Perfect Trust: A Rowan Gant Investigation (5 page)

“Don’t call ‘im sir,” Ben quipped with a
chuckle. “He’ll get a big head.”

“What’s wrong? Are you jealous?” she asked
him before returning her attention to me. “Sir? Coffee?”

“Absolutely,” I answered, instantly turning
the heavy mug in front of me upright and sliding it toward her.
“Regular, please.”

She deftly filled the mug, pouring expertly
from the side of the pot, then topped off Ben’s in the same
fashion. “You guys ready to order, or do you want a few
minutes?”

“I’m ready.” Ben looked over at me and raised
a questioning eyebrow. “How ‘bout you, Row?”

“Uhmm,” I muttered as I pulled a single page
menu encased in well-worn laminate from behind the napkin holder
and gave it a quick once over. “How about…a number three,
over-easy, wheat, and a side of biscuits with sausage gravy.”

“Ewwww, runny eggs? Don’t you know you can
get sick from those,” she said as she wrinkled her nose.

“Wendy ain’t ‘zactly the most tactful person
when it comes to ‘er opinions,” my friend expressed.

“Oh, shut up, Storm,” she chastised him with
the same good-natured familiarity of her earlier jab, which told me
he was a regular here just as I’d suspected. Then turning back to
me, she offered, “How about you have scrambled instead?”

“Would that make you feel better?” I asked
with a grin.

“Yes. Yes it would.”

“Okay, scrambled is fine.”

“You want cheese on those?”

“Sure.”

“Cheddar, American, or Monterey Jack?”

“Hmmmm, do I want cheddar?” I asked her with
a bit of hesitation.

“Yes, you do. Good choice.” She smiled. “Now,
what about you, Storm? I guess you want your usual?”

“Yeah.” He nodded and flashed a quick grin
her way.

“You’re in a rut, Storm,” she told him with a
grin of her own as she turned and headed back up the short
aisle.

“Hey, Wendy,” Ben called after her, a
good-natured tone underscoring his words. “Tell Chuck I said don’t
be so friggin’ stingy with the onions this time.”

He had purposely spoken loud enough to be
heard by virtually anyone in the diner but most especially the
fry-cook. His answer came as a grumble and a mock threatening wave
of a spatula from the large man behind the grill. “Yeah, yeah,
yeah, Storm. Yer always complainin’ about somethin’.”

The exchange was met with a few lighthearted
chuckles from some of the other regulars in the diner, along with
some additional friendly jibes. Chuck finally laughed then threw up
his hands in an imitation of surrender, announcing in the process,
“Hey, if youse don’t like it, go eat somewheres else.”

The restaurant settled quickly back into its
morning routine, leaving our booth in a quiet wake.

“Okay,” I finally said after taking a healthy
swig of coffee and giving Ben a solemn look. “So what’s up? It’s
been my experience that when you offer to buy me a meal, something
is going on, and it’s usually not good.”

“Hey,” he feigned insult. “Did’ya ever think
I might just wanna buy ya’ breakfast and visit with ya’?”

I nodded. “It crossed my mind, but then
reality got in the way.”

“Jeez, white-man.”

“So, am I wrong?” I asked. “Is this just
social? If so, I apologize.”

He sat mute, took a sip of his coffee,
and then stared out the slightly fogged window next to us for a
moment before turning back to me. “Well, no, but it ain’t
necessarily a bad thing.
Maybe
.”

“Okay.” I shrugged. “So what is
it,
maybe
?”

He sent his large hand up to the back of his
neck and gave it a quick massage as a mildly troubled expression
panned across his features. After a moment he reached down into the
seat next to him and brought his hand back up with what looked like
an oversized index card in it.

“Porter, Eldon Andrew,” my friend told me
succinctly, tossing the name out as a raw fact for me to
digest.

“Sounds like a beer,” I replied.

“Just look at the picture,” he returned as he
handed over the black and white mug shot.

