Perfect Trust argi-3

by M. R. Sellars

  I stood looking at him for a moment and could almost visibly see the wheels turning. Something was up, but for some unknown reason he was going to keep me in the dark about it. I didn’t like this situation at all because something deep down told me that whatever it was that Ben was laboring over, it definitely had something to do with me.

  The earlier rampant fear that I had perhaps killed Paige Lawson myself now returned to the forefront with extreme prejudice. Everything Helen had said to convince me otherwise went instantly out the window, and I became my own prime suspect once again.

  I couldn’t take it.

  “Am I a suspect?” I blurted.

  “Do what?” Ben shook his head as if he’d misheard the question and stared back at me with a look of incredulity.

  “You heard me, Ben,” I rushed the words out before my brain could convince me to shut up. “Am I a suspect in Paige Lawson’s death?”

  “Hell no.” He stared at me and screwed up his face in confusion. “Where the fuck’d’ya get that idea?”

  “I don’t know,” I shook my head as I sighed. “I was there… All the stuff that’s been happening… Now you’ve obviously got something bothering you-presumably because of that phone call-and you’re keeping whatever it is from me…”

  “Gimme a break, white man,” he said. “Hell, I don’t even tell my wife everything about work, okay?”

  “Yeah, maybe so, but I’ve got a feeling that whatever that phone call was about, my name got mentioned in there somewhere.”

  “Listen…” he sent a hand up to massage his neck and gestured at me with the other. “You’re just gonna hafta trust me on this. That call is prob’ly gonna turn out to be nothin’, but even if it doesn’t, I just can’t discuss it with ya’ right now. Okay?”

  “Probably going to turn out to be nothing,” I repeated his words. “So it does have something to do with me then?”

  “I told ya’, I’m not goin’ there.”

  “But if it has something to do with me…”

  “Row, drop it.”

  “Ben…”

  “Now, Row.”

  I wasn’t going to get anywhere with him, that much was obvious. I was also breaking the cardinal rule of not pushing Ben Storm into a corner, and I knew better. I decided I’d better heed his advice.

  “Yeah. Okay. Sorry. You know how I am…”

  “Yeah,” he harrumphed. “No shit.”

  I cocked my head in the direction of the dining room and changed the subject. “So everyone’s getting ready to eat.”

  “Great,” he nodded. “I’m starvin’. You gonna tell me what we’re having yet? It smells good.”

  “I think you’ll like it.”

  “Okay, but what is it?”

  “Food, Ben. Trust me, you’ll like it.”

  “Well, if I don’t, at least I’m covered.”

  “You didn’t really bring a sack of belly-bombers, did you?” I asked.

  “No, but I got a coupl’a frozen pizzas out in the van. All I gotta do is borrow your oven and I’m good ta’ go.”

  I shook my head and grinned at him, “I can’t believe you did that.”

  “Hey, a man’s gotta eat.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the back of the house. “By the way, did you say your deal was over with out there?”

  “We’ll officially cast circle a bit later, but that’s not for a while yet. So except for tending the fire through the night and clearing the towers later, yeah, it’s pretty much done. Why?”

  “So it’s all clear for alcohol?”

  “In moderation, yeah, sure. Since you aren’t participating, you’ve pretty much been clear all along.”

  “Shit, wish I’d known that, ‘cause I need a Scotch like right now.”

  “Yeah, me too. Do me a favor and pour me one while you’re at it,” I said as I stepped past him. “I’ve just got to hit the restroom first.”

  “You sure you wanna drink? I thought ya’ said alcohol wasn’t allowed in the circle thing, and if y’a still gotta do that later…”

  “I’ve got awhile yet. Besides, in this particular case I don’t think the God will mind if I relax a little bit.”

  “Okay. You’re the Witch.”

  “Yeah. Don’t remind me.”

  The hairs along the back of my neck were still on end by the time I returned to the dining room. It was becoming more obvious by the second that something very bad was waiting in the wings for its chance to overturn my world.

