The Law Of Three: A Rowan Gant Investigation (38 page)

She gave me a quick shake of her head. “Any
details you can remember. Any at all.”

“Let’s see,” I sighed heavily. “He quoted a
few Bible verses to me, then informed me that he intended to rape
my wife. Is that what you want to know?”

The abruptness in my voice was unmistakable.
Any attempt at disguising my anxiety was effectively rendered null
and void by my rapidly hardening attitude.

Kavanaugh stared back at me for a moment,
wagging the ballpoint pen back and forth between her thumb and
forefinger as she drummed it on the legal pad in her lap. The
rhythm of the nervous tick wasn’t helping my headache in the least.
If anything, it was simply reminding me that it was there. I was
just about to reach out and snatch the pen from between her fingers
when she stopped.

“Mister Gant,” she began. “I know this is
hard, and trust me, I realize this doesn’t seem important to you,
but each detail gives us something more to work with.”

“Forgive me,” I told her. “But some of your
questions really haven’t made much sense to me.”

“On the surface, to most people, they don’t,”
she agreed. “But we aren’t in a normal situation here. Specific
details are important to the overall profile of both the individual
and the situation.”

“Maybe I’m dense, but I don’t see how some of
the things you’ve asked can relate to all of this.”

“Believe me, Mister Gant, you would be amazed
by what seemingly insignificant details can sometimes mean the
difference between peaceful resolution and tragedy.”

“Maybe so, but ten minutes ago you asked me
what color coat he was wearing earlier today. I mean, come on…”

“Do you play chess, Mister Gant?”

“Yes,” I answered. “And will you please call
me Rowan? I’ve been getting ‘Mistered’ and ‘Sir’ed’ to death
today.”

“All right, Rowan,” she continued. “As a
chess player, you are certainly familiar with the concept of a
stalemate, correct?”

“Of course.”

“Well, that’s exactly what a hostage scenario
is. A stalemate. A big, hairy, no-win situation. The thing is, the
hostage-taker doesn’t know this. We do, but he doesn’t. His mental
state usually places him in one of two frames of mind. Either he
believes he has the upper hand and will be able to force his
demands on us, or he is in such a state of desperation that he
believes he cannot win.

“The second state is the worst because that
is usually when he will start killing hostages in an attempt to
regain perceived control of the situation. Our job is to make an
end run around the stalemate by convincing him that we are as
concerned for his well being as we are for the hostage or
hostages.”

“I understand that,” I said. “But the color
of his coat?”

“Sometimes, even when you think it is going
well, something that appears wholly unrelated can make everything
go sour.” Kavanaugh sighed. “Let me give you an example. I worked a
hostage negotiation three years ago in Nashville, Tennessee. It was
a bank robbery gone bad. The gunman had five hostages, but things
had stayed fairly calm. We were in the ninth hour, and everything
was going by the book. It really looked like we were going to be
able to bring on a positive resolution with no casualties, not even
the gunman.

“As a good faith move for the release of one
of the hostages, we gave in to a request for soda. A specific brand
of root beer actually.” She paused for a moment. There was a
distant look in her eyes that bespoke of repressed sadness and
maybe even a modicum of self-blame. She looked down at the notepad
in her lap then back to me. “Two minutes after we sent it in, the
gunman went berserk, and without warning he killed the hostage he
had told us he would release. He shot her point blank in the back
of the head as he shoved her out the door.

“Her name was Becky, and she was a
twenty-three-year-old teller-trainee with a husband and a
one-year-old daughter.” She paused again as if taking a moment to
force the memory from her mind, and then asked, “Do you know why he
killed her?”

I simply shook my head.

Her expression moved in the direction of
controlled anger for a pair of seconds and then blanked to a
professional, matter-of-fact countenance as she looked me in the
eyes. “Because the soda was in a can instead of a bottle. We had
missed a detail.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say that I
was sure hadn’t already been said. I let out a heavy breath and
closed my eyes. I had been able to feel the burst of anguish that
came from Agent Kavanaugh as she relayed the incident. To be
honest, when she had first started, I wasn’t entirely sure the
story was going to be anything more than a textbook example. That
thought proved itself to be wrong within the first few
sentences.