I took the card and stared at the muddy grey
tones of the photo as I leaned back in my seat, feeling a slight
wince of pain in my shoulder in the process. The twinge might very
well have been psychological, but the surgery to repair the joint
and its associated musculature was still less than a year old. If I
could believe the doctor, whom I had no reason to doubt, an
occasional pain wouldn’t necessarily be all that unusual for a
while yet.

I suppose that when you consider all the
facts, a minor pain should actually be welcome. I mean, first, a
madman bent on ushering me across into the world of death rams an
ice pick into my left shoulder. Nearly up to the handle… Twice…
Planting it firmly into bone on the second plunge I might add. And,
if that weren’t enough, I ended up plummeting off the side of a
bridge, only to have the very same shoulder forcibly dislocated by
the sudden stop at the end of the fall. Of course, I suppose I
should be thankful that the rope held, or the sudden stop would
have been farther down and more along the line of fatal. And
finally, I proceeded to hang from the damaged joint while the
crazed serial murderer attempted to finish the job he’d started. I
was lucky to even be alive, much less to still have the arm intact
and functioning.

Still, looking at the photo that was
officially labeled Texas Department of Corrections brought that
night back to the forefront of everything with painful clarity. A
finger of acidic fear tickled the pit of my stomach, threatening to
invoke nausea. I ignored it and continued to stare at the
picture.

The countenance depicted in the photograph
was younger than I recalled and lacking the greasy shag of white
hair that had framed it earlier this year. In fact, in the photo
his head was shaved. His cheeks were fuller, and though the picture
was black and white, one could tell from the grey scale tones that
his complexion held a healthy color. The gaunt mask I had faced ten
months before had been almost devoid of such pigment, appearing
pasty and ghostly white in pallor—the color of death. Even so, his
eyes hadn’t changed at all. Dark and sunken, almost hidden in their
deeply shadowed sockets, they burned with a furious malevolence.
Just as they had done when I stared into them months ago.

When last I had seen this face, it had been
firmly attached to the ice pick wielding lunatic.

The self-proclaimed Witch hunter…

The modern day, self-appointed inquisitor
with a singular purpose—to eradicate from the world those he
perceived as heretics. Being a Witch, and a male one at that, I
matched up easily with his set of criteria for those belonging on
his hit list.

He had managed to kill six others before
getting to me, two of them not even actual Pagans. Why he had not
yet killed again, I was at a loss to explain.

If you asked the authorities why—even the cop
sitting across from me now that I call my best friend—you would be
told that it was because he was dead.

You would be told that I had shot him in
self-defense, perhaps mortally, though no one could be sure. And
even if the wound was not fatal, it didn’t matter because he had
then fallen to his certain death from the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge
into the ice-laden Mississippi river.

That was the official story. But I knew
better.

Yes, I will admit that I had most definitely
shot him. However, I fired the round into the arm he was using to
try to choke me to death. And while there was plenty of solid
evidence that I had not missed when I pulled the trigger, something
told me that the wound wasn’t nearly so grievous as others
believed. That same something also told me that he did not in fact
fall into the river that night, but instead, escaped.

How? I couldn’t begin to tell you, but it was
a feeling far in the back of my head. One of those sensations that
begins as a slight itch that can’t be quelled by any means and then
quickly grows into a fearful foreboding. The kind of mysterious
intuition you just don’t ignore—especially if you are a Witch.

I think I might have breathed an inner sigh
of relief while I stared at the picture. I had fully expected Ben
to produce a case file or crime scene photo from beneath the table
that would somehow tie into my current unexplained somnambulistic
excursions. On second thought, the sigh might not have been only
one of relief but of disappointment as well. I really did need to
figure out what was going on, and the sooner the better.

“I’ve been carryin’ that damn thing around
for a week,” my friend told me, gesturing toward the photo. “I
wasn’t sure if I should even show it to ya’ or not.”

I could sense the concern in his voice, and
the careful way in which he was watching me was physically
palpable. I looked up from the mug shot and noticed that his jaw
was held with a grim set. This expression wasn’t a hard one for him
to achieve, what with his deeply chiseled features and dusky skin
that visually announced his full-blooded Native American heritage.
Even sitting, he was better than a full head taller than me.
Standing, he measured six-foot-six and was built like an entire
defensive line. The nine-millimeter tucked beneath his arm in a
shoulder rig and the gold shield clipped to his belt made him
appear just that much more formidable.

