Perfect Trust: A Rowan Gant Investigation

by M. R. Sellars

  “Sorry,” she apologized as she shifted the healthy stack of folders into both arms. “It’s just, sometimes this elevator takes forever.”

  “That’s okay. Sorry I didn’t see you coming,” I told her. “Which floor?”

  “Three, please. Thank you.”

  I leaned forward and punched the button for the third floor as I said, “No problem.”

  The young woman remained standing immediately before the doors, obviously in a hurry. She was petite and dressed tastefully in a wool skirt and blazer. Her carefully manicured nails were lacquered a fashionable shade, and her pale skin was brushed with only the barest necessity of makeup needed to enhance her natural beauty.

  My heart hesitated for a beat as I stepped back and caught a glimpse of her profile. Just twenty-four hours ago, I had sat voyeuristically in my truck and watched her as she made her way into the building, all the while fantasizing about what she would look like if she had red hair.

  The recognition sparked a moment of internal embarrassment, even though I knew full well that she had no idea the incident had ever occurred. Unfortunately, the fleeting chagrin was the least of my worries as the imaginings of her with an auburn mane suddenly returned, encroaching upon my mind even more powerfully than before.

  I clenched my teeth and struggled to keep my breathing even as the thoughts once again assaulted me, this time bringing with them far more lurid imaginings. Dizziness flooded into my skull and induced a nauseating tickle at the back of my throat as darkly perverse desires welled within me. The fantasy no longer entailed a simple change in hair color; it had become a private reel of soft-core pornography directed by someone unseen but most definitely felt.

  The lights in the elevator seemed to flicker and dim as the sliding doors touched in the middle, and the car began its downward journey. She didn’t seem to notice the visual effect, so I assumed that it was happening inside my head alone—not exactly the reassurance I wished for. I could feel myself slipping out of reality, losing control to the director of this lurid fantasy.

  She allows the stack of files to spill onto the floor of the elevator, turning toward me as she does so. Her hair has darkened to a deep red and cascades across her shoulders and down her back. An intense light of desire burns in her eyes as she looks at me and smiles. Wordlessly she shrugs off her blazer and allows it to fall to the floor then begins to slowly unbutton her blouse as she moves toward me.

  I forced myself to seek any type of grounding that I could, no matter how thin or tenuous. I needed something to cling to if I were going to escape this unwanted ethereal bond. I stared directly ahead, fighting to maintain an even rhythm to my breathing while I silently willed the vision to evaporate. A flicker of colors insinuated themselves, flashing the scene from negative to positive and back again. I blinked and saw reality in all its stark wonder. The young woman hadn’t moved an inch. She was standing in front of the doors, her back to me, and still very blonde.

  I made the mistake of sighing in relief, and my grip on this plane gave way. With my desperate concentration shattered, the here and now slipped through my fingers like a greased rope.

  She is half nude now, and as I watch she seductively allows her skirt to drop and steps out of it. Standing before me she is clad in nothing but a garter belt, stockings, and heels. Her makeup has gone from subtle to extreme; her lips are glossed with a garish slash of blood red. She presses her body into mine without a word. I can feel her hot breath on my neck as she slowly undulates against me.

  Again I reached for reality, denying those things I thought I was seeing and experiencing. I could feel my back pressed against the wall in the corner of the elevator. I wasn’t certain if the sensation was just another part of the cheesy skin-flick scenario being forced upon me or if it was the real thing. I banked on it being the latter and folded myself into it as I shut my eyes.

  The sickening male voice I’d heard echoing within my brain the night before suddenly returned. I squeezed my eyes shut even tighter and swallowed hard, fighting to ignore its existence, only to fail miserably in my attempt.

  Oh God, she’s so close to perfect!

  Her skin…

  Her neck…

  She could be her!

  I desperately wanted to scream. I had no idea how much longer the elevator ride was going to last, but to me it had already been an eternity. I was afraid I wasn’t going to make it.

  Look at her…

  Oh sweet Jesus, so close…

  The black gown…

  She’d look so great in the black gown…

  She’ll be almost perfect…

  Almost her…

  Almost…

  I opened my eyes to check the car’s downward progress and sucked in a startled breath. My arm was extended and my hand was less than a pair of inches from the young woman’s shoulder. I was starting to tremble, and I snatched my arm back quickly, grasping my wrist with my other hand and hugging it tight against my body.

  The dark thoughts were now threatening to infect other portions of my anatomy, and I held my breath, fighting to force them away. I concentrated on anything mundane I could grasp—anything that could replace the rampant sexual energies that were building within me.

  A dizzying rush in my ears drowned out almost everything except my own frenzied heartbeat. I scarcely noticed as a muffled electromechanical bong sounded overhead, insinuating itself seamlessly into the barely audible, syncopated mood music. There was a slight jerk, and the doors split, opening wide upon a brightly lit hallway.

  The young woman turned quickly to me and flashed a warm smile, “Merry Christmas.”

