Love Is The Bond: A Rowan Gant Investigation (7 page)

“Got it,” I finally said.

“All right then,” she replied absently as she
inspected the top display on the camera then deftly ejected the
flash memory card and handed it to me. Once she had popped in a
fresh card, she looked up and handed me the small protective case.
“That’s it for the main room. Let’s move to the back.”

Thus far, the process had been nothing more
than routine. Admittedly, since this was a homicide crime scene,
and with knowing that the victim’s body was awaiting us in the next
room, it lent a surreal quality to each shot taken; but even that
didn’t prevent it from approaching abject boredom.

Still, I had to say I was more than just
slightly impressed by my wife. With every passing moment, she was
demonstrating just exactly how much of a pro she truly was. Even
though she had never said exactly how well she did in the courses
she had taken, I was willing to bet she had aced them. Watching her
now, if I didn’t know better, I would have sworn she’d been doing
this job for years.

“Rowan,” she asked, looking up at me. “Are
you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I returned with a shrug.
“Why?”

“You’re kind of quiet.”

“Just tired,” I replied, not wanting to
embarrass her here with a gush of praise. I’d wait until we were
alone for that.

“No headaches then?”

Her query suddenly made more sense. “No.
Nothing to worry about,” I answered then added as an afterthought,
“Yet.”

“Aye, yet. That’s what I’m afraid of,” she
replied with a sigh then after a brief pause, cocked her head
toward the back of the room. “Come on, then.”

“I’m gonna go ahead and get a coupl’a guys
started on this stuff out here,” Murv told us.

“Sounds good,” Felicity replied. “We’ll be
another half hour, maybe forty-five minutes, back here.”

“That’ll work,” he answered. “Take all the
time ya’ need. By the way, rumor has it the Feebs are on their
way.”

“That was quick,” I offered.

“Storm wanted ‘em in the loop,” he replied to
my unasked question. “Federal judge, all that jazz.”

As crime scenes go, Ben’s assessment had been
for the most part correct, up to and including the fact that
Felicity and I had both seen much worse. For instance, when you’ve
viewed the remains of one of your friends who’d been eviscerated by
a madman, you’ve pretty much pushed the envelope.

Still, even though the horrific visions of
that, and other things I’d witnessed, would never be completely
erased from my mind, they had at least dulled with time.
Unfortunately, that familiarity had also served to desensitize me
to the offensive sights, or so I had come to believe. The simple
fact was that there were even times when I found myself wondering
about my own capacity for compassion after everything I’d seen.

On this particular morning, however, upon
reaching the doorway of the bathroom, it became painfully apparent
that not stopping and grabbing a quick bite for breakfast had been
a wise choice.

As we had worked the main portion of the
room, moving systematically around the clock face just as Felicity
had prescribed, we had made sure to include the dressing area just
outside the bathroom door. But my wife had been doing the actual
shooting, not me. Since the area was too small for the both of us,
I had remained back and out of the way in order to allow her ample
space to work. Because of that, I was only just now witnessing the
abomination that had been patiently waiting.

Maybe it was the fact that it had been two
years since I’d been directly involved with a homicide
investigation. Maybe I had finally managed to simply forget.
Whatever the reason, I had been forced back across the line between
callousness and humanity. I had been living in a calm, safe world
long enough now that in a single instant I discovered I wasn’t
nearly as jaded as I had once feared.

Unfortunately, that realization was forced
completely out of my mind by the acrid tang of bile on the back of
my tongue. I heard Felicity call out a description followed by a
focal length and light source just as she’d been doing earlier.
However, I was completely unable to write it down, especially not
now that I had my head hanging almost between my knees, and I was
struggling to control my breathing. The bright stab of the strobe
flash flickered red through my tightly shut eyelids, and I heard my
wife saying something again, but I was still unable to respond.

In some small way, I suppose I should have
found it comforting that the reason for my preoccupation was the
fact that, at the moment, I was desperately trying not to
involuntarily expel my morning coffee.

