All Acts Of Pleasure: A Rowan Gant Investigation (9 page)

“You heard me you sonofabitch!” I finally
screamed. “Get the fuck out of my house!”

With a dazed shake of his head and one last
look of sadness, he turned and headed for the door.

CSU technicians were already coming into the
house as Ben was lumbering out. One of them shot me a concerned
look, glanced over his shoulder at Ben’s back as he disappeared
down the front steps, and then returned his gaze to me.

“Are you okay, sir?” he asked.

“No,” I snipped.

He reached his hand toward me and started to
ask, “Do you need…”

“No!” I cut him off, my tone still livid.
“Just leave me alone!”

He shook his head and muttered a sarcastic
“Excuse me” as he took a step back then turned away and joined up
with the other techs as they began fanning out through my home.

I didn’t bother to drag myself up from the
floor until I heard Ben’s vehicle back out of the driveway then
speed away, taking my entire reason for living with it.

“This isn’t good,” Jackie’s voice hummed from
the earpiece of the phone.

Our attorney had patiently listened to me as
I relayed to her the story of Felicity’s arrest, interrupting me
only when necessary to ask for clarification on particular facts.
Then, following a proverbial pregnant pause at the end of my
diatribe, those three words were all she said. Unfortunately, they
were far from what I wanted to hear.

Jackie had a habit of thinking out loud, and
I’m certain that the comment was nothing more than her rhetorically
voicing her thoughts. However, I was still at least five notches
beyond pissed off, not to mention the fact that a handful of crime
scene technicians were turning my house into a disaster area all
around me as I stood there. Therefore, I was really in no mood for
listening to someone tell me something I already knew. Especially
when it wasn’t helping to fix the problem.

“No fucking shit,” I spat into the handset.
“Are you billing me for that? Because I already had it figured out
on my own.”

“Okay,” she returned, far more calmly than I
expected. “The first thing you need to do, Rowan, is settle down.
Biting people’s heads off isn’t going to help the situation.
Especially when the head you’re biting off is mine. I’m on your
side, remember?”

“Yeah, well you’ll have to excuse me. I’m
still trying to pry a knife out of my back that was put there by
someone else who was supposed to be on my side.”

“Your friend the cop? The one who arrested
Felicity?”

“I wouldn’t exactly call him my friend. Not
now. Not after this.”

“You might need to take a step back and look
at it from a different perspective, Rowan.”

“I’m not so sure that there
is
another perspective on
this.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” she replied.
“Think about this. You’re in a big city where they usually frown on
having police officers arresting their friends. You aren’t in a
small town where everyone knows everyone else, and there’s no
choice in the matter. It would be better for the department to
avoid a conflict of interest like this.”

“Yeah, so what’s your point?”

“My point is that your friend probably had to
pull some major strings to be allowed to make the arrest rather
than allowing someone else to take her in. He most likely saw what
he was doing as a favor.”

My reply was so sharply edged with sarcasm
I’m surprised I didn’t cut my own tongue. “Yeah, some favor.”

“I suspect he was trying to spare you from
the anguish of having strangers show up and haul Felicity
away.”

I stayed silent for a moment and thought
about what she had just said. I finally replied, “Well, I guess he
did make it a point to repeatedly tell her not to say a word. The
other cop with him wasn’t real excited about that at all.”

“You need to give your friend some credit,
Rowan. I’m sure he was only doing what he thought was best for his
friends, given the situation,” Her statement was punctuated by an
electromechanical “ding” in the background then the hollow quality
that had surrounded her voice disappeared. I could hear a droning
background noise and assumed she must have just stepped from the
elevator in her office building and was on her way past the
decorative waterfall in the lobby.

“Maybe,” I replied. “But, this is wrong and
he knows it.”

“Yes, I’m sure that he does. But, obviously
she was going to be arrested anyway given the fact that a warrant
was issued. So, who would you rather have had do it?”

I didn’t think she really wanted an answer to
the question so I just grunted.