  And I hated not knowing what it was.

  CHAPTER 17

  The sun was riding a southern arc in the cloudless sky, casting its brightness across the cityscape as I hooked my truck onto Clark Avenue and then a couple of blocks later found myself a parking space directly in front of City Police Headquarters. After easing between the diagonal lines, I levered the vehicle into park and paused a moment. Finally, I took off my sunglasses and tucked them between the headliner and passenger side visor then switched off the engine.

  December 24 ^ th had stealthily arrived as a follow-up to our celebration of the winter’s solstice; sneaking into the fold as it always did each year, no matter how prepared you thought yourself to be. Two entire days had passed since the party, each of them an almost indiscernible fraction of time longer in lighted hours than was the day before. The Sun God had been reborn, but the new solar year had still brought with it the issues left unresolved during the previous turn of the wheel.

  However, as if in honor of a secretly declared cease-fire, the 48 hours had passed with nothing blatantly out of the ordinary happening to me. No dreams, no uninvited visions, no sleepwalking. Not even the barest twinge of a waking nightmare. In Felicity’s estimation, and that of others around me, this all appeared to be a display of my progress; an outward indication that my psyche was on the mend. I wished that I could agree with them, but I’d had a similar experience before, and the outcome had been less than pleasant.

  To me, this period of supernormal silence was more frightening than anything that had occurred to date; very simply because I could feel the foreboding that they could not. Still, as I said, it was nothing horrific; nothing that was overtly driving me as had the events of recent past. This was merely an indefinable aggravation that would tickle and itch, doing all that it could to irritate me, asleep or awake. Each time I would think it had finally gone away, it would pop up in a different corner of my brain, tempting me with shaded emotions that hinted at a future it had no intention of actually revealing in advance.

  The sense had been with me ever since Yule, bolstered in part by Ben’s cryptic attitude following his secretive phone call. Deep down inside I knew this was a harbinger of things to come and these fleeting days were merely the calm before the storm. What I feared the most, however, was that if this level of calm turned out to be directly proportionate to the intensity of the coming squall, then I could never be prepared for what I would have to face. I was truly afraid that in the grand scheme of things, everything up until now had been the metaphorical equivalent of nothing more than a spring shower.

  For a time, I made an almost hourly ritual of mutely begging the Lord and Lady to reassure me that I was wrong. When it became obvious that my pleas were to be left unanswered, I gave up.

  Truth be told, what I really needed to be doing right now was forgetting about it all and taking some time to relax. Whatever it was that was coming was still an unknown, and there was simply nothing I could do to stop it. Not at this stage of the game anyway. I was just going to have to ride it out. On top of that, a new calendar year was almost upon us, and the more mundane tasks in my life would soon multiply. January tended to be one of the busier months for my consulting business, for with a simple turn of the year, annual budgets magically refreshed and people started renewing support contracts and planning system changes. With that being only a week away, the lull in my day-to-day grind had already started to dissipate and would soon be coming to an end. Once that happened, if I was still dea
ling with a plague of ethereal horrors, I was going to be a complete wreck-as if I wasn’t one already.

  For the moment, I had no place to be and nothing much to do. I really needed to take advantage of the situation. It would be a perfect day for some quiet meditation and grounding exercises, especially considering that I could have the whole house to myself with no distractions.

  Today being Christmas Eve, Felicity-fully decked out as one of Santa’s helpers-was visiting a local children’s home with her nature photography club. And I do mean she was fully decked out. In fact, I was actually finding it hard not to think about how she’d looked when she left the house. To the kids I’m sure she simply appeared to be a rather perky elf, but to your average red-blooded adult male… Well, let’s just say her costume wasn’t “standard issue” for the North Pole, and she did it justice in ways Father Christmas hadn’t originally imagined, if you know what I mean.

