The Law Of Three: A Rowan Gant Investigation (10 page)

“Aye, Rowan, we’re talking about Benjamin
Storm,” she outlined. “He’d never abandon you like that. The man is
more loyal than a Saint Bernard.”

“You’re right,” I acknowledged. “I think he
still could have found a way around it though. But this, I don’t
know…”

“Aye, maybe so, but I’m betting it’s moot
now,” she said.

She tilted her head back and closed her eyes,
then let out a heavy sigh. Her face was still flushed from her
recent bout of weeping as well as the attempt to contain it. Her
composure had returned for now, but the emotional burden remained,
for both of us.

“Probably,” I muttered, then finally asked,
“So, what about you and me?”

“Aye, what about us?”

“I had the impression that I pushed a button
or two earlier.”

“You did,” she acknowledged.

“So?”

“So, that was before the bitch in the other
room got under MY skin.”

“Not wanting to choose between being the pot
or the kettle?”

“Aye, let’s just say I gained a thorough
understanding of how you felt.”

We fell quiet as the argument down the hall
continued for another round. I rolled my arm up and pushed back the
sleeve on my coat to glance at my watch. I frowned when I saw that
the bezel was shattered, and what I could make out of the display
was mostly a darkened splotch where the liquid crystal had cracked
and burned out. I looked at it for a moment, puzzled by what I saw.
I quietly shifted in my seat, slightly twisting left then right as
I mentally reenacted being forcibly shoved into the van.

Without a doubt, I remembered my left
shoulder striking the doorframe, but I couldn’t recall anything
happening on the right. Still, it was the only explanation, and
cliché as it was, it had all happened too fast for me to remember
for sure.

“What are you doing, then?” Felicity
asked.

She must have sensed my gyrations in the seat
because her eyes were still closed.

“Trying to figure out how I broke my
watch.”

“Aye, it probably happened when Ben tossed
you into the van.”

“That’s kind of what I was figuring.”

She lifted her arm and held it out to me. I
reached up, pushed back the cuff of her leather jacket and looked
at the timepiece that encircled her delicate wrist. I found myself
stopping to think about the jumble of lines on the display before
remembering to mentally flip them over. The lack of sleep was
catching up with me.

“Remember to subtract fifteen,” Felicity
reminded me about her penchant for setting her watch fast,
ostensibly so she would always be on time.

I didn’t bother to point out to her that she
was still habitually late.

The calculation worked out to the time being
8:15 a.m. It had been a little over four hours since we’d first
arrived at the crime scene with Ben, but it already felt like it
had been a week. Unfortunately, I knew from experience that it was
only going to get worse. One of these days I hoped to be able to
experience the other side of that coin—the one where it actually
got better after the getting worse part.

I lowered my wife’s arm back to her lap and
turned my head to look out the entrance foyer. The sun had
officially peeked over the horizon something around an hour ago,
give or take a few minutes. Still, the cloud cover that layered
itself over the city wasn’t about to relinquish its hold. The muted
light that managed to filter downward took on the grey pallor of
dusk and oozed in to bring illumination, though not necessarily to
brighten the landscape.

I heard my wife rummaging in her pockets as I
stared through the windows at a wintry morning in Saint Louis. From
where we sat, I could see the upper edge of the city hall parking
lot on the opposite side of Clark Avenue. Cars were already filling
the spaces as people went about their routines, oblivious to the
horror going on behind these walls. To them, Randy Harper was no
more than an unnamed victim of an atrocity that had been reduced to
a ten-second breaking-story byte—and even that was only for those
who actually caught the morning news.

A part of me wanted to be angered by their
apathy, but for once this morning logic prevailed, and I knew they
couldn’t be blamed. Still, it hurt. It was a throwback to the whole
“misery loves company” thing. I was in mourning. In my heart, I
wanted everyone else to mourn as well.

What pained me even more, however, was the
fact that I wasn’t entirely certain that Lieutenant Albright was
far off the mark in hanging me for the crime. Perhaps I was an
unwitting accomplice in some bizarre, convoluted sense of the
concept. People were dying; friends were dying. Moreover, for all
the horrors I saw in my mind, I was powerless to stop it. In fact,
I seemed to be at the center of it.

