Crone's Moon: A Rowan Gant Investigation (12 page)

“Tell me you didn’t drive yourself over
here,” I said, refraining from making any drunken Indian jokes.
Sober, I knew he would laugh. In this condition, well, let’s just
say I didn’t want to test any theories.

“‘
Kay, I won’t.” He pushed away from
the doorframe and stepped in, stumbling over the threshold in the
process. “Ya’oughta have somon fis that.”

“Gods, you’re even more cliché when you’re
drunk,” I muttered.

“Whassat?”

“Nothing.” I shook my head and pushed the
door open wider as I motioned him in. “Get in here and sit down,
Tonto. I’ll go put some coffee on.”

“I’ll hava’beer,” he told me as he dropped
himself onto the sofa with a heavy thump.

“Don’t have any,” I lied.

I stepped forward and looked out into the
driveway. His van was nosed in diagonally across the double lane of
concrete, effectively blocking any entry or exit. I had already
made a mental note to at some point get his keys away from him. I
appended it to include repositioning the vehicle so Felicity would
be able to pull in when she got home.

“Scosh then,” he announced.

“Don’t have any of that either.” I continued
down the path of untruthfulness as I closed the door and bolted
it.

“Burrbahn?”

“Nope.” I was heading for the kitchen now,
letting him run down whatever list he could come up with.

“Vokka.”

“Can’t say as that I have any of that
either,” I called out.

“How’bout killya?”

I poked my head back out of the kitchen to
look at him with a furrowed brow. “What?”

“Killya,” he repeated. “Ya’know, killya. Iss
Messican.”

“No,” I replied as I made the connection. “I
don’t have any Tequila. But I do have coffee.”

“Shit,” he mumbled.

I stepped back into the kitchen and started
the coffeemaker’s carafe filling from the filtered tap. While the
water was rising, I reached into the cabinet and retrieved the
coffee grinder and a bag of beans labeled ‘breakfast blend’. I
poured a measure of the roasted coffee into the bowl of the
grinder, thought about it for a moment and then added an extra
handful. I wasn’t going to be able to duplicate Ben’s ‘cop coffee’,
but I could at least make it a little stronger than usual.

“Yo whyman,” Ben’s voice boomed through the
house. “Wheresa squaw?”

“Coven meeting,” I called back.

“Spooky,” I heard him say, then pause. “Why
you ain’t there?”

“Long story,” I answered.

“Tell me a shtory.”

“Some other time,” I said.

After adding the fresh grounds along with a
small pinch of coarse salt to the filter basket, I poured in the
water and switched the device on. I started to return the grinder
and bag of beans to the cabinet but decided against it and left
them where they were. I had a feeling it was going to be a long
night.

My own earlier introspection was still
floating around in the back of my head, but I consciously put it
aside for the time being. I had my suspicions about why my friend
was currently parked on my couch in a state of advanced
inebriation, but my brain was also developing new theories with
each passing second. The only way I was going to know for sure was
to hear it directly from him.

Still, whatever it was that had brought him
to this state, he had sought refuge here for a reason; and it was a
good bet that the reason was to talk.

He was loyal to a fault and had been there
for me more times than I could count, so the very least I could do
was listen and be there for him.

I walked back into the living room to find my
friend in a staring contest with Dickens, our black cat, who was
perched on the end table quietly inspecting the boisterous human
anomaly. As I pulled my rocking chair around to face the sofa, I
took the opportunity to look him over myself. The fact that I could
see a pistol riding on his hip and his badge clipped to his belt
immediately dispelled one of my theories— he hadn’t been fired or
suspended.

“Coffee will be ready in a few minutes,” I
offered. “Here’s an idea. Why don’t you tell ME a story?”

He pointed at Dickens and then looked over at
me. “I thing yer cat hase me.”

“I think he’s confused by you,” I replied.
“Can’t say as that I blame him.”

“You confused,” he asked, his head bobbing as
he tried to focus on me.

“A little, maybe,” I returned. “Mainly
wondering why you’re sitting in my living room totally wasted.”

“‘
Caush I’ve been drinkin’.”

“No kidding. But I’ve known you a long time,
Ben. You don’t drink like this.”

“New hobby,” he mumbled.

“You might want to think about picking a
different one.”

“Yathink?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“‘
Kay, I thought ‘bout it,” he said
almost immediately.

“Yeah, well you might want to try it again
when you’re sober,” I instructed. “So, why don’t you tell me what’s
up.”

“Opposite of down,” he cackled.

“Yeah, you’re a regular comedian,” I returned
with a frown.

“Oh’yeah,” he said suddenly, a distant but
serious look washing over his face. “Iss her.”

“What?” I asked with a shake of my head.

“Her,” he repeated, tossing his hand limply
outward in an uncoordinated attempt to point. “Iss her.”

I followed the haphazard thrust with my eyes
and looked back over my shoulder at the muted television. A news
update was playing out on the glowing screen, with a picture of
Tamara Linwood inset at the upper corner.

“You mean they identified the remains?” I
asked as I turned back to him.

“Uh-huh,” he grunted. “Iss her.”

I wanted to seize on that point and run with
it, but I knew he was in no condition to follow through. I resigned
myself to the fact that this was something that would need to be
addressed later. How much later was the question.

“I don’t think that’s why you came here,
Ben,” I pressed.

“Hellno, I came here ta’ visit my friend. You
seen ‘im? Shortguy, rise a broom.” He cackled again.