“Now, the reason I said this isn’t good is
the fact that they even had a warrant to begin with and that they
came and got her on a Friday.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Well, first off arrest warrants aren’t
typically issued on felony cases if there is probable cause.
Especially where violent crime is concerned. The arrest is simply
made and the charges get filed. The warrant is just paperwork that
happens during the process as a matter of course.

“Someone is definitely dotting I’s and
crossing T’s on this one. Being very cautious and official about
it. So, that tells me one of two things. One, they don’t have much
of a case so they are playing it by the book…”

“That’s a good thing, right?” I interrupted
hopefully, a sudden brightness in my voice.

“If that’s the case, yes,” she answered then
proceeded to extinguish my momentary glow. “However, it could also
mean that they are pretty certain they have a smoking gun, and
they’re just being careful because of their long time affiliation
with you as a consultant.

“Either way, one thing is perfectly clear.
She is no longer simply under investigation. She’s been moved up
from person of interest to prime suspect.”

“Damn.”

“Of course, we won’t know for sure what is
going on until I can get there and get a read on the
situation.”

“Whatever it is, the one behind it has got to
be Albright,” I mumbled. “She’s a bureaucrat with a badge and she
hates both of us. She’s tried to pull stunts before, and I can just
about guarantee you she’ll do whatever it takes to make this
stick.”

“Well, whoever it is, they’re playing
for keeps. Warrants aren’t issued on whims. They’ve got
something
they think is damaging, or
she wouldn’t be in custody right now.”

“Okay, so what about it being Friday? What’s
up with that?”

“The courts are closed over the weekend,
Rowan, and it’s…” she paused for a moment. “…It’s already after two
in the afternoon. Given the nature of the arrest, I seriously doubt
I’m going to be able to do much in the way of getting an emergency
bail hearing. Unless there was a bail amount on the arrest warrant
already.”

“I don’t remember seeing one.”

“I’m not surprised. It would be pretty much
unheard of in a homicide case, and with this being a high profile
double murder charge…so, anyway, what it all means is that I’m
afraid Felicity is going to be spending the weekend, at the very
least, in jail. To be honest, Rowan, probably longer. Bail in a
homicide case like this is going to be unlikely, and even on the
off chance we can get it set, it will be exorbitant.”

“I don’t care. I’ve got money.”

“We could be talking millions, Rowan, and
even though you’ll only need ten percent in cash, it could mount
up.”

“I can cash in our IRA’s if I have to.”

“I understand, but remember it could all be a
moot point. Like I said, bail might not even be an option depending
on what they have.”

“Dammit!” I spat. “You aren’t telling me what
I need to hear.”

“Actually, yes I am. I’m just not
telling you what you
want
to
hear.”

“Yeah. Okay. Fine. So what now?”

“Now, I need to ask you a question.”

“What?”

“You aren’t going to like it.”

“Yeah, so why should my day suddenly start
getting better?” I returned sarcastically. “What’s the
question?”

I heard her take in a deep breath, and a
second later she hit me with the last thing I expected. “Is
Felicity guilty? Did she kill those men?”

“Hell no! How can you ask me that?! What
happened to being on my side?!”

“It’s my job, Rowan. I have to know what I’m
up against and whom I’m defending. You’re absolutely certain she’s
innocent?”

“Yes,” I returned harshly. “And don’t ever
ask me that again.”

“I won’t. Not you. But you need to understand
that I’m going to have to ask Felicity the same thing.”

“And you’ll get the same answer.”

Here we had a slight problem. And, that
problem came in the form of the fact that I wasn’t entirely sure I
was telling the truth with that last comment. The night Felicity
had been taken into custody at the East side motel, the suspicious
fingers were already being pointed and the investigation underway.
When I discussed it with her, she had told me that she wasn’t even
certain in her own mind that she hadn’t committed the crimes.
The
Lwa
possession had caused
substantial blocks of time to be missing from her memory, and that
frightened her. It didn’t do much for me either, but I still knew
she was innocent. Why, when the police apparently had evidence to
the contrary, I couldn’t say; but the fact remained that I knew it
beyond any doubt in my mind.

