Harm None: A Rowan Gant Investigation (32 page)

As expected, the small package contained a
tape cartridge full of data. The included trouble sheet indicated
that the database was corrupt and needed to be recovered, which was
one of the contract services I provided to my clients. I quickly
scanned over the trouble sheet to see if there was any more
information and noted that this particular client was located in
Seattle, Washington. I was just preparing to slip the cartridge
into my computer’s tape drive when the hair rose on the back of my
neck.

“
It always rains here,” Ariel’s voice
rings through my head. “It’s mostly just a misty rain.”

Rain.

Constant misty rain.

Seattle, Washington.

The second of my nightmares
suddenly made sense as the electrochemical reaction within my brain
generated the connection. It almost always rained in Seattle. I
remembered that from a magazine photo layout Felicity had done
about the
Seattle Bumbershoot
Festival
. A festival to celebrate the rain.
Work was once again forgotten as I seized the phone and stabbed out
Ben’s cellular number on the keypad.

His voice came after the second ring,
“Hello?”

“Ben, it’s Rowan.”

“Hey,” he replied, “I was just gonna call
you. You’ll be happy to know that the D.A. decided to hold off on
filin’ charges against R.J. pendin’ further investigation.”

“That’s great,” I answered quickly, “but
that’s not why I called.”

“What’s up?”

“I know I’m going to sound crazy again,” I
started. “But I’m calling about another vision I had.”

“When? Just now?” he asked.

“No, a couple of nights ago,” I continued.
“I’ve been having them almost every night since I got involved in
this whole thing. They just haven’t necessarily made sense until
now.”

“So what is it?” he pressed anxiously. “Did
you see another murder? The kid?”

“No, not yet.” I hoped we
could make that
yet
into a never. “I’m pretty sure this one is a clue about the
killer’s identity, but I don’t quite know what to make of
it.”

“Well spit it out man,” he urged. “What is
it?”

“Seattle,” I told him. “Seattle or the
Pacific Northwest. I think that’s where he’s from or
something.”

I could hear him scribbling notes in his
book. Less than half a dozen hours ago, he had considered me a
lunatic and possibly even a murderer. Now he was accepting what I
said on blind faith. He wasn’t taking any chances.

“What makes you think Seattle?” he asked.

“Rain,” I told him simply and then explained
it. “It almost always rains in Seattle. In the vision, I saw Ariel
and she told me that it was always raining. I think she’s trying to
tell me who the killer is or where he’s from at least.”

“Okay. I’ll check NCIC and call Seattle PD to
see if they have any cases similar to ours, open or closed. You got
anything else I should know about?”

“I’ve had two other visions, but nothing has
clicked yet... except maybe money.”

“Money?” he asked in a perplexed tone.

“It doesn’t make sense to me either but then
neither did the rain until just a few minutes ago.”

“No problem. I’ll start makin’ some calls,
and I’ll get in touch with ya’ as soon as I know somethin’. If
anything else falls into place for ya’, call me right away.”

“I will. Talk to you later. Bye.”

“Bye.”

I gently settled the handset back into its
holder, silently grateful that Ben had been willing to believe me
this time. I only wished that a young woman hadn’t had to die in
order to open his eyes. But then, that wasn’t his fault.

I really didn’t feel like working anymore,
but my clients weren’t paying me to track down serial killers; they
were paying me to fix their computer software. I turned back to the
small tape cartridge and spent the next hour and forty-five minutes
earning my living.

* * * * *

It was almost three hours before I heard
anything from Ben, and instead of calling, he and Detective Deckert
simply appeared at my house. The pendulum clock had just issued an
audible announcement of the time, telling me that it was 1:00 in
the afternoon when I answered the doorbell.

“What’s for lunch?” Ben said to me as I swung
open the front door.

“I was just nuking some lasagna,” I
answered.

“That’ll work.”

The dogs scrambled about, nosing one another
out of the way in a contest for the attentions of the two visitors.
I sent them out the back door as Ben and Deckert seated themselves
at the kitchen table.

