“Yeah, yeah I’m here,” Ben began speaking again as he twisted the cell phone back into place. “He what? You’ve gotta be kiddin’… Shit… Okay… Yeah…” He let out a heavy sigh. “Yeah… I’ll be here… Thanks.”
I turned back to face him and found his concerned gaze still locked on my face as he switched off the phone and stuffed it into his pocket. The thick silence in the corridor rose to a crescendo and was then replaced by his almost apologetic voice. “You okay now, Row?”
“They didn’t get him, did they?” I asked.
“No. No, they didn’t.” He shook his head as he spoke. “So, can I let you go now?”
I was still tensed and shaking, but the sight of my wife behind him had forced me to calm quicker than I would have otherwise. I nodded to him, and he tentatively relaxed his stance, waiting a short moment before releasing me entirely.
As soon as I was free, I stepped past him and wrapped my arms around Felicity. She laid her head against my shoulder and held tight.
“Aye, it was him,” she whispered. “He called here, then.”
“It’s okay,” I told her. “It’s okay.”
Looking past her I could see the rest of the group milling about in the corridor, staring at us with their own brand of fear on their faces.
“They had the number to the pay phone from the caller ID.” I spoke aloud to Ben without turning; my tone was just short of an accusation. “It’s not like they had to trace it. What went wrong?”
“That wasn’t the problem, Row,” he answered. “They pinpointed the location right away and dropped every copper in the area on it like the friggin’ sky was fallin’.”
“So what happened?”
“Jeezus, Row, this bastard is a piece of work…”
“What?”
“He had two pay phones stuck together with duct tape, white man.”
“Awww, Gods…” I brought one hand up to massage my forehead as I closed my eyes. “That’s why it sounded so hollow. He relayed it.”
“Yeah. Not exactly the most high tech. All you gotta do is call one pay phone, tape it to the one next to it, and then dial here with that pay phone…”
“Doesn’t really matter, it worked, didn’t it?” I spat.
“Yeah. Unfortunately it did. They’re lookin’ at the computers now, tryin’ to trace it back, but since he was nowhere around, odds are he was talkin’ to ya’ on a cell. He was hell and gone from the scene the minute he dialed the fuckin’ number.”
CHAPTER 12:
“I really don’t want to monopolize your time,” I said as I leaned against the deck rail and looked out across the back yard.
“You are not monopolizing anything, Rowan,” Helen Storm answered in the clear and carefully worded fashion I’d grown accustomed to since our first meeting less than one month ago. “Besides, I was ready for a cigarette.”
Ben’s sister was a self-described chain smoker, and she supported her claim easily. To me it seemed like an odd habit for a psychiatrist, but then, she was also human. We all had our vices—for instance, with me, it was cigars—so I was not about to make a judgment.
In the physical features department, Helen bore more than a passing family resemblance to her brother; the obvious exception being that she stood just shy of a foot shorter than he was. Other than that, they shared the same mysteriously dark eyes and characteristic profiles. Her thick, black hair hung in a straight fall that pleasantly contrasted her softly angular features. It was streaked here and there with strands of grey, which was the only visual indicator that she was the older of the two siblings.
I shrugged inside my coat, giving a slight shiver against a random gust of wind that managed to infiltrate its folds and then tugged the zipper up another pair of inches in self-defense.
Yellow-brown stands of decorative grasses ringed the inside of the yard, each clump angling upward in shallow arcs to peek just inches over the top of the privacy fence. Snow was now falling in heavy waves, drifting downward, slipstreaming sideways on the wind and then tumbling to rest on the dormant carpet of Zoysia.
“Nancy probably needs you more than me,” I said while looking down and absently inspecting the burning cigar I was twisting between my thumb and forefinger. “She’s the one who just lost her husband to a psychopath.”
Helen exhaled a stream of smoke and tapped the ash from the end of her cigarette before gesturing. “Look there, Rowan.”
I looked up then swiveled my head and followed her finger with my eyes. A sturdily-caged bird feeder sat atop a post in a nearby section of the yard with a pair of black-capped chickadees flitting in and out of it. A much larger bird, speckled along its brown back, hung from the side where a suet cake had been affixed.
“That is a northern flicker,” she announced.
“Avoiding my question?” I asked, looking back at her with a slight smile.
She shrugged as she spoke. “No, not really, Rowan. I am simply fascinated by birds. Besides, you did not ask a question. You made a comment.” She returned the smile as she paused and took a drag on her cigarette. “Now, if I were to treat your comment as a question, first I would point out that Eldon Porter is a sociopath not a psychopath.”
“Touché,” I answered.
“Secondly, I would tell you that Nancy has exactly what she needs, given the circumstances. Family. As she advances through the stages of grief, her family will be the most effective support system she could ever need. She will talk to me when and if she feels ready to do so. Perhaps she will never need me. I cannot say one way or the other at this stage. That is something that is peculiar to the individual. You can rest assured, however, that she is not yet ready.”