Unfortunately, something else I knew was that
my wife was still harboring distrust in her own sanity. And,
because of her personal history within the bondage and D/S
subculture, she was finding it easy to convince herself that
perhaps she really was the killer. The truth was, when Jackie asked
her the question, she was very likely to say, “I don’t know.” What
was even more frightening was that it was going to be a bit before
Jackie got there. Given Felicity’s mental state, depending on what
she was told by the police between now and then, her answer could
well be “Yes. I think I’m guilty.”

That single possibility, all by itself,
scared me as much as anything ever could right now.

“Find a way to get her home, Jackie. I know
that’s asking a lot, but I need her home. I need her home NOW.”

“I’ll do what I can,” she offered. “But, you
need to be prepared for this.”

“Prepared?” Incredulity filled my voice.
“Okay, then why don’t you tell me how I’m supposed to prepare
myself for my wife spending time in jail on a bogus murder
charge.”

“I wish I knew, Ro…”

The end of her sentence was truncated by an
annoying beep issuing from the earpiece of my phone. Lately, I had
been ignoring the call-waiting when it chimed in, due to a recent
resurgence of mysterious hang-ups that had been plaguing us off and
on for the past few years. Under the circumstances, however, I
thought it might be a good idea to answer it this time.

“I’ve got another call coming in. Can you
hold for a sec?”

“Listen, I’m almost to my car,” she replied.
“Why don’t you go ahead and answer the call. I’ll get back to you
when I get to the police station and have a handle on things.”

“Don’t you want me to meet you there?”

“Absolutely not. There’s nothing you can do
at this point, and emotionally you’re a bomb looking for a place to
explode. You’d do nothing but cause trouble and make things worse.
Just stay right there while they’re searching the house, and don’t
do anything stupid.”

The insistent beep chimed in again.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean just stay there and don’t
do
anything
,” she instructed,
heavily emphasizing the last word. “I need to concentrate on your
wife right now, so I don’t need to be worrying about you
too.”

I answered in a clipped tone. “Yeah. Fine.
Okay. Later.”

I didn’t wait for her to say goodbye. I
reached out and stabbed the off-hook switch on the telephone’s base
with my finger, held it for a second, and then released it. A
second later I heard the telltale click rattling in the earpiece as
the call I had just been on was disconnected.

“Hello?” I said into the mouthpiece.

“Rowan,” a familiar voice floated into my
ear. “How are you doing?”

I sighed, half from relief and half from
frustration. It obviously wasn’t a hang-up, but it also wasn’t
someone calling to tell me this had all been a terrible mistake
either. Of course, logically I knew that wasn’t going to happen,
but under stress we tend to create fantastic resolutions for
situations simply in order to maintain hope, and that was but one
of the happy endings bouncing around inside my skull at the
moment.

“I’ve been better, Helen,” I replied, my tone
flat.

“I know, Rowan. Benjamin just called and told
me what happened.”

“I suppose he wants you to find out if I’m
still mad at him,” I quipped.

I knew I shouldn’t be taking my anger with
her brother, and the situation, out on her; but I just couldn’t
help myself. The way I saw it, everyone in my path was a potential
enemy at this point.

“Actually, Rowan, no, he does not. I believe
he is fully expecting you to be angry with him for some time to
come. He has resigned himself to that.”

“Very astute observation on his part,” I
asserted. “Mainly because he’s right.”

“He was forced to make an extremely hard
decision.”

“Well, I’ve got some bad news for him. He
decided wrong. Felicity is innocent and he knows it.”

“I am speaking of his decision to handle the
arrest rather than allow someone else from the department to do
so.”

Apparently, Jackie had been correct. Still,
it didn’t change the fact that he had led my wife out of the house
in handcuffs.