“Yeah, but this is some pretty strict shit, Row,” he returned then scooped up a forkful of the dangerous looking omelet. “They pretty much brow-beat the inmates with the holy scripture.”
“And you think that if he was insane to begin with…” I let my voice fade, leaving the end of the sentence unspoken. It wasn’t that I didn’t know what to say. It was the fact that the thought of the penal system having created this monster suddenly overtook me, and my earlier brush with nausea was returning.
Ben picked up where I left off, expressing his own thoughts aloud. “What I think is that if ya’ got a mentally unstable fruitcake who’s that open ta’ suggestion, and ya’ subject ‘im to Bible study and prayer meetins’ from sunup ta’ sundown, seven days a week, somethin’s bound to snap. Maybe it snaps good. Maybe it snaps bad. I think ya’ can guess which direction I think this wingnut went.”
“Don’t tell me,” I shook my head in disbelief, “They preach Evangelical, Old Testament.”
“From what I understand, yeah. Why? That mean somethin’?”
“It would explain a slight discrepancy that bothered me.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, he embraced the Malleus Maleficarum along with a very old, very outdated, and no longer accepted Catholic ideal—that being the literal eradication of heretics. He even went so far as to dress as a priest,” I explained. “But, in my encounter with him, he seemed to come at things from a far more fire and brimstone approach, as opposed to the calmer, ritualistic trappings of Catholicism. The words he spoke were more than a sectarian ceremony for him. He was, for all intents and purposes, preaching.”
“Like I said, that’s one screwed up wingnut,” Ben offered. “But I guess it’d be a hell of a sermon.”
“Exactly.” I nodded.
“Guess it’s a good thing he’s history then,” he stated before shoveling a portion of the formidable breakfast into his mouth.
The twinge that had lanced through my shoulder earlier now returned with a treble hook of barbs trailing in its wake. The pain deep in the joint burrowed its way up the side of my neck and joined with that unforgiving itch in the back of my brain.
Now I had two problems to worry about. But for now they were mine—and mine alone.
I didn’t say a word.
December 18
Saint Louis, Missouri
CHAPTER 2
I was trying very hard to remember exactly what it was that I was doing here. For some unknown reason, I was at a complete loss. Truth was, I didn’t even know how I had come to be anywhere other than my own warm bed, and it was more than just a little disconcerting. Still, it certainly wasn’t the first time I’d experienced this phenomena recently, although the sickening feel of personal defilement was conspicuously absent this time. While somewhat of a consolation, that fact still did nothing to quell the oncoming panic, so I forced myself to remain calm and try to think it through.
Cognitive reasoning isn’t exactly an easy task when you feel like a refugee from the amnesia ward. My thoughts felt jumbled, but I was heartened that I actually had some of them for a change. Unfortunately, I don’t really think that they all belonged to me. Every now and then I would grapple with one of the memories as it tumbled through my numbed consciousness, inspecting it closely before it could get away. I was reasonably certain that such thoughts as “which pair of shoes I should wear with my new dress,” and “setting up an appointment to have my nails done before the party” belonged to someone else entirely. It was also a safe bet that said someone was female. What I was doing with her memories I couldn’t say, but they were fading from existence as quickly as they came in, and that wasn’t going to make it any easier to figure out.
There were, however, two things that kept circulating around my muddled grey matter with an uncharacteristically sharp clarity. One was a large glowing yellow rectangle. The other was a particularly nasty, and relatively familiar, burning sensation on the side of my neck coupled with a feeling of utter helplessness and disorientation. I couldn’t quite tell which of us should lay claim to this pair of thoughts. Until recently I’d thought of them purely as my own. Now in retrospect, I had to wonder. Of course, I suppose it was always possible that they were being shared by both of us.
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat and continued to stare at the scene before me while pondering the greater meaning of luminescent geometric shapes and inexplicable pains. For the moment I resigned myself to the present situation in hopes some thought of lesser obscurity would finally provide an answer.
