Never Burn A Witch: A Rowan Gant Investigation (25 page)

“...In fact,” I finally submitted, “I think
he could be upset by what he’s done here. I think he may even be
feeling very intense remorse, and he’s trying to come to terms with
what he has done.”

“How do ya’ figure that?” Ben asked.

“The Bible verse,” I answered with a nod in
the direction of the wall. “Galatians chapter three, verse one. ‘O
foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey
the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been set forth,
crucified among you?’...

“I think the killer is trying to tell us that
this man was bewitched by his wife and her path, and for that he
had to die. Kind of a guilt by association thing.”

“You sure he didn’t just kill ‘im because he
was in the way?”

“In reality that’s probably exactly what
happened. But remember, this individual doesn’t kill just for
kicks. He has an agenda, and in some perverse way, he still
respects life—but only the life of the good and righteous as
defined by his beliefs. This is his way of justifying his actions
as much to himself as to us.”

“Man, I know it’s been awhile since I’ve been
ta’ church,” Ben declared. “But I sure as hell don’t remember the
Bible advocatin’ all the shit this asshole is doin’.”

“It doesn’t in a literal sense,” I
replied, “but it
is
written in
a way that leaves itself open to a wide range of interpretations.
The killer is picking and choosing passages and taking them out of
context in order to vindicate his actions. Notice they always
contain a key word—Witch, bewitched, wizard,
sorcerer...”

“This guy is just plain demented,” Mandalay
expressed.

“You’ll get no argument from me on that
account,” I told her. “But in this case, I doubt even he believes
the message he left behind. I think he might even be in some severe
emotional pain over this. That’s what I’m feeling anyway, for
whatever it’s worth.”

“Yeah, we should all feel real sorry for the
fuckhead,” Ben spat.

“On the one hand, this could give us some
breathing room,” Agent Mandalay ventured. “If he really is broken
up over this or whatever, then maybe he will shut down for a while.
Decompress. Stop killing.”

“Uh-huh,” Ben grunted in agreement. “I’m all
for anything that’ll stop the body count from risin’, but it’s
gonna make the prick a helluva lot harder to find if he just
withdraws.”

“He will withdraw for a while, I’m sure. How
long is anyone’s guess,” I offered. “The feelings of sadness I’m
picking up are far too intense for him to keep going without first
coming to terms with this. But something tells me that he’ll cycle
through it. He’s not finished with what he set out to do.”

“Of course not,” Ben expressed. “We could
never be that friggin’ lucky.”

“Another thing,” I said. “I don’t think that
killing the husband was his only mistake. Something just doesn’t
click with this scene.”

“Whaddaya mean?”

“Take a look around. No books on WitchCraft
or Wicca in the house. No pentacles or other symbols. No trappings
of the religion anywhere in here that I’ve seen.”

“So maybe she kept all her stuff hidden or
somethin’.” Ben shrugged. “Like ta’ keep friends or relatives from
knowin’. What’s it I’ve heard ya’ say… ‘Hidin’ in the broom closet’
or somethin’ like that.”

“Yeah, that’s the colloquialism. And, maybe
she was, but I don’t think so. Not this time. There’s something
else too... Like I said before, he passes judgment on his victims.
It’s very formal and strict. Even more so than pronouncing sentence
in a court of law. It’s important to him that the accused be fully
aware that WitchCraft is considered an unforgivable crime.”

“Yeah, so? I’m not sure I’m followin’
you.”

“Do you get the feeling that he didn’t do
that this time or something, Rowan?” Mandalay asked.

“Oh no, he pronounced sentence all right.” I
shook my head. “But what I picked up when they were recovering her
body was that she didn’t understand. The fact that he accused her
of being a Witch made absolutely no sense to her. It was an
unfathomable concept in her mind.”

“So that’s why you don’t think she was a
Witch?” she pressed.

“That’s why I’m almost positive she
wasn’t.”

“Then she doesn’t fit the victimology any
more than the husband,” Ben expressed. “What would have prompted
‘im to pick her?”

“I wish I knew.”

Further musings were cut short, and our small
cluster grew larger by one when Carl Deckert trundled through the
doorway from the living room. He had been out leading the
door-to-door interviews and from the look of his face had only just
now come inside.

