Perfect Trust: A Rowan Gant Investigation

by M. R. Sellars

  “I dunno why ya’ got called,” Ben shook his head as he stepped toward her. “There was no reason ta’ bother ya’ over this.”

  It was obvious, to me at least, that he was playing dumb. The observation didn’t escape the M.E.’s attention either.

  “Excuse me?” she returned. “I should have been called before you ever came in here. It’s called procedure, or have you forgotten?”

  “I didn’t wanna bother you.”

  “You didn’t want to bother me.” She offered the statement back to him, a much heavier note of incredulity lingering in her voice this time. “What’s wrong with you? You didn’t think someone on my staff would call me anyway? You know better than that.”

  “What for?” he shrugged.

  “Well, let’s see.” She rolled her gaze upward and gestured toward us. “For starters, three people show up in the middle of the night to view a body from an active homicide investigation.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “I just told you. Procedure. You know full well that this is outside the norm. If we didn’t know her identity it would be one thing, but we know exactly who she is. I’m also betting that none of you are next of kin.”

  My friend continued to press his luck. “Yeah, so? Since when did viewin’ remains become outside normal procedure?”

  “Dammit, Storm! Will you quit it with the innocent act! You know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s almost one in the morning for God’s sake! This is a morgue, not a quick shop!”

  Felicity and I remained silent during the exchange. My wife still hadn’t released her grip on my hand, and in fact, she was squeezing so tight that my fingers were beginning to go numb. I gave her a quick nudge and glanced down at the entwined extremities. She followed my gaze, immediately picked up the queue, and let go.

  Itchy pinpricks assaulted my digits as blood flowed once again unfettered into my hand. Far worse, however, was the sudden feeling of isolation and detachment that washed over me as we separated. I had known that I was having trouble staying grounded—even if I hesitated to admit it—but the depth of this sensation drove firmly home the severity of my problem. It had been so long since I’d felt so truly centered and at ease that the feeling had been almost like a drug. I wanted it back, I wanted more, and I wanted it now.

  Being suddenly and instantly without the warm comfort it brought had ushered in its own brand of fear to fill the void. I had to consciously tell myself not to reach for Felicity’s hand like a frightened child.

  “Okay, so we aren’t exactly keepin’ banker’s hours,” Ben rebutted. “But we’re just havin’ a look. No big deal.”

  “If that is the case, Storm,” Doctor Sanders contended, “then why did you send the diener out of the room?”

  Ben shook his head at the mention of the morgue attendant. “I figured he had better things ta’ do than stand around and watch us look at a dead body. Besides, he’s a little creepy, ya’know?”

  “Spare me. And, it’s his job to stay in here with non-staff and you know it. Are you sure it wasn’t so he wouldn’t see what you were doing with that dead body?” she shot back.

  “We weren’t doin’ anything with it.” He went immediately on the defensive. “Just what are you implyin’?”

  “I’m not implying anything, Storm,” she declared. “Johnathan told me he heard some kind of chanting back here after he left you three. Do you have an explanation for that?”

  “That would have been me,” Felicity chimed in.

  “Stay out of this,” Ben ordered over his shoulder.

  “I’m sorry,” the doctor directed her gaze toward my wife, “I know we’ve met, but I don’t recall your name.”

  “O’Brien. Felicity O’Brien.”

  “Right. Well, Miz O’Brien, since Detective Storm seems to be stuck talking in circles right now, would you like to explain what is going on here?”

  “Listen, Doc…” Ben took another step forward and insinuated himself physically between the M.E. and us. “Let’s leave them outta this. If ya’ got a problem with all this, take it up with me.”

  “I tried that already and it didn’t get me very far, now did it?”

  The tension was rapidly building between the two of them, and my friend’s heretofore uncooperativeness was at its root. He was now making a fresh bid for control over the situation, but I wasn’t entirely sure he was going to win out. As was his nature, he was using his physical stature as an intimidation tactic; or trying to at least. Doctor Sanders appeared totally unfazed.

  “So what are you gonna do about it, Rowan?” Debbie Schaeffer whispers softly into my ear.

  The sudden return of the disembodied voice took me by surprise. I had been fully under the impression that any link with the other side had been completely severed the moment the medical examiner had interrupted us. Obviously, I was wrong.

  “Look,” Ben told the M.E., “I’m sorry. Let’s just work this out, okay?”

  She met his challenge with one of her own. “If you want to work this out, you can start by telling me what is really going on here.”

  Ben’s hand shot up to smooth back his hair and came to rest on his neck as his fingers began to work at a knot of tension. “It’s not as bad as it looks, okay?” he appealed.

  “Just tell me what’s going on, and I’ll decide that for myself.”

  “Just let them have their little tiff,” Debbie Schaeffer whispers into my ear again. “I’ve got something to show you.”

  I feel the touch of icy fingers against my palm, followed by them intertwining with my own. The frigid grasp of death encircles my hand, and I feel its frost creep upward along my arm.

  I looked down at my hand the moment the sensation took hold. There was nothing to see, but the chilled feeling was definitely there.

