* * * * *
My keys had been exactly where Ben had said they would be. After retrieving them I had unlocked the door and tripped my way across the room as our English setter and Australian cattle dog expressed their great relief that someone had finally come home after being gone, in their doggish perception of time, forever. I punched in my alarm code and followed with a second series of key presses. A prerecorded female voice issued from the panel announcing that it had switched from the away mode to the stay-at-home setting. Basically, switching off the motion sensors but resetting and rearming the doors and windows.
I’d never really thought all that much about the household alarm system. It was something we had really only used whenever we were out of the house, and then only to protect “stuff.” It had always been there for the express purpose of guarding our possessions. These days, however, it had served yet another purpose. Protecting us.
In the month following the incident on the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge, I’d had the system upgraded. Every window in the house had been equipped with sensors and cell technology had been added to avoid the alarm being disabled by simply cutting the phone lines. There were additional motion detectors and even secondary panels added to main rooms to allow for quick access to panic buttons. It all seemed so terribly paranoid to me at times, and Felicity had definitely thought it to be overkill, which she had told me in no uncertain terms. But I did it anyway. I wasn’t going to take any chances. I knew that Eldon Andrew Porter was still out there no matter what anyone else believed, and I had no doubt that he would eventually be coming for me.
Now that I was inside and secure, my first order of business was to go in search of a piece of nicotine gum. I hadn’t even tried to hide my withdrawal-like symptoms from Felicity since I had at one time been a smoker. Of course, I’d recently discovered that I hadn’t succeeded in hiding anything else anyway, so it wouldn’t have mattered. At any rate, I didn’t have to get the gum from a secreted stash. However, I did have to remember where I’d last put it. Once I found the box and quelled the immediate crisis level desire for a cigarette, I set about finding anything I possibly could do in order to waste time.
After a round of behind the ear scratches for the boisterous canines I disabled the back door sensor long enough to let them out—then back in once they’d discovered that the weather was not what they’d expected. Our three felines, Emily, Dickens, and Salinger, were nowhere to be seen, so I simply filled their food bowls and moved on to something else.
There were a few dishes in the sink, left over from the night before, so I took my time washing, drying, and putting them away. I could have simply loaded them into the dishwasher, but that wouldn’t have taken near as long.
I thumbed through the mail that had occupied the box along with my keys, discarding several pieces of poorly targeted direct market advertising in the process. After extracting those items pertinent to my consulting business, I tossed the remainder into the basket next to the front door.
Before starting up the stairs to my office, I took a moment to listen to the messages on our personal answering machine. Two hang-ups and one quick hello from a friend who was inquiring about what to bring to the Yule ritual we’d planned for a few days hence. I started to jot a note down as a reminder to call him but found that the notepad, which normally lived by the phone, had apparently gone AWOL. A quick search through my pockets for a scrap to write on rewarded me with two things—the pad containing the repetitious morbid rhyme and the business card of Doctor Helen Storm.
I rubbed my bearded chin absently with the back of my free hand while I stared at the simple calling card. I’d very consciously been putting this moment off, but I’d made a promise, and there definitely wasn’t anything pressing at the moment that should keep me from making the call. Nothing I hadn’t purposely produced for that very reason at least.
With a resigned sigh I snatched up the handset and punched in the phone number from the upper right corner of the card. Even in my tired fog, my mind began calculating, and I latched on to the idea that it was probably going to be at least a week or two before she’d be able to get me in. That might very well give me enough time to prove I was correct about Paige Lawson, although even I wasn’t entirely sure what I was being correct about.
After six rings the phone was answered by a pre-recorded message announcing that I had reached Metro Counseling and that the offices were currently closed for lunch. I felt a wave of relief as the voice continued on, telling me that if this were an emergency I should call the doctor’s exchange, otherwise I should leave a message and someone would get back to me as soon as possible.
Following the high-pitched tone at the end of the message I began to speak, “My name is Rowan Gant and I need to see about making an appointment with Doctor Storm. My number is…”
I was cut off by a burst of squelchy feedback, combined with the fumbling knocks of someone rushing to pick up the phone. A female voice barely overrode the squeal, telling me to hold on for a second. Various warbles and clicks followed then fell quiet as the person at the other end managed to stifle the recorder.
“I am very sorry about that, Mister Gant,” the woman’s soothing voice apologized. “This is Helen Storm. Benjamin told me I should be expecting your call.”
My earlier relief turned to instant surrender when she told me that she wanted to see me late tomorrow morning.
CHAPTER 4
D-E-A-D-I-A-M!
D-E-A-D-I-A-M!
What’s that spell?
Dead I am!
Louder!
Dead I am!
One more time!
DEAD I AM!
I awoke in darkness.
I really wasn’t all that surprised. Nightmares and darkness tend to go hand in hand. I’d grown relatively used to the cycle by now.
