Perfect Trust argi-3

by M. R. Sellars

  “You do not have a very high opinion of psychiatrists, do you, Rowan?” she asked after a moment.

  “It’s not really that,” I answered, somewhat embarrassed that I was broadcasting my distaste for the situation so clearly. I thought I’d be able to maintain at least some amount of control, but quite obviously I had not. “I’m just not entirely sure that I need one.”

  “You might not,” she answered easily.

  I paused, slightly taken aback. “Well, I have to admit, that’s not exactly what I was expecting you to say.”

  “I got that impression.”

  “I’m sorry.” I apologized for my challenge. “That was pretty rude of me, wasn’t it?”

  “Not really.” She shook her head and smiled. “You are simply voicing your anxiety.”

  “I suppose you’ve dealt with worse.”

  “Were I at liberty to do so, I could tell a few stories,” she chuckled.

  “Okay, so now that we have the awkward moment out of the way, I guess I can assume Ben has filled you in on some things?” I posed the question without accusation.

  “Yes. Some.” She nodded. “I will not lie to you. Benjamin and I have talked at length about your situation. I have even spoken with your wife.”

  “The conspiracy grows,” I remarked flatly.

  “That is one way to view it,” she returned. “Or you could look at the other side and see it as some people who care very deeply for you and are trying to help.”

  “You’re right. That comment was unfair.”

  “Fairness is somewhat subjective. It is all a matter of the individual perception.”

  “So it’s okay for me to perceive that my wife and best friend have conspired against me? I thought that was considered paranoia.”

  “It is perfectly natural to feel a sense of betrayal when a loved one disagrees with you on something such as this,” she explained. “But healthy individuals will reason it out and understand that they are not being betrayed at all. It would only be paranoia if you took it to the extreme.”

  “So you don’t think I’ve taken it to the extreme?”

  “Seriously, at this juncture, no I do not.” She took a drag from her cigarette and made it a point to exhale the smoke downwind before bringing her penetrating gaze back to my face. “To begin with, you are here and obviously no one is forcibly escorting you. Secondly, you are not visibly angry. Maybe a bit apprehensive… Some confusion… Yes, I can sense some definite confusion… But I do not really detect any fear. If anything, you are somewhat curious about what I think about everything I have been told thus far. All in all, I would have to say you are probably a perfectly rational human being. Of course, we have only been talking for a few minutes now. So I suppose I should reserve me judgment.”

  At the end of her impromptu analysis, she gave me a disarming smile.

  “Don’t you need to show me some ink blots or play some word association games with me before you can draw that conclusion?” I asked.

  “I tend to trust my instincts,” she chuckled. “It would appear that you have as many misconceptions about psychiatrists as the general public have about Witches.”

  “So Ben told you about that.” I offered the words more as an observation than a question.

  “Of course, not that he needed to do so,” she explained. “You have made no secret of the fact and therefore have attracted more than your share of media coverage from your involvement with the Major Case Squad.”

  She was correct. I had been the hot topic earlier this year in both print and broadcast media. Among the headlines were such things as “SELF PROCLAIMED WITCH AIDS POLICE IN MANHUNT” and “POLICE SEEK HELP FROM PAGAN PRACTITIONER.” There was usually a picture of me to accompany the story, so my faith and way of life weren’t exactly secret. The worst, however, had to have been the moniker coined by a local TV station news team. Ben, FBI Special Agent Constance Mandalay, and I had been dubbed the “Ghoul Squad.” That one, along with a video clip of the three of us at a particularly gruesome crime scene, had even made it into the national media pipeline.

  “So the Witch thing doesn’t bother you?” I asked.

  “Should it?” She raised an eyebrow and questioned me as much with her gaze as her words.

  “No.” I shook my head. “But it did take some time to convince Ben, so I assumed maybe you might be…” I let my voice trail off as I searched for the least offensive phrase.

  “…Just as closed minded?” She offered the words to me. “My brother is peculiar that way.”

  “I thought so,” I agreed. “Especially for a Native American.”

  “Benjamin never truly embraced his heritage,” she told me. “Only on the surface, culturally perhaps, though not completely in that respect either. And especially not deep down. Certainly not at a spiritual level. I cannot fault him for it; he has his reasons. But I can easily see where it would seem odd to you.”

  It was obvious by the way she spoke that she was intimately familiar with the history to which Ben would occasionally allude, but never reveal. Still, she didn’t offer any further details, so I didn’t ask.

  I said, “I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “You didn’t.” She shook her head and gave a slight shrug as she crushed out the remains of her cigarette. “With that said, however, what do you say we go inside and see if we can figure out just exactly what has been keeping you off balance as of late.”

  The remainder of my time spent with Helen Storm was relaxing if nothing else. She was so easy to talk to that I actually felt calm and even partially grounded while we chatted in the comfort of her office. My earlier apprehension had melted quickly away, only to return for wholly separate reasons when the session came to an end.

  While we hadn’t stumbled across any great revelations or uncovered any “ooga-boogas,” as she called them, lurking in my psyche, Helen felt that we had actually made some amount of progress. I just didn’t know exactly how much or of what type that progress was, and she didn’t elect to tell me.

