Perfect Trust: A Rowan Gant Investigation (25 page)

As if on a sudden gust of wind, the twirl of
ethereal energy exploded outward, rushing through me, around me,
and past me, only to dissipate into nothingness.

The sound of a car whooshing past back up on
the blacktop instantly faded in and was followed by a repeat of the
shrill scream. After a measured beat, a third warbling scream
announced itself, now identifiable as the electronic peal of the
cell phone in my jacket pocket.

I allowed myself to breathe and thrust my
shaking hand into my pocket then withdrew the chirruping device and
stabbed the answer call button.

“Hello?”

“Rowan?” Ben Storm’s voice greeted me with a
quizzical tone.

“Yeah, Ben,” I answered, hoping the tremble
in my own voice wasn’t noticeable. “What’s up?”

“Ya’ sound like you’re outta breath, white
man,” the earpiece buzzed with his words.

“It’s a long story,” I answered, not sure
what exactly to say.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I told him then repeated,
“What’s up?”

“Well, I called the house and Felicity told
me you’d gone to see Helen today.”

“Yeah, she got me in this afternoon.”

“Uh-huh,” he grunted. “Well, I just talked to
‘er and she said you’d left ‘er office well over an hour ago.”

“Checking up on me?” I retorted, somewhat
perturbed.

The leaves crunched as I shuffled about then
knelt down to retrieve the flashlight.

“Actually, no,” he remarked, “but I’m gettin’
the feelin’ maybe I should be.”

I turned in place and located the distant
silhouette of my truck up on the shoulder. Aiming what little glow
was coming from the flashlight toward the ground at my feet, I
began working my way toward the vehicle.

My friend was correct. Somebody needed to be
checking up on me if I was going to make a habit of being this
reckless. Truth was, his unexpected call had probably saved my
sanity, if not my life.

I softened a bit at the realization. “Yeah.
You probably should.”

The rustle of the fallen foliage was loud,
and I was certain he could hear it.

“Row, where the hell are you? Ya’ sound like
you’re rakin’ leaves or somethin’.”

“Somewhere I shouldn’t be,” I told him,
electing to not try hiding the truth.

“Where, Row?” he asked again, sternly this
time.

“A little wooded grove out off of Three
Sixty-Seven,” I answered.

I could hear him sigh heavily at the other
end. “Jeezus, Rowan. What the hell are ya’ tryin’ ta’ do? Make
Felicity hate me? She’s gonna have your ass for this, ya’know?”

“It’s not my fault,” I volunteered the thin
excuse.

“Don’t tell me. You’re gonna say Debbie
Schaeffer made ya’ do it this time too?”

“Kind of,” I returned. “Something like that
anyway.”

“Yeah, whatever. Look, I want ya’ to get yer
ass outta there right now,” he instructed.

“I’m working on it.”

“Don’t lie ta’ me, Rowan.”

“I’m not.”

Silence filled the earpiece for a moment
while I picked my way through the last of the underbrush and
started back up the embankment.

“Shit,” my friend exclaimed softly. “I
shouldn’t even ask ‘cause it’ll just encourage you…” He sighed as
he fell into a thoughtful silence then finally spoke again. “Well
did’ja figure anything out?”

“Unfortunately, no.”

“Man… I just don’t know what ta’ do with you…
Jeez…” His voice trailed off.

“If it’s any consolation,” I offered, “you
called me just in time to keep me from doing something really
incredibly stupid.”

“Like what you were doin’ now isn’t really
incredibly stupid?” he shot back.

“No,” I agreed. “It’s stupid all right. But
what I was about to do was even more stupid.”

“Great,” he muttered.

I scrambled my way to the top of the hill and
sat down on the bumper of my truck for a moment in order to rest. I
flicked off the flashlight and set it aside then reached into my
pocket and withdrew a cigarette.

“So,” I asked after lighting the butt and
taking a deep drag. “Why were you calling me in the first
place?”

“Just wanted ta’ let ya’ know we looked into
a connection between Lawson and Schaeffer.”

“And?”