Felicity was still shuffling around behind
me, and I finally heard her soft voice filled with deep concern,
“Nancy?”

Silence filled the lobby. Even the argument
between Ben and Lieutenant Albright had fallen to a level easily
muffled by the walls. I could faintly hear the frantic sobbing
coming from the earpiece of the cell phone my wife had to her
ear.

“I know, I know…” Felicity murmured. “Is
someone with you? Good.”

I closed my eyes and slowly massaged my
temples while listening to the local side of the conversation. My
wife was possessed of an intense maternal instinct. Ever since we
had adopted this young Coven, they had become like foster children
to us. In many ways, that feeling ran even deeper for her.

“Aye, I know dear, I know. Put Cally on,
then,” she continued. “Cally? How are you making it? Is Nancy okay?
Aye… Aye… I know. Have you spoken to anyone else? Aye, that’s good.
Gather them. She needs her friends with her. Good. Yes. That’s
where we are now…”

I looked back over my shoulder to see my wife
nodding gently as she spoke, sadness woven through her pretty face
and eyes glistening with tears that she was barely holding
back.

“No honey, don’t bring her down here,” she
instructed, as the gentle nod of her head became a semi-vigorous
shake. “Not yet. She doesn’t need to see him like this.”

I reached over, covered Felicity’s free hand
with my own, and gave it a reassuring squeeze. I didn’t envy her at
the moment, but I respected her devotion to the Coven and loved her
even more for it.

“Aye, make her a strong cup of chamomile and
willow bark tea. Aye, keep her grounded, and just listen to her… I
know… I know… Yes, Rowan and I will be there as soon as we can… I
don’t know, dear, I don’t know… Aye, it’s not good, then… Aye,
we’ll see you soon, I promise… Remember—just listen to her… Aye,
goodbye.”

The phone issued a forlorn peep when she
disconnected, and she sat there mutely staring at the device in her
hand. A tear broke loose from the well in the corner of her eye and
began rolling slowly down her cheek.

“How is she?” I asked.

“Hysterical,” she answered softly. “Cally is
with her.”

“Yeah, I kind of picked that up. What about
everyone else?”

“On the way. They’d been contacted by the
police already, just like Ben said.”

“Good.” I nodded.

“How did…”

She anticipated the question. “Nancy was out
of town on a business trip. Training seminar or something like
that, then.”

“Okay.”

“This is wrong, Rowan,” Felicity made a
quiet, almost emotionless declaration. “It is just wrong.”

Silence rushed back into the room, filling
the void as the words faded out. I squeezed her hand once again and
tried to think of something to say but failed. I knew exactly how
she felt, but we had fallen out of sync.

At this particular moment, I was shifting out
of the early stages of grief and rushing headlong into anger.

“Aye, where are we going?” Felicity asked
from the back seat of the van.

Ben hadn’t rubbed more than two words
together in the same breath since he’d come through the door and
into the lobby of the medical examiner’s office. The best we’d
gotten was a short “come on” coupled with a jerk of his head as he
continued past us and out the front doors. He already had the Chevy
started and was waiting impatiently for us by the time we caught up
with him.

Now, we were heading through the city, him
brooding behind the wheel and paying even less attention to traffic
signals than usual. The turns he was taking formed no discernable
pattern and fell in place with no particular destination I could
imagine. The only thing that was obvious was that we were heading
away from the M.E.’s office at an accelerated clip. It seemed, very
simply, that he couldn’t widen the gap between himself and
Lieutenant Albright fast enough.

“Dunno,” he muttered in return, keeping with
his current trend toward one-word responses and grunts.

Thus far, I’d kept my mouth shut, but I was
about to lose what little control over my tongue I had left.
Knowing Ben as well as I did, I was fully aware that it was best to
just leave him alone when he was like this, and he would open up
when he was ready. Right now, I didn’t consider that an option. I
had more than enough on my mind without piling this on top of it. I
felt responsible for whatever had gone on behind those doors, and
selfish or not, I didn’t have time for that guilt to be getting in
my way. I was going to clear this slate, and I was going to do it
right now.

“All right, out with it,” I demanded.

