“I don’t know, Ben. I’m feeling like a bad re-tread right now.”
“So, like maybe you need to do that groundin’ thing you and Felicity are always talkin’ about,” he offered. “Ya’know, so the creepin’ ooga-boogas can’t fuck with ya’ so much.”
“That’s the other problem,” I said. “I’m already doing that.”
“For real? You ain’t just sayin’ that to get me off your ass?”
I guess I’d lied to him about my condition too many times for him to take my word for it right off the bat.
“Yeah, for real. You can ask Felicity if you want.”
He pondered my answer for a moment before speaking. “So, that’s not a good thing then, huh?”
“No.” I shook my head. “No, it’s not.”
“So, whaddaya gonna do about it?”
I tucked the hand towel across the bar on the wall then turned to face him and leaned back against the vanity. “I don’t know,” I told him as I shrugged. “I haven’t figured that out yet.”
“Can’t you cook up a potion or wear some garlic around your neck or somethin’?”
“What was that you told me earlier?” I answered. “I think it was, ‘you’ve been watching too much TV.’ Besides, garlic is for warding off vampires.”
“Does it work?” He grinned back at me.
I couldn’t help but allow myself a small chuckle. “I don’t know, Chief. I’ve never met one.”
The sobbing noises that were filtering down the corridor had diminished for the moment. They had actually been sliding up and down the scale ever since they began, and this appeared to be one of the low points. More soft voices, including the unmistakable Celtic brogue of my wife, could be heard joining the first in an attempt to shore up the explosion of grief. I needed to get out there myself, but I didn’t know that I was ready to face it; not quite yet, anyway. I felt a bit selfish, hiding away and wallowing in my own problems, but there was far more to this than just Randy’s death. And, since I was at the center of it, I was bearing a disproportionate load that was getting heavier all the time.
A small tickle had been working on the back of my head for a good part of the morning, and it was now resurfacing. This time it bypassed its normal annoyance stage and leapt directly into a nagging question.
I furrowed my brow and pursed my lips for a moment as I mulled the query over. I wasn’t entirely sure why it mattered, but for some reason it was begging an answer.
“You got that look,” Ben announced.
“Excuse me?”
“You know, that look like you’re confused about somethin’.”
“Maybe a little puzzled.”
“Okay, so spit it out.”
“I don’t really know if it’s important.”
“Yeah, so spit it out anyway.”
“Okay. You wouldn’t happen to know where Porter is originally from would you?”
“Not off the top of my head, why?”
“Because of some of the choices he’s made lately,” I explained. “Using the page from Hexen und Hexenmeister for one. The nail for another.”
“I thought the nail was pretty obvious,” he said.
“On the surface, yes, but he could have guaranteed that we could ID the body in a lot of other ways. The nail has symbolism of its own…” I let my voice trail off.
After a moment, Ben spoke up. “Okay, so you wanna enlighten us mortals?”
I was so caught up in pondering the query that I just gave him an offhanded answer. “Witches aren’t immortal, Ben.”
“Yeah, whatever. You wanna fill me in please? What about the nail?”
“What?”
“The nail, Rowan. You’re obsessin’ about the nail, and I’m kinda lost.”
At some point while I was staring off into space, he had retrieved his notebook from his pocket, and he now appeared poised to record any pearl of wisdom I may utter. I was afraid he was about to be disappointed by a cheap, plastic imitation.
“Oh, that. Nails are a major component of Witch jars and have been long thought by certain cultures to act as a deterrent to magickal forces and WitchCraft. Kind of a protective talisman of sorts.”
“Do I wanna know what a Witch jar is?”
I shrugged. “It’s just a version of the talisman. I can give you details if you want them.”
“Is it important?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t seem to know a lot today.”
My reply was laced with sarcasm. “Thanks a lot.”
“Just an observation.” He shrugged then continued. “Okay, so anyway, two plus two equals what? Thirty-seven?”
I furrowed my brow deeper and shook my head. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m tryin’ to figure out where you’re headed with this. You’re just talkin’ about nails and the Hex Meister book. What’s that got to do with where Porter comes from?”
“Like I said, the whole nail mythology fits in very well with particular cultures, such as the Pennsylvania Dutch. Add in the book which is German…”
The distance-muted jangle of a telephone floated down the corridor and came to us through the doorway.
“So what you’re sayin’ is that you think Porter might be from Pennsylvania.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. It’s just a thought.”
“And it tells us what?”
“That’s what is puzzling me. I don’t know.”
“I see.” He flipped his notebook shut with a frown and stuffed it back into his pocket. “Well that was a waste of time.”
“Cut me some slack, will you, Ben,” I stated. “You’re the one who asked.”
He held up his hands. “Yeah, yeah, you’re right. I’m sorry. It’s been a long one for all of us I guess.”
I heard R.J. pick up the phone on the fourth ring and answer it with a solemn “Harper residence.”
Ben glanced up the hallway from his position leaning against the doorframe of the bathroom, then looked back at me, and cocked his head toward the front of the house.