  Still, though it was hard for me to believe that simply talking with her for an hour could have such an effect, I wasn’t about to knock it. Without a doubt, I was actually looking forward to my next appointment with her.

  *****

  “Jeezus fuck! I can’t believe this is happening!” an extremely agitated Ben Storm exclaimed as he came through my front door.

  I’d barely managed to pull the barrier open in response to the repeated jangle of the doorbell that was coupled with an impatient knock. His six-foot-six frame was already in forward motion the moment I turned the knob.

  “Well, hello to you too,” I said as I quickly sidestepped out of his way.

  I was gnawing my way through yet another piece of nicotine gum and, for the moment, wasn’t feeling nearly as jittery as I had fifteen minutes before. I’d been home for several uneventful hours now and was actually in the process of throwing together dinner when Ben first assaulted the front doorbell. Felicity and I had intended to spend the evening going over our plans for the upcoming Yule ritual. Unfortunately, the frenzied tone of my friend told me that was about to change.

  He completely ignored my jibe and using one of the handful of nicknames he’d assigned to my wife asked, “Is Firehair home?”

  “Not yet, why?”

  “Shit. She got ‘er cell phone with her?”

  “Probably. What’s going on, Ben?”

  “Well, we can’t wait, so ya’ better call ‘er and tell ‘er ta’ meet us. Make sure ya’ tell ‘er ta’ not even come home first.” He shot his hand up to rub his neck as he began to pace. “Jeezus she’s gonna freakin’ kill me for this.”

  “Why not? Meet us where? What are you talking about?”

  He didn’t seem to hear me and instead of answering simply muttered, “Dammit, white man, you are just too fuckin’ spooky.”

  “BEN!” I exclaimed, raising my voice to capture his attention. “Would you mind telling me what the hell you’re going on
about?”

  He stopped and looked at me with a deadly serious gaze then shook his head. “Ya’know your little foray inta’ the world of sick poetry?”

  “What about it?”

  “Well the handwritin’ might not have belonged ta’ Paige Lawson, but it sure as shit belonged ta’ Debbie Schaeffer.”

  “Debbie Schaeffer? Why does that name sound so familiar?”

  “Because she’s been all over the friggin’ news. She’s the college cheerleader that went missin’ about two months ago.”

  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 words rang inside my skull with painful clarity, and the exuberance of the morbid cheer was now sharply obvious. Ben didn’t need to say anything more for me to know that Debbie Schaeffer was no longer a missing persons case. Her legacy now belonged to homicide and the Greater Saint Louis Major Case Squad.

  “Where should I tell her to meet us?” I asked quietly as I turned toward the phone.

  I had no doubt it was going to be a very long night, in more ways than one.

  CHAPTER 6

  My wife’s cell phone was either off or out of range, and based on the way her schedule often ran, I wasn’t exactly certain when she would be home. Ben seemed almost in a panic, edged with a sense of urgency that he’d thus far left a mystery. He made it clear that he wasn’t at all interested in waiting for her to call back, and he insisted upon us leaving immediately. Knowing him like I did, I elected not to press for any further explanation until his adrenalin level started to drop off. As much as I hated to, I had done the only thing I could and left a quick message on Felicity’s voice mail telling her to meet us at his house.

  *****

  My keyed up friend was already navigating his van out of the subdivision before I could get fully into my seatbelt. The sun had fallen past the horizon almost an hour before, and the light of the waxing crescent moon was diffused into a weak halo by thin, wispy clouds that fell across it like a shroud of frost.

  For some unknown reason, Ben cranked the van into a quick right turn onto the side street that was positioned diagonally across from our driveway. Considering where we were headed, I thought it odd since it wasn’t exactly the shortest route to the highway. Out beyond the windshield, darkness overwhelmed a no-man’s land of unlit asphalt that stretched at regular intervals between the streetlamps. I caught only a brief glimpse of motion as a vehicle came barreling toward us from one of the puddles of blackness.

  The van lurched left then almost instantly to the right, narrowly missing a parked Thunderbird and tossing me against my door just as I was about to snap the buckle of the shoulder harness into place. Judging from the blotches of primer decorating the otherwise darkly hued T-Bird, if we’d made contact we wouldn’t have been its first scrape by far.

  I hadn’t remembered noticing the vehicle in our subdivision before, but there was something terribly familiar about it, although I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what. Still, it was the kind of aggravating feeling that makes a person say to oneself, “Whoa, deja vu.” The thought went as quickly as it came, however, since any further concentration on the subject was unceremoniously truncated by the sound of my friend’s voice.

  “Asshole!” Ben exclaimed the epithet as we narrowly avoided slamming into the oncoming news van. “Learn ta’ fuckin’ drive!”

  I straightened in my seat and returned to the task at hand, quickly coupling the safety belt before my friend’s infamous driving could send me tumbling again.

  “So have you calmed down a bit?” I asked.

  “Whaddaya mean?”

