday season still visibly occupied the reception area of the office. Customarily, the room was bland and functional, so the ornamentation was quick to conjure a “what’s wrong with this picture” feeling.
Intertwined silver and gold garland still hung in shallow swags along the edge of the counter with a dozen or so holiday cards folded over them and on display. The screen saver on the computer behind the desk offered a snowy scene, complete with an inviting-looking log cabin and a twinkling Christmas tree. Here and there, other decorous attentions to detail could be picked out—a coffee mug emblazoned with a picture of Santa Claus; a wreath on the door leading back to the offices, also locked; and even a half-depleted bowl of festively-wrapped candies. All of them came together to form the whole: an unlikely clutch of cheer in the midst of a place that seemed overwhelmed by depression. I didn’t know about anyone else, but it just wasn’t working for me.
I’d seen the inside of this building too many times, not only in my waking hours but in nightmares as well. I had grown to despise its plain façade over the past couple of years. Still, as much as I hated it, I couldn’t escape. If it was nothing more than morbid fascination that brought me here, at least I could seek help, but I wasn’t fortunate enough to have a sickness to blame. I had become a permanent satellite inextricably gripped by the gravity of circumstance; my erratic orbit inevitably intersecting with an occupied autopsy suite. As often as not, I felt compelled to bring about the collision myself, and right now, I was at ground zero of yet another impact. Even though I was not at fault this time around, the ever-associated migraine was looming like a dark shadow over me.
This place was always a seething well of pain for me, and this morning was no different; of course, my irascibility facto
r being off the scale as it was didn’t help matters at all. I had started hearing the voices of the dead—screams mostly—the moment we turned onto Clark Avenue. Staving them off became a somewhat violent internal struggle as soon as we entered the building.
I sought refuge from the ethereal by embracing the mundane. I occupied my mind with trivial tasks in order to erect a mental barrier—anything from mutely reciting the alphabet in reverse to intensely pondering a shadow on the wall. At one point, I even found myself wondering about the holiday cards. Considering that the clientele of a morgue are normally beyond any need for celebration, they seemed out of place to me. I reached down and flipped one of the greetings partially open to reveal the inscription, which showed it to be from a sales rep at Stryker Corporation, a well-known maker of medical implements. I checked another and saw that the sender was a local wholesaler of surgical supplies.
I guess I had been over thinking the situation. Of course, in my agitated state, perhaps I was not truly thinking at all.
Unfortunately, seeing the names of the companies led me to dwell on such things as powered bone saws and stainless steel scalpels, which in turn brought back memories of post-mortems I’d witnessed first hand. Fearful cries from the other side rose in volume for a brief moment as I rushed to switch channels on my thoughts before they could suck me in.
“Aye, Ben. How long do you think we’ll be waiting, then?” Felicity asked aloud, her voice thankfully snatching my attention away from the place I’d been heading.
There had not yet been enough time for me to redeem myself, and I was still firmly entrenched on her bad side. She hadn’t spoken directly to me since my offhanded comment over half an hour ago, and it wasn’t looking like she intended to change that any time soon.
I looked over and focused on her. She was seated in a chair across from us, her leather jacket unzipped and revealing the stylized logo of a previous year’s Kansas City Pagan Festival that adorned the front of her sweatshirt. Her legs were crossed, and one foot was bobbing in time with music only she could hear.
I absently pondered the wisdom of the logo on her shirt being visible, given the current situation. For the first time in years, I was actually considering not being quite so open about my spirituality. Of course, once you’ve taken as many steps out of the broom closet as we had, getting back in was almost impossible, so the idea was moot. Still, calling attention to it might not be the best course.
She looked up from her wristwatch and gazed toward Ben with an expectant expression that barely masked the fatigue showing in her face. “It’s been almost twenty minutes now.”
He pushed away from the counter then looked out the doors and through the glassed-in foyer. “Who knows? Bee-Bee probably wants Row to stew long enough to do somethin’ stupid.”
“Like he hasn’t already?” she volunteered.
“Yeah, well I’m talkin’ stupid enough to give her a reason to arrest ‘im.”
“Hey!” I declared. “I’m standing right here you know.”
Ben looked at me. “Yeah, and?”
“Yeah, and, you two seem to have a bad habit of talking about me like I’m not here, that’s what. You do it all the time.”
“Not all the time. Just when it’s for your own good.”
“That’s subjective.”
“Uh-huh. Two-way street, Row. You aren’t exactly the pinnacle of objectivity yourself.”
As much as I hated to admit it, he had a point. Of course, that didn’t mean I had to like it. “Well, it’s still annoying.”
“Yeah, well so’s when you talk to dead people the rest of us can’t hear.”
Felicity piped up, a matter-of-fact tone permeating her voice. “Aye, Ben’s right.”
“What do you mean?” I scrunched my forehead as I spoke. “You’ve ventured over to the other side yourself as I recall.”
“Not about that.” She dismissed my comment with an impatient shake of her head. “About your giving Lieutenant Albright a reason to arrest you, then. If you don’t calm down, you’re going to do just that.”