The bizarre Seussian chant was still echoing inside my head with a frighteningly excited edge to its morose verbiage. I laid completely still, letting the imagined sound fade to crisp silence, only to have the quiet replaced by a low, repetitious rumble. I slowly turned my head and found myself face to face with one of our resident felines. The paws outstretched to touch me and incessant purring, as my shoulder was being kneaded, led me to believe it was most likely Dickens, since this was the norm for him.
The familiarity of my surroundings was a relief. For once, I wasn’t at a loss for the how’s, where’s or why’s of my situation; and, I also wasn’t forced to deal with the nauseating sense of violation I had come to know so well. I knew exactly where I was—safely tucked in my bed, more or less under a blanket, with one arm hugging a pillow against the side of my head. My other arm, however, had gone thoroughly numb from the uncomfortable angle it was crooked into beneath my body. I shifted the appendage, and circulation instantly took hold full force. I winced as an astronomical number of pinpricks began traversing up and down its length.
In addition to knowing where I was at the moment, I also had a fair recollection of how I’d gotten here. These simple facts may seem obvious and mundane to virtually everyone else, but to me they were comforting revelations.
As to the why I was here, well that was obvious—it was the middle of the night and I was trying to sleep. Unfortunately, there was a perverted mantra running around inside my head that was insisting that I do otherwise.
I rolled to the side, upsetting Dickens in the process, and sleepily scanned the face of the clock. The digital readout showed it to be almost a quarter past four. For all intents and purposes that simply meant 4:00, since my wife kept the timepiece set fifteen minutes fast to avoid being late. The self-imposed mind trick didn’t actually work for her, but that’s another story entirely.
My arm was beginning to regain its feeling, and every moment that passed was bringing me closer to being fully awake. The eerie echo reverberating inside my skull had been absent for a good number of minutes now; however, it had been replaced by my own inner voice repeating the rhyme over and over.
> D-E-A-D-I-A-M!
D-E-A-D-I-A-M!
What’s that spell?
Dead I am!
Louder!
Dead I am!
One more time!
DEAD I AM!
The seeming approbation of death was imprinted upon my consciousness with indelible permanence, and it continued to loop like a snippet of a song that you simply can’t get out of your head. If its intent was to keep me from sleeping, it was accomplishing that task with absolute perfection.
Letting out a resigned sigh, I climbed out of the bed as quietly as I could in order not to wake Felicity. My eyes were fairly adjusted, and I managed to pull on some clothes without much fuss and then retrieved my glasses and Book of Shadows—a Witch’s dream journal of sorts—from a drawer in the nightstand. Even though I knew I was in no danger of forgetting the morbid ditty, I figured I’d best make written record of it because I was certain that anything this insistent meant something important.
I just didn’t know what.
* * * * *
“How’ya feelin’?” The left field greeting issued from the handset immediately following my “hello.” Ben’s down to business approach to telephone conversations, sans the typical salutations, was as identifiable as his voice, so I wasn’t at all phased by the abruptness.
“About as well as can be expected, I suppose,” I returned, glancing at the clock in the corner of my computer screen, “considering that I have an appointment with your sister in a couple of hours.”
I didn’t offer the fact that I had been up since 4 a.m. because I was pretty sure I knew where the conversation would turn from there. I was also fairly certain that he wouldn’t accept the uneventful truth for an answer. He would assume I was hiding something then belabor the point, and I really didn’t need any more distractions right now. As it was, I’d been parked in my office for the better part of my somewhat expanded morning trying to get some work done. So far I’d accomplished little more than going through the previous day’s mail and moving a pile of paperwork from one side of my desk to the other. I hadn’t exactly been what you could call productive.
What I really needed to do was return a few phone calls and put together some proposals for clients, but I simply didn’t have the motivation. Even though I was trying, I was still feeling so overwhelmed by everything; it seemed useless to attempt anything more than simply existing.
“Cheer up, white man,” he told me. “She’s good at what she does. It’s not like she’s gonna bite or somethin’.”
“I know, Ben. I know.”
We both fell speechless, him becoming just the sound of someone breathing on the other end of the phone and me turning quietly introspective.
“Well, there’s really no easy way ta’ tell ya’ this,” my friend finally spoke. “But I’ve got some news ya’ prob’ly don’t wanna hear.”
“The handwriting?” I asked.
“Yeah. It’s not Paige Lawson’s.”
“Are they sure?”
“No doubt, Row,” he replied. “They don’t look anything alike.”
“Damn,” I muttered.
This latest revelation did nothing to help my overall sense of demoralization. I had been certain that Paige Lawson was trying to communicate with me. Now, I couldn’t even be sure that it wasn’t simply all in my head.
“Graphologist said that based on the slant, the sample was most likely from a left-handed individual,” he continued. “And prob’ly female, although they get a little hinky ‘bout swearin’ to one gender or the other.”
“Well, I told you that much,” I offered.
