Rowan Gant - Perfect Trust Part 10

"Why would I stay out of it?" I shot back. "I'm the one that's being talked about here."

She ignored me and turned back to Ben. "You know how he is. But you're still bringing him into this even after everything that's happened."

"Well, if ya want the truth, he pretty much brought himself into it."

"He's right." I nodded a.s.sent.

"And how would that be?"

"Well you were there when he handed me that writing sample," he answered.

"So?" she shot back. "You didn't have to take it."

"I didn't see YOU do anything to discourage it," he returned.

"Go n-ithe an cat thu is go n-ithe an diabhal an cat!" Felicity snarled.

"Excuse me?" Ben's face was washed over with abject confusion as he cast his questioning glance from me to my wife and then back again. "What the h.e.l.l was that?"

"It's Gaelic. She just said something on the order of 'may the cat eat you, and may the cat be eaten by the devil'," I told him, having heard the Celtic epithet from her before.

"Do what?"

"It's an old traditional Irish curse," I responded coolly. "One that she's particularly fond of using when she's really, really angry."

"f.u.c.kin' great," he huffed. "Now I got a 'curse' on me?"

"Not exactly, it's just..." I started to answer.

"Aye, I told you to stay out of it now," she ordered as she once again shot her glare my way.

"And I told you, I don't think so," I returned with my own stern look. "I'm not some little kid who can't make decisions for himself you know."

"Aye, I wouldn't be so sure about that. Look what you've done to yourself so far."

"You know as well as I do that I haven't got any control over this."

"d.a.m.n your eyes, but you do!" she snapped. "You didn't have to run off chasing a maniac in the middle of the night!"

"That's not what I'm talking about."

"But it's what I AM talking about, then! If I let Ben drag you into this you'll justdo it again."

"That's what I'm tryin' to tell ya, Felicity," Ben interjected. "I'm not gonna let it go that far."

"Like you think you can stop it, then?" she chided.

"Why not? You think I can't?" he shook his head. "Look, Felicity, I wish it wasn't this..."

"Don't you 'look Felicity' me!" She cut him off. "We had an agreement!"

"I know," he pleaded. "But..."

"But what?!" she demanded. "It wasn't convenient for you, then?"

"No, it's..."

"Aye, what then? Your career is suddenly more important than your best friend's sanity?"

"Now dammit, you know better than that."

"I'm not so sure I do."

"Oh come on, Felicity..." I tried to wedge myself back into the dispute.

"No, Rowan." Ben held up his hand and sharply cut me off. "Stay out of it. This is between me and her."

"Excuse me?!" I rejoined. "h.e.l.lo? What the h.e.l.l has gotten into you two? You're arguing about ME here, so I think I have a right to voice my opinion."

He didn't seem to hear me. With each word, their voices had grown louder and even more strained. Ben's heretofore-defensive posture was starting to lean farther and farther toward the offensive. I could tell by the look on his face that there was next to nothing holding him back. My wife's hammering staccato of interruptions were taking a toll on his patience as the escalation of tempers progressed.

"So just what the h.e.l.l are you trying to say here, Felicity?" Ben demanded.

"And what is it you think I'm sayin'?" she spat.

I desperately wanted to defuse the situation, but I had no real clue how I was going to do it. My temper was flaring just as much as theirs were, and that wasn't going to do any good. Thus far, every time I opened my mouth I only seemed to stoke the fire under them, and that blaze was starting to grow rapidly. In a very short time they'd reached a level where I wasn't entirely sure that they even acknowledged my presence in the room any longer.

It had now become plain to see that the issue was one that was most definitely between the two of them. It was also clear that it had festered for several months, and recent events were simply bringing it to a head.

"G.o.ddammit, don't you think I have enough guilt over what happened on that bridge?"

"Well perhaps you should think about this all a bit harder then!"The sharpness in their voices had intensified several-fold. I had no choice but to resign myself to the fact that we wouldn't get anywhere until this was played out to conclusion. Since they had drawn a bead on one another, for all intents and purposes ignoring me, I could only watch.

"What? You think I haven't?!"

"You're askin' to bring him into another investigation aren't you?!"

As angry as I was at being treated like a fifth wheel, I fought to stifle it. "Fine," I finally muttered. "Go ahead and kill each other. Give me a call when you're finished."

With that, I pushed my chair back from the table, placing some small, symbolic amount of distance between them and me. Hard as it was to stay out of it, I made a halfhearted attempt to distract myself by leafing through a cookbook that had been holding down a sheaf of papers on one corner of the table. However, just as I was afraid it would, the growing conflagration won out over recipes for such things as Beef Wellington and Broccoli-Onion-Cheese Ca.s.serole. Like a horrific train wreck that you just can't stop staring at, I again returned my attention to the duel between my best friend and my soul mate.

"Felicity, will you..."

"Will I what?! Stand by quietly and let you get my husband killed?!"

"Come on," he shot back. "You know that's not going to happen!"

"Aye, do I?!" She widened her eyes and shook her head. "Just what have we been discussing for the past several months then?"

"I know what we've been discussing, and YOU know I'm not going to let anything happen to him."

"Aye, just like you didn't let anything happen to him the last time?!"

"Dammit, you know I already blame myself for that!"

"As well you should!"

"Screw you!"

"Aye, like I'd give you the pleasure!"

