“Felicity, will you…”
“Will I what?! Stand by quietly and let you get my husband killed?!”
“C’mon,” he shot back. “You know that’s not gonna happen!”
“Aye, do I?!” She widened her eyes and shook her head. “And just what have we been discussing for the past several months then?”
“I know exactly what we’ve been talkin’ about, and ya’ know I’m not gonna let anything happen to ‘im.”
“Just like you didn’t let anything happen to him the last time?!”
“Dammit, you know I already blame myself for that!”
“As well you should!”
“Screw you!”
“Like I’d give you the pleasure!”
A brief lull insinuated itself into the argument, brought on I can only assume by the intensely personal level of the attacks. But though it slipped suddenly in like the eye of a hurricane, its tenure was far shorter.
“Felicity, come on,” Ben pleaded, once again making an attempt at reasoning with her. “Rowan is my best friend.”
She wasn’t having any of it. “You’ve an odd way of showin’ it.”
“Listen, do you really think…”
“What I really think is that you’ve lost your mind!”
“You know as well as I do…”
“What?! What do I know as well as you do?!”
“I’m tryin’ to tell you…”
“Come on, then! Tell me! What is it?!”
Her relentless attacks finally brought the roiling argument beyond the red zone it had consistently occupied. What had started as a simmer, then progressed into a rapid boil, now erupted like steam from a burst pipe.
“JEEZUS FUCKIN’ CHRIST, FELICITY!” Ben shouted in exasperation. “Will’ya’ just shut up for a minute and lemme finish?!”
At that moment, for lack of a better description, my wife “pulled her face off.” Her tight frown and locked jaw opened wide into what could be metaphorically pictured as a fanged maw, allowing her own anger to explode outward.
“FINISH WHAT?! FINISH KILLING MY HUSBAND?!” she screamed as she physically rose from her chair. “DAMMIT, BEN, YOU PROMISED ME YOU WOULDN’T DO THIS!”
“SO I BROKE THE FUCKIN’ PROMISE! DEAL WITH IT!” he returned in the same demonstrative tone, rising from his seat as well.
Even with the table between them, he towered over my petite wife. They locked spiteful gazes with one another and a tense silence slid smoothly in as if to underscore their words.
A period of time that felt to be the greater portion of a quarter hour, but that in reality was surely less than a single minute, oozed by as I watched them. Even with the quiet permeating the room, I didn’t know if the conflict was fully over. I wasn’t entirely sure that it would be to my advantage to make another try at interjecting my opinion—or if it would even be heard if I did.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t by my own choice that I interrupted the terse mood that was now blanketing the scene. In fact, I didn’t even realize I had done so until Ben and Felicity turned their stares away from one another and sighted them in on me.
The first sound I noticed came as a thin, rapid scratching that held an even and almost hypnotic rhythm.
The second sound came as the first abruptly ended then was replaced by a rustling of paper—like the sound of a page being flipped.
The third sound announced its presence as a recurrence of the first, matching rhythm perfectly with the point where it had suddenly ended.
I didn’t want to look. I already knew what I was going to see, but I also knew that ignoring it wouldn’t make it go away. I followed their gazes down to the tabletop and joined them in watching as my left hand methodically defaced the pages of the comb-bound cookbook—scribbling quickly and evenly across the paper, moving of its own accord.
With a little concentration, focusing on the fluid scribbling and ignoring of the preprinted words that made up the recipes, one could make out the repetitious couplets.
Hey, hey, hey, whaddaya say!
Don’t ya know I’m dead today!
Hey everyone, I’m here to say!
I’m dead today! I’m dead today!
Gotta let Rowan come out and play!
Gotta let him do it ‘cause I’m dead today!
I looked back up as Ben huffed out a haggard breath and turned his gaze back to Felicity. My hand continued to move, though it now seemed to be slowing and had begun to falter at the end of each line. An effect, I assume, of the fact that I was now fully aware of its activity.
In a calm voice my friend finally asked, “So, ya’ wanna keep arguin’ about this, or do ya’ wanna help me keep ‘im from doin’ somethin’ stupid?”
My wife kept her eyes locked with mine and let out her own resigned sigh. “Aye…it looks like I don’t really have a choice, then.”
CHAPTER 7
The hands of the clock were firmly pressed up against midnight when we arrived at the Saint Louis City Morgue. Situated on Clark Avenue, the building was flanked by police headquarters on one side, an on-ramp to Highway 40 on the other, and across the street from the rear entrance of city hall. All in all, the structure was less than obtrusive in appearance—simple brick and mortar construction with nothing that would make it stand out, architecturally at least—against the rest of the buildings in the area. In reality, there would be nothing outwardly distinctive about it at all if it weren’t for the small, black-on-white, block lettered sign above the main entrance that stated simply, MEDICAL EXAMINER.
Even though it was clearly marked, it was easily possible for someone to drive past the building on an almost daily basis and not even realize just exactly what it was. It looked like nothing more than just another office building, and even the sign above the door didn’t truly betray the fact that inside was the final stop for those departed from this world under suspicious circumstances. In fact, it was more than likely that the majority of the civilian population of Saint Louis didn’t even know that this was more that just a business office, it was the place where bodies were dissected in search of hidden answers.