  She was gone through the opening before I could reply—not that I was able to do so. For reasons unknown, as quickly as it had begun, the disharmonious reverberation in my ears was instantly gone, replaced by the muted sound of the elevator doors sliding shut and a synthesized melody that closely resembled “Angels We Have Heard On High.”

  I let out a heavy sigh as the red-tinted darkness pooled lower in my body, finally flowing outward to leave me feeling physically weakened and emotionally spent. I literally stumbled away from the wall of the car, grateful no one else was there to witness my condition. I had just begun to regain my composure when the doors again fractured down the center and opened onto the lobby.

  In a fit of panic, I wondered if I should rush back upstairs to Helen Storm’s office and tell her what had just happened, but I was almost afraid I would encounter the young woman again on the way back up. If I did, I wasn’t entirely sure I could control the urges that had almost overtaken me moments before. I thought about it hard, not moving from the corner of the car as I stared into space at nothing in particular.

  My immediate reaction was to seek the psychological relevance of the episode in order to understand it, obtain another dose of reassurance that I wasn’t well on my way to criminally insane. But something in the back of my head kept telling me that psychoanalysis wasn’t going to reveal an answer to this one. This was something more—something completely beyond the pale—at least so far as it applied to the mundane world.

  I gave up on weighing the options when I realized the elevator doors had slid shut once again.

  I absently punched the recessed door-open button on the panel and exited the confines of the lift, then quickly crossed the tiled lobby, hooked past a too-symmetrically decorated Christmas tree, and pushed onward out through the glass doors.

  A cool breeze caressed my face and forced me to calm a bit more. I stopped for a moment on the sidewalk and turned away from the wind as I lit a cigarette then inhaled the smoke deep into my lungs. As I exhaled, I was certain that I heard a familiar voice in the distance but not the dark one as before. This one had plagued me for several days now, beginning as unfamiliar scratchings on a page before finally coming into its own. As usual, it was filled with a peculiar mix of desperation and mockery at the same time.

  Gimme a D!

  Gimme an E!

  Gimme
an A!

  Gimme another D!

  What’s that spell?

  DEAD! DEAD! DEAD!

  DEAD, Rowan.

  I’m dead for God’s sake; so quit feeling sorry for yourself.

  Do something about it.

  My decision was made for me. My gut told me that there was something more than just my addled psyche at work here and I was going to have to figure it out on my own. As frightened by the prospect as I now was, I had no choice but to follow its lead.

  CHAPTER 14

  When I exited the parking lot of the medical building, my head was telling me to turn left toward home. After all, Felicity would be expecting me, and there were still a million things that needed to get done before the gathering tomorrow evening.

  My gut, on the other hand, asserted its newly assigned leadership and pre-empted the turn with a pair of rights before finally making that left, and I was soon motoring north on the Innerbelt. Thirty minutes later I awoke from an absent-minded daze as I found myself pulling off onto the shoulder of an isolated section of Highway 367, not far from the Clark Bridge and Alton, Illinois.

  I sat for several minutes, engine running, while I pondered the autopilot that had brought me here. I had traveled this road more times than I could remember and had even pulled off along the side to watch the eagles that would winter in the area. However, it wasn’t yet the season for eagle watching, not to mention it was a bit late in the day for the activity. Besides, the prime spot for it was much farther down the stretch of asphalt anyway. This particular spot on the roadside had attracted me for a far more sinister reason, and though I’d never stopped here before, I had arrived at this exact location with only my subconscious as a guide.

  I sat staring through the passenger side window, peering past my own reflection in the glass and allowing my eyes to adjust to the cold shadows. In what little was left of the fading light, I could just barely make out a twisted ribbon of yellow and black crime scene tape stretched between spindly tree trunks in the distance.

  I finally switched off the headlights and cast a quick glance at the radio before twisting the key to kill the engine. The digital clock on its face showed it to be almost 5 p.m. With tomorrow being winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, official sunset was rapidly approaching. In fact, it was less than an hour away. However, considering the thick blanket of grey clouds that was acting as a barrier to the sun’s rays, dusk had been abbreviated, and for all intents and purposes nightfall was already upon us. The miniscule amount of illumination still available would be completely gone in a matter of heartbeats.

  I felt more than a little queasy about being here. I wanted to believe that I was simply following my instincts by coming to the spot where Debbie Schaeffer’s remains had been found. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder if I was actually being guided by a tortured soul who had recently discovered she held a healthy measure of control over me, even in this world. Realistically, she was probably pulling the strings and was the one directly responsible for bringing me to this place. What was left for me to come to terms with was whether or not I was capable of handling what she wanted to show me without first asking for outside help.

  The events of the previous night screamed, “No.”

  My clouded judgment shouted back a resounding, “I don’t know.”

  Debbie Schaeffer’s haunting voice just kept echoing in the back of my skull, “I’m dead, Rowan. Do something about it.”

  I continued to sit there, staring out the window while the grey shadows faded to inky black as if condensed into a single minute of time-lapse video. Taking a deep breath, I weighed my options and considered what was being presented. I was in no way naïve enough to believe that I was going to stumble across some enlightening bit of physical evidence that would break the case wide open. That was the sort of thing that always happened in dime store mystery novels—but almost never in real life. Trained crime scene investigators had already been over this area with eyes sharper than mine, so the odds of my finding anything more than a pile of dead leaves were beyond astronomical.

