The Law Of Three: A Rowan Gant Investigation (3 page)

I’d been propped there for no more than a
minute when my muffled swearing was interrupted by a sleepy voice
at the doorway.

“Row? Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I grunted with little conviction in
my voice. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

I hadn’t heard her approach, not that I was
surprised. I was a bit preoccupied to say the least, and besides,
she was far more graceful than I would ever be. I grimaced, not so
much from the pain, but because waking Felicity was exactly what I
had wanted to avoid.

“What are you doing up?”

“Just attempting to break my toe,” I
muttered, turning my head and looking back toward her.

“What happened?” my wife asked, her voice a
quiet blend of two parts sleep to one part concern, all underscored
by a faint Celtic intonation. “You’re sure you’re okay, then?”

Felicity was second generation
Irish-American, and she had spent an enormous amount of time in
Ireland throughout her life. She was never completely free of the
lilt, though it was most pronounced whenever she was overtired,
under stress, or as in this case, half asleep. It almost always
came bundled with a rich and colorful brogue to match.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” I told her as I focused on
her slight form. “Just stubbed it, that’s all.”

She had propped herself in the doorway, using
the back of her hand for a pillow as she rested it against the
frame. In the dim light, I could see that her eyes were closed as
she yawned. A loose pile of fiery auburn hair sat atop her head in
a Gibson-girlish coif. Whenever she let the cascade of spiraling
tresses hang free, it would easily reach her waist. Her pale skin
seemed to almost glow in the darkness.

She let out a heavy sigh and stretched
slowly. She was clad in an oversized t-shirt, but her tight figure
still managed to tug it into varying degrees of eye candy as she
languidly arched her back. How she managed to look this good even
when she had just climbed out of bed was something beyond my
comprehension, but I certainly wasn’t going to complain.

“Aye,” she said as she reached out and
switched on the overhead light. “So tell me why you’re awake,
then.”

“Because I couldn’t sleep?” I offered,
squinting against the sudden infusion of brightness.

“Aye, don’t be a smart ass now. You know what
I meant.”

“Would you believe I was trying to get some
work done?”

“No.” She shook her head.

“Getting a drink of water?”

“Rowan.” She cocked her head and shot
me a frown as she paused—effectively impaling me with her
I’m serious
look. “I’m half asleep,
but I’m not blind. You’ve coffee on, and you’ve been playing
solitaire on your computer. Quit screwing with me,
then.”

“Okay,” I answered with a defeated sigh. “I’m
waiting for Ben to call.”

As absurd as it sounded, it was the
truth.

It may be the middle of the night, but I knew
beyond a shadow of a doubt that the telephone was going to ring,
and Detective Benjamin Storm was going to be at the other end. For
me, very simply, this was a foregone conclusion.

What’s more, it was not because he happened
to be my best friend and that he just felt like talking at an odd
hour. It was going to be something I didn’t want to hear but
probably already knew. In any case, I knew it would be something
that I had no choice but to deal with.

Felicity closed her eyes and let her head
tilt forward, dropping her forehead into her hand.

“Nightmare?” she asked softly as she began
massaging her brow. She was intimately familiar with the forms my
precognitive intuition would sometimes take.

“Headache.”

“Humph,” she grunted, then asked hopefully,
“Did you take anything just in case?”

“Not that kind of headache,” I replied.

“You’re certain, then?”

Her question was answered by the grating peal
of the telephone vibrating against the walls of the small room
before I could even utter the “yes” that now lodged itself in my
throat.

My wife looked up at me with sadness in her
jade-green eyes and then gave a slight nod to the coffeepot. “Aye,
I’ll go put on some clothes. Best pour me a cup of that as
well.”

I started to protest. “I don’t think…”

“…
That I should go?” she shot back,
filling in my sentence and cutting me off. “Are you planning to
stay out of it?”

I sighed and fidgeted at the sudden tension.
She already knew what my answer would be.

“Aye, I thought so. We’re not discussing
this, Rowan,” she continued with a stern shake of her head. “If you
go, I go. End of story. Now answer the phone, then.” She was
already turning around the corner of the doorway on her way back to
the bedroom as she issued the last command.

