All Acts Of Pleasure: A Rowan Gant Investigation

by M. R. Sellars

  “Anyhow, since Wentworth was actually known to have a history with prostitutes that had been getting swept under the carpet for a while, he looked into it. After doing a little digging, it came to light that the whole kidnap and torture victim fetish was his particular kink. So, things added up in that respect, but there was still something weird going on.”

  “How so?”

  “Felicity,” I said in a matter-of-fact tone. “She started acting strange. It began with her acting…well…kind of…I guess the only delicate way to put it is sex starved. She was just plain insatiable. And, if that weren’t enough, she turned into a complete bitch.”

  “Bitch?” Helen echoed. “That is certainly not a word I would have ever expected you to use in conjunction with your wife, Rowan.”

  “Tell me about it, but that’s what happened. She would actually get herself aroused by berating me, or in some instances, by actually physically abusing me.”

  “I believe I see a rather obvious connection with your nightmare now.”

  “Yeah,” I grunted. “Kind of brings it all into focus, doesn’t it? Anyway, it was at about this time that I found out my dear, sweet wife actually has a history with the BDSM community.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes?” I repeated, slightly puzzled. “You don’t seem particularly surprised by that.”

  “Actually, I was already aware of it.”

  Slight puzzlement became brow-furrowing confusion. “I’m sorry? I’m not sure I heard you correctly.”

  “Remember, Rowan. Felicity has sought my counsel as well. She shared her proclivities with me quite some time ago.”

  “Well, that’s interesting,” I said in a mild huff. “Because she never bothered to tell me.”

  “Until now, obviously.”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “And did she give you a reason why she did not tell you before now?”

  “What she said is that she was afraid I might not be open to the idea and that I would stop loving her.”

  “Yes. That was her concern when she spoke of it to me.”

  “But, she knows me better than that.”

  “Does she?”

  “Of course she does.”

  “Contrary to what you may believe, Rowan, everyone has secrets. They do not necessarily keep them secret to harm or injure. Sometimes they do so in order to protect. You are a perfect example.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. How often have you lied, or simply twisted the truth, in order to protect Felicity from what you perceived as harm?”

  “That’s different,” I objected.

  “Actually, no it is not. You are simply too close to see that.”

  “Maybe,” I half-agreed. “But she lied to me about our relationship.”

  “No, Rowan, she did not. She simply repressed one of her own desires in order to protect her relationship with you. She never lied.”

  “You’re splitting hairs.”

  “No, I am stating a fact.”

  “Okay, fine,” I said with a nod. In my heart I knew she was correct, so further objections wouldn’t do any good. “So, what else did she tell you?”

  “I am not at liberty to discuss that. Her sessions with me are confidential, as are yours.”

  “But you just…”

  She cut me off. “I simply told you something you already knew, because she had told you herself. Please, do not ask any more about things you know I cannot discuss. Now, continue your story.”

  “I’m not sure that I’m comfortable with that, given what you just…”

  “Rowan, you need not worry. Your wife adores you, which is the very reason she repressed this aspect of her sexuality to begin with. Believe me when I tell you there is nothing else you need to know. Now, please…go on.”

  “Well, I don’t really see the point…”

  “I, however, do.”

  “Okay,” I huffed. “Anyway, things really escalated a couple of days later when Officer Hobbes was found dead in a motel. This time there was absolutely no question about the whole B and D, S and M thing. All of the trappings were right there in plain sight. But, this time there was a new twist to the scene. Artifacts were present that lead me to believe some sort of convoluted Voodoo ritual had taken place.”

  “Voodoo?”

  “Yeah, Voodoo. Well, a horribly bastardized version of it really. I’ll leave out the gorier details since you asked me to, but let’s just say it was twisted. What happened in that room may have started out as consensual sex play, but that’s not how it ended. It also didn’t have anything to do with true Vodoun religious practice…it was just sick…

  “What’s even worse is that once again there was an overwhelming sense of female sexual arousal permeating the room. Almost to the point of being stifling—for me anyway. It was then that I was absolutely positive the killer was a woman and that she had literally gotten off on torturing this man to death.”

  “You felt it deeply, didn’t you, Rowan?” Helen asked.

  The tenor of her question told me she already knew the answer, but I gave it to her anyway. “Yeah. From both sides of the fence, actually.”

  I paused and absently attempted a drag on my cigar only to find that it had gone out once again. Instead of relighting it, I simply fiddled with the band, twisting it in an endless circle.

  “Anyhow,” I continued. “Felicity had a meeting with a client that morning, so she didn’t go to that crime scene with me. But, while I was standing there talking to Ben, she just suddenly showed up. The problem was, it wasn’t really her. She was acting haughty and abusive to everyone, calling herself Miranda, and had even started speaking with a heavy Southern drawl. That’s about the time I started doing the math and figured out she was being possessed by a Lwa.”

  “Low-ahh?”

  “Kind of a high ranking ancestral spirit in Voodoo culture. They are more or less the pantheon of Gods and Goddesses that Vodoun practitioners worship. During rituals they will invite Lwa into their bodies. They call it being ridden, and the practitioner is then called the horse for the particular spirit. That’s basically how the ancestors speak to them from the afterlife.