“You’re not gonna win, Row,” Ben offered. “Especially if you play ‘push me-shove you’ with her. She’ll knock your ass down and kick you while you’re there.”
“Whatever happened to the whole ‘to protect and serve’ thing?” I asked.
“Number one,” he returned, “you’ve been watchin’ too much TV. And number two, never pull the ‘taxpayin’, law-abidin’ citizen who pays your salary’ crap with a copper. Trust me, it just pisses us off.”
“So, it’s okay for her to treat me like a criminal?”
“How many times have I gotta tell ya’, Row? This is reality. She’s holdin’ the cards here, not you.”
“Yeah, I know,” I grudgingly admitted. “But she’s still getting to me.”
“That’s YOUR problem, then,” Felicity said. “You know how to get around that. Ground and center yourself.”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re right,” I said as I pulled my glasses off and rubbed my eyes, lingering for a moment as I pinched the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger.
“How’s your head?” Felicity asked, her voice still edgy but softened by a few degrees of concern.
“Killing me,” I answered.
“Twilight Zone?” Ben asked.
“Yeah,” I nodded slightly. “And we’re already hell and gone past the signpost.”
CHAPTER 6:
Lieutenant Albright breezed in through the front doors of the medical examiner’s office just over twenty minutes later. True to what Ben had told me earlier, her gelid expression had not changed in the least.
“Mister Gant,” she said as she entered, cracking what might have passed for a pleasant smile had there not been so much sarcasm affixed to it. “I am surprised to find you here in the lobby as I asked. Apparently you CAN obey the law if you try hard enough.”
“The door is locked,” I answered coldly. “You know that.”
“Of course.” She nodded. “But that sort of thing has never stopped you in the past.”
I caught an acidic response in my throat and choked it back down, turning my head to the side and closing my eyes as I did so. I heeded Felicity’s advice and took an audibly deep breath in through my nose, then exhaled slowly through my mouth as I opened my eyes and turned back to face Albright. I could feel energy flowing along my spine and coupling with the Earth in a solid ground. It was as tangible to me as a hot and neutral lead on an electrical outlet. Still, it didn’t bring complete calm, and simply being in this woman’s presence made me bristle.
“Look, Lieutenant,” I began. “You’ve made your feelings perfectly clear. I have no desire to continue down this path with you.”
“And which path would that be, Mister Gant?” she asked, feigning ignorance.
“I’m telling you that I am not going to allow you to bait me any longer, Lieutenant,” I replied. “I’m here, just like you asked. I’m just waiting for you to tell me what it is you want from me.”
I cannot say that she was visibly disappointed by my stance, but I definitely had the feeling that some of her steam had instantly become just so much condensation. There was a short period of silence while she considered what I had just said. I fully suspected that she was using the time to regroup and plot her way around the obstacle I had just placed before her.
“Mister Gant,” she proceeded with a tilt of her head. “What I want, you cannot possibly give.”
“How so?”
“No matter what powers you may claim to have, you cannot change that which has already happened. I firmly believe that the man on the table beyond that door is there because of you. There is nothing you can do to bring him back nor any of the other victims for that matter.”
“No. No I can’t,” I agreed in a quiet tone.
“Now, just a little while ago I had the unpleasant duty of phoning Mister Harper’s wife to ask that she come down here to identify his remains, and…”
; She didn’t get a chance to finish the sentence. Like a banshee wail, Felicity’s voice pierced the air between us, rendering everyone mute. “You what?!”
“Excuse me?” Albright turned her hard stare on my wife.
“Aye,” Felicity began as she stood and moved forward, bringing herself eye-to-eye with the lieutenant with no more than a pair of steps between them. “You told Nancy that Randy was dead, over the phone?”
“And what would you have had me do, Miz O’Brien?” she shot back.
“Send someone to tell her in person.”
“That is not how it is done.”
The one word response that my wife uttered next surprised everyone, including me. “Bitch.”
The thick calm that enveloped her as she spoke was something I had seen only once before and was in no hurry to see again. The button that had now been pushed was well up the column from what I’d done earlier. I wasn’t sure if there were enough Gods to create a pantheon that was capable of quelling the fire that had just been ignited.
I actually saw a wash of surprise flow across Lieutenant Albright’s features as she stared back at the redheaded tempest in front of her. It was obvious that Felicity’s outburst had blindsided her.
“What did you just say?” she asked.
“I think you heard me, then,” my wife answered with frigid purpose in her voice as she cocked her head to the side and glared. “But I’ll be more than happy to repeat it for you if you’d like.”
The door on the back wall of the lobby clicked loudly and then whooshed open just as Albright started to open her mouth. A pale young man with a stoic expression and scraggly goatee poked his head through the opening and regarded us with general disinterest. After a moment, he pushed the door wider and held it open with his back against it.
“Doc says for you to come on back” was all he said.
Albright swung her gaze from the young man back to Felicity and shook her index finger perfunctorily as she mustered a menacing tone. “We will finish this discussion later.”
The Law Of Three: A Rowan Gant Investigation Page 6