But, unlike the majority, I knew those details all too well.
I’d been here more than once, and each time when I had taken my leave, I’d been completely devoid of any desire to ever return. Still, it seemed that I always ended up back here whether I truly wanted to be or not. Even worse, it was sometimes at my own behest.
Like right now.
It had taken a good while to talk Ben and Felicity into allowing me to come here and view the remains of Debbie Schaeffer. Neither of them was particularly keen on the concept, least of all my wife, so she had taken the most convincing by far. If that weren’t bad enough, my friend was absolutely no help. I had been completely on my own in accomplishing the task.
I suppose in some ways it was understandable. For one thing, Ben was already treading on thin ice with her, and both their tempers were only now beginning to cool as it was. Add to that the fact that my coming into direct contact with the young woman’s remains didn’t exactly fit with his concept of keeping me as far removed from the investigation as possible, and there you had it. The combination was easily more than enough to make him unwilling to help me plead my case.
Considering the fragility of the current truce between Felicity and he, I can’t say that I blamed him.
Not much anyway.
I might have simply given up, gone ahead without her, and then suffered the consequences later if it hadn’t been for one simple fact—I needed Ben in order to get into the morgue, and his tenuous agreement with the plan was entirely contingent upon her being present to keep an “ethereal eye” on me just in case I started to slip.
At one point, in a failed attempt to change his mind, I had made the mistake of again mentioning the fact that Felicity may not be able to do anything about it whether she was there or not. For that remark I promptly ended up working double time, not only to win over my wife but to re-convince my fr
iend as well.
When all was said and done, it was already half past eleven when we climbed into Ben’s van and made the trek downtown. The intensity of my own stress level finally decreased a fraction as soon as we were under way. Unfortunately, the quiet ride also allowed for earlier forgotten nuisances to return full force.
I was completely out of nicotine gum, and my inexplicable desire for a cigarette was now reaching unnatural proportions. What was worse, I still had no idea why the cravings had come upon me. I hadn’t even been this bad when I was actually addicted to them. It was becoming increasingly harder for me to keep the outward manifestations at bay. At the moment I was only slightly to one side of irritable, and I was traveling directly toward it at high speed.
The impending collision wasn’t going to be good at all.
* * * * *
“You ain’t plannin’ on doin’ any of that hocus-pocus stuff where you become one with the corpse, are you?” Ben asked me as he levered the gearshift into park and switched off the van’s ignition.
“That’s not something I actually plan, Ben,” I answered with an impatient edge to my voice. “It just has a tendency to happen.”
My wife expressed her feelings on the subject in a single terse sentence. “It might not if you kept yourself grounded.”
“I do.”
“Yeah, right.” Her voice held more than a hint of sarcasm.
“Don’t even go there.”
Felicity paused for a moment, obviously taken aback by the sudden bite of my words. “Excuse me?”
“Forget it,” I answered, shaking my head. “Just forget it.”
Emotionally, I was poised to bite her head off. Logically, I knew she was correct and that I had no valid reason to do so. But, that bit of reality didn’t make the urge any easier to quell.
I simply couldn’t afford to take it any further. If I let the comment bait me, it would only serve to re-kindle the argument we’d just barely settled less than thirty minutes ago. With all of us on edge as we were, such an altercation could turn ugly fast.
Given my current state, very ugly, very fast.
“Look,” Ben interjected. “I’ve had enough arguin’ for one night. Now, the last time we were here I seem to remember ya’ havin’ ta’ come outside to get away from all the ghosts or whatever ya’ see in there.”
“Lost souls,” I offered flatly.
“Fine. Lost souls, ghosts, ooga-boogas, whatever…it’s all the same ta’ me ‘cause I can’t see ‘em. I just wanna know if all that shit is gonna send ya’ over the edge or somethin’ like last time.”
“They weren’t the real problem last time,” I explained, fighting to keep the annoyance out of my voice. “It was the fact that I was channeling the actual death of a victim that…”
“Don’t split hairs with me, Row,” he interrupted. “I need ta’ know whether ta’ take ya’ in there or start the fuckin’ van and get outta here right now.”
“We already talked about this back at the house, Ben,” I shot back a harsh rebuke.
“Yeah, well B.F.D. Is it gonna be a problem or not?”
I gave up and told him what he wanted to hear. “They won’t be a problem.”
Apparently, he was a little short on trust at the moment.
“Is he yankin’ my chain?” He directed his question to Felicity.
“Aye, he is. But if we take some precautions, I think it will be okay.”
“You think it’ll be okay?”
“What do you want? It’s not like I do this every day, you know.” A mild spark of anger flashed in her voice. She was tired; we all were. Her own irritability was showing just as Ben’s was, and I’m certain my uncharacteristic moodiness wasn’t helping in the least. As I had suspected it would, the night was getting longer by the moment.
“Okay, okay,” Ben returned, a slight defensive note in his voice. “I’m not exactly an expert on this Twilight Zone crap myself y’know.”