“Okay, here’s the run down,” his voice issued
as he sidled up next to us. “We got nuthin’ in the way of
witnesses.”

Out of habit he removed his fedora and
smoothed back his disheveled, greying hair then perched the hat
back atop his crown and tilted the brim upward out of his face. His
fleshy cheeks were flushed bright red, and he was visibly winded. A
cloud of coldness still seeped from the fabric of his coat to
noticeably chill the air around us.

“Looks like almost everyone was at a meeting
of the condo association when all this apparently went down,”
Deckert explained. “Nobody saw or heard a thing till the security
guard found the pool gate open.”

“Nobody normal ever goes ta’ those things,”
Ben stated incredulously. “What’s up with that?”

“I always go to mine,” Constance confessed.
“Second Friday of every month.”

Ben stared back at her briefly, “No offense,
Mandalay, but you might want ta’ get a life.”

“Well, I
am
on the board,” she admitted.

“Correction,” Ben chided.
“Change
might want
to
desperately need
.”

“Yeah, well how’s this for a kick in the
teeth,” Deckert remarked dismally before she could retort. “They
were listenin’ to one of the local department’s finest talk about
settin’ up a neighborhood watch program to supplement the hired
security.”

* * * * *

“How’s that arm?” Ben asked me as he guided
the van onto the exit ramp from Highway 40.

“Sore,” I answered flatly. “Still throbbing a
little, but it’ll be okay.”

We were both exhausted, and there was no
doubt in my mind that we were operating on automatic pilot. I
wasn’t entirely sure what was keeping my friend going at this
point. I knew for a fact that for every ounce of energy I had lost
through the painful physical manifestations of my unknown ethereal
guide, Ben had expended more than double that amount in worrying
about me. Personally, I felt like I could sleep for a week, and my
mind was all but completely numb. How he was even managing to stay
awake was beyond me.

“What about the pool water thing and all
that? Are ya’ sure you don’t wanna see a doctor about it?” he
pressed.

“I already did, Ben. Doctor Sanders,
remember?”

“Yeah, I know, but...”

“I’ll be fine,” I interjected with a weary
yawn. “Stop being such a mother hen.”

“Okay. Fine. I’m too goddammed beat to argue
with ya’ about it anyway.”

“Good.”

He cautiously turned through the blinking
yellow traffic signal at the intersection and continued down the
salt-and-cinder-dulled asphalt strip. Streetlights cast yellowish
glows at evenly spaced intervals along the roadway, forming harsh
puddles of sickly light separated by thick, blue-black shadows.

“So you gonna be able to make it in the
mornin’?” Ben finally asked, switching the subject to the hastily
scheduled emergency meeting of the Major Case Squad, which was in
reality only a few painfully short hours away.

“Yeah, I’ll be there.”

“Shit, I oughta just go on in now,” he
lamented. “I’m barely gonna have enough time for my head ta’ hit
the pillow as it is.”

“You should really go home,” I told him. “You
need the rest as much as I do. Besides, I’m sure Allison would
appreciate it.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “She sure as hell didn’t
know what she was gettin’ into when she became a cop’s wife.”

“Have you heard her complain about it?” I
asked.

“Nope. Not a word,” he replied. “She’s really
great about that.”

“Then I would expect she probably knew what
she was getting herself into. Give her a little credit, Tonto.”

“Yup. You’re right. I s’pose maybe she
did.”

By now he had turned the Chevy down my street
and was slowly pushing it the last few blocks toward my home.
Leafless tree branches bowing under the weight of ice and snow hung
low over the roadway, forming an eerie canopy. I was already
starting to imagine that I could feel my bed.

“Oh, by the way,” Ben started as a thought
was apparently remembered and brought to the forefront, “the Bible
they found next ta’ the pool house was book-marked just like the
other two. The same passage as from the Sheryl Keeven murder was
highlighted. First Samuel, 15:23. Whaddaya make of that?”

“Off the top of my head, I don’t know,” I
answered as he hooked the vehicle into my driveway and rolled it to
a halt. “I’m sure he assigns a particular significance to each
passage and applies it to the victim based on that.”

“Yeah. That’s what we were thinkin’ too.”

