Rowan Gant - Perfect Trust Part 7

After a round of behind the ear scratches for the boisterous canines I disabled the back door sensor long enough to let them out, then back in once they'd discovered that the weather was not what they'd expected. Our three felines, Emily, d.i.c.kens, and Salinger, were nowhere to be seen, so I simply filled their food bowls and moved on to something else.

There were a few dishes in the sink, left over from the night before, so I took my time was.h.i.+ng, drying and putting them away. I could have simply loaded them into the dishwasher, but that wouldn't have taken near as long.I thumbed through the mail that had occupied the box along with my keys, discarding several pieces of poorly targeted direct market advertising in the process.

After extracting those items pertinent to my consulting business, I tossed the remainder into the basket next to the front door.

Before starting up the stairs to my office, I took a moment to listen to the messages on our personal answering machine. Two hang-ups and one quick h.e.l.lo from a friend who was inquiring about what to bring to the Yule ritual we'd planned for a few days hence. I started to jot a note down as a reminder to call him but found that the notepad, which normally lived by the phone, had apparently gone AWOL. A quick search through my pockets for a sc.r.a.p to write on rewarded me with two things-the pad containing the repet.i.tious morbid rhyme, and the business card of Doctor Helen Storm.

I rubbed my bearded chin absently with the back of my free hand while I stared at the simple calling card. I'd very consciously been putting this moment off, but I'd made a promise and there definitely wasn't anything pressing at the moment that should keep me from making the call. Nothing I hadn't purposely produced for that very reason, at least.

With a resigned sigh I s.n.a.t.c.hed up the handset and punched in the phone number from the upper right corner of the card. Even in my tired fog, my mind began calculating, and I latched on to the idea that it was probably going to be at least a week or two before she'd be able to get me in. That might very well give me enough time to prove I was correct about Paige Lawson, although even I wasn't entirely sure what it was I was correct about.

After six rings the phone was answered by a prerecorded message announcing that I had reached Metro Counseling and that the offices were currently closed for lunch. I felt a wave of relief as the voice continued on, telling me that if this were an emergency I should call the doctor's exchange, otherwise I should leave a message and someone would get back to me as soon as possible.

Following the high-pitched tone at the end of the message I began to speak, "My name is Rowan Gant and I need to see about making an appointment with Doctor Storm. My number is..."

I was cut off by a burst of squelchy feedback, combined with the fumbling knocks of someone rus.h.i.+ng to pick up the phone. A female voice barely overrode the squeal, telling me to hold on for a second. Various warbles and clicks followed, then fell quiet as the person at the other end managed to stifle the recorder.

"Sorry about that, Mister Gant," the woman's soothing voice apologized. "This is Helen Storm. Benjamin told me I should be expecting your call."

My earlier relief turned to instant surrender when she told me that she wanted to see me late tomorrow morning.

CHAPTER 4.

D-E-A-D-I-A-M!.

D-E-A-D-I-A-M!.

What's that spell?

Dead I am!

Louder!

Dead I am!

One more time!

DEAD I AM!.

I awoke in darkness.

I really wasn't all that surprised. Nightmares and darkness-they tend to go hand in hand. I'd grown relatively used to the cycle by now.

The bizarre Seuss-like chant was still echoing inside my head with a frighteningly excited edge to its morose verbiage. I laid completely still, letting the imagined sound fade to crisp silence, only to have the quiet replaced by a low, repet.i.tious rumble. I slowly turned my head and found myself face to face with d.i.c.kens, one of our resident felines. He had his paws outstretched to touch me and was purring incessantly as he kneaded my shoulder.

At least I wasn't feeling violated for a change. And I wasn't at a loss for the how's, where's or why's of my situation for the most part. I knew exactly where I was-safely tucked in my bed, under a blanket more or less, with one arm hugging my pillow against the side of my head. The other had gone thoroughly numb from the uncomfortable angle it was crooked into beneath my body. I s.h.i.+fted the appendage and circulation instantly took hold full force. I winced as an astronomical number of pinp.r.i.c.ks began traversing up and down its length.

