Harm None: A Rowan Gant Investigation (43 page)

A familiar, searing fire sprinted suddenly up
my spine, bringing with it a dark foreboding. The hair stood out
from the back of my neck, and my body felt like a living pincushion
in a vat of alcohol as every other follicle stiffened to attention.
Crackling static danced across my skin, setting its already
tortured surface ablaze.

“
Hey, mister, what time is it?” The little
girl tugs on my sleeve. “I have to go soon. What time is it? Hey,
mister!”

The hardened steel wedge of realization
buried itself soundly between the hemispheres of my brain and drove
relentlessly inward. I scrambled back to the Jeep in a frenzy,
awkwardly slipping and falling on the loose gravel twice before
making it. Felicity had the cell phone pressed to her ear and was
apparently filling Ben in on my sudden, inexplicable behavior.
Sensing what I was after, she handed me the device before I could
snatch it away from her.

“It’s happening now, Ben!” I fired into the
phone with absolute certainty.

He began protesting immediately, “Wait a
minute, you said the full moon would be on Friday.”

“It’s after midnight, Ben,” I appealed,
fighting to keep from shouting. “It IS Friday. Look at a calendar
or a newspaper or something. What is the exact time the moon will
be full?”

“Hold on...”

I could hear the door swing open and his
distant voice as he called out for a calendar. Quickly, he
returned, joined by the sound of rustling papers and other
voices.

“It’s not on here, Rowan,” he responded in
exasperation. “It’s got the phases but not the times. Wait a
minute... what’s that?” One of the muted voices interrupted him,
and he left me hanging for a thirty-second eternity. I could hear
frantic muttering in the background before he returned. “Benson’s
kid is an astronomy student. He got her on the horn and she says
that in our time zone, it’ll be one-thirty-seven A.M.”

“What time is it now?” I appealed to my
wide-eyed wife.

“Ten till one,” she answered.

“Less than an hour, Ben,” I told him
insistently. “He’s going to kill her in less than an hour.”

“But where? He could be at almost any park in
the state. Shit, he might not even be IN Missouri anymore.”

I realized that in my rush to convince him of
our severe deficit for time, I had not yet voiced my other
revelation. “No Ben, he’s still in Missouri. In fact, he’s right
here. Right now. I can feel him.”

“Right where?”

“Wild Woods Park, just inside the city limits
of Overmoor.” I turned to face the gently waving pine trees once
again. “I’m standing right outside the fence.”

“Are you sure about...” He cut himself off
before he could finish the question. “Forget I said that. Stay
right where you are, Rowan. You understand me? I’m callin’ Overmoor
and gettin’ some squad cars over there right now. We can be there
in fifteen minutes, twenty tops. Don’t go in until we get there,
Rowan. You hear me? Don’t go in the fuckin’ park.”

T
rue
to what Ben had said, two Overmoor squad cars descended upon us at
almost the same instant I switched off the cell phone. At my
urging, we moved the three vehicles farther down the shoulder in
order to remain out of the line of sight of anyone in the park.
Seventeen lethargically oozing minutes later, Ben and Detective
Deckert arrived, followed hotly by a dark sedan bearing U.S.
government plates.

Special Agent Constance Mandalay looked far
more intimidating than attractive in the muted glare of the distant
streetlamp. The strict angular shadows that sliced through the
sodium vapor glow painted her slight figure in an almost violently
imposing likeness as she fixed her angry gaze on me.

“Did I not make myself clear, Mister Gant?”
she javelined the query tersely. “You are no longer a part of this
investigation. Period. Now, since Detective Storm seems intent on
following you blindly about, you’ve not only bought yourself a
world of trouble, you’ve managed to jeopardize his career as
well.”

My head was still being relentlessly hammered
from the inside, and fire danced up and down my spine, making me
painfully aware of Roger’s presence in the moonlit park. The
seemingly endless misery coupled with our race against time had
begun deeply affecting my overall disposition. I was walking
nothing other than the paper-thin edge between steady calm and
explosive anger. The instant Agent Mandalay inserted herself into
the grotesque equation, I lost all semblance of balance.

“Go fuck yourself,” I told her drily.