“Where’s Firehair?” Ben asked, lounging back
in his chair.

“Working. She had a shoot for some department
store scheduled today.”

“Shouldn’t she be restin’ or somethin’?”

“How long have you known Felicity, Ben?” I
returned.

“Yeah. You’re right. Forget I ever asked
that.”

“So, I’m assuming you didn’t just come by for
lunch,” I told them while preparing the dish of pasta.

“You assume correctly,” Ben returned, “but I
still wanna eat.”

“I’m working on that,” I answered and looked
over at Deckert who gave me an animated shrug.

“Well, it appears that you’re two for two on
this nightmare thing,” Ben started. “We hit paydirt with the
Seattle PD. They’ve got an open case that bears a striking
resemblance to our four. Especially Ariel Tanner.”

“Coed at the
University of Washington
,
Seattle.” Deckert picked up the thread. “Found dead in her dorm
room. She had been skinned in a similar fashion to the Tanner
woman, but the autopsy revealed that she was probably already dead
due to respiratory arrest.”

“He overdosed her on the curare,” I
mused.

“Kinda,” he replied. “Toxicology showed the
dose to be too low to have caused respiratory arrest in your
average person. Seems this young lady was unlucky enough to be a
member of the small percentage of people who are hypersensitive to
the drug.”

“Considering what she would have had to
endure otherwise,” I observed, “I’m not sure I would call her
unlucky in that respect.”

“Yeah,” he grunted, “I see what you
mean.”

“The mirror in the room was shattered, and
there was a Pentacle inscribed on the wall along with the words
‘All Is Forgiven,’” Ben added. “Not to mention that the door was
propped open. Sound familiar?”

“More than just a little,” I answered. “But
shouldn’t it have shown up earlier? I thought this was what things
like NCIC and VICAP were all about.”

“They are,” he affirmed. “Clerical error. The
case was never entered into the database.”

“Lovely… Well, did they turn up any leads?” I
queried. “Fingerprints? Anything?”

“No prints,” Deckert answered. “According to
their forensics lab, the size and shape of the incisions were
consistent with those of a scalpel or a similar cutting
implement.”

“There’s a medical school at
the
University of
Washington
,” I voiced. “A friend of mine
attended it. That would tie in with the curare and the theory about
the killer having some kind of medical background as well. When did
this happen?”

“A little less than a year ago,” Ben answered
this time. “And nothin’ else came up on the NCIC database, so to
our knowledge, he hasn’t killed anywhere besides here and
Seattle.”

The timer on the microwave beeped, so I
stepped over to pull out the tray of lasagna. I moved through the
task of dishing it onto plates automatically, still pondering
everything that had been said.

“So our killer moved from
Seattle to Saint Louis sometime within the last year,” I ventured,
“and might have been a medical student at the
University of Washington
.”

“That’s how it looks,” Deckert acknowledged.
“The Seattle PD is compiling a list of the med students they
interviewed right now.”

“How soon do you think you’ll hear
something?” I placed steaming plates before the two men and
absently offered them silverware.

“Hopefully sometime this afternoon,” Ben
answered, cutting into the lasagna with his fork. “They’re as
anxious to find this asshole as we are.”

“Yeah,” Deckert added. “As if it wasn’t
enough that this shithead maimed and killed this girl, it turns out
she was the daughter of some big cheese out there. The family
posted some obnoxious amount as a reward.” He glanced up from his
plate and noticed me leaning against the counter lost in thought.
“So are you gonna eat or what?”

For all intents and purposes, I had switched
to automatic pilot when the two of them began filling me in on the
latest news, and the fact that I was hungry was all but forgotten.
Before I could answer, the dogs began yelping loudly, raising their
general, happy, canine ruckus at the back gate. A moment later, the
reason became obvious when we heard the front door open, followed
by Felicity noisily entering.

“Ben, your van is in my parking spot,” her
voice came from the other room.