I returned to staring out into the yard as she spoke. The seasonally barren branches of trees twisted in the air, their grey-black bark collecting cottony traces of the falling precipitation. As I stared at them, they began to look as though they were spindly arms reaching out in some agonized death throe—all in all, a visual metaphor for my own tortured mood.
I took a hard drag on the end of my cigar. I normally reveled in the spicy taste of a good, Maduro-wrapped smoke, but at the moment it wasn’t bringing the pleasure I hoped. I allowed the blue-white smoke to stream out slowly between my teeth, making a futile grab for some modicum of enjoyment and finding none.
“Ben asked you to come here for my sake, didn’t he?” I asked.
My matter-of-fact tone didn’t faze her. “Of course, Rowan, but you knew that already.”
“Yeah, I guess I did.”
“I am certainly willing to be here for all of your friends as well,” she added.
“I’m sure they would appreciate that.”
“Under the circumstances, however, you are the primary concern.”
“I’m okay,” I told her.
“I am certain that you are,” she replied. “However, I sense that you have concerns of your own.”
“Don’t we all?” I asked the question in an easy, rhetorical sense. I wasn’t looking to be difficult, and I didn’t want to come across to her that way.
“Of course,” she answered in her own comfortable tone. “Your concerns, however, are far less… shall we say ‘mundane’, than most.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Guess so.”
“Benjamin told me you had some type of seizure earlier.”
“You could call it that.”
“Do you think that it was something else?”
I looked over at her. “What do you mean?”
“Your comment.” She shrugged. “It implies that you think of the episode as something other than a seizure.”
“Oh, that.” I nodded then shrugged. “I’m not really sure what it was. I know it wasn’t very pleasant, but other than that…” I allowed my voice to trail off as I pondered the event.
“Do you feel that it might have something to do with Eldon Porter?” she asked.
“Maybe.”
She shuffled for a moment and then looked up at th
e grey sky. “I love snow. It carries with it such a simple purity.”
“It’s frozen water crystallized around any number of impurities it picks up in our polluted atmosphere.” I stated the fact. “Not sure how that qualifies in the purity department.”
She regarded me with a slight chuckle. “I see that you are not in the mood for philosophical metaphors today, Rowan.”
“Guess not.”
She nodded as she fished out a fresh cigarette and lit it from the smoldering butt of the first. After discarding the spent smoke in the sand bucket, she cocked her head to the side and watched me for a moment.
“How has Felicity been holding up?” she finally asked, shedding her initially adopted clinical air.
“Okay I guess. But, you probably know more about that than me.”
I based my observation on the fact that my wife had recently taken advantage of Helen’s offer of therapy in the wake of the kidnapping and attempted rape she’d experienced.
She clarified the question. “I meant in light of what has happened today.”
“She’s frightened,” I offered with a shrug. “Natural reaction if you ask me.”
“I should think so.” She nodded. “Porter’s threats are coming on the heels of a very traumatic experience for her. She is feeling terribly vulnerable right now.”
“How deep does that vulnerability go is the question,” I said aloud.
“Meaning?”
“I don’t know,” I sighed. “I guess I’m lamenting my own feelings.”
“Would you like to share those feelings, Rowan?”
“Like? No. But, to be honest, standing here talking with you, I have to say that I feel compelled to, yes.”
She let out a small, musical laugh. “Compelled? Oh my, Rowan, I truly wish that all of my patients were as easy to work with as you.”
“You mean you don’t have this effect on everyone?” I smiled.
“Believe me, my life would be much easier if I did,” she returned.
“Probably be boring though,” I offered.
“Perhaps, however, you are certainly not boring in any sense of the word, Mister Gant.” She puffed on her cigarette and watched the large woodpecker as it continued drilling away at the suet cake. “So, you were saying?”
Her casual attitude had put me at ease as usual, and suddenly my emotional baggage seemed much easier to unpack in front of her.
“I can’t help but wonder if part of the vulnerability she is feeling might stem from a lack of confidence in my ability to protect her.” I offered the thought to her and waited patiently for her analysis. The wait was short.
“What is it that would lead you to believe such a thing?”
“I don’t know.” I shook my head. “Just a feeling.”
“Is it really a feeling, or is it something you have conjured in your imagination?”
“Full of questions today, aren’t you?”
“It is my job, Rowan,” she returned with a smile and cocked her head to the side. “Now, do you happen to have answers for my questions?”
I raised an eyebrow as I looked back at her. “I get the impression that I do whether I know it or not.”
“You catch on fast.”
“I can probably find a few people who would dispute that,” I returned with a grin.
“We all have our critics,” she answered then brought her free hand up and began tapping her index finger against her pursed lips as she deepened a crease in her brow. After a moment, she spoke again. “I am confident that I would not be breaking a doctor-patient trust by telling you that your feeling is incorrect. Felicity has no lack of confidence in your ability to protect her.”
I sighed heavily as I weighed the information I’d just been given. “I’m sure that should make me feel better, but unfortunately it doesn’t.”
“Why do you think that is, Rowan?”
“I suspect that the logical answer would be that I am the one who lacks the confidence.”
“That would be the logical answer, yes.”
“But not the correct answer?” I asked.