My mouth was still somewhat watering from the
nausea, but the major wave seemed to have passed for the most part;
at least I hoped that it had. I was still keeping my eyes closed,
but the image I’d seen was freshly imprinted on my retinas, so I
suppose it didn’t really matter. I was going to see it one way or
the other, and I suspected that my rampant imagination was probably
coloring my memory of the sight to appear much worse than it
actually was.

“Rowan?” Felicity’s worried voice filtered
into my ears, and I felt her hand softly pressing against my
back.

“I’m okay,” I mumbled after puffing out a
heavy breath.

“Keep yourself grounded,” she told me, her
tone wavering as I heard the note of concern begin to rise.

“No,” I slowly shook my head. “That’s not it.
Don’t worry.”

“What is it then?”

I swallowed hard and opened my eyes, then as
I slowly brought myself upright, I pointed past her through the
doorway. “Just a little queasy, that’s all.”

The first thing that had caught my eyes was
the very point that now had me transfixed. A large splotch of blood
intermixed with what was presumably brain tissue and bone fragments
formed a hideous blot against the dingy tile of the bathroom’s back
wall. My suspicion, in this case, had been dead wrong. My
imagination hadn’t even begun to do justice to the horror that now
fell directly in my line of sight. It was all I could do to keep
from staring at it, and truth be told, even that wasn’t enough. I
was losing the battle with each passing second.

I tried to calm my churning stomach by
forcing myself to detach from the reality of what I was seeing and
view it from an analytical standpoint. It wasn’t easy, considering
the circumstances, but after a moment I managed to invoke the thin
delusion out of self-defense. It was no panacea, but it helped,
even if only a little.

Judging from the density of the smear along
with the shattered tile, the point of the matter’s impact appeared
to have been just over halfway up the wall. From there, it
continued to spread heavily along its vertical path. Above that,
the splatter arced outward in a wide pattern, eventually becoming a
light spray of rusty red upon the dull surface. Below the broken
squares, blood and bits of flesh trickled downward, streaking the
ceramic and eventually pooling on the bathtub ledge. I finally
allowed my gaze to roam as I followed the drizzles of crimson
downward, inevitably coming to rest on the victim himself.

Wentworth, or what was left of him, was a
gross adornment to the already dirty floor. He wasn’t what you
would call a small man, but he also wasn’t exactly enormous either.
Still, his bulk went a long way toward filling the tile floor of
the small bathroom. He was visibly overweight by a good margin and
certainly out of shape, both facts that couldn’t be missed because
he was completely nude.

Based on his current position, he probably
would have been facing outward through the doorway were it not for
the fact that he was pitched back against the side of the bathtub.
He appeared to have been kneeling at the time of death, and that
was pretty much his position now, albeit canted backward and
slightly to one side where gravity had forced him to slip. He
hadn’t gone far, however, as his shift to the right had been halted
early on by the unaccommodating narrowness of the gap between the
toilet and the tub.

What remained of his head was lolled to the
side, face slack and jaw hanging open with bright blood dribbling
across his chin, dripping down onto his chest. A wide strip of
silver-grey duct tape was positioned firmly over his eyes. The left
side of his skull, from just above and behind the ear on up to the
crown, was all but completely missing and of course, now formed the
sickening mosaic behind him. It didn’t take much to figure out that
someone had shoved a gun into his mouth and then pulled the
trigger.

Even though his body had gone limp in death,
his shoulders appeared strained, and upon second glance one noticed
that his arms disappeared behind his back as if bound there.

In front of him was a multi-hued puddle,
ranging from yellow to an orangish-pink. Amid it all was a stream
of something whitish and viscous looking. The bulk of the liquid
was obviously a mixture of blood and what was probably his own
urine. I wasn’t certain, but I suspected the white substance was
seminal fluid.

There was no real way to tell for a fact if
the urine had been the product of fear or simply muscles relaxing
once his life had fled. My guess, however, was that it had occurred
after death. I couldn’t prove it, of course, but I felt no fear in
the room, only the buzz of heightened passion. Even now, standing
in this doorway and looking at this macabre scene, sex came to the
forefront. Those physically intangible facts weren’t helping me
deal with this at all. When you added the suspected ejaculate to
the list of oddities, I was even more unnerved.