In addition to knowing where I was at the moment, I also had a fair recollection of how I'd gotten here. These simple facts may seem obvious and mundane to virtually everyone else, but to me they were comforting revelations.

As to the why I was here, well that was obvious-it was the middle of the night and I was trying to sleep. Unfortunately, there was a perverted mantra running around inside my head that was insisting that I do otherwise.

I rolled to the side, upsetting d.i.c.kens in the process and sleepily scanned the face of the clock. The digital readout showed it to be almost a quarter past four. That simply meant four for all intents and purposes since my wife kept the timepiece setfifteen minutes fast to avoid being late. The self-imposed mind trick didn't work, but that's another story entirely.

My arm was beginning to regain its feeling and every moment that pa.s.sed was bringing me closer to being fully awake. The echo reverberating inside my skull had been absent for a good number of minutes now, but the words themselves remained present and accounted for.

D-E-A-D-I-A-M!.

D-E-A-D-I-A-M!.

What's that spell?

Dead I am!

Louder!

Dead I am!

One more time!

DEAD I AM!.

The seeming approbation of death imprinted itself upon my consciousness and looped like a snippet of a song that you simply can't get out of your head. If its intent was to keep me from sleeping, it was accomplis.h.i.+ng its task with absolute precision.

Letting out a resigned sigh, I climbed out of the bed as quietly as I could. My eyes were fairly adjusted and I managed to pull on some clothes without much fuss, and then retrieved my gla.s.ses and Book of Shadows-a Witch's dream diary of sorts-from a drawer in the nightstand. I figured I'd best record the morbid ditty that was keeping me awake, because I was certain that anything this insistent meant something important.

I just didn't know what.

"How'ya feelin'?" The left field greeting issued from the handset immediately following my 'h.e.l.lo'. Ben's down to business approach to telephone conversations, sans the typical salutations, was as identifiable as his voice, so I wasn't at all phased by the abruptness.

"About as well as can be expected, I suppose," I returned, glancing at the clock in the corner of my computer screen. "Considering that I have an appointment with your sister in a couple of hours."

I'd been parked in my office for the better part of the morning trying to get some work done. So far I'd accomplished little more than going through the previous day's mail and moving a pile of paperwork from one side of my desk to the other. I had not exactly been what you could call productive.

I still needed to return a few phone calls and put together some proposals forclients, but I simply didn't have the motivation. I was feeling so overwhelmed by everything that it seemed useless to attempt anything more than simply existing.

"Cheer up, white man," he told me. "She's good at what she does. It's not like she's gonna bite or something."

"I know, Ben. I know."

We both fell speechless, him just the sound of someone breathing on the other end of the phone and me quietly introspective.

"Well, there's really no easy way to tell you this," my friend finally spoke, "but I've got some news you prob'ly don't wanna hear."

"The handwriting?" I asked.

"Yeah. It's not Paige Lawson's."

"Are they sure?"

"No doubt, Row," he replied. "They don't look anything alike."

"d.a.m.n," I muttered.

This latest revelation did nothing to help my overall sense of demoralization. I had been certain that Paige Lawson was trying to communicate with me. Now, I couldn't even be sure that it wasn't simply all in my head.

"Graphologist said the sample was most likely from a left-handed individual," he continued. "And probably female, although they get a little hinky about swearing to one gender or the other."

"I told you that much," I offered.

"Yeah, I know, but the samples are worlds apart and yours is still not from Paige Lawson. I really didn't even need the crime lab for this, but I had them verify it anyway. The buck-fifty a.n.a.lysis is this-The moderate left slant coupled with the narrow s.p.a.cing denotes an independent and possibly introverted individual. The heavy pressure and ornate loops in the letters indicate a secretive personality. There's some more here about the margins, size, and stuff, but it all boils down to the same thing. It's still not Paige Lawson's handwriting."