The tableau beyond the slightly fogged window strobed frantically with patches of red, blue, and white like an insane outdoor disco. Strings of holiday lights entwined through evergreen hedgerows were winking in and out of time with the brighter flashes in a futile attempt to find dominance over the darkness. I should have found the panorama saddening, but instead I felt little empathy for much of anything.
Flickering light bars mounted atop emergency vehicles were things to which I was growing far too accustomed. I reached this conclusion quickly with no resistance whatsoever from my rational self. It was undeniable. There was a time, when gathered in such an excessive number, the flashing beacons would have reminded me of severe tragedy. At this particular moment, however, they were simply an annoyance that my eyes were being forced to contend with.
Once upon a different time in my life a garish slash of yellow crime scene tape would have insinuated itself into my soul, bringing with it quick fear and deep sorrow. Now, an example of that thin plastic barrier was close by, slowly undulating on a cold winter breeze. In this instance it seemed simply a part of the everyday landscape. At least that is how it seemed to the me I had become.
Even the squawking radios and idling engines that tainted the night with their continuous disharmony seemed nothing more than a normal slice of reality. They neither belonged nor didn’t belong. They were very simply just there.
The bare truth was that nothing mattered to me now. Nothing but the yellow rectangle of light pouring through the open door of the townhouse apartment, a haunting incandescent spill that was being easily absorbed by a thirsty sponge of darkness.
Regrettably, it looked like I was going to have to answer some serious questions before I got anywhere near that doorway. At least that was the impression I was getting from the stern look molded onto Detective Benjamin Storm’s features.
I hadn’t seen my friend since meeting him for breakfast earlier in the month. It wasn’t surprising really, what with the holidays barreling in upon us—Chanukah had already arrived, securing first place in a yearly contest; with Yule, Christmas, and Kwanzaa lining up in the queue. Schedules were tight—being full of parties, relatives, and even in light of the season, work. I had hoped that the next time we saw one another, it would be at a gathering of family and friends where we could share a drink and forget about the everyday rigors of the world.
Of course, this was my bizarre life, and something like that wasn’t about to happen.
I guess I should have known I wouldn’t be blessed with such normalcy considering the circumstances, not to mention the fact that just over one year ago my very existence had veered off course to follow this far more tremulous path. On a sweltering August night, an ability that would soon become my life’s bane had exited thirty plus years of shadow to come fully into the light.
It was on that night that a perverted serial murderer had taken the life of one of my friends—a student I’d instructed in the ways of The Craft. Her final passage across the bridge into Summerland had cost me dearly.
I would never again be the same. In fact, I often wondered if what that really meant was that I would never again be sane.
It was during the investigation of her death—as well as the subsequent victims—when I discovered that a cigar is not necessarily always a cigar. I had learned that for me at least, a nightmare is quite possibly a harbinger of reality; that an intimate supernatural connection with the “othe
r side” was my talent as a Witch—and at the same time, my torment.
Just as unfortunate was the fact that the random visions and nightmares didn’t always make much sense—like right now. And they were very often accompanied by a headache that would make a migraine seem like a welcome relief. Sometimes a sensation would even manifest as an unexplained pain localized in some other part of my body—once again, just like now.
The only saving grace was that this didn’t happen all the time. There were actually long stretches where I was able to experience “life as usual.” But, torment did happen frequently enough to keep me off balance and always wondering. I just never knew when or where to expect it.
Judging from the current circumstances, this was obviously one of the when’s, and wherever I was at the moment was, well, one of the where’s.
And once again, as I’d known for some time that I would end up, I was smack in the middle of something I’d rather have no part of. Especially given the fact that I was parked in the chilly back seat of a Saint Louis City police cruiser, wearing a pair of handcuffs and staring out the window at my best friend’s incredulous face.
