The Law Of Three: A Rowan Gant Investigation (8 page)

My friend twisted the steering wheel and
nudged the vehicle slowly forward through the group of reporters
and camera operators as they began parting. As he brought the van
around and rotated the wheel back toward center, he shot me a quick
glance.

“Listen, Kemosabe, I had no idea that was
what she had planned, but it doesn’t surprise me. I told you what
she thought of ya’.”

“But that whole exercise was done for no
other reason than to get under my skin.” I asserted.

“Uh-huh,” my friend grunted. “That’s how she
plays the game.”

“Well, her rules suck.”

“Aye, but that doesn’t matter,” Felicity said
from behind me. “She succeeded in exactly what she set out to do.
Look at yourself, then. I’ve never seen you lose your temper like
this.”

“Yes you have,” I shot back as I turned in my
seat to face her. “You just don’t remember it because a sick
sonofabitch had you drugged up on Rophynol.”

“Aye,” she answered with an uncharacteristic
hardness in her voice. “He did at that, but I remember more than
you know, Rowan Linden Gant. More than you know.”

As she slumped back in her seat, she
continued to stare at me with a cold fire in her jade green eyes. I
knew at that moment that I had flipped the wrong switch.

I hoped my chosen deities were listening.

* * * * *

In keeping with the theme set forth by
Lieutenant Albright, the security guard at the Saint Louis City
Medical Examiner’s office had been phoned about our impending
arrival. He let us in while on his way out the door to grab a
smoke. He had been instructed to tell us to wait in the lobby until
she arrived. Another tactic on her part, obviously, but there was
nothing we could do. The door that led farther into the building
was locked. I knew, because I succeeded in raising Ben’s anger a
notch by ignoring his vehement instructions not to check it.

Remnants of the recent holiday season still
visibly occupied the reception area of the office. Customarily, the
room was bland and functional, so the ornamentation was quick to
conjure a “what’s wrong with this picture” feeling.

Intertwined silver and gold garland still
hung in shallow swags along the edge of the counter with a dozen or
so holiday cards folded over them and on display. The screen saver
on the computer behind the desk offered a snowy scene, complete
with an inviting-looking log cabin and a twinkling Christmas tree.
Here and there, other decorous attentions to detail could be picked
out—a coffee mug emblazoned with a picture of Santa Claus; a wreath
on the door leading back to the offices, also locked; and even a
half-depleted bowl of festively-wrapped candies. All of them came
together to form the whole: an unlikely clutch of cheer in the
midst of a place that seemed overwhelmed by depression. I didn’t
know about anyone else, but it just wasn’t working for me.

I’d seen the inside of this building too many
times, not only in my waking hours but in nightmares as well. I had
grown to despise its plain façade over the past couple of years.
Still, as much as I hated it, I couldn’t escape. If it was nothing
more than morbid fascination that brought me here, at least I could
seek help, but I wasn’t fortunate enough to have a sickness to
blame. I had become a permanent satellite inextricably gripped by
the gravity of circumstance; my erratic orbit inevitably
intersecting with an occupied autopsy suite. As often as not, I
felt compelled to bring about the collision myself, and right now,
I was at ground zero of yet another impact. Even though I was not
at fault this time around, the ever-associated migraine was looming
like a dark shadow over me.

This place was always a seething well of pain
for me, and this morning was no different; of course, my
irascibility factor being off the scale as it was didn’t help
matters at all. I had started hearing the voices of the
dead—screams mostly—the moment we turned onto Clark Avenue. Staving
them off became a somewhat violent internal struggle as soon as we
entered the building.

I sought refuge from the ethereal by
embracing the mundane. I occupied my mind with trivial tasks in
order to erect a mental barrier—anything from mutely reciting the
alphabet in reverse to intensely pondering a shadow on the wall. At
one point, I even found myself wondering about the holiday cards.
Considering that the clientele of a morgue are normally beyond any
need for celebration, they seemed out of place to me. I reached
down and flipped one of the greetings partially open to reveal the
inscription, which showed it to be from a sales rep at
Stryker
Corporation
, a well-known maker of medical
implements. I checked another and saw that the sender was a local
wholesaler of surgical supplies.