“I am certain that it is a part of it, Rowan, but I believe we both know that it goes somewhat deeper than that.”
“Okay. How about, I’m afraid?” I said simply.
“What is it that you fear, Rowan?”
“It isn’t obvious?”
“Why don’t you tell me? Is it so obvious?”
“Well, I think it is,” I shrugged as I spoke. “I’m afraid of Porter.”
“Are you really?”
Again, I raised an eyebrow and regarded her silently for a moment. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m afraid of him. I mean, the bastard is out to kill me, and he doesn’t seem interested in giving up on the idea.”
“I am not so certain that you are being honest with yourself, Rowan.”
“Okay, I’ll bite.”
She drew her lips into a thin frown for a moment, her expression telling me that she was obviously in search of the words to express what was on her mind. It didn’t take her long to track them down.
“As I recall, you are the man who purposely drove a van through a set of plate glass windows, climbed injured from the wrecked vehicle, and then headed straight into a situation where you could have been ambushed by a killer.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“It does not sound like the action of a fearful man to me.”
“No,” I agreed. “It was the action of a desperate man. The son-of-a-bitch had kidnapped my wife.”
“All right, perhaps that was not the best example for you. How about this…Do you remember a conversation we had a few weeks ago, Rowan, when I asked you why you had chased Eldon Porter out onto that bridge by yourself instead of immediately calling the police?”
“You mean the conversation where you refused to tell me why YOU thought I did it?” I asked with good-natured sarcasm in my voice. “Vaguely.”
Helen smiled back at me. “You have been thinking about it then.”
“You could say that.”
“Have you reached any conclusions?”
“You mean other than the fact that it was a stupid move on my part?”
“I would not necessarily call it a stupid move, Rowan. You were ill prepared, perhaps, but not stupid. That is, however, a matter of opinion.”
“I’d have to say that you are in the minority with that opinion,” I told her.
“Be that as it may, you still have not answered my question.”
I huffed out a breath and brought my cigar up to my lips but hesitated without taking a puff. Instead, I watched the feathery snow as it threw itself against the ground in gathering clumps, quickly overcoming the landscape with its whiteness.
“I’ve heard a rumor that I did it because I have a ‘heroing complex’ and that I’m suicidal,” I finally responded.
“That would be a pseudo-scientific term coined by an amateur psychiatrist, I assume?”
“You tell me. You’re the one with the sheepskin.”
“Let me ask you this. When you have placed yourself in harm’s way, have you done so in order to seek glory and recognition?”
“No.”
“Do you want to die?”
“Not particularly.”
“Then, were I you, I would ignore that diagnosis.”
“I’ll give it a try.”
“Good. Now, you are still not answering my question, Rowan,” she pressed with gentle firmness. “What I want to know are the conclusions YOU have reached about why you did it.”
“I’m not sure that I have, Helen,” I told her then took a long drag on the cigar and rolled the smoke around in my mouth. I still wasn’t enjoying it.
She sighed heavily and then joined me in silently watching the forming snowscape. This sudden inconsistency in her otherwise calm demeanor was probably the closest to impatience I’d ever seen in her. Still, her annoyance didn’t seem to be directly with me although I am sure I played
some role in it. What I felt from her was that she was struggling with a decision that on an everyday basis she would have easily snubbed out of principle. After a full measure of heartbeats, she spoke again.
“The situation you currently face has placed an unfair imperative upon you, Rowan. Normally, I would feel it best to continue guiding you along your path until you reach a logical resolution. However, I fear that in this case I may need to take a more active role, and because of these extraordinary circumstances, I am going to break one of my own rules.”
“You’re going to tell me I’m a fruitcake?” I looked back at her with a smile as I cracked the joke.
She ignored my thin attempt at levity and locked her eyes with mine in a coldly serious gaze. “You are not afraid of Eldon Porter, Rowan. You are afraid of yourself.”
CHAPTER 13:
I blinked.
I thought about what she had just said, and then I blinked again.
“I’m afraid of myself?” I repeated the comment back to her as a question.
“Yes, Rowan. You fear yourself. You harbor a deep-seated fear of the things you are capable of doing.”
“You mean the nightmares? The channeling? That stuff?”
“That is a part of it, yes,” she explained. “But in reality, those are simply talents you possess which fuel your turmoil.”
“I’ll admit the nightmares tend to be pretty scary, but…”
“No, Rowan,” she interrupted. “Open your eyes and see beyond the surface. You recently told me that you felt as though you were on the inside looking out but could see only darkness, did you not?”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “I remember something like that, and as I recall, you told me to use that darkness as a mirror.”
“Yes.” She smiled and gave me a curt nod to the affirmative. “Now what I want you to do is look into the reflection, not merely at it. For you, understanding lies within the depths of the image.”
I tilted my head forward and removed my glasses then rubbed my eyes for a moment before sliding the spectacles back onto my face and returning my gaze to her. “Helen, your wisdom is starting to sound like the mystical advice of a little, green swamp creature from the sci-fi movies we all know and love.”
The Law Of Three: A Rowan Gant Investigation Page 11