Still, had it not been for the empathic
connection now presenting itself, I’m sure I would have believed
she had fabricated the whole thing simply to benefit her
explanation. I think maybe Ben’s jaded attitude had done more than
just begun to wear off on me. It had become an integral part of my
personal makeup.

“So…” She stopped short. I watched as she
consciously took a deep breath herself, and then she began again.
“So, I know that some of my questions might seem off the wall to
you, Rowan, but there is a reason for them. Everything matters even
if you don’t think it does.”

“I’m sorry,” I muttered.

She shook her head. “Don’t be. I didn’t tell
you that story to make you sorry. I want you to understand. As long
as you do, that’s all that counts.”

“I think I do.”

“Good. Now can you give me any details from
that call?”

I nodded. “I can try.”

I searched my memory for a moment, trying to
remember specifics of a conversation that seemed to have taken
place ages ago but in reality was no more than twelve hours old. My
thoughts were muddy from lack of sleep and an overabundance of
sensory input. I swam through the murk and seized on the snippets I
found floating about the dark mental waters.

“His biblical references were all Satan
specific,” I finally recalled aloud. “Ecclesiastes three, three.
Second Corinthians, Book of Revelation. I’m pretty sure they were
all from the King James Version.”

Kavanaugh scribbled a note on the legal pad.
“Why does that stick out in your mind?”

“Because he follows the covenants and
procedures of the
Malleus
Maleficarum
,” I told her and then added a short
explanation. “It’s a Witch-hunting text that was written by a pair
of inquisitors posing as theologians in the year fourteen
eighty-four. The King James version of the Holy Bible wasn’t
published until over one hundred years later in sixteen
eleven.”

“What do you think is the significance of
that?” she pressed.

“It’s probably just a part of his
mental state,” I offered. “It may be nothing. Truth is, the King
James version of the Bible is the most commonly available, but what
is so peculiar to me is that he has gone to a great deal of trouble
to research things. From the
Malleus
Maleficarum
, to various practices of the Inquisition,
and even the pomp and ceremony of the executions. When I had my
run-in with him last year, he was wearing the clerical collar of a
Catholic priest. So in a way, I would have halfway expected him to
use the version of the Bible connected with that period of history.
All of it is the Christian faith, yes, but the translations aren’t
exactly the same.

“However,” I said, “The prison ministry that
is most likely responsible for sending him down this path is
Evangelical, Old Testament, fire and brimstone. His indoctrination
would have come from the KJV, so the discrepancy might be
moot.”

“You never know. So your perception is that
he is confused?” Kavanaugh asked as she scribbled.

“Absolutely,” I agreed. “Or at the very
least, mislead.”

“What about his threat to rape your
wife?”

“That was yet another thing that tied in to
his research,” I stated flatly. “And he even told me as much. The
fact is that it wasn’t uncommon for inquisitors to rape the accused
as a form of torture. But the real reason he made the threat was to
piss me off. What started out for him last year as a
re-establishment of the fifteenth century Inquisition has now
become focused on a personal vendetta.”

“Because you shot him?”

“That’s part of it, probably,” I
acknowledged. “But I have a feeling that I was on his list long
before that. When he makes references to me being the spawn of
Satan, it’s not just a metaphor. I think he honestly believes, that
by killing me, he is effectively beheading the monster. Eliminating
the source of WitchCraft.”

“Why do you think he became so focused on
you?”

“Just lucky I guess,” I quipped and then made
a dismissive gesture of apology. “I’m sorry. Seriously, if I had to
guess, it was probably because at the time he started his crusade I
was in the public eye. There was a newspaper article running about
me because I was teaching an ongoing alternative religion and
tolerance seminar for the city police department.”