As I said before, how I’d come to be here I wasn’t entirely certain. The last thing I remembered for a fact was climbing into bed next to my wife, Felicity. From there, to the best of my recollection, I had gone to sleep.
The next thing I even begin to remember after that is chasing after the glowing yellow rectangle. Upon adding up the imagery with the circumstances and carrying the remainder, I had concluded that the luminous shape was none other than the doorway to the apartment in the near distance. It didn’t help that said doorway was quite obviously the entrance to an active crime scene.
“Rowan? Jeezus…” Ben’s voice came to me, initially muted by the tempered glass of the windows, only to have the rest of the sentence leap in volume as he jerked open the car door. “What the fuck?!”
From what I could tell, the woman’s thoughts that had commandeered my synapses were pretty much gone, for now at least. At the moment, I was feeling relatively lucid, though there was still a definite fog hanging over me that kept threatening to obscure rational thought altogether. I hoped it would hold off long enough for me to figure out what was going on.
“Hey,” I answered sheepishly.
“Jeezus H. Christ, white man,” he continued. “What’s goin’ on? What’re ya’ doin’ here?”
“Honestly?”
“Hell yes, honestly, Rowan!” he barked. “This is a fuckin’ crime scene, not a shopping mall.”
“I don’t know.” There it was. The omnipresent and wholly unsatisfactory answer to a serious question that had become my pat answer. But as much as I wanted to give him something different, once again it was all I could conjure at the moment. I shrugged then continued, “I was actually hoping that you could tell me.”
“No way, Row.” He shook his head. “No way. You’re gonna hafta do better’n that.” With a thick frown pasted securely to his face, he huffed out a heavy sigh and stepped back, pulling the door open wider as he did so. “C’mon, get outta there.”
I rocked myself forward, and scooted across the stiff upholstery of the cold bench seat, then twisted toward the opening. Impatiently, my friend took hold of my upper arm with one large hand and guided me out onto the curb, telling me to watch my head at just about the same instant the back of it impacted with the doorframe. I’m pretty sure he timed it that way on purpose because it was more than plain that he wasn’t at all happy with me right now.
As amazing as it seems, even in the middle of the night, if you happen upon a crime scene, you will find at least a handful of onlookers seeking a morbid thrill. At the moment I was apparently the object of that thrill. If that wasn’t enough embarrassment for one sitting, we were being paid even more intense regard by a clutch of reporters and cameramen. Blue-white cones of artificial brightness instantly glared outward from their powerful lights, making the two of us the centerpiece of the harsh setting.
“Friggin’ assholes… Don’t turn around, Row…” Ben instructed me in a clipped voice, helping me forward with a rough hand as he stepped quickly in behind me.
We walked at an even pace, him guiding me with a hand planted firmly on my shoulder, weaving through cops and evidence technicians until we were positioned in the shadows behind a Crime Scene Unit van. Out of sight of the cameras and prying eyes of the reporters, we came to a halt and he told me to stand still.
I heard the clinking of metal, followed by a muted ratcheting noise, and my left hand was suddenly free. I rolled my shoulder and felt it give a slight pop as I brought it back to its natural position. A moment later, the metal was no longer chafing my other wrist, and I repeated the motion for my right shoulder as I turned around.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Yeah, thank me later after I kick your ass,” my friend told me. “Now what gives? What’re ya’ doin’ here?”
“I was serious, Ben,” I answered with a shake of my head. “I don’t know. I don’t even know how I got here.”
“Hell, that’s easy,” he told me while jerking his thumb over his shoulder. “Your goddamned truck is parked right over there in the middle of the fuckin’ street blockin’ traffic.”
“Who was murdered?” I unconsciously dismissed his statement and blurted out the question while looking past him at the glowing doorway.
“No… Me first, Row.” He shook his head vigorously. “Is there somethin’ about this I should know? Is this some kinda Twilight Zone shit here? You havin’ one of those visions or somethin’ like that?”
“It might be, Ben. I don’t know.” I shook my head again as I gravitated ever so slightly toward the scene.