“EXCUSE ME?” she demanded incredulously,
visibly taken aback by my uncharacteristic and graphic
instruction.

The low chatter among the uniformed officers
came to an abrupt halt, and everyone present turned their eyes upon
the close-quartered standoff that had materialized between us.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” I apologized
for my rudeness but still maintained my umbraged tone, “but you’ve
had it in for me from the very beginning, and I have no idea why.
To be honest, I don’t care that you don’t like me. Whether you want
to believe it or not, Roger Henderson is in this park.” I stole a
quick glance at my watch and then displayed it to her. “And in less
than twenty-five minutes, the sonofabitch is going to stick his
hand into a little girl’s chest and rip her heart out. Now, if
arresting me makes you happy, then be my guest. Just do that little
girl a favor and wait until after we’ve stopped this asshole from
killing her.”

Agent Mandalay stared back at me with a
slackened expression. A retort half formed, her lips parted
suddenly then almost immediately closed without revealing the
substance of the comment. The only sound to escape her was a
reluctantly acquiescent sigh. “Okay. Fine. We’ll search the park,
but rest assured, Mister Gant, I am not through with you.”

“Fine.” Still unflinching, I held her
contemptuous stare. “All I want to do is save the little girl.”

She all but ignored my comment and turned her
attention to the uniformed officers who had been observing our
sharp exchange. “It looks like we’re in the middle of a residential
area. How big is this park anyway?”

“We are, ma’am, and it’s pretty small,” a
sergeant replied. “Just a few acres. It used to be the grounds of a
seminary.”

“Doesn’t sound like a very secluded place for
a ritual murder.” She directed her sarcasm toward me.

“Actually, it is fairly obscured. The idea
was to leave it as natural as possible,” he offered. “With the
exception of the trail, it’s pretty heavily wooded on the opposite
side of the lake.”

He began stumbling over his words near the
end of the sentence. I could tell by his expression that if looks
could kill, she had just stared him into an early grave.

“All right, Mister Gant.” She turned back to
face me once again. “Any suggestions as to WHERE in the park we’ll
find him?”

The details of my vision had become clearer
and more precise with each painful recurrence. They were now so
sharply in focus as to seem almost unreal.

“About thirty yards up the hill on the other
side of the lake.” I described in words what my mind was replaying
in overblown, pixilated color. “There’s a small clearing. It’s
surrounded on all sides by trees and bushes. There’s an indirect
entrance from the back.”

She looked back to the uniformed officers and
raised a questioning eyebrow.

“Yeah, he’s right,” one of the patrolmen
spoke up. “There’s a clearing there. We’ve caught a few teenagers
hiding out in there, partying in the middle of the night.”

“Deckert,” she dictated as she unbuttoned her
jacket and slipped her sidearm from its holster. “You’re with me.
You four,” she directed herself to the uniformed officers. “Spread
out and flank the clearing. Storm, you stay here with Mister Gant
and his wife, and keep an eye on the entrance.”

“But...” I started to protest.

“Save it!” she shot back. “You’re staying
here.”

Ben grabbed my arm and shook his head as I
started forward. I could feel Felicity’s hand resting on my other
shoulder, leaching her own mixture of fear, anger, and desperation
into me.

“Look, Mandalay,” Ben lashed out. “If you
want my badge then come and get it. But until it’s in your hot
little hand, get off your power pony and give it a rest. I’m goin’
in and Rowan’s comin’ with me.”

“Suit yourself,” she remarked flatly. “But be
aware that you’re kissing what’s left of your career goodbye and
getting your friend charged with interfering in a federal
investigation in the process.”

“O’Brien. That’s spelled capital O apostrophe
capital B, r-i-e-n,” Felicity broke her self-imposed muteness.

“Excuse me?” Agent Mandalay demanded.

“I just wanted to make sure you spelled my
name right when you filed the charges,” my wife told her flatly.
“I’m going in too.”

Special Agent Mandalay simply turned and
stalked off into the night, waving for the others to follow. Ben,
Felicity, and I brought up the rear, quickly and quietly covering
the forty odd yards along the shoulder to the park entrance. As a
group, we advanced across the small paved parking area to the
trailhead and proceeded up the short path to the starting marker.
There, low to the ground, a white metal rectangle was bolted
securely to an earthbound wooden post. PLEASE DO NOT FEED GEESE was
embossed on its surface in bold black letters.