  “The thing is, though, Lwa aren’t evil beings that run about torturing and killing. In a rudimentary sense they are messengers. Because of that, I figured that this particular spirit wasn’t a generally accepted Lwa but instead had to be one that this person elevated to Godhood in her own mind.”

  “Thank you for the primer. However, I still do not understand what this spirit has to do with Felicity? Why would it choose to possess her?”

  “That’s the sixty-four thousand dollar question, Helen. I’m not sure either, but I can tell you that Felicity was being ridden by someone or something who wasn’t particularly friendly, and that’s when the so-called incident occurred.

  “In a nutshell, after physically assaulting me and managing to twist the situation such that it got me arrested instead of her, my wife disappeared. Well, actually while Ben was getting me out of jail, she went home and changed clothes.”

  “That seems to be an odd thing to do.”

  “Normally, I’d agree, but given where she was heading, it actually made a bizarre kind of sense. So, anyhow, Ben called Agent Mandalay and asked her to stop by our house just on the off chance that Felicity went there. When she arrived, Felicity was in fact still in the house, but things went south. Felicity—actually at that point, Miranda—assaulted Agent Mandalay, somehow managed to get the upper hand then took her weapon and really did disappear for a while.

  “Obviously, we managed to find her but only after several hours. And, this is why the change of clothes—she went over to a fetish nightclub on the East side, picked up a guy, and took him back to a motel.”

  Helen looked at me, a note of concern in her face. “But, surely she did not kill him, did she?”

  I shook my head. “No. The Lwa jumped ship before she got that far. She did manage to do a serious number on him with her hig
h heels, though. Literally trampled him until he was bloody and unconscious.”

  “Do you have any idea why the possession ended so suddenly?”

  “Actually, that’s typical for a Lwa possession. They pop in and pop out. Although, I don’t have an answer for why this one didn’t complete its task before it left. I suppose it could be because taking over Felicity had to be some kind of accidental collateral possession—because she doesn’t practice Voodoo and certainly didn’t consciously invite it in, that I’m aware of.

  “In fact, prior to showing up at the Hobbes crime scene, she would tend to fight it whenever she would realize an attack was happening. Of course, that was before I had a handle on what it actually was, so I wasn’t much help in that department. Anyway, I suspect she was still trying to fight it to some extent even then, so I guess it was kind of like a host rejecting a transplant or something of that sort. But, that’s only a pet theory. Either way, I’m just glad she didn’t kill the guy.”

  “How serious did his injuries turn out to be?”

  “She hurt him pretty bad,” I replied. “He spent a day in the hospital, which I’m sure I’ll end up getting a bill for. But, when the cops talked to him, he refused to press charges against her. Seems he actually liked getting stomped on by her so much he wants to ‘submit to Mistress Miranda’ again. He somehow even managed to make the connection between Felicity and the pseudonym. Probably from the cops would be my guess since he was actually being urged to press charges. Anyhow, he got her business number and has called several times.”

  “I am sure that is disconcerting for Felicity.”

  “Yeah. She was a bit freaked out at first. After the fifth or sixth time though, she just switched on a whole alpha female persona and ordered him to stop calling her. That seemed to do the trick, for now at least.”

  “Obviously you think he will call again.”

  “He seemed pretty fixated on her, so, no, I’m not going to rule it out.”

  “Does this bother you?”

  “Well yeah, stalkers are not something you take lightly. And, even if he isn’t dangerous it’s just plain annoying.”

  “No, Rowan. What I mean is are you jealous?”

  I thought about that for a moment. I hadn’t really considered jealousy as a possibility, consciously anyway, so I weighed it carefully before responding.

  “I don’t know, to be honest. I don’t think I am. I mean, she was being ridden by a Lwa when the encounter happened, so it’s not like she was cheating on me. However, she did tell me that when she snapped back to reality, she was so aroused that she didn’t exactly stop right away.”

  “And, naturally, that concerns you,” she remarked.

  “Maybe a little. But, the sudden exit of a Lwa tends to leave the horse disoriented. Even if she thinks she knew what she was doing, she didn’t really know what she was doing. Does that make sense?”

  “Of course. However, that was not the aspect of jealousy I was asking about.”

  “Okay, so why else would I be jealous?’

  “Because, in a sense this man is fulfilling your wife’s sexual fantasies and you are not.”

  “Feeling a little direct today, Helen?”

  “Am I not always direct?”

  “Yeah, I suppose you are. For the most part.”

  “So?”

  “So, I really haven’t given it that much thought.”

  “Yes, Rowan, you have.”

  “Okay, so yeah. I have.”

  “And?”

  “And, yeah,” I shrugged. “Maybe I am a little jealous.”

  “Have you spoken to Felicity about it?”

  “No.”

  “You need to.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right. I will when things calm down a bit.”

  “Good,” she offered with a nod then extracted a fresh cigarette and lit it before changing the subject. “So, what about Constance? Is she well? She seemed to be fine when she attended the funeral service with Benjamin.”