“Nothing there, Row,” he told me. “No
connection, no common friends, activities, or anything. Nada.”

“Are you certain?”

“Certain as we can be with what we’ve got.
The whole Lawson thing is a dead end, white-man. She’s got nothin’
ta’ do with Debbie Schaeffer.”

“So I guess you’re closing the books on her
then?” I asked, dejection filling my voice.

“Well, yes and no.”

“What do you mean, ‘yes, and no’? Which is
it?”

I could literally feel his hesitation over
the phone. “Man… I shouldn’t even tell you…”

“Come on, Ben. You can’t leave me hanging
like that.”

“Shit,” he muttered the expletive. “Okay, but
ya’ gotta promise me you’ll stay outta this and let us handle
it.”

“Fine. I promise.”

“Yeah, right,” he returned, obviously not
believing me for a minute, then he huffed out a breath before
continuing anyway. “Okay, listen, it looks like ya’ might’ve been
right about Lawson’s death not bein’ an accident. Well, not
entirely an accident, anyway.”

“Go on.” I was intrigued, even a little
elated. Vindication appeared to be on the horizon, and it was
something I sorely needed.

“Remember I mentioned she had a welt on her
neck?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. “Well, the M.E. says it’s
consistent with the type of mark that could be left by a
high-powered stun gun.”

“I thought those things weren’t supposed to
leave marks?”

“Depends,” he explained. “Not always, but
there’re a lot of factors; trust me, they can definitely leave a
serious welt. I speak from experience.”

My hand lifted automatically to my neck, and
I focused on the memory of the burning sensation I’d felt. The
jangle and buzz that had taken over every nerve in my body; the
disorientation and paralysis that had driven me to fall helpless on
the ground while at that crime scene. A piece of the puzzle locked
securely in with another. As yet, I could only imagine the picture
that was going to be formed, but at least now I had a start.

“So it’s a murder case now?”

“Kinda,” he acknowledged without enthusiasm.
“We figure what prob’ly happened was that some asshole waited in
the bushes and assaulted ‘er on her way in the door. Most likely a
doper or somethin’ lookin’ ta’ score some quick cash. Jammed ‘er
with the stun gun, she fell and cracked her head on the table;
shithead sees the blood, panics and runs without even liftin’
anything.”

“You think that’s all it was?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“But it could be more, right?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “I really don’t think so.
There’s nothin’ else there.”

In my mind’s eye I could see him shaking his
head as he spoke.

I thought about it silently for a moment.
Logically, Ben was correct, but I wasn’t subscribing to logical
theories these days. There actually was something else there; he
just couldn’t see it, and I wasn’t going to give up until I found
it. With what he’d told me, I had a start; now I just needed to
build on it. I could tell from my friend’s tone that he was already
regretting that he’d told me anything at all, so I was just going
to have to chase this lead on my own.

“So what about the whole smoking thing,” I
asked, changing the subject as much to hide my intentions as to let
him off the hook.

“Yeah, yeah, I looked into it. Far as we can
tell they were both clean. Neither of ‘em smoked.”

“Guess it’s someone else then,” I
submitted.

“There is no one else, Rowan,” he answered.
“Listen, you still out there in the woods?”

“No. I’m sitting on the back of my
truck.”

“Good,” he returned flatly. “Then get the
fuck in it and go home.”

He ended the call with that abrupt command,
an almost angry click following the last words. I wasn’t exactly
making people happy.

I’d scarcely managed to climb into the cab of
my vehicle and get myself belted in before the cell phone pealed
for attention a second time. I gave the face a quick look, and the
caller ID display registered my home number. I can’t say that it
was unexpected, but I can say that I was dreading it. I answered it
anyway.

It was dead on 6 p.m. when I pulled into the
driveway, fully chastised via phone. Felicity was waiting for me
when I walked through the front door, and she was armed and ready
for round two.

If looks could kill she would have been
planning my funeral two seconds after I arrived…

* * * * *

It took the better part of the next day for
me to finally redeem myself with my wife. I hadn’t tried to hide
anything from her, and while that helped my case to a small extent,
she was still far from pleased.