I guess I had been over thinking the
situation. Of course, in my agitated state, perhaps I was not truly
thinking at all.

Unfortunately, seeing the names of the
companies led me to dwell on such things as powered bone saws and
stainless steel scalpels, which in turn brought back memories of
post-mortems I’d witnessed first hand. Fearful cries from the other
side rose in volume for a brief moment as I rushed to switch
channels on my thoughts before they could suck me in.

“Aye, Ben. How long do you think we’ll be
waiting, then?” Felicity asked aloud, her voice thankfully
snatching my attention away from the place I’d been heading.

There had not yet been enough time for me to
redeem myself, and I was still firmly entrenched on her bad side.
She hadn’t spoken directly to me since my offhanded comment over
half an hour ago, and it wasn’t looking like she intended to change
that any time soon.

I looked over and focused on her. She was
seated in a chair across from us, her leather jacket unzipped and
revealing the stylized logo of a previous year’s Kansas City Pagan
Festival that adorned the front of her sweatshirt. Her legs were
crossed, and one foot was bobbing in time with music only she could
hear.

I absently pondered the wisdom of the logo on
her shirt being visible, given the current situation. For the first
time in years, I was actually considering not being quite so open
about my spirituality. Of course, once you’ve taken as many steps
out of the broom closet as we had, getting back in was almost
impossible, so the idea was moot. Still, calling attention to it
might not be the best course.

She looked up from her wristwatch and gazed
toward Ben with an expectant expression that barely masked the
fatigue showing in her face. “It’s been almost twenty minutes
now.”

He pushed away from the counter then looked
out the doors and through the glassed-in foyer. “Who knows? Bee-Bee
probably wants Row to stew long enough to do somethin’ stupid.”

“Like he hasn’t already?” she
volunteered.

“Yeah, well I’m talkin’ stupid enough to give
her a reason to arrest ‘im.”

“Hey!” I declared. “I’m standing right here
you know.”

Ben looked at me. “Yeah, and?”

“Yeah, and, you two seem to have a bad habit
of talking about me like I’m not here, that’s what. You do it all
the time.”

“Not all the time. Just when it’s for your
own good.”

“That’s subjective.”

“Uh-huh. Two-way street, Row. You aren’t
exactly the pinnacle of objectivity yourself.”

As much as I hated to admit it, he had a
point. Of course, that didn’t mean I had to like it. “Well, it’s
still annoying.”

“Yeah, well so’s when you talk to dead people
the rest of us can’t hear.”

Felicity piped up, a matter-of-fact tone
permeating her voice. “Aye, Ben’s right.”

“What do you mean?” I scrunched my forehead
as I spoke. “You’ve ventured over to the other side yourself as I
recall.”

“Not about that.” She dismissed my comment
with an impatient shake of her head. “About your giving Lieutenant
Albright a reason to arrest you, then. If you don’t calm down,
you’re going to do just that.”

“You’re not gonna win, Row,” Ben offered.
“Especially if you play ‘push me-shove you’ with her. She’ll knock
your ass down and kick you while you’re there.”

“Whatever happened to the whole ‘to protect
and serve’ thing?” I asked.

“Number one,” he returned, “you’ve been
watchin’ too much TV. And number two, never pull the ‘taxpayin’,
law-abidin’ citizen who pays your salary’ crap with a copper. Trust
me, it just pisses us off.”

“So, it’s okay for her to treat me like a
criminal?”

“How many times have I gotta tell ya’, Row?
This is reality. She’s holdin’ the cards here, not you.”

“Yeah, I know,” I grudgingly admitted. “But
she’s still getting to me.”

“That’s YOUR problem, then,” Felicity said.
“You know how to get around that. Ground and center yourself.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re right,” I said as I
pulled my glasses off and rubbed my eyes, lingering for a moment as
I pinched the bridge of my nose between my thumb and
forefinger.

“How’s your head?” Felicity asked, her voice
still edgy but softened by a few degrees of concern.