I knew better than to press my luck,
especially on this subject. We’d beaten it beyond recognition
already, and we were both too stubborn to give in. I took a step
forward, picked the phone out of its cradle on the fourth ring, and
then placed it to my ear.

“Yeah, Ben. I’m here” was all I said.

“Awww, Jeezus H. Christ, Row… Jeeeez…
Goddammit…” He launched immediately into a string of curses, his
voice a peculiar mix of relief, anger, and disgust.

Whenever my friend started a sentence this
way, I knew that what followed probably wasn’t going to be good. Of
course, I’d known that before the phone ever rang, but there was
always that small inkling of hope that I might be wrong. Judging
from the baseness of Ben’s first words, I knew that this would not
be the occasion.

“Porter?” I inserted my question into the
lull that trailed along in the wake of his outburst.

“Yeah,” he returned, his voice slightly
calmer. “But that was a given, I guess.”

In an instant, the “probably” became an
absolutely, and the “wasn’t going to be good” was nothing less than
a cold fact.

“Uh-huh. Truth is I’m surprised he waited
this long,” I replied. “It’s been more than two weeks since he
killed that woman in Cape Girardeau.”

“Yeah.” He paused. “So, what gives? You sound
like you were awake already.”

“Yeah. I was.”

“So what’s up? Don’t tell me you were waitin’
for me to call.”

“Okay, I won’t.”

“Jeez, Row…” The note of resignation in his
voice was clear. “So, did you have one of those nightmares or
somethin’?”

“No. Just a headache.”

“Bad one?”

“Bad enough.”

“Regular, or was it one of those hinky,
weird-ass,
Twilight Zone
ones
that you get?”

“Something like that.” I shook my head even
though he couldn’t see me.

Twilight Zone
.
That’s what my friend liked to call it whenever I would engage in
any form of psychic detection or supernormal communication. He was
accustomed to the peculiar psychic events that had seemed to plague
me for the past couple of years, but he still had his own unique
branding for them. He had a whole handful of euphemisms—“la-la
land,” “out there,” and even just plain “weird,” but
Twilight Zone
remained his favorite.
I guess I couldn’t blame him for the interpretation though. Even I
wasn’t always comfortable with the paranormal excursions myself,
but then, I also didn’t always have control over them either. And,
while a certain amount of mysticism comes along with being a
practicing Witch, at times I felt almost as if I had plugged
directly into the main switchboard of the “other side.”

Disconcerting is just about the nicest word I
could use to describe it. You don’t want to hear the others.

“
So why didn’t you call me?” he
asked.

“And do what? Tell you I had a headache?”

“Hasn’t stopped you before.”

“Actually, when I’ve called you in the past
I’ve had a little more to say.”

“Yeah. Maybe so.”

“So, do you want me to meet you?”

“For what?”

“To go to this crime scene?”

“No, actually. I was just calling to make
sure you were okay.”

The meaning behind his words was quickly
apparent to me. For a number of reasons, I was most likely at the
top of Porter’s hit list; not the least of which was the fact that
I had shot him. Of course, he was trying to kill me at the time, so
I didn’t have much choice. However, since he had already tried
once, we had every reason to believe that he would do it again.

This was exactly why Felicity and I had spent
the past two weeks residing in a tiny, unfamiliar apartment in a
secure building instead of our own home. We were in hiding, and it
was starting to get on my nerves.

“So, the victim is male?” I asked

“That’s what they said. I just got the call a
few minutes ago.”

“So where is the scene?” I pressed again.

“No way. Stay put, Row. Let us handle
this.”

“You know I can’t do that, Ben.”

“You don’t have a hell of a lotta choice now
do ya’?” he shot back.

“I’ll just show up,” I told him calmly. “I
can find out where the scene is without your help.”

“And I’ll fuckin’ arrest your sorry ass if
you do.”

“Ben…” I just allowed my voice to trail
off.

“You know, Rowan, we ain’t just a bunch of
bumblin’ idiots. Cops solve murders all the time without your
help.”

“I know, Ben, but this is different.”