  Unless, perhaps, that mythical piece of evidence was simply invisible to the unaware—a latent clue, hidden from the view of those not able to see beyond this plane of existence. Still, it would need to be tangible for it to be worthwhile, and such a thing was far from likely.

  Besides, something about that idea just didn’t feel right either. No, evidence was not why I was here. Not by a long shot. I was here for the connection—for the proximity to ground zero. I was here for the express purpose of reliving someone else’s nightmare—as if I didn’t have enough of my own already. Deep down, I was beginning to resent the fact that these visions were being imposed on me against my will. I’d already had more than enough of them to last me a lifetime, but there seemed no end to the horrifying pictures that begged my attention. It was no wonder I felt like I was going mad.

  I engaged in a few more moments of restless indecision before finally surrendering to the idea that I was already here so I might as well get out and take a look. I’d already wasted enough time so as to deprive myself of any natural lighting, so I rummaged about beneath the seat and eventually extracted a flashlight before climbing out of the cab and starting down the shallow embankment.

  I wasn’t entirely sure if it was just the darkness, or the place, or even if the temperature had actually dropped, but it felt far colder than it had just an hour or so before. I stopped for a moment to zip my jacket, shrugging it closer and turning up the collar to fend off the slight breeze. Standing there on the side of the small hill, I looked to my left and in the distance saw the muted glow of the lights from the Clark Bridge just peeking over the barren treetops. Exhaling a frosty breath, I watched the foggy luminescence disappear from view as I ventured the last few steps down the grade and into the stand of trees.

  My feet crunched noisily through the dry layer of leaves, and with each step I kicked up the damper stratum beneath, filling the air with the sharp, “composty” odor of decay. The flashlight wasn’t the most powerful in the world, but I’d expected better performance than I was getting. The batteries were apparently just this side of dead, so the faint yellow beam quickly dissipated less than two yards ahead, making my progress slow and unsteady.

  To my back, commuters were making their way home from jobs on this side of the river, and an occasional car would rush by, the beams of its headlights cutting a swath through the trees well above my head. Totally useless for illuminating my path, however, they did create oblique shadows that would quickly arc through a semicircular pattern as the vehicle approached then flitter to obscurity when it passed. I’m sure it was nothing more than my anxiety-fueled imagination, but some of those visual artifacts seemed to possess lives of their own—and they didn’t look friendly.

  I carefully picked my way through the scrub, tripping twice on the same fallen log and only narrowly regaining my balance before almost being pitched to the ground. Leaning against a tree for support, I decided to stop once again in order to get my bearings. The crime scene tape had looked to be some thirty or so yards from the roadside. In my estimation, I had probably managed to cover half that distance so far.

  With each step, the world had seemed to close off behind me, creating an isolating darkness. Even the swish of randomly passing vehicles had faded so far into the background that the only sound left for me to hear was my labored breathing and pounding heart. As I stood in place, wheezing in the cold air, my body screamed for a dose of nicotine. I reached my hand inside my jacket at the impulse but then thought better of the idea before fully withdrawing the pack of cigarettes. Shoving it back into my breast pocket, I panned the dying flashlight across the landscape in search of a trail or break in the undergrowth.

  A flicker of bright yellow lashed quickly through the weak beam as the wind swelled and then fell off in a rolling wave. I had apparently made it farther than I’d suspected. I cocked my head to the side and listened carefully as a static-laden
hum began inside my head. Eventually my ears filled with a faint whisper.

  Dead I am. Dead I am. I do not like that dead I am.

  “I know you are.” I found myself answering the voice aloud. “Trust me, I know.”

  Aiming myself in the direction of the yellow flicker, I stiff armed my way through a close huddle of saplings and pushed closer. As I inched forward, hollowness began to invade the pit of my stomach, mixing with the other ingredients of the night to spin itself into a thin thread of fear. I continued listening intently to the breeze, waiting for the voice that only I could hear.

  “Talk to me, Debbie,” I muttered under my breath. “Tell me your story.”

  The thread of foreboding began to embroider itself up my spine, bringing a chill that made me physically shiver and hug my coat tighter. I rubbed my palm against the day’s growth of scratchy whiskers on my cheeks then tugged thoughtfully at my beard as I let out a nervous laugh. If I wanted proof that I was insane, then this was it. I was out here in the dark with a dying flashlight, completely and totally ungrounded and unprotected. What’s more, I was actively inviting the spirit of a murdered woman to pop into my head when I knew for a fact that doing so was no less than inviting disaster. Yeah, I thought, I’m definitely pushing the envelope with this one.

  Silence still permeated the night, leaving me with the rattle of my breathing and thump of my adrenalin-affected heart as the only audible companions. The burst of rational thought should have driven me to immediately turn and flee, but rationality wasn’t my strong suit right now. I pressed forward and the droning hum began again.