My mood was darkening at a thoroughbred’s
pace; I had already bypassed coldly succinct and moved full bore
into rudely abrupt.

“With what?” he shot back without looking in
my direction.

“Whatever you’ve got going on in your head,”
I returned. “I know you probably want to yell at me, so just do it
and get it over with.”

“What the hell are you talkin’ about?” he
asked.

“That whole deal back there with Albright,” I
pressed. “It’s not like we couldn’t hear the explosion.”

“If you were listenin’ in then what the hell
are you goin’ on about?”

“Aye,” Felicity interjected, using her voice
to drive a wedge between us before the situation could become any
more volatile. “We weren’t exactly eavesdropping you know. We could
hear voices but couldn’t make much out, then.”

My wife had placed her hand on my shoulder,
and I could feel her acting as a lightning rod, forcing me to
discharge at least some of my welling anger.

“Yeah,” he huffed as he released the wheel
with one hand and smoothed back his hair before allowing his
fingers to come to rest on the back of his neck. “Yeah, I know. Got
kinda loud, didn’t it?”

“Aye, just a bit,” she agreed.

“So fill us in,” I asked when at least a
modicum of calm had crept into my voice.

“Well, I’m not workin’ this case anymore if
that’s what you’re askin’.”

“But, do you still have a job?”

“Yeah, for now,” he answered. “But I dunno
how long that’ll last.”

“So she didn’t suspend you?” I asked.

“Nahh,” he shook his head as he spoke. “She
can’t. Not directly anyway. But, she can pull strings, and you can
bet she’s makin’ those calls right now. The other thing she CAN do
is kick me off the Major Case Squad, and she did that before I even
opened my mouth.”

“I’m sorry, Ben,” I sighed. “Man, I’m so
sorry.”

“What’re you apologizin’ for?”

“For doing this to you, of course.” I shook
my head. “This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t been defending
me.”

“Is that why you think I wanna yell at ya’?
Fuck that.” He screwed up his face and gave me a dismissive wave.
“This was just the sprinkles on the icing for her. Albright has had
it in for me from the git-go.”

“But…”

“But nothin’, white man.” He cut me off. “You
aren’t responsible for this, so give it up.”

“Aye, what if she gets you suspended, then?”
Felicity asked.

“Then I get a vacation,” he offered with a
shrug.

“Are you sure about that?” I asked.

“At this stage of the game, yeah,” he nodded.
“I haven’t done anything to get myself shit-canned yet.
Reprimanded, yeah. Transferred, maybe. But it’s nothin’ I can’t
live with.”

“Then why did you come out of there so pissed
off?” I questioned.

“Hey, Kemosabe, I was in there with Bible
Barb. I seem to recall you losin’ it yourself a little earlier. You
wanna re-think that question and ask it again?”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

“Besides,” he ventured. “She said some shit
about you that really got to me.”

“Like what?”

“No way, man. I’m not gonna repeat it.” He
shook his head. “But let’s just say the bitch is lucky I won’t hit
a woman.”

* * * * *

“I’m so glad that you’re here,” Cally told
Felicity as she hugged her tight. “Nancy’s upstairs in the bedroom.
She just fell asleep a few minutes ago.”

“Aye, dear.” My wife returned the embrace and
spoke in a comforting tone. “That’s good then.”

We were standing in the entryway to Randy and
Nancy Harper’s two-story home on Arkansas, just a block off Grand
Avenue in the city. We’d been here several times before when they’d
hosted circles for the Coven. Those happier recollections now
seemed to dull against the painful sharpness of this new memory in
the making.

I glanced around and noticed a small, wheeled
suitcase, which was parked at an angle against the wall,
pull-handle still extended. It had obviously been forgotten in
light of the current circumstances. In the opposite corner, a
bentwood coat tree stood at attention beneath a crush of winter
outer garments. Next to the stairs, a small, antique telephone
table sat with a pile of mail strewn across its top. A digital
answering machine occupied one corner, its green power indicator
glowing in the muted light of the hallway. I absently wondered why,
at times like this, the normally insignificant things around us
would stand out in stark contrast to everything else. Without
warning and for no apparent reason, they would become illuminated
details in a darkened tableau. It was more than just curious to me.
In a sense, it was almost disturbing.