“Are we going to sit here and fog up the windows, or are we going to go in?” I asked impatiently.
“When I’m ready,” Ben said. “Why don’t ya’ tell me again just what it is that you’re expectin’ ta’ find out?”
“We’ve already discussed this too.”
“Yeah, and we’re discussin’ it again.”
Truth was, I didn’t really have a good answer for the question. All I knew was that someone was communicating with me from the other side, and all indicators now pointed to that someone being Debbie Schaeffer. Coming here was the only way I knew to “complete the call,” so to speak.
“I don’t know.” I gave him the only answer I could. “A clue or something. You know, it’s not like this is the first time we’ve ever done this.”
“Yeah, I know,” he affirmed, “but in the times I’ve seen ya’ do this I’ve also seen it go south. Way south. You’ve almost died on me twice. Three’s a charm, white man. That’s ‘zactly what we’re tryin’ ta’ avoid in case ya’ missed that earlier.”
“Think positive,” I grumbled.
“I am thinkin’ positive. I’m positive I ain’t willin’ ta’ trade your life for a handful of flaky clues in a murder investigation.”
“Look,” I sighed, desperate to at least get out of the confines of the van. “It took me half the night to convince you two that we should come down here, so can we just dispense with this never ending committee meeting or whatever the hell you want to call it?”
“I just wanna make sure we’re doin’ the right thing here,” my friend expressed. “’Cause somethin’ in my gut tells me I should put some distance between you and this place and not look back. I tend ta’ trust my gut.”
“That’s just you being overprotective, again,” I countered.
“There’s no such thing as bein’ overprotective when dyin’ is one of the possibilities.”
“Well, that’s why you wanted Felicity here, right?”
“Don’t be trying to use me as a pawn, then,” my wife declared. “I want to hear you rationalize this too.”
I hadn’t been backed completely into a corner yet, but it was getting very close. I’d had my fill of the ping-pong oration I’d had to repeatedly deliver just to get this far, and it didn’t seem there would ever be an end.
I was exhausted.
I was ready to kill for a cigarette.
But the worst of it was that I was getting very tired of being treated like a child. My resolve was set in concrete, and I wasn’t about to let them make me turn back now.
I knew that exploding wasn’t going to get me anywhere even though it was what my knee jerk impulse was telling me to do. I drew in a deep breath and held it for a moment before exhaling heavily. In my head I’d made a connection that they apparently had not. Thus far, I’d managed to hold it back as my one trump card, and it appeared that now would be a good time to toss it onto the table.
“Look,” I verbally threatened, “we can either do it this way, right now, or we can just wait until I go out sleepwalking again and see where that takes us.”
“What’s that got to do with it?” My wife shook her head slightly as confusion contorted her brow.
“Yeah, white man,” Ben added, “ya’ wanna expand on that?”
“Debbie Schaeffer went missing two months ago, right?”
“Yeah, so?” he returned.
“So, I started sleepwalking two months ago. You do the math.”
My friend puffed out his cheeks and expelled a deep breath as he sent one large hand up to massage the back of his neck.
“Shit. There’s just no winnin’ with you” was all he said.
* * * * *
Luck seemed to be on our side for a change, as Ben knew the security guard on duty for this shift, so there were no prying questions or even odd looks. The two simply exchanged pleasantries, including what I’m certain was a tired joke about cadavers escaping, and then we were in. The watchman seemed perfectly content to return to the game of solitaire that was occupying the
screen on the computer at the reception desk.
The dim lighting at this time of night lent an eerie feel to the corridors of the city morgue. Pale shadows tempted your mind into playing sadistic tricks on your eyes, seeing movement where there was nothing to move.
Seeing light where there was dark.
Seeing dark where there was light.
In reality, some of those sadistic tricks weren’t tricks at all, but anomalies within the veil between the worlds.
If they chose to listen, even those with closed minds could hear the tortured cries of spirits in transition—some in acceptance of their fate, some in utter disbelief, but all with one thing in common. Each of them was trapped between the worlds of life and death, never making it fully to the other side.
Unfortunately for me, I didn’t have the luxury of choosing to listen, or to ignore. It had been made for me. A relentless cacophony echoed from the walls to assault my senses even before we passed through the door. It was much like walking into a crowded party; only this party was one where most of the guests are screaming and sobbing with pain. It took almost everything I had to put up a mental shield and block them out. Even then they remained, a static-plagued radio, tuned between stations and set at low volume, interrupted every now and again with a burst of angry noise.
A brief glance told me that Felicity was feeling a similar buzz inside her own head.
Earlier this year I had actually spent the night in this place when the worst snowstorm we’d had in a decade had brought Saint Louis to all but a complete standstill. Ben and I had been trapped here with the chief medical examiner and a severely charred corpse whose spirit staunchly refused to move on. My ethereal dealing with that victim was yet another piece of the puzzle that made up the current fractured state of my psyche. I can say without a doubt that, to date, those dark hours had been the longest night of my life.
Perfect Trust: A Rowan Gant Investigation Page 11