  The visit was something that her group did every year at this time-handing out donated toys, clothing, and coats. Every holiday season the event managed to garner more and more press, which in turn created more demand from various charitable organizations. Thankfully, the added press also brought more donations. So as word got around, what had originally started a few years back as a small party for some underprivileged kids had now grown into a huge affair, encompassing not only the children’s home but visits to local hospitals, retirement homes, and shelters as well. It was a great cause, and even though it was hard work, they loved every minute of it.

  Considering the list I’d seen of this year’s scheduled visits, Felicity definitely wouldn’t be back for the rest of the day, so I had plenty of time to just vegetate. In the end, I think it was that volatile combination of idleness and nervous energy that had finally set me in motion. In short, she hadn’t even been gone for two hours before I went in search of trouble.

  And now, here I was, parked in front of City Police Headquarters and staring out my windshield in a semi-catatonic stupor. Considering my original intentions though, this might very well be a good thing.

  I had actually started out from the house with the plan of revisiting the wooded area on Route 367 where Debbie Schaeffer’s body had been found. Subconsciously, I suppose that like most, I found some comfort in the daylight. I really don’t know why because time of day really had no bearing on the unique curse of visionary abilities that had been terrorizing me for the past two years. Truth was, I had no idea what had any bearing on them because they certainly weren’t under my control. In any event, my automatic pilot had engaged almost as soon as I backed out of the driveway, and I was three quarters of the way here before it dawned on me that here wasn’t where I’d originally planned to go.

  Sitting there, I felt a shiver run up my spine, and I forced back yet another soft-core image of my wife in her costume as my brain shuffled through the random thoughts it had kept waiting in the wings. Then I frowned at the provocative cogitation.

  Felicity and I had a perfectly healthy and even fairly imaginative sex life. While the male of the species supposedly has sexual thoughts every two minutes, I was really starting to wonder about myself. This constant fantasizing about her, while perfectly enjoyable in most respects, was becoming troublesome-especially considering recent events. I made a mental note to mention this constant obsession when my next appointment with Helen rolled around. This, of course, triggered remembrance of other mental notes I’d made and then promptly forgotten-such as the whole fantasy episode surrounding Felicity’s hair when we were at the morgue. Then there was the episode in the elevator that I’d had when leaving the counseling office. In retrospect, I really should have called Helen about that one immediately. Of course, it had seemed driven by an outside force, though I wasn’t even certain about that. Truth is, it really didn’t make much sense at all. None of it did.

  I suppose that if I was somehow becoming overly obsessed with sex, then the lurid thoughts could very well be my own. But even that didn’t seem correct to me. There really seemed to be an outside presence. I was almost certain that I could feel it. Moreover, it had something to do with Debbie Schaeffer and Paige Lawson.

  Unfortunately, everything that happened at the morgue that night after I connected with Debbie Schaeffer was still an out of focus jumble. What little I’d been able to pick out here and there was completely nonsensical. Dolls in prom dresses, makeup, a smart-mouthed cheerleader, flashing lights… Then there was Paige Lawson. Where did she fit into all of this?

  If the outside presence that was forcing all of the lurid thoughts into my head was the one responsible for either of their deaths, then maybe the crime-or crimes-were motivated by sex. But one was a kidnapping and the other appeared to be a robbery gone awry. Maybe Paige Lawson was just an anomaly-a piece of a totally different puzzle that I was trying too hard to make fit into a blurry and indistinct picture.

  But then, every time I had one of these semi-pornographic fantasies, there was the thing with red hair. Both Debbie Schaeffer and Paige Lawson were blondes. So was the woman in the elevator. So that almost had to come directly from me. I mean I had to admit that I personally had a thing for red hair, so that could make it highly likely that it was just my own preference overlaying itself with the imagery.

  Likely? Probably? Or just maybe?

  It was starting to get very confusing again. I’d been mulling it all over so much that it was giving me a headache.

  If Ben was correct, I was just chasing my tail anyway, and I needed to direct my energies toward something more productive. I finally gave up on my attempt at analysis and decided to leave it to Helen. After all, as she’d pointed out, she was the one with the degree in psychology. Since all of the incidents seemed linked by sex, and that was apparently a driving force for me these days, maybe I’d remember to mention all of this at the next appointment.