Up to this point the scene looked much like I
had voiced earlier—a contract killing. It had all the hallmarks of
an execution style murder. However, as I took in the raw tableau, I
continued to have even more of the “not quite right” sensation
tickling my brain—as had Ben. I knew that what I was feeling didn’t
fit the scene, and I couldn’t yet put my finger on it, but
something I was seeing, other than just the semen, didn’t belong
either.

“Are you going to be okay?” Felicity asked
me.

I realized that I was still staring past her
and gave my head a quick shake then focused on her face. “Yeah…
Yeah, I’ll be all right. What about you?”

“Aye, me?” she asked. “I’m fine.”

“This doesn’t affect you?”

“Yes… and no,” she replied almost
apologetically. “I’m afraid perhaps I’m a bit indifferent right
now. I’ve seen this sort of thing quite a bit because of the
classes. And… much more recently than you as well.”

“Yeah. Probably so.” I gave her a nod then
fell silent again, shifting my gaze to stare back over her shoulder
at Wentworth’s corpse.

“Do you want to go outside then?” she asked
after a moment. “It’s okay. I can finish up here.”

I shook my head.

“What is it?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve got that look on your face, Row,” she
pressed. “What are you thinking?”

“What Ben said…” I answered as I returned my
eyes to meet hers. “You know, about something not being right. Do
you get that too?”

She gave a quick nod in the affirmative. “But
I’m not sure what.”

“Well, if the white stuff is what I think it
is…” I offered.

“Aye, I noticed that… And… and…” She allowed
her voice to trail off.

“And what?”

“Gods, Row,” she almost whispered, her tone
disturbed. She looked away for a second then back to me with a
tortured embarrassment in her eyes. When she started speaking
again, she kept her voice low but stammered through the sentences
as if trying to confess a mortal sin. “There’s something about this
room… Ever since we came through the door… It sounds crazy… No,
more like sick… No, it IS sick… But if… If we were alone right now,
I’d… Right now, I want to…”

I gave her a knowing nod, and when I spoke I
kept my voice down as well. “I know, hon, I can feel it too.
There’s a residual sexual energy in this room that’s beyond…” I
stammered myself, searching for the right words. “…Intense, is the
only way I can explain it.”

She nodded back in agreement. “And it feels
far too singular and recent, then. Not like something built up over
time.”

“Yeah, I got that too,” I returned. “And did
you notice there’s no fear?”

She gave me a quick nod. “Aye. I did. And, I
really don’t know what to make of that.”

“Me either,” I huffed. “But something is
definitely odd here.”

“Is everything okay back there?” Murv called
out from the front of the room.

“Fine,” I replied, looking up with a quick
wave. “Just took me by surprise is all.”

“Yeah,” he replied, continuing about his
business with the other tech he’d brought in. “It’s a friggin’
mess.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Felicity asked me
when I turned back to her. “Are you certain you don’t want to wait
outside?”

“No, I’ll be okay. Really. It was just the
initial shock.”

“If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure. Let’s get this done.”

“All right then.” She gave me a nod. “There
is a set of photoevidence scales in the bag. I’m going to need
them.”

* * * * *

Even though I was more than ready to put
distance between this scene and me, my stomach had calmed
considerably. I knew there was a time when it would have taken much
longer for me to get over something like this, but my own learned
indifference was starting to return, much to my disappointment.

We had already shot the wide angle and
mid-range photos of the scene proper then moved immediately into
the close-ups. We ran into a problem positioning a photoevidence
scale near the exit wound, so since I had the free hands, I had
been charged with the duty of reaching in and carefully holding it
in place. Felicity didn’t really have it any easier as she was
forced to contort herself into a position where she could shoot the
picture and not disturb any potential evidence. Still, it wasn’t
the most pleasant task I’d ever performed.