“Whoa, Kemosabe.” He reached out and stopped my progress easily. “Just where do ya’ think you’re goin’?”
“I want to have a look at the scene, Ben,” I answered automatically.
“What for?”
I didn’t reply because I simply didn’t know the answer.
“Look, Row, this is a pretty routine investigation here, if you can call somethin’ like this routine. Truth is we don’t even know if it’s a murder or an accidental death just yet. There’re no weird symbols or any crap like that, so I don’t get what you’re doin’ here.”
He was making reference to the anomalous evidence that had prompted him to bring me into the two previous investigations. I could understand his point of view, but it was becoming apparent to me that visible evidence wasn’t always going to be what triggered my involvement.
“Now, let me ask ya’ somethin’,” my friend continued. “Did’ya know someone who lived in this apartment?”
The shroud of disorientation was descending on me again, rendering my fleeting clarity a thing of the past. My scalp was starting to tighten, and the back of my head held fast to a dull throb that was threatening to increase exponentially. I still had no real clue what I was doing here, but the growing pressure in my skull told me that there was definitely a reason. I was just too mesmerized by the doorway to recognize what it was.
“Look, Rowan, you’re actin’ pretty weird. How ‘bout I call Felicity and get ‘er down here to pick you up.”
“I’m fine,” I said, looking past him and focusing on the door. Something unseen, but very powerful, was compelling me to move toward that oblong patch of light.
“No, man, you ain’t fine,” he told me, emphasizing the word. “It’s two-friggin’-thirty in the mornin’, and you just showed up outta nowhere at a crime scene. Uninvited mind you. Then ya’ ducked under the barrier tape and started walkin’ across the yard like some kinda zombie, completely ignorin’ the officers who told you to stop. I got news for ya’… not every copper in Saint Louis knows who you are. You’re damn lucky ya’ didn’t get hurt. I mean, Jeezus… Hey… Hey… HEY Rowan! Are you even listenin’ ta’ me?”
“What?” I asked in a distracted timbre. I’d only barely heard him talking and hadn’t actually registered any
of the words. The only thing that mattered right now was the doorway.
“Have you been drinkin’?”
“What?” I stammered absently.
“Pay fuckin’ attention! Have you been drinkin’?”
“No…” I shook my head as punctuation. “Of course I haven’t been drinking.”
At least I didn’t think I had. The truth was, I had no earthly idea.
“Okay… So… Ya’ don’t smell toast or somethin’ do ya’?” he asked in earnest.
“What?” I shook my head, this time in confusion, and stared at him briefly. “Toast?”
“I read somewhere that ya’ smell toast when you’re havin’ a stroke,” he offered.
His words came to me in a random sputter of sound as my cognizance shifted in and out of phase with the rest of reality.
“What?” I mumbled, not sure I had heard him correctly.
“That’s it,” Ben said, sounding as much concerned as annoyed this time. “I’m gettin’ you to a hospital. There’s definitely somethin’ not right with ya’.”
Inside my skull I heard a loud electric snap and felt a burning sting along the side of my neck. The nasty tingling sensation that had been at the back of my concerns had now burst into searing flame through my entire side. I tried to reach upward but found my body was ignoring any instructions issued to it by my brain. I felt myself shaking violently and beginning to stiffen as my mind short-circuited into oblivious disorientation. My chest tightened and began to sharply spasm with the same intense pain that accompanies a nocturnal leg cramp.
My sight was taken over by a darkened tunnel of fading vision, and in a flash the ground leapt upward to meet me. On impact, a sharp hammer blow of agony peened the side of my skull and spread rapidly outward into a migraine-like ache that settled in for the long haul.
As I lay crumpled onto the cold lawn, I could just barely make out the distant sound of my friend’s frantic voice yelling, “Somebody get a paramedic! Now!”
Perfect Trust: A Rowan Gant Investigation Page 5