"It still isn't mine either."

"Yeah, I know. I went ahead and had them compare yours from some of the forms I've had you fill out down here. There wasn't enough to get a good a.n.a.lytical read on you, but they were confident that you weren't the one pus.h.i.+ng the pencil. I didn't tell them any different."

At first I was surprised at what he'd done, but Ben's actions made perfect sense.

He had to rule out all of the possibilities and since I claimed the writing had come out of me, it was a logical move.

"On the bright side," he told me, "there's a note here saying that the little curly-q thing with the I's is pretty unique. For whatever that's worth."

"Not much, apparently.""It would be easy to identify in another handwriting sample if we ran across it."

"And the odds of that are?" I asked rhetorically. "Besides, you've proven that it's not her, so it doesn't really matter."

"So maybe it's someone else."

"Do you really believe that?"

"Hey," he contended, "like I said, I've seen weirder s.h.i.+t than this. Especially outta you."

"Yes, but neither you nor Felicity seemed terribly convinced yesterday." I allowed the words to hang between us in a verbal challenge of his professed faith in my sanity.

"Look, Row, let's not go there. I wish I'd been able to give you something here, but..." He sighed. Without even seeing him I knew he was ma.s.saging his neck with a large hand. "It's just not there, man. Sorry."

"It's not your fault," I told him. I meant it even though I'm sure I didn't sound very convincing. "So what about Paige Lawson?"

"Whaddaya mean?"

"You said yesterday that you weren't even sure it was a homicide."

"Oh, that. Well, it's looking less and less like it. Waiting on the final results of the autopsy, but there's just nothing there at this point."

"How was she found anyway?"

"Row..."

"Can you humor me?" I appealed dully. "You just blew my theory apart. You could at least throw me a bone here."

He exhaled heavily at the other end. "Nothing spectacular really. Squad car drove by on regular patrol and noticed the door hanging open. When the copper came through about half an hour later it was still open so he stopped to check it out.

Found her laying facedown just inside."

"And he didn't notice anything else?"

"Rowan, he's a cop. We may not be perfect but this is what we're trained to do."

"Yeah, I know," I responded, feeling mildly chastised. "I'm just really having a hard time with all of this."

"I know, man. I know."

For the second time during our conversation silence insinuated itself, bringing all conversation to a halt. I'm sure Ben was thinking that I was worse off than he'd originally imagined, but was tactfully keeping the observation to himself. I was simply reminding myself of the old bromide about not being insane as long as you had enough wits about you to wonder if you were.

"So anyway," my friend halted the swelling pause with a change of subject, "thatYule thing of yours is this Friday, right? What time were you wanting Allison and me over?"

He was correct. Yule was only two days away and as usual we had invited some non-pagan friends to our traditional gathering. This was the first year that any had accepted.

The switch in the focus of the conversation was awkward, much like any s.h.i.+ft that occurs in a chat such as ours. Even with its abruptness, it gave me something tangible and far more pleasant to grasp. Finally there was something welcome and familiar among the discord.

"You're welcome any time," I answered. "The official ritual will be around six-thirty or seven. I've already spoken to the group and they are fine with the two of you joining in if you'd like."

"We don't hafta do anything weird do we?"

"You don't have to do anything at all," I returned. "But if you do anything 'weird'

it's going to be of your own accord, because we don't have anything 'weird' planned.

Just a simple Yule ritual."

"Well, you know what I mean."

"You know, I think I've told you this before, but for a Native American you sure have a bizarre view of alternative spirituality."

"It's a long story, Kemosabe," he confessed. "But at least I'm tryin'. So what happens after the ritual? Do we like commune with ghosts or somethin'?"

"No, wrong Sabbat. That would have been back in October for Samhain." I referred to the traditional holiday non-pagans call Halloween. A night when the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest and we honor those who have pa.s.sed before us.

"Actually, after the ritual we have a late dinner and wait for dawn."

"Why? Is she going to be late?"