  I hadn’t even given thought to calling Agent Mandalay, Constance, when I had spoken of her earlier, even though we certainly knew one another well enough. I suppose I was so caught up in the story that the informality hadn’t had a chance to creep in. Of course, it stood to reason that Helen would use her first name since the petite federal agent had been in an on-again, off-again relationship with her brother for more than a year.

  “She’s fine. Felicity mainly just managed to stun her enough that she could get her own handcuffs on her,” I explained then quickly added, “Don’t spread that around.”

  “Of course not. Are there going to be any repercussions?”

  “I don’t think so. Constance actually pulled some strings and so did Ben, so there weren’t any charges filed. However…”

  I felt, as much as heard my own voice trail off into silence.

  “However, what, Rowan?”

  “Your brother told me something when we were out looking for Felicity that night. Apparently, they found long red hairs at both crime scenes. The Wentworth scene could have been a fluke since she was physically there taking the photos, but she was never actually inside the room at the Hobbes scene, and they were there too.”

  “Did he tell you they were definitely from Felicity?”

  “No, but they took a few samples from her for comparison when they had her in custody, and we haven’t heard anything yet. In fact, ever since that day we’ve been persona non grata as far as the investigation goes. They’ve made no secret of the fact that they consider Felicity a “person of interest”, but they haven’t gone so far as to call her a suspect. At least not yet.”

  “I see,” Helen said with a nod then turned her head and proceeded to look out at the broken cloud cover.

  “Anyway, that’s the story. And, that’s when the nightmare started. And, like I said, it’s just been getting worse since.”

  “So,” she said after an uncomfortable pause. “Now, you believe Felicity is leading a double life and actually killed those two men.”

  I looked back at her with complete incredulity twisting my features. “Hell no! Where in the world did you get that?”

  “So, then why is it you told me you think Felicity is the woman in your nightmare?”

  I opened my mouth to reply but closed it quickly. I felt my face relax into a chagrined half smile as the realization dawned on me that I had just been the victim of a carefully guided psychological play. The truly embarrassing part was that I had cast myself in the lead role without realizing it, and all Helen had done was sit back and direct.

  “Face my fear, huh?” I grunted.

  “Sometimes we use swords, sometimes we use words,” she replied with a shrug. “So, I take this to mean you have managed to reason yourself out of the silly notion that the cruel specter you have been battling nightly is in reality your wife?”

  “Yeah,” I replied with a nod.

  “She may have a proclivity toward sexual dominance and mildly sadistic play, Rowan, but certainly within limits. She is no monster. You know that.”

  “But, the nightmare does mean something…” I ventured.

  “I am certain it does. For you, they always do. You simply need to listen to what it is saying and not what you were afraid it might be inferring.”

  “There’s just a bit of a language barrier, Helen. Dead people don’t always use words quite the same way you or I do. They like to tell their tales with strange imagery and convoluted verbal references that come across as bizarre parodies of reality.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Yeah, well you wouldn’t happen to have a dead-to-living dictionary laying around would you?”

  “No, but given your wealth of experience in that realm, perhaps you should consider writing one.”

  “I doubt if it would sell.”

  “You might be surprised.”

  “Yeah, maybe. So, let me ask you something. Why didn’t you just tell me I was being paranoid like I asked you to do in
the beginning?”

  “Because, Rowan, you would not have believed me if I had. You did, however, need someone to listen so that you could figure out for yourself that which you knew all along.”

  “Yeah. I guess you’re right,” I said. “Even so, I still have this nightmare to contend with.”

  “Yes, but now you can meet it on your own terms.”

  The relief began to fade as I felt murky shadows folding around me once again. That seemed to be the way of my life most of the time, gloomy and overcast with occasional brief periods of warmth and light. I just wished those periods of brightness would last a little longer.

  “You know, Helen,” I said as the weight of the ethereal darkness pressed in on me. “I have a terrible feeling that things are going to get a lot worse before they even think about getting better.”

  “Is that a feeling, or an intuition, Rowan?”

  “A lot of both.”

  “I hate to say this, but I fear you are correct.”

  “That’s not exactly comforting, Helen.”

  “It was not meant to be.”

  Friday, November 18

  1:27 P.M.

  Saint Louis, Missouri

  CHAPTER 3:

  I suppose having only three repetitions of the horrifying night terror was better than the quintuplet I had experienced the night before I visited with Helen. I’ll admit I would have preferred none at all, but I wasn’t going to complain. I’d take what I could get, and a reduction in frequency was as good a place as any to start.

  The lower rate of recurrence wasn’t the only positive note either. While the panic that always accompanied the nightmare didn’t dissipate one iota, at least I didn’t wake up imagining that it was my red-haired wife standing just out of my sight while harboring cruel intentions. And, even though I supposedly reasoned that out on my own, I definitely credited Helen with getting me there with my sanity intact. Or, what there was of it I suppose; because I wasn’t always sure I qualified as fully compos mentis.

  However, even though I no longer envisioned Felicity as the physical embodiment of my fear, the fact remained that the presence I felt was still undeniably female, and she was disturbingly familiar.