  “Look, Doc, you’ve seen the stuff that Rowan does, right?” My friend was starting into his explanation.

  “I’ve been witness to one or two of Mister Gant’s episodes, yes,” Doctor Sanders answered. “Is that what this is all about?”

  “Come on, Rowan. You need to look at this.” Debbie Schaeffer is pulling me by the hand.

  “Yeah, pretty much,” Ben affirmed.

  “Is there a particular reason it needed to be done in the middle of the night?”

  I glanced over to Felicity and saw that her attention was focused fully upon the exchange between Ben and Doctor Sanders. Consciously, I wanted to tell her what was happening. The recent revelation I’d reached regarding my own ability to ground and center once again brought forth the acid tang of fear on the back of my tongue. I knew that no matter how much I verbally denied it, my current state left me open and vulnerable. It wouldn’t take very much at all to get me into deep trouble—potentially fatal deep trouble. My mouth opened as I started to voice the concern, but before any sound escaped I felt my hand squeezed and heard a rush echo inside my skull.

  “Shhhhhh! Don’t tell anyone. Just come with me and look. You need to see this.”

  I closed my mouth and looked over the tableau again. My friend had his back to us and his large frame was positioned such that he was almost completely blocking the slight medical examiner from my view. I could only assume that I was just as obscured from her sight.

  I could feel something tugging at my hand, and when I looked, my arm was actually moving. I tried to stop its progress, but the spirit of Debbie Schaeffer was fully in charge, and her strength came from sources beyond this plane of existence. I was no match for her. I closed my eyes and desperately fought to achieve a solid ground. It was the only way I could think of to regain control over my own body.

  “Come on, Rowan. They aren’t watching. You really, really need to see this. Trust me.”

  “It was a judgment call,” Ben told the M.E. “Maybe it wasn’t the best one I’ve made, but those are the breaks.”

  “You’re pretty good for that, aren’t you?”

  “Come on, Doc. There ain’t a need ta’ make this personal.”
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  “Then what about the chanting Johnathan heard?” she fired off another question. “What was that all about? I don’t recall chanting being a part of Mister Gant’s episodes.”

  “I think maybe he didn’t really understand what he heard.”

  “What did he hear then?”

  “Felicity here said a prayer, that’s all.”

  “COME ON, ROWAN! Don’t you trust me?”

  I started to appeal to my wife for help, only to find the words caught painfully in my throat. Instinctively I reached for her with my free hand, but grasped nothing more than a handful of cold air. I opened my eyes and became suddenly aware that I was no longer standing next to her. Without any realization whatsoever, I had moved several steps away and now found myself positioned in front of the wall bearing the cold storage drawers. Directly before me on a rectangle of stainless steel was a temporary label annotated with a case number and the name. The number meant nothing to me, but the name was all too familiar—Lawson, Paige.

  The disembodied voice of Debbie Schaeffer echoes with the insistence of an excited five-year-old. “Go on, open it. You really, really, really need to see this, Rowan!”

  I stood there completely dumbfounded for a moment. The pit of my stomach was churning in a way vastly different from what had been brought on by the stench of decay. The acrid boil that was happening down there now was one of pure, unadulterated fear. I had felt such things before, and with even greater intensity, but what was most disturbing about this instance was that this fear was my own—no one else’s.

  I watched on helplessly as my hand moved of another’s volition, guided by an invisible though firm and icy grip. As my fingers drew closer to the handle of the drawer, I fought to cry out for help. Still, my voice caught in my throat, and I managed nothing more than a weak, raspy gurgle that went unheard.

  “I said SHHHHHHHH!” Debbie Schaeffer admonishes me. “You have to trust me.”

  “A prayer,” Doctor Sanders stated flatly, her tone betraying her lack of belief in what she’d just been told.

  “Open it, Rowan. Open it.”

  My hand moved in a jerking parody of a mechanical appendage as it was forced to grasp the handle and then tug the latch open. A second later I was sliding the drawer smoothly outward on the heavy-duty rollers amidst their mild roar of friction.

  In an instant I was face to face with the pallid remains of Paige Lawson, and still my hand moved, guided by an invisible but wholly distinguishable force. My arm literally vibrated as I struggled against Debbie Schaeffer’s ethereal control. My palm hovered mere inches above the chilled corpse of the young woman.

  “Touch her, Rowan. You REALLY, REALLY, REALLY need to see this!”

  “Is there a particular…” Doctor Sanders started to continue her interrogation only to be interrupted by the sound of the opening drawer. “MISTER GANT! JUST WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?!”

  The sharpness of the medical examiner’s demand shattered the delicate pane of the trance like a baseball hitting a plate glass window. Unfortunately, it was too late.

  Debbie Schaeffer’s ghostly form drove my hand downward, bringing my latex sheathed palm against Paige Lawson’s cold flesh.

  Colors flashed in a riot of sparks, blooming to the absolute pinnacle of saturation then bleaching to dull shades of grey. An otherworldly electricity coursed through my body on a never ending quest to jangle every nerve, seeking out and destroying anything in its path. Light flickered before my eyes and then drained away in a chaotic whirlpool of luminescence, bleeding red then black.