I turned to Detective Deckert. “I guess I’ll
get that chance after I heat some up for her.” I jerked my thumb in
the direction of the living room and then waved my index finger at
the both of them. “I’ll let you two get her caught up with what’s
been going on.”

S
o
what’s with this theory about the next victim being a child?”
Felicity was mechanically sorting film canisters. “I mean, is there
something that can be done?”

While she was eating, Ben and Deckert had
brought her up to date on the days events, from the latest murder
to the discovery of the connection with Seattle. We had now moved
to the dining room table where she could do some work while we
talked.

“It took some doin’ since we don’t have any
hard evidence,” Ben answered, “but I managed to convince the chief
of the possibility of a child abduction. We’ve got coppers
stationed at all of the area schools, but the truth is, we really
don’t know what we’re lookin’ for. This asshole hasn’t established
any kind of pattern or anything.

“And what with school just starting in some
districts, the effort has been hard to coordinate.”

“Not to mention that it’s quite a bit of
ground to cover,” Deckert added. “He could try to grab a kid
outside of the metro area for all we know.”

“What about the police in those areas?” she
posed. “Can’t they help out?”

“They are,” Deckert explained, “but you’re
talking about some real small departments. They can only spread
themselves so thin, and like Ben said, he hasn’t exactly been
sticking to a particular stereotype...and now we’re guessing that
he’ll go after a kid...”

I had been listening quietly, pondering the
facts as they were reiterated for my wife’s benefit and trying each
of them out on the mental jigsaw puzzle I had created. Each of my
nightmares provided another piece, and I felt that my recent
revelations had begun putting them together. The border was
completed, I was certain of that, and something told me that I had
most of the pieces necessary to fill in the center but for some
reason, still lacked the dexterity to do it.

I was troubled as much as the rest of them by
the paradox the killer had created. It was obvious that he was
practicing, preparing himself for the rite of invocation I believed
he intended to perform. With each victim, he had grown
progressively more intense, displaying increasingly greater skill
at his grotesque art. Each of his steps seemed carefully planned
out, but at the same time, the selection of his victims appeared
random.

Ariel Tanner, Karen Barnes, Ellen Gray, and
now Darla Radcliffe. Other than the fact that three of them knew
R.J., they had little in common. There was nothing to indicate that
they knew one another. The fact that R.J. was still in custody at
the time of the fourth murder tended to rule him out as a suspect
and in my mind, as the common thread I was searching for. The women
lived in different parts of the city and county. They had different
professions, different hair colors, different eye colors, sizes,
weights, shapes, birth dates, this, that, and the other thing. They
appeared to have nothing more in common than being adult,
mid-to-late twenties, and female. Now I believed that the killer’s
next victim would be a child, so even that pattern, minute as it
was, instantly began to unravel.

“Rowan?”

I plunged back toward reality at the sound of
Felicity’s voice sharply prodding me. “Wha...What?”

“You were starin’ off into
space for a minute there,” Ben interjected. “Somethin’ we should
know? You weren’t goin’ all
Twilight
Zone
on us were you?”

“No. Nothing like that,” I answered, still
dragging myself out of my introspective trance. “I was just
thinking about the victims. There’s got to be some kind of
connection that we’re missing. He had to pick them for a reason.
There has to be a common thread.”

“I’ll buy that, but I got no idea what it
is,” he returned. “We talked to friends, relatives, and neighbors
of all four of ‘em. We’ve been over the crime scenes dozens of
times. Personal effects as well. Nothin’.”

“Why does it matter?” Deckert interjected.
“If you think he’s gonna go for a kid this time then all bets are
off.”

“I don’t know.” I stood up and began slowly
pacing about the room. “Maybe it would give us a better idea of who
we’re looking for. Maybe it’s something the four of them could have
in common with a child...I don’t know.” I began to mutter, “It just
bothers me...”

“You’re thinking that if we knew the
connection,” Felicity ventured, “that we might have a better idea
of the type of child he might abduct?”