  After a moment I let out a purposeful sigh and muttered to no one but myself, “Yeah, right.” Then before getting out of the truck, I made yet another mental note to start writing this stuff down so that I was no longer depending on my easily sidetracked brain.

  I’d have to start doing that later though. Right now I just wanted to smoke another cigarette or two before going inside.

  *****

  “Merry freakin’ ho-ho-ho,” Ben said as I dropped myself into one of the ancient molded-plastic seats next to his desk. “Wanna cuppa?”

  “I don’t know…” I shook my head, mentally gagging on vivid recollections of the caustic liquid the homicide division called coffee.

  “Hey,” he exclaimed. “It’s Christmas freakin’ Eve, Kemosabe. We actually washed the pot this mornin’.”

  “Yeah,” I chuckled. “Whether it needed it or not, right?”

  “Exactly.” He grinned.

  I couldn’t help but notice an n ^ th generation photocopy gracing one corner of his desk blotter, especially since it was positioned so that I could easily read it. A blurred but still recognizable pair of mug shots dominated the page, showing a rotund, bearded man in an instantly recognizable suit. The text beneath outlined a wrap sheet stating that the individual was wanted for breaking and entering, cookie theft, and illegal dumping. It further went on to say that he was known by such aliases as Saint Nick, The Jolly Elf, Santa Claus, etcetera, and could often be found in the company of elves. Last seen fleeing in a late model sleigh pulled by eight reindeer. Consider armed with candy canes. Approach with caution.

  “Sounds like a real tough guy,” I said, indicating the novelty on his desk.

  “Yeah,” he nodded and laughed. “The asshole dumped a whole pile of crap at my house last year, and I ended up holdin’ the bag for all the batteries. If I ever catch up with ‘im I’m liable ta’ kill ‘im.” Leaning back, he took a sip of his coffee and watched me carefully for a long moment. “So what’s up? Why ain’t you with the little woman?”

  “She’s out doing that annual charity thing with her photography club.”

  “Yeah, I know. She was
just on the news about forty-five minutes ago givin’ ‘em an interview.” He let out a low wolf whistle. “Nice outfit.”

  “Uh-huh,” I grunted, not really needing the reminder.

  “So explain that one to me.”

  “What? Her costume?”

  “Hell no, that was pretty self-explanatory, ya’ lucky bastard,” he said. “I’m talkin’ about ‘er doing the whole Miz Santa Claus thing. How’s that fit in with what you were celebratin’ the other night?”

  “It doesn’t really,” I told him. “Yule is a religious holiday, just like Christmas or Chanukah. Santa Claus, however, while associated with Christmas, isn’t a religious figure. In his current incarnation he’s actually an icon of commercialism created by a soft drink company.”

  “Yeah, I read somethin’ about that already, smartass,” he grinned. “What I’m askin’ is if you Witches celebrate Christmas too?”

  “In the sense of it being a commercialized, secular holiday, sure, many of us do. But it doesn’t bear any religious significance for Pagans like it does for most everyone else.”

  “So ya’ get like two holidays in one,” he stated as much as asked.

  “You could look at it that way, but Christmas is the generally accepted holiday by society as a whole. I doubt you’ll find many employers who give winter solstice as a paid holiday. So it’s kind of a trade off. Besides, the actual date for Christmas was pilfered from the Roman celebration of Saturnalia anyway…”

  “Saturn-who?”

  “Forget it. You’ll just end up accusing me of boring you with a bunch of details.”

  “Yeah, I s’pose you’re right,” he nodded almost thoughtfully as he chuckled. “Anyway, the real reason I asked is Allison and I wanted ta’ invite you and Firehair over ta’ the house tonight if ya’ aren’t doin’ anything.”

  “I thought you were having a family get-together this evening?”

  “Yeah, we are. Helen’s comin’ over, but that’s about it. Besides, you two are like family anyway.”