Kavanaugh nodded thoughtfully and underlined
a couple of specific passages in her notes. “Is there anything else
you can remember from that conversation?”

I took a sip of the coffee from the thermos
cup and realized it had cooled considerably. Still, it wet my
throat and that was primarily what I was after.

“His manner of speech, maybe,” I replied.

“How so?”

“This morning he was much more formal. He
seemed calm, and his selection of wording was less conversational
and more like it was staged. That’s pretty much how he was that
night on the bridge as well. Deliberate and rehearsed.”

“That’s not uncommon when dealing with a
psychosis,” she returned, making a quick note. “The insane will
often slip between conversational and non-conversational English.
It’s an indicator of the individual’s current state of
stability.”

“Yeah.” I nodded in agreement. “But this
whacko is a wildcard. It’s when he sounds rational that I really
get worried.”

“That’s how most of them are,” Agent
Kavanaugh replied with a curt nod as she proceeded to circle a few
more spots within her page of notes. “I want to go ahead and get
this out to the team so they can get it up on the board for the
negotiator,” she told me as she stood up, still perusing the
handwritten words. “I shouldn’t be gone for very long. There’s an
agent right outside…”

“…
To make sure I stay inside,” I
completed her sentence.

“I was going to say, in case you need
anything,” she replied flatly.

“Yeah, okay,” I said, unable to keep all of
the sarcasm out of my tone.

“But since you brought it up…” She purposely
allowed the comment to go uncompleted.

“I’ll be good,” I replied. “But could you do
me a favor?”

“What’s that?”

“Ben Storm,” I said. “The detective I was
with. Could you let him know where I am? He tends to worry like a
mother hen.”

“He already knows,” she told me. “But I’ll
say something to him.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it.”

“No problem.”

Agent Kavanaugh had only been gone for a
minute or so, and I was finally starting to come down from the most
recent in the daylong series of adrenalin dumps my body had been
experiencing.

I looked behind myself, first over my left
shoulder; and then over my right, just to make sure I wasn’t about
to touch something that I shouldn’t; then I leaned back against the
wall of the van. This was no easy task considering the bulk of the
flak vest I was trussed up in. If I hadn’t thought Kavanaugh would
throw a fit, I would have taken it off before she returned.

The metal bench I was seated on wasn’t
exactly comfortable, but it beat standing. I gave a quick glance
down its length and postulated that I just might be able to stretch
out on it if I positioned myself correctly. After a healthy measure
of seconds spent considering the idea, I decided I had better
not.

It seemed ironic to me that I had just been
sitting here discussing the mental state of Eldon Porter with an
FBI agent because in reality, right now my own psyche was as
fragile as spun glass. I was rafting on emotional whitewater, and
my oar was lodged under a boulder two hundred yards behind me.

On the one hand, I was relieved that Porter
was holed up in the building because at least now we knew where he
was. On the flip side, I feared for the safety of his hostage, not
to mention the overwhelming guilt I felt because that hostage was
Star.

Then there was everything in between. I was
jittery, disgusted, sad, excited, angry, and virtually any other
emotion you could think of, all at once. I was struggling with the
sudden shifts from one to the next as I would run through the full
range, only to find myself repeating it all over again in the very
next moment.

The one thing that remained constant was the
fact that I was just flat out exhausted.

I tilted my head back and tried to relax. I
knew Agent Kavanaugh would probably be back any moment, and as soon
as she was, the questions would start all over again. Her story had
impressed upon me the importance of this interview, but I was still
dealing with my overwhelming impatience.

What my irrational brain wanted me to do was
rush into the building and bring about an end to Eldon Porter once
and for all. What my logical brain wanted for me was to go to
sleep. The few hours I’d managed to abscond with earlier had held
me over for a while, but they were nothing more than a stopgap. I
needed to be unconscious for a while—a long while—but I was afraid
that wouldn’t be happening anytime soon.