“Looks like they’re gettin' ready to bring ‘er back this way,” he told me. “Guess we’d better make an appearance.”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “You’re right.”
“Hey, Rowan.” A young man with long dark hair poked his head around the side of the door. “How are you doing?”
“I’m okay, R.J.,” I told him with a slight smile.
“Good,” he nodded quickly. “So, like, the phone’s for you.”
“For me?” I asked, “Who is it?”
“I didn’t catch his name, but he said he was a cop.” He shrugged. “He just asked if he could speak to Rowan Gant.”
“I’m with Ben already. Why would the police be calling me here?” I puzzled.
“Albright’s probably got a copper checkin’ up on you,” Ben offered. “It’d be just like her.”
“Great.” I rolled my eyes. “Just what I need. Okay, R.J., I’ll be right there.”
“’Kay.”
The young man disappeared behind the wall, and we heard him moving back up the hallway.
“Be just your luck she’ll get on the phone and start chewin’ on you again,” my friend offered.
“This wouldn’t be a good time for that,” I returned.
“Hey, at least I warmed her up for you.”
“Thanks, Ben,” I said with something nearing good-natured sarcasm rimming my voice. “Thanks ever so much.”
* * * * *
Everyone had moved back into the dining room before I ventured into the corridor and made my way to the front of the house. Ben tagged along behind me, ostensibly to lend some moral support if I was about to be verbally worked over by Albright yet again.
My left shoulder was beginning to ache, and the pain was going out of its way to make itself known. I’d had trouble with the joint ever since Porter had rammed an ice pick into it that night on the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge, especially when I was faced with a change in the weather like to
day. Not to mention, bouncing it from the doorframe on Ben’s van had only served to aggravate the old injury. I took a moment to rotate it in the socket and felt a grating pop, which just made it worse. I winced and hoped the ibuprofen would be kicking in soon.
“You okay?” Ben asked.
“Shoulder,” I told him.
He nodded then leaned his back against the wall opposite me. “Yeah, sorry about that.”
“Uh-huh,” I grunted. “I’ll get you back.”
“So, don’t worry too much,” he continued, keeping his voice low. “If they want you to come in, I’ll go with ya’.”
I nodded acknowledgement back at him as I picked up the handset from the telephone table and pressed it against my ear. “Hello. This is Rowan Gant.”
I was greeted with the hollow sound of static that told me the phone was definitely off hook at the other end, but there was nothing else. For a moment, I thought that I might have been placed on hold. However, as I listened I was certain that I could hear the thready sound of breathing intertwined with the semi-silence issuing from the earpiece.
“Hello?” I spoke again. “Anyone there?”
“You must excuse me,” a painfully familiar voice returned. “It is not every day that I speak with the spawn of Satan.”
CHAPTER 11:
I froze.
There wasn’t much else I could do.
The voice sounded hollow and distant, but there was no mistaking to whom it belonged.
The pain in my shoulder erupted from a smolder to an intense blaze, just like a fire suddenly fed by a back draft. The sharp ache coursed down my arm, searing every nerve ending in its path before ricocheting from my fingertips and driving back upward into my skull. I closed my eyes and sighed heavily as the burning spasm tightened my scalp and opened the gates for the dull throb that had been sequestered in the back of my head.
What I wanted to do at this very moment was to explode with anger. Instead, I forced myself to remain grounded and keep my voice even. I opened my eyes and turned to face Ben as I spoke, “Hello, Eldon.”
My friend had been slouched against the wall, and he now came fully to attention, his face masked with a look of incredulity as he stared back at me.
“Porter?” he mouthed the question silently, holding his hand to emulate a telephone as he placed it to the side of his head.
I nodded slowly in response.
“You would have been proud of your disciple, Gant,” Porter was telling me. “He maintained his allegiance to you right up to the end.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.”
“Book of Revelation,” I offered. “I already know you can quote the Bible, Eldon. Why don’t you stop hiding behind someone else’s words?”
“Hiding? You are the one hiding, Gant. I am walking in the light of God.”
“You’ll excuse me if I have a little trouble with that, Eldon,” I offered. “I seem to recall your God saying ‘Thou shalt not kill.’”
“He also states that there is a time to kill. Ecclesiastes…”
“…Three, three. Yeah, I’ve heard. So why don’t you tell me what you really meant?”
Ben had become a flurry of activity, moving with a choreographed swiftness as he stepped forward and checked the caller ID display on the telephone’s base unit. He quickly retrieved his notebook, scribbled something, and then motioned to get my attention and mouthed, “Keep him talking.”
I felt like I was in the middle of a movie about a kidnapping and that I had been selected to take the call making the ransom demand. I nodded and tried to concentrate on what Porter was saying.
“…remained impenitent.”
“I’m sorry, Eldon,” I returned. “There must be some static on the line, I didn’t catch that first part.”
“There’s no static,” he answered calmly. “You were distracted by Detective Storm instructing you to keep me on the line while he gets this call traced.”
My first inclination was to assure him that his comment was untrue, but that’s what always happens in the movies, and it’s always a lie. I decided to go for broke. “You’re right, but can you blame us?”