The group fanned out, following the trail in
opposite directions, skirting around the lake on both sides.
Everyone moved as quietly as possible, and I was fighting to
contain several pained groans that threatened to seek release as
the white-hot intensity of Roger’s presence burned up my spinal
cord and into my brain.

A bright stripe of cold moonlight traced a
ribbon of white across the rippling surface of the dark water. The
night was silent save for the occasional light breeze through the
upper reaches of the trees. Even the crickets were refusing to sing
their songs. We continued to creep along the path, moving as
hastily as discretion would allow.

Ahead of me were Agent Mandalay and Detective
Deckert; to my left, Felicity; and behind, Ben. The other officers
were no longer visible, having slipped around to the other end of
the lake and into the thickening woods. I cast a quick glance to my
right and captured an instant flash of movement near the rocky
shoreline. There immediately followed a loud plop as something hit
the water.

Like sharply honed combat veterans, Mandalay
and Deckert dropped to one knee, pistols directed at the fading
sound. Ben did the same, dragging Felicity and I downward with him.
Taking aim, he instantly snapped on a small but powerful
flashlight, sighting it alongside his weapon. A muted glow diffused
eerily through the water from the tightly focused beam.

The forced hush was thick around us, and I
swallowed hard to evict my heart from my throat. The five of us
stared almost unblinking into the murky water seeking out any and
all movement. More than a few of our precious seconds expired
before we pinpointed the source of the sound. Centered in the
ribbon of moonlight, a rounded stub protruded upward from the
water, followed by an ovalish dark hump, roughly the size of a
dinner plate. Slowly, the large turtle began to paddle away.

After releasing soft relieved sighs, we
regained our upright stances and proceeded deeper into the park. As
we rounded the easternmost end of the shallow lake and made our way
around to the backside, Ben quietly solicited Felicity’s and my
attention and motioned for us to stop.

“I want you two ta’ wait right here,” he
whispered.

“But Ben,” I objected, “what about...”

He didn’t let me finish. “Right here!” he
insisted, whispering through clenched teeth.

I had no choice but to stand silently
watching as he moved past us along the path with Agent Mandalay and
Detective Deckert. In mere moments, the three of them shrank to
small blue-black silhouettes on the dimly washed landscape then
disappeared as they seemed to melt and join with the shadows.

The antimony-veined disk of the moon jeered
down at me when I allowed my gaze to drift upward. Though
imperceptible to the naked eye, I knew only a thin thread-like arc
of darkness remained along its edge. Looking back down, I pressed
the side of my watch, and a dim blue-green glow illuminated its
face. In less than twelve minutes, even that dark wisp of a thread
would be gone.

We stood alone in the uneven shadows, mutely
straining to glean whatever details we could from the silent
landscape. I kept watch on the opposite end of the lake, expecting
to catch a glimpse of the uniformed officers through some of the
thinner sections of the trees. They had a slightly farther distance
to travel, as the trailhead had started closer to our end. However,
our momentary diversion, courtesy of the lake inhabitant, should
have evened out the time.

Should have, but for some reason the four
patrolmen still hadn’t appeared, and a gnawing worry was starting
to brew deep in my stomach.

“Something’s wrong,” I whispered to
Felicity.

“You feel it too?” she half asked. “I’m
freezing.”

Felicity always sensed ethereal presences as
coldness, no matter what the temperature truly was. The less
pleasant the energy she sensed, the colder she got. She was
shivering as she leaned against me.

“The other cops. They should have come around
the end of the lake by now, but I don’t see them.”

“What do you think happened?” she questioned
through chattering teeth. “Where are they?”

“I don’t know, but I’m willing to bet
that...”

I wasn’t afforded the opportunity to complete
the sentence. A sixteen-pound sledgehammer, swung at full force,
impacted squarely with the back of my head, shattering my skull and
spilling its contents onto the path. At least I can only imagine
that to be the closest example to the unbearable pain that suddenly
stole away my breath, my sight, and even my very thoughts.