“We still need to figure out the why’s and
wherefore’s behind how he picked his latest victim to start
with.”

“I hear ya’... That’s kinda why I asked... So
that passage doesn’t mean anything in particular to ya’?”

“Not in that respect, no. It fit Sheryl
Keeven but not Christine Webster, so I don’t know what to say about
the aberration. Sorry.”

“That’s okay white man, just thought I’d
check.”

“I’ll sleep on it, and maybe it’ll make more
sense in the morning,” I offered.

“Yeah, go get some rest,” he told me as I
unlatched my seat belt then popped the passenger door open.

As I climbed out I looked up at the thick
comforter of grey clouds hanging low in the sky and could feel the
utter stillness around me. The fatigue coursing through my body was
so viscid that I felt enveloped in a total fog.

I just looked back to my friend and said,
“Gonna snow.”

* * * * *

I could hear the dull, muffled bong of our
antique clock announcing the hour as I twisted my key in the lock
and pushed the front door open. The final measure of the tone
sharpened for an instant then it faded away to silence on the cold
breath of the night. I quietly pressed the door shut and latched
the deadbolt before proceeding to unzip my coat. A tired glance at
my watch told me the evaporated peal had been the last note in a
trinity of chimes. It was three a.m.

“Canya’ tell me why you’re shuttin’ me out of
this then?” Felicity’s somewhat slurred voice, brimming with a
heavy Irish brogue, pierced the darkness as I turned.

I was startled enough to involuntarily flinch
at the question and almost drop my keys. I had fully expected to be
subject to the wet-nosed greetings and cursory inspections
customarily doled out by the dogs. The throaty trilling and
prancing rub of one or more of our three cats dancing around my
ankles wouldn’t even have surprised me.

What I hadn’t been prepared for at all was my
wife curled lazily in a chair, camouflaged by a crocheted afghan of
dark, muted blues, still awake and palpably angry. My eyes were
fairly well adjusted to the dark, and I could just make out our
black cat, Dickens, huddled in her lap, soaking up the attention
her fingers were absently paying a spot just behind his ears.

From her slurred speech and the shape
on the marble end table that looked suspiciously like a bottle of
Bushmills
,
I had to assume she
was somewhat marinated. It was readily apparent that I had arrived
just in time for the umbraged portion of her emotional thrill ride.
From what I could make out of the tousled look of her auburn locks
combined with random sniffling, I suspected I had only recently
missed the segments consisting of mild panic and heartfelt
sobbing.

Felicity was never able to hide it from me
when she had been crying, no matter how much she sought to cover
the evidence with makeup or shadows. It was very obvious that she
had done her share of it tonight, but right now she was in no
condition to try concealing the fact even if she wanted to. I got
the impression however, that in this particular case, she
didn’t.

“Shutting you out of what?” I asked.

“Aye, you know essactly what I’m talking
about,” she parried then swilled down the remains of the whiskey
from a hi-ball glass in her dainty hand and set it aside with an
uncoordinated motion that attested to her impaired depth
perception. Fortunately, the crystal tumbler didn’t break, but the
loud clatter of its base against the marble end table sent Dickens
flying from her lap to scurry into the shadows. “Surely now, you
weren’t thinkin’ ya’woodn’t be missed at the party, then.”

“Of course I knew I would be missed... But
it’s not like I snuck out or anything. So just how much have you
had to drink?”

“Don’t chainch the zubject.” She mumbled the
command through an alcoholic stupor that was creeping up on her
much quicker than I think she realized. “You left wiffout me.”

“I didn’t exactly have much choice in
the matter, Felicity,” I answered her calmly as I finished
shrugging off my coat and tugged open the closet. “You had just
started dancing, two detectives were in the lobby of the hotel
waiting for me, and it was
your
family reunion. Just what did you expect me to
do?”

“Donchu unnerstan how worried I was?”
she demanded as she attempted to wrestle herself from the folds of
the afghan. Had the situation been different, her inebriated
bumbling would have been almost comical. As she fought to
disentangle the fabric, she continued to mutter, “I know what those
things you do to…to do…do…Oh,
cac
! They do you to you do…to…
Fek
! Oh, you know whad I mean... I feel them
too.”