“Yeah, I know you think it is, but it’s not.
Why can’t you just stay put where I know you’re safe, and let me
handle this?”

“Because I want my life back, Ben.”

“Gettin’ yourself killed would kinda defeat
the purpose now wouldn’t it?”

“We’ve had this discussion before, Ben.”

“And I don’t recall bein’ convinced that time
either.”

“I need to do this,” I appealed.

He huffed out a heavy sigh after an extended
silence. “Fine. Jeez. Okay. At least if you’re with me, I can keep
an eye on ya’. I’ll swing by and pick you up. But listen, Row,
you’d damn well better tell Felicity before I get there. I don’t
have time for an argument like last time.”

“Don’t worry. She’ll be coming with us.”

“Both of you?” he groaned. “Sheesh. Lucky
me.”

“Hey, it’s not my idea.”

“Are you willin’ to stay home and let me
handle this?” he queried flatly.

“I thought we’d already established that as a
no,” I replied, somewhat confused by the question.

“Then quit tryin’ to blame her. It IS your
fuckin’ idea,” he huffed. “Meet me in the lobby. I’ll be there in
fifteen.”

“This is fucked…” Ben spat, shaking his head
in a display of disbelief and looking upward as he spoke. “This
S.O.B is just plain sick.”

It was just after four a.m. by the time we
arrived, and we found ourselves standing in the middle of Locust
Street downtown. We had signed in on the scene log with Felicity
and me listed as consultants and allowed in only by Ben’s
graces.

Stepping onto the active participant side of
the bright yellow strip of barrier tape that cordoned off the
street was akin to entering another world. I glanced around,
feeling both out of place and right at home in the same instant. In
the past two years, I’d visited more active homicide crime scenes
than many cops see in their entire careers, and I didn’t even have
a badge. Something seemed very wrong about that, but it was a fact
I simply could not change. I didn’t find it reassuring at all that
I was becoming so accustomed to it.

Cold wind sliced in a linear gust down the
thoroughfare, flaring the band of plastic tape as if to highlight
the repeated imprint of block letters along its length. Bold
strokes formed words that had become all too familiar to me—CRIME
SCENE DO NOT CROSS. The temperature was settled for the moment at
an even thirty-six degrees, but the computed wind chill pushed the
overall feeling downward into the range of the mid-twenties.

There were a half dozen crime scene
technicians milling about on the ground, while another handful
could occasionally be spotted working on the roof of the building
that was before us. The medical examiner’s hearse had already
arrived, and the area was illuminated by the visual insanity of
flickering light bars on idling emergency vehicles.

When the street-level scene was taken as a
whole, my friend’s candid observation simply became a commentary
that mirrored my own feelings. Unfortunately, he was talking about
something far worse, for what was taking place on the tableau of
the cold asphalt was only a supporting backdrop for the spectacle
above.

My gaze followed Ben’s, coming to rest
between the second and third floor windows of the four-story, brick
building. There, carefully directed spotlights illuminated the
centerpiece of this nightmare. Garish shadows molded themselves in
a shroud about the nude and blood streaked corpse of a man.
Suspended by a rope tied about his ankles, he was hanging upside
down. His head was obscured by an executioner’s hood, and his arms
were splayed out to the sides, perpendicular to the rest of his
body, as if to form an inverted cross. The appendages were held
stiffly in place by what looked like a two-by-four across his
shoulders. At this distance, I couldn’t be positive, but the piece
of wood appeared to be held fast by something encircling his wrists
and neck.

This, in and of itself, was macabre enough to
make anyone believe that it could only be a Hollywood “slasher
flick” in the making. If only that were true, for it didn’t end
there. From the victim’s groin, downward to a point in his
mid-torso, his abdomen was split open. There, protruding from the
ragged tear like a grey-white serpent, his intestines cascaded
across his chest to hang in a pendulum-like loop several feet
beneath. Each time the wind would pick up, the sash of organ tissue
would move with the breeze, undulating like heavy drapes next to an
air vent. Blood still dripped at protracted intervals from the
exposed viscera to plop wetly onto the dark stain that now graced
the sidewalk below.