“Yeah, I know, but like I said, the samples are worlds apart…and yours still ain’t from Paige Lawson. Ta’ be honest, the difference is so obvious I really didn’t even need the crime lab for this. But just ta’ be sure, I had ‘em verify it anyway. Accordin’ to the experts, the buck-fifty analysis is this, and I quote—The moderate left slant coupled with the narrow spacing denotes an independent and possibly introverted individual. The heavy pressure and ornate loops in the letters indicate a secretive personality…
“There’s some more here about the margins, size, and stuff, but it all boils down to the same thing. It ain’t Paige Lawson’s handwritin’.”
“It isn’t mine either.”
“Yeah, I know. I went ahead and had ‘em compare yours from some of the forms I’ve had ya’ fill out down here. There wasn’t enough to get a fancy analysis, but they were confident that you weren’t the one pushin’ the pencil. I didn’t tell ‘em any different.”
At first I was surprised at what he’d done, but Ben’s actions made perfect sense. He had to rule out all of the possibilities, and since I claimed the writing had come out of me, it was a logical move.
“Anyway, on the bright side,” he told me, “there’s a note here sayin’ that the little curly-q thing with the I’s is pretty unique. Very personal…for whatever that’s worth.”
“Not much, apparently.”
“It’d be easy to identify in another handwriting sample if we ran across it.”
“And the odds of that are?” I asked rhetorically. “Besides, you’ve proven that it’s not her, so I suppose it doesn’t really matter.”
“Yeah, so maybe it’s someone else.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“Hey,” he contended, “like I said, I’ve seen weirder shit than this. Especially outta you.”
“Yes, but neither you nor Felicity seemed terribly convinced yesterday.” I allowed the words to hang between us in a verbal challenge of his sudden professed faith in my sanity.
“Look, Row, let’s not go there. I wish I’d been able to give ya’ somethin’ here, but…” He sighed. Without even seeing him I knew he was massaging his neck with a large hand. “It’s just not there, white man. Sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” I told him. I meant it even though I’m sure I didn’t sound very convincing. “So what about Paige Lawson?”
“Whaddaya mean? What about ‘er?”
“You said yesterday that you weren’t even sure it was a homicide.”
“Oh, that. Well, it’s lookin’ less and less like it. Right now we’re waitin’ on the final results of the autopsy, but there’s just nothin’ there at this point that says foul play.”
“How was she found anyway?”
“Row…”
“Can you humor me?” I appealed, my voice dull. “You just blew my theory apart. You could at least throw me a bone here.”
He exhaled heavily at the other end. “Nothin’ spectacular really. Squad car drove by on regular patrol and noticed the door hangin’ open. When the copper came through about half an hour later it was still open so he stopped ta’ check it out. Found her layin’ facedown just inside.”
“And he didn’t notice anything else?”
“Rowan, he’s a cop. We may not be perfect but this is what we’re trained ta’ do.”
“Yeah, I know,” I responded, feeling mildly chastised. “I’m just really having a hard time with all of this.”
“That’s kinda obvious.”
For the second time during our conversation, silence reared its head, bringing all conversation to a halt. I’m sure by now Ben was thinking I was worse off than he’d originally imagined, but so far he was tactfully keeping the observation to himself. I would almost have agreed with him were it not for the fact that I kept reminding myself of the old bromide about not being insane as long as you had enough wits about you to wonder if you were.
“So anyway,” my friend finally put the brakes on the swelling pause with a change of subject. “How ‘bout that Yule thing of yours… That’s this Friday, right? What time were ya’ wantin’ Allison and me over?”
He was correct. Yule was only two days away, and as usual we had invited some non-Pagan friends to our traditional gathering. This was the first year that any had accepted.
The switch in the focus of the conversation was awkward, much
like any shift that occurs in a chat such as ours. Even with its abruptness, it gave me something tangible and far more pleasant to grasp. Finally there was something familiar among the discord.
“You’re welcome any time,” I answered. “The official ritual will be around six-thirty or seven. I’ve already spoken to the group, and they are fine with the two of you joining in if you’d like.”
“We don’t hafta do anything weird, do we?”
“You don’t have to do anything at all,” I returned. “But if you do anything weird it’s going to be of your own accord, because we don’t have anything weird planned. Just a simple Yule ritual.”
“Well, you know what I meant.”
“You know, for a Native American you sure have a bizarre view of alternative spirituality.”
“Like I’ve said before, it’s a long story, Kemosabe, and ya’ don’t wanna hear it. Trust me… But hey, at least I’m tryin’,” he replied, then chuckled. “So what happens after the ritual? Do we like commune with ghosts or somethin’?”
“No, wrong Sabbat. That would have been back in October for Samhain.” I referred to the traditional holiday non-Pagans call Halloween. A night when the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest, and we honor those who have passed before us, which made his comment closer to the mark than he realized—especially since he had intended it as a joke. “Actually, after the ritual we have a late dinner and wait for dawn.”
“Why, is she gonna be late?”
I winced as he delivered another joke in an attempt to further lighten the mood. It wasn’t terribly effective in its intent, but I still responded in kind. “Yeah, Ben. She’s probably not going to arrive until morning.”
Perfect Trust: A Rowan Gant Investigation Page 8