His hand went up to smooth back a shock of
his coal black hair and lingered once again at his neck, a
mannerism that told anyone who knew him that he had something on
his mind.

“You worry too much,” I said as I dropped my
eyes back to the photo.

“Yeah, you keep sayin’ that, but I know how
ya’ are,” he returned.

He was correct. He did know how I was. Until
recently, he knew most of the details—though certainly not all—of
the nightmares I had experienced, both during and after the
investigations surrounding two separate serial killers. Both of
which had terrorized Saint Louis in the span of less than one year.
He had personally witnessed me involuntarily channeling the
victims—and their horrific ends. He had even saved my life in both
instances when I had recklessly taken on the killers myself.

He was fully aware of the emotional toll the
investigations, and especially the supernatural elements of them,
had taken on me. I had been affected on many levels. Because of
this and his deep loyalty as a friend, he worried more about my
mental health than I did. The fact that I had only become involved
in the cases at his request played more than a small part in it as
well.

“I’m not going to wig out on you, Ben,” I
returned in a fully serious tone. “I’m okay.”

“Yeah, but all that
Twilight Zone
shit you go through…” he let his
voice trail off.

“Really, Ben. I’m fine,” I offered and then
changed back to the subject at hand. “How did you find out who he
is? I thought the evidence was inconclusive, and there were no
identifiable fingerprints in his van. Besides, it’s been almost a
year now.”

“Dumb fucking luck,” he answered. “A coupl’a
weeks ago, County got a call from a distraught woman babblin’ about
somethin’ she found in her basement. Turns out she was the owner of
the house where this wingnut was doin’ his thing.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, no shit. Right outta the blue.
The house was a piece of rental property she’d inherited. She lives
outta state, and it was hung up in probate for a while, so she
didn’t even know he was livin’ there. She thought it was vacant.
Anyhow, the legal BS finally got cleared up, and then she got
around ta’ comin’ inta town ta’ get it fixed up for sale. Well,
when she starts cleanin’ up, guess what she finds in the basement?
The fuckin’
holy torture
chamber
. The shrine, the candles, all of it.
Everything just like you described from that vision thing ya’ had.
Even found a copy of that book ya’ kept talkin’ about.”

“The
Malleus
Maleficarum
?” I offered, referencing the fifteenth
century Witch hunting manual the killer had adopted as his
manifesto.

“Yeah, that’s the one.” He nodded. “So
anyway, the copper that took the call gets a hinky feelin’ and
calls Deckert over at County Homicide. He goes and has a look, then
calls me before he even leaves the place.”

Carl Deckert was a mutual friend who had also
been assigned to the Major Case Squad during the investigation. He
was intimately familiar with the case, and I’m sure that when he’d
seen the basement of that house it had set off more than one
alarm.

“So, why didn’t you call
me
?”

“For the same goddamn reason I’ve been
packin’ that friggin’ mug shot around for a week,” he explained. “I
wasn’t so sure it was somethin’ you needed ta’ see.”

“You’re being overprotective, Ben.”

“So sue me. Hell, I’m still not so sure I
should be showin’ it to ya’ now.” He sighed and then added, “Why do
ya’ think I’m doin’ it here instead of droppin’ by your place?”

“Because you don’t want Felicity to know
about it,” I returned, knowing for certain that he was alluding to
my wife.

“‘
Zactly.” He nodded. “After everything
that happened, I promised ‘er I’d keep some distance between you
and the cop shit. She finds out and she’ll pull ‘er damn face
off.”

“She’s being overprotective too.”

“He looks real pleasant,” a feminine voice
came from behind me, interrupting us before Ben could object
further. I looked up to see that the waitress had reappeared at our
table and was looking at the mug shot over my shoulder. “Number
three, scrambled with cheddar,” she continued un-fazed and slid a
plate in front of me. “…And a side of biscuits with sausage
gravy.”