  “I mean have you calmed down yet?” I repeated. “You just came through my front door like a runaway train, and so far you’ve been a little short on explanations.”

  “I told ya’,” he offered. “That handwriting sample matched up ta’ Debbie Schaeffer.”

  “Correct me if I’m wrong,” I started, “but if I’m understanding this turn of events correctly, Debbie Schaeffer has been murdered, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Which by definition would make her dead already, right?”

  “Oh, yeah, she’s definitely dead. No two ways about that.”

  “Okay, then. So, I hate to sound cold,” I said as a preface to my question, “but what’s the rush?”

  “Simple,” Ben returned. “Because of a chucklehead with a big mouth, there’s about ta’ be a goddamned media circus bustin’ out all over this thing.”

  “That’s to be expected,” I shrugged, not seeing the correlation. “It was news then, it’ll be news now.”

  “Yeah, well did ya’ happen ta’ notice the logo on the side of the van that just tried to kill us? Whichever asshole leaked the info also knew about the handwriting sample and decided ta’ toss your name inta’ the mix. The circus is headin’ for your friggin’ front yard, Kemosabe. Shit, it looks like I just barely managed to beat ‘em there.”

  “So that’s why you didn’t want Felicity to go by the house.”

  “Exactly. I just hope she gets the message and doesn’t blow it off.” He let out a heavy sigh before continuing. “Look, it’s bad enough that you’re gettin’ dragged inta’ somethin’ like this again, ‘specially now. I just wanna at least make sure ya’ don’t get caught up in the hype this time.”

  “I don’t see how you are going to keep that from happening, Ben.”

  “By doin’ exactly what I’m doin’. Gettin’ ya’ the hell outta there.”

  “Maybe that will work tonight, but what about tomorrow? And the next day? And the next?” I asked.

  “There might not be a tomorrow, or a next day for ‘em. My plan is ta’ keep ya’ as far away from this as possible,” he told me.

  “They’ll just camp outside my door.”

  “Already on it. The coppers in Briarwood know what’s up and they’re gonna take care of it.”

  “They can’t restrict the freedom of the press, Ben.”

  “No, but they can protect the rights of a private citizen.”

  “Okay, so then why didn’t they just take care of it now instead of this whole clandestine escape crap?”

  “They are. We just gotta give ‘em some time to do it.”

  “I really don’t think this is going to work, Ben.”

  “Well, we’re gonna make it work,” he shot back.

  “Think about it, Ben,” I appealed. “You just said yourself that I’m being dragged into this. The damage has already been done. I think at this point it’s out of your control.”

  “Not entirely.”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier if I just made a statement to the press telling them I’m not involved in this investigation?” I offered.

  “No reason for them to believe ya’,” he answered. “Especially once they find out you’re lyin’.”

  It took a moment for the balance of his comment to sink in. When it finally did, I almost stuttered my next question. “Just a second ago you said you were keeping me as far from this as possible. Did I miss something here?”

  “Missin’? No. Denyin’? Yeah, prob’ly. Gimme a break, I know how ya’ are.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You ain’t serious? I gotta spell it out for ya’?”

  “Please.”

  He huffed out a heavy sigh then launched into an explanation, “It means, number one, less than forty-eight hours ago ya’ just showed up at a crime scene right out of the blue, so somethin’ tells me ya’ just might do it again.” He paused as he hooked the van through a quick right turn and down the ramp onto the highway. “And number two, ya’ handed me a piece of paper with Debbie Schaeffer’s handwritin’ all over it that ya’ say ya’ wrote yourself. So, whether I like it or not, you’re already connected to all of this by some of that weird ass Twilight Zone shit.
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br />   “Believe me, this is a decision I did not wanna make,” he continued, “but the way I got it figured, I have two choices. Either I keep ya’ as isolated as possible and not even let ya’ know what’s goin’ on; or, I go ahead and bring ya’ in on it right from the git’go and try ta’ keep your involvement to a minimum.

  “Considerin’ what you’ve already done and what I’ve seen ya’ do in the past, I doubt the first choice has any chance of workin’-period. That leaves me with nothin’ but option two. So I figure if I can exert some control over the contact you have with this case, then maybe ya’ won’t go off into la-la land on me.”

  “That’s a pretty big maybe,” I told him. “I don’t exactly have control over it myself.”

  “That’s why I want Felicity ta’ meet us,” he explained. “I want ‘er there with ya’ every goddamned second.”

  “She might not have that much control over it either.” I shook my head at the comment. “Besides, you know she’s not going to be happy about this.”

  “Whaddaya mean ‘not happy’?” he returned. “She’s gonna be freakin’ mad as hell. I just hope she leaves me some hair.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” I told him. “So what are you going to do? Sneak me in and out of my back door?”

  “If I hafta.”

  “You know, they’ll get to me eventually.”

  “As long as that eventually is after it’s all over and they’ve got no reason to put the spotlight on ya’, then I’m okay with it, ‘cause ya’ won’t be interesting to ‘em anymore.”

  “I don’t think we’ll be that lucky,” I sighed, “but I do appreciate the effort.”

  “Not a prob, Kemosabe.”