Ben had taken a few steps down the hall to get out of earshot and was now whispering into his cell phone as he read off something from his notebook. I glanced down at the caller ID display and noticed that it said “PAY PHONE,” and gave the number. I couldn’t place the exchange other than that it was definitely a Saint Louis number.
“No, I suppose that is the sort of thing you would do,” Porter replied, an eerie flatness to his voice. “His loyalty to you is misguided, but he will soon see the truth.”
“What truth is that?”
“Your devotion to Satan, of course.”
“I think you have me confused with somebody else.”
“Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices.”
“Second Corinthians, chapter two, verse eleven,” I told him. “Nice try, but you aren’t the first person to take it out of context and throw it in my face.”
I knew my comment could very possibly serve to antagonize him, but I didn’t care. He’d already done his share to anger me—and he had succeeded in spades.
“Set thou a wicked man over him: and let Satan stand at his right hand,” he told me.
“Psalm, one-oh-nine, verse six. Come on, Eldon, you didn’t really call here to recite the Holy Bible to me did you?”
Ben was nodding as he continued whispering into his phone. He looked up in my direction and motioned at me to keep Eldon on the line.
“Did you get my note?” the voice asked.
The only other time I had spoken to Porter was when he had pronounced my sentence the night he tried to kill me. Then, as now, his voice was cold and emotionless. This last comment was a sudden and unexpected exception. He sounded almost gleeful.
I felt a wave of heat flush through my face as my blood pressure rose. My free hand clenched into a hard fist, and I fought to maintain my composure. Unfortunately, my stolid silence gave him exactly what he wanted.
“I’ve been doing some more reading, Gant. Research mostly. Historical…”
“Good for you,” I muttered, barely able to contain my anger.
“Oh yes,” he replied. “It is very good for me. You see, it seems that I’ve been far too narrow in my scope when it comes to extracting confessions.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
“Take your disciple for instance. He was my first disembowelment. I thought it went very well.”
I sucked in a deep breath through my nose and let it slowly out through my mouth, steeling myself before answering him in a cold tone. “I thought you said you weren’t able to break him?”
“Oh no, you misunderstood. He confessed. He just never told me where I could find you.”
“That’s because he didn’t know,” I spat.
“It doesn’t matter. I’ve found you now.”
I looked over at Ben, and he once again waved his hand, indicating that I should keep Porter talking. I frowned hard. I wasn’t sure how much more I could take before I completely lost control.
“Maybe you just think you have,” I said.
There was a long silence at the other end, and I thought for a moment that he might have hung up, but then his voice issued once again from the earpiece. “You never did tell me if you got my note.”
“You know I did.”
“I made that selection specifically for you. What did you think?”
“I think you are a sick bastard.”
I thought I heard him actually laugh before settling once again into his emotionless voice. “Your wife is very lovely, Gant. For a heretic. I suppose you are aware that the inquisitors of the fifteenth century sometimes found it necessary to, shall we say,
‘have their way’ with the women they interrogated?”
My fragile pane of composure shattered into jagged shards. The heat that had earlier flushed my face now consumed my entire body. I could feel myself shaking, and I was gripping the handset so tight that my fingers were beginning to numb.
“Listen to me you son-of-a-bitch,” I spoke evenly into the mouthpiece. My voice started at a low volume, but with each sentence it grew along an ever-increasing upward arc. “This is between you and me. No one else, got me?! You had better start praying to your God right now. You’d best pray that the police get to you first, because I’m coming after you. I’m coming after you, and I’m going to kill you! DO YOU HEAR ME GODDAMMIT?! I’M GOING TO FUCKING KILL YOU, YOU BASTARD!”
I was holding the phone in front of my face, screaming into it. Adrenalin was pumping through me, and I was shaking uncontrollably. I felt a hand clamp on my shoulder, and I wheeled about, swinging the handset like a club. My hand was suddenly engulfed by Ben’s own. He pushed me against the wall and held me there as he ripped the telephone away with his free hand. He brought it up to his ear and listened then frowned before dropping it onto the table beside the base and snatching up his cell phone.
“It’s clicking, like maybe he hung up,” he fired his voice into the device. “Tell me you nailed the bastard… Yeah… Yeah… Okay, I’ll hang on…”
My friend looked at me with a mixture of concern and what looked as though it might have been fear in his eyes. He was still holding his cell phone to his ear, but he twisted the mouthpiece down out of the way. “Jeezus, Row… Calm down… ‘Kay?”
I was still shaking, but Ben had me stiff-armed against the wall; I wasn’t going anywhere. I sucked in a deep breath and glared back at him as I spoke, “The motherfucker just told me he was going to rape my wife!”
I heard a gasp, and when I looked to the side I realized that my outburst had attracted the attention of everyone else in the household. The worst part was that the look on Felicity’s face told me that she’d heard every word of what I’d just said to Ben.
I stared back at her pained expression, watching as her earlier fear visibly resurfaced. I mutely chastised myself for losing control and tried to find something to say to her that would quell her uneasiness but came up empty.
The Law Of Three: A Rowan Gant Investigation Page 10