“Killing me,” I answered.

“Twilight
Zone
?” Ben asked.

“Yeah,” I nodded slightly. “And we’re already
hell and gone past the signpost.”

Lieutenant Albright breezed in through the
front doors of the medical examiner’s office just over twenty
minutes later. True to what Ben had told me earlier, her gelid
expression had not changed in the least.

“Mister Gant,” she said as she entered,
cracking what might have passed for a pleasant smile had there not
been so much sarcasm affixed to it. “I am surprised to find you
here in the lobby as I asked. Apparently you CAN obey the law if
you try hard enough.”

“The door is locked,” I answered coldly. “You
know that.”

“Of course.” She nodded. “But that sort of
thing has never stopped you in the past.”

I caught an acidic response in my throat and
choked it back down, turning my head to the side and closing my
eyes as I did so. I heeded Felicity’s advice and took an audibly
deep breath in through my nose, then exhaled slowly through my
mouth as I opened my eyes and turned back to face Albright. I could
feel energy flowing along my spine and coupling with the Earth in a
solid ground. It was as tangible to me as a hot and neutral lead on
an electrical outlet. Still, it didn’t bring complete calm, and
simply being in this woman’s presence made me bristle.

“Look, Lieutenant,” I began. “You’ve made
your feelings perfectly clear. I have no desire to continue down
this path with you.”

“And which path would that be, Mister Gant?”
she asked, feigning ignorance.

“I’m telling you that I am not going to allow
you to bait me any longer, Lieutenant,” I replied. “I’m here, just
like you asked. I’m just waiting for you to tell me what it is you
want from me.”

I cannot say that she was visibly
disappointed by my stance, but I definitely had the feeling that
some of her steam had instantly become just so much condensation.
There was a short period of silence while she considered what I had
just said. I fully suspected that she was using the time to regroup
and plot her way around the obstacle I had just placed before
her.

“Mister Gant,” she proceeded with a tilt of
her head. “What I want, you cannot possibly give.”

“How so?”

“No matter what powers you may claim to have,
you cannot change that which has already happened. I firmly believe
that the man on the table beyond that door is there because of you.
There is nothing you can do to bring him back nor any of the other
victims for that matter.”

“No. No I can’t,” I agreed in a quiet
tone.

“Now, just a little while ago I had the
unpleasant duty of phoning Mister Harper’s wife to ask that she
come down here to identify his remains, and…”

She didn’t get a chance to finish the
sentence. Like a banshee wail, Felicity’s voice pierced the air
between us, rendering everyone mute. “You what?!”

“Excuse me?” Albright turned her hard stare
on my wife.

“Aye,” Felicity began as she stood and moved
forward, bringing herself eye-to-eye with the lieutenant with no
more than a pair of steps between them. “You told Nancy that Randy
was dead, over the phone?”

“And what would you have had me do, Miz
O’Brien?” she shot back.

“Send someone to tell her in person.”

“That is not how it is done.”

The one word response that my wife uttered
next surprised everyone, including me. “Bitch.”

The thick calm that enveloped her as she
spoke was something I had seen only once before and was in no hurry
to see again. The button that had now been pushed was well up the
column from what I’d done earlier. I wasn’t sure if there were
enough Gods to create a pantheon that was capable of quelling the
fire that had just been ignited.

I actually saw a wash of surprise flow across
Lieutenant Albright’s features as she stared back at the redheaded
tempest in front of her. It was obvious that Felicity’s outburst
had blindsided her.

“What did you just say?” she asked.

“I think you heard me, then,” my wife
answered with frigid purpose in her voice as she cocked her head to
the side and glared. “But I’ll be more than happy to repeat it for
you if you’d like.”

The door on the back wall of the lobby
clicked loudly and then whooshed open just as Albright started to
open her mouth. A pale young man with a stoic expression and
scraggly goatee poked his head through the opening and regarded us
with general disinterest. After a moment, he pushed the door wider
and held it open with his back against it.

“Doc says for you to come on back” was all he
said.