I had a tendency to forget that even though
Felicity wasn’t prone to the same type or frequency of bizarre
visions as myself, she was a Witch nonetheless and very in tune
with her surroundings. At this particular stage of the game, I had
to accept that she was actually far more in tune than me, whether I
liked it or not.

While she was unsure of the details—until she
forced me to fill her in, that is—she had been perfectly aware that
I was up to something. She had even experienced some sensations of
my own fear because of the deep bond between us. Once she became
privy to the particulars behind that fear, however, her initial
concern folded quickly into anger.

Fortunately, since she had been a direct
witness to what had happened at the morgue the evening prior, she
was willing to believe that I wasn’t necessarily the one in control
of the situation. While that tempered the anger, it only served to
return her concern to the forefront, which started the vicious
cycle anew.

Still, when everything was said and done, it
was noon before she decided that she was speaking to me again.

“Hello?” I said in a hurried voice. I had
managed to snatch up the telephone receiver just as the fourth ring
was dying away and only a split second ahead of the answering
machine.

My greeting was met with nothing more than
dead air, although there was a distinct hollowness to it, which
lead me to believe that there was almost certainly someone on the
other end. After a moment, I repeated the salutation.

“Hello? Anyone there?”

My query was answered by what I thought might
possibly have been a shallow breath, though I couldn’t be sure. The
sound was promptly followed by a soft click in the earpiece as the
calling party hung up.

I dropped the handset back into the
cradle and scanned the caller ID box next to it. The blocky letters
on the LCD display read,
UNAVAILABLE
. Whoever it was either lived in an
area without the CLID service, or more likely, they’d keyed in the
code to disable it.

“Who was on the phone?” Felicity asked, as
she zipped quickly through the living room and hooked past me on
her way upstairs with an empty box that had earlier contained the
holiday decorations that now tastefully adorned strategic locations
throughout the house.

We’d both managed to grab a fairly
substantial amount of sleep, and her brogue had melted back into
the normally perceptible Celtic lilt minus the clipped affectations
that had permeated her speech before. Of course, the extra time
we’d spent resting was directly responsible for us now rushing
about in a frenzy to get everything done before our guests
arrived.

“Don’t know,” I called after her. “They hung
up and the caller ID says unavailable.”

“That’s weird,” she said as she came back
down the stairs, quickly sidestepping to avoid a cat that was on
its way up. “There were three hang-ups on the answering machine
when I checked it yesterday and another two this morning.”

“There were a couple on there the other
morning when you dropped me off here too. Did you check the ID
box?”

“Uh-hmm,” she acknowledged with a nod, as she
shot past me in the opposite direction this time. “All unavailable
except one, and it was a data error. What about your other
two?”

“Same. Unavailable.”

“Hmmm,” she remarked. “Wonder what that’s all
about.”

“Well, the hang-ups on there yesterday might
have been the media from the night before,” I speculated as I
followed her into the kitchen.

“Here.” She pushed a cutting board holding a
large knob of ginger across the island toward me. “Peel and slice.
It goes in this bowl here.”

“For the marinade?”

“Yeah. After you’re through with that, mince
three or four green onions and throw them in there too.”

“How do you think ostrich tenderloin is going
to go over with this crew?”

“They probably won’t even know it isn’t beef
unless we tell them.”

“Well, if we do let it out of the bag, I get
to be the one who tells Ben.”

“Just as long as I get to watch.”

“You can run the video camera,” I joked as I
pulled a knife from the block on the counter then retreated back to
the other side of the island so I wouldn’t be in her way.

“So don’t you think reporters would have left
messages?” she asked after a moment.

“What? You mean the hang-ups? I don’t know.”
I shrugged as I absently scraped the skin from the pungent ginger
root. “Maybe…maybe not. They probably didn’t figure I’d return the
calls if they did, so they might have just been trying to get lucky
and catch me.”

“I suppose it’s probably nothing. It could be
just some telemarketing outfit,” she offered. “They always mask the
caller ID.”