  A rapid burn ripped its way along the side of my neck.

  Blinding pain erupted inward from the side of my skull and wrapped around to repeat the assault.

  My chest tightened and spasmed as I felt the breath chased from my lungs.

  My own words mixed with those of Doctor Sanders as the catch in my throat opened wide to release the escaping air in the form of a tortured scream, “HELP ME!”

  CHAPTER 10

  I had never really paid that much attention to acoustic ceiling tiles. Actually, I had never really had a reason to do so. At this particular moment in my life, however, the random pattern of decorative holes punched into their dull surfaces was occupying my full and undivided attention. I quickly discovered that if you stare at them long enough, the randomness of the indentations would become less and less chaotic. With little more than a spoonful of imagination mixed in, the dots became easy to connect and rallied themselves into complex pictures, complete with highlight and shadow.

  In my mind’s eye, I was just applying the final touches to a particularly intricate portrait when reality elected to position itself between my canvas and me. My carefully constructed image of a striking young woman with long, flowing hair exploded into a shower of bright red sparks that hesitated for a moment then fell slowly earthward, systematically burning themselves out along the way like the dying bursts of holiday fireworks.

  It really didn’t matter that the fantasy had been disturbed because the image was replaced in kind with a face of equal—if not superior—beauty, even though it was wrinkled with a mixture of anger and concern.

  “How’s your head, then?” Felicity asked as she peered down at me.

  With the artistic trance broken, I set about focusing my attentions on the question I’d just been asked. I took a quick mental assessment and discovered that my head was still throbbing somewhat. However, there was another sensation that overshadowed the mild pain in a big way—I wanted a cigarette and I wanted it yesterday.

  “Hurts a bit,” I croaked, trying without success to ignore the craving.

  “Aye, you kept mumbling something about that while you were out,” she said. “That, and cigarettes.”

  The proverbial cat was now on the loose. “How long?”

  “You mean how long were you out? A few minutes,” she replied. “Barely long enough for us to bring you in here, really.”

  From the looks of everything around me, “in here” was apparently one of the offices on the main floor of the morgue.

  “Great,” I mumbled. “Did I do anything besides complain about my head and cigarettes?”

  “You mean other than go off chasing after answers on your own?” She submitted the query with measured terseness born of her underlying anger with me, and the words themselves explained why.

  “Whoa, before you unleash that wrath on me, it wasn’t exactly my choice,” I protested. “Debbie Schaeffer was apparently on a mission.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She insisted on me touching Paige Lawson,” I said. “She kept saying there was something she needed to show me that I really, really needed to see.”

  “And that was?”

  I shrugged. “Beats me. I don’t remember much of anything after pulling the drawer open, and believe me, I did that under duress.”

  “So why didn’t you say something before going off on your own?”

  “I tried. But somehow Schaeffer’s spirit was actually in control of my body.”

  “Aye…” she nodded as the pieces fell into place for her. “And now do you understand why I’ve been so worried about you?”

  “Yeah.” I gave a slight nod myself. “The experience was definitely a wake up call.”

  “How ya’ feelin’?” Ben’s voice overtook the momentary silence as he followed the opening door into the room. He seemed tense, almost reserved, and businesslike.

  “Okay, I guess,” I answered as Felicity moved back and helped me to sit up. “Rattled.”

  “So who’s the bad guy?”

  “What?”

  “All the hocus-pocus you did.” He waved his hand around in the air. “Tell me ya’ figured out who the bad guy is.”

  “Well, no, I didn’t. Not exactly.”

  “Wunnerful. What’s not exactly mean? Ya’ got clues? Leads? Anything?”

  “Maybe… I’m not exactly sure. I saw… I saw…” I stumbled over what I wanted to say as I sudden
ly realized that I didn’t really remember what I had seen. “I think…”

  He didn’t allow me to flounder for long. “Yeah. Great. So you good enough ta’ travel?”

  “I suppose, but shouldn’t we…”

  “No but’s, no shouldn’t we anything’s, white man.” He shook his head. “We need ta’ leave. We can get some coffee down the road and talk about it there.”

  “But I’m not sure I’m finished here.” I wasn’t lying. I could feel that the memory of what I’d experienced downstairs was flitting around inside my head, just out of reach. I simply needed a trigger to bring it home to me. “There might be something else, Ben. We won’t know unless…”

  He cut me off. “Look, you got no idea what it took for me ta’ convince the Doc there wasn’t somethin’ really hinky goin’ on down there tonight. I wouldn’t count on gettin’ anywhere near those remains in the near future if I was you.”

  “I can talk to her…”

  He interrupted me again. “Leave it alone, Row. If I was ta’ visit a proctologist right now he’d have two assholes ta’ choose from if you get my meanin’. We gotta go. Now. That’s it. Do not pass go. End of discussion.”

  “Doctor Sanders chewed you out? But…” I let the remainder of the question hang unspoken.

  “She was just a warm up, my friend, and she wasn’t the only one who got dragged outta bed tonight.” He shook his head. “I just now got off the phone with my lieutenant.”