A brief lull insinuated itself into the argument, brought on I can only a.s.sume, by the intensely personal level of the attacks. But, though it slipped suddenly in like the eye of a hurricane, its tenure was far shorter.

"Felicity, come on," he pleaded, making an attempt at reasoning with her. "Rowan is my best friend."

She wasn't having any of it. "You've an odd way of showin' it."

"Listen, do you really think..."

"What I really think is that you've lost your mind!"

"You know as well as I do...""What?! What do I know as well as you do?!"

"I'm tryin' to tell you..."

"Come on, then! Tell me! What is it?!"

Her relentless attacks finally brought the roiling argument beyond the red zone it had consistently occupied.

What had started as a simmer, then progressed into a rapid boil, now erupted like steam from a burst pipe.

"JEEZUS f.u.c.kING CHRIST, Felicity! Will you just shut up for a minute and let me finish?!" Ben shouted in exasperation.

At that moment, for lack of a better description, my wife 'pulled her face off.' Her tight frown and locked jaw opened wide into a fanged maw as her own anger exploded outward.

"FINISH WHAT?! FINISH KILLING MY HUSBAND?!" she screamed as she physically rose from her chair. "DAMMIT, BEN, YOU PROMISED ME YOU WOULDN'T DO THIS!".

"SO I BROKE THE f.u.c.kIN' PROMISE! DEAL WITH IT!" he returned in the same demonstrative tone, rising from his seat as well.

Even with the table between them, he towered over my pet.i.te wife. They locked spiteful gazes with one another and a tense silence slid smoothly in, as if to underscore their words.

A period of time that felt to be the greater portion of a quarter hour, but that in reality was surely less than one minute, oozed by as I watched them. Even with the quiet permeating the room, I didn't know if the conflict was fully over. I wasn't entirely sure that it would be to my advantage to make another try at interjecting my opinion, or if it would even be heard if I did.

Unfortunately, it wasn't by my own choice that I interrupted the terse mood that was now blanketing the scene. In fact, I didn't even realize I had done so until Ben and Felicity turned their stares away from one another and sighted them in on me.

The first sound I noticed came as a thin, rapid scratching that held an even and almost hypnotic rhythm.

The second sound came as the first abruptly ended, then was replaced by a rustling of paper-like the sound of a page being flipped.

The third sound announced its presence as a recurrence of the first, matching rhythm perfectly with the point where it had suddenly ended.

I didn't want to look. I already knew what I was going to see, but I also knew that I had little choice in the matter. I followed their gazes down to the tabletop and joined them in watching as my left hand methodically defaced the pages of the comb-bound cookbook-scribbling quickly and evenly across the paper of its own accord.With a little concentration, focusing on the fluid scribbling and ignoring of the preprinted words that made up the recipes, one could make out the repet.i.tious couplets.

Hey, hey, hey, whaddaya say!

Don't ya know I'm dead today!

Hey everyone, I'm here to say!

I'm dead today! I'm dead today!

Gotta let Rowan come out and play!

Gotta let him do it 'cause I'm dead today!

I looked back up as Ben huffed out a haggard breath and turned his gaze back to Felicity. My hand continued to move, though it now seemed to be slowing and had begun to falter at the end of each line. An effect, I a.s.sume, of the fact that I was now fully aware of its activity.

In a calm voice my friend finally asked, "You wanna keep arguin' about this or you wanna help me."

My wife kept her eyes locked with mine and let out her own sigh. "It looks like I don't really have a choice."

CHAPTER 7.

The hands of the clock were firmly pressed up against midnight when we arrived at the St. Louis City Morgue. Situated on Clark Avenue, it was flanked by Police Headquarters on one side, an on-ramp to Highway Forty on the other, and across the street from the rear entrance of City Hall. All in all, the structure was less than obtrusive in appearance-simple brick and mortar construction with nothing that would make it stand out, architecturally at least-against the rest of the buildings in the area. In reality, there would be nothing outwardly distinctive about it at all if it weren't for the small, black-on-white, block lettered sign above the main entrance that stated simply, MEDICAL EXAMINER.

Even though it was clearly marked, it was easily possible for someone to drive past the building on an almost daily basis and not even realize just exactly what it was. It looked like nothing more than just another office building, and even the sign above the door didn't truly betray the fact that inside was the final stop for those departed from this world under suspicious circ.u.mstances. In fact, it was more than likely that the majority of the civilian population of St. Louis didn't even know that this was more that just a business office, it was the City Morgue.But, unlike the majority, I knew.

I'd been here more than once, and each time when I had taken my leave, I'd been completely devoid of any desire to ever return. Still, it seemed that I always came back whether I truly wanted to or not. Even worse, it was sometimes at my own behest.

Like right now.

It had taken a good while to talk Ben and Felicity into allowing me to come here and view the remains of Debbie Schaeffer. Neither of them was particularly keen on the concept, least of all my wife, so she had taken the most convincing by far. If that weren't bad enough, my friend was absolutely no help. I had been completely on my own in accomplis.h.i.+ng the task.

I suppose in some ways it was understandable. For one thing, Ben was already treading on thin ice with her, and both their tempers were only now beginning to cool as it was. Add to that the fact that my coming into direct contact with the young woman's remains didn't exactly fit with his concept of keeping me as far removed from the investigation as possible, and there you had it. The combination was easily more than enough to make him unwilling to help me plead my case.

Considering the fragility of the current truce between Felicity and he, I can't say that I blamed him.

Not much, anyway.