I was just about to sit back and give up on
the conversation when I heard the hissing burp of the coffee pot as
it finished its brewing cycle.

“I’m going to go get us some coffee,” I told
him flatly as I rose.

In the kitchen, I pulled down a pair of mugs
from the cabinet and filled them. I started to pick them up then
thought about the lack of coordination my friend had just
displayed. Figuring that hot coffee and he were not about to mix, I
carefully poured a third of his cup back into the pot.

After a quick wipe of the counter with a
dishtowel, I hefted the mugs and headed back for the living room. I
was beginning to get the impression that Ben was too far on the
other side of sober to actually talk about what had driven him to
this point. Still, I was hoping that with a little luck, the java
might nudge him back in this direction and get him rolling.

Unfortunately, my hopes were immediately
dashed when I returned. My friend’s head was tilted face upward
against the back of the couch, his mouth hanging wide open and his
eyes closed. Dickens was draped half across his shoulder and half
across the back of the sofa, purring with an in and out warble.

“Ben?” I said aloud.

He didn’t respond.

“Ben?” I said again as I sat his cup of
coffee on the end table and then gave his arm a nudge.

Nothing.

I let out a sigh and cocked my head, letting
my gaze drift out into space. I took a sip of my coffee then walked
across the room to the bookshelf and picked up the telephone.

If my suspicions were correct, Ben being
trashed stemmed from what little I had overheard the day before. I
could well be wrong, but I was guessing that he and Allison were at
odds. Still, from the looks of things, he wasn’t going to be moving
for quite awhile, and there was no reason for her to worry about
him when he didn’t come home, even if they were angry at one
another.

I tucked the device up to my ear and heard
nothing but a hollow clicking sound. Puzzled, I tapped the off-hook
switch a few times. Still, I heard only the hollowness. I settled
it back onto the cradle and with my coffee in hand, trudged back
into the kitchen to check the phone there. I found the same thing.
Next, I ventured back through the living room, down the hall and
into the bedroom. There, I found the reason for the dead line. The
phone next to the bed was on the floor, along with everything else
that had been on the nightstand. In the wake of the carnage were
two lounging cats, Emily and Salinger, glassy-eyed and surrounded
by the remnants of a catnip-stuffed toy mouse.

“Hope you two didn’t make any long distance
calls,” I said aloud as I picked up the phone and married it back
to the cradle.

After giving the line a moment to reset, I
lifted the receiver and got a steady dial tone. As I stabbed in
Ben’s home number, I mutely wondered how long the phone had been
off the hook and if anyone had tried to call.

“Hello?” a familiar voice answered after the
third ring.

“Hi, Allison, it’s Rowan,” I said.

There was an overt silence at the other end
then her voice issued again. This time it was a stilted mix of
trepidation, confusion, and maybe even annoyance. “Oh, hi,
Rowan.”

I was taken aback by her tone, but I decided
to ignore it and ventured forth. “So listen, I’m sorry to call this
late, but I didn’t want you to worry. Ben’s okay but he’ll probably
be sleeping here tonight. He’s passed out on my couch.”

The silence crept in once again.

“Why would I worry?” she finally asked.

“Umm, uhh,” I stuttered. “I just thought
maybe you might be concerned when he didn’t come home.”

“He hasn’t told you has he?” she asked, her
voice audibly softened with a note of understanding now in place of
the confusion.

“Allison, he’s too drunk to make a coherent
sentence,” I replied.

I heard her sigh at the other end. “Rowan…
Ben and I separated at the beginning of the month. He hasn’t lived
here for two weeks.”

It was my turn to fall silent. In all of my
imaginings of what might be wrong, the foremost had been something
between the two of them. But, not once did I even consider that it
was something this bad.

“Rowan?” she said.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m here,” I answered. “Listen…
Allison… I’m…”

“It’s okay, Rowan.” She stopped me. “I’m
sorry I was so cold when you called. I just assumed he’d told
you.”

“We are talking about the same Benjamin
Storm, right?” I asked.

“I know what you mean,” she answered.

I stared at the phone, searching for
something to say; anything at all would do, so long as it pushed
aside the embarrassed silence.

“So, Allison,” I finally offered words that
no matter how sincere in intent, still sounded tired and overused.
“If there’s anything Felicity and I can do…”

“Just take care of him, Rowan. God knows
someone needs to,” she told me, then without another word she hung
up.

I pulled the handset away and held it for a
long moment, pondering the painful news. I’d known the two of them
for what seemed like forever. They had been together ever since
we’d met, and the idea of them splitting up now was completely
foreign. Even though there was no mistaking what Allison had just
told me, I was still having trouble wrapping my head around the
concept.

I had just settled the phone back onto the
base when the squeal of locked brakes and skidding tires sounded on
the street in front of the house. I headed out of the bedroom and
back up the hallway, only to be greeted by the dogs bellowing at
the door as a frantic pounding began against it.

I rushed to the door, fully expecting to find
someone who had just hit an animal, or worse a pedestrian, in front
of my house. I twisted the deadbolt and swung the door wide, only
to be greeted by RJ, a member of the Coven.

His eyes were wide, and he wore a frightened
mask across his features. The moment I saw him, the anguish that
made a perpetual home in the pit of my stomach was released in an
explosive torrent. Hollowness filled my chest, and my body tensed.
The coffee cup left my hand and shattered with an unceremonious
crack against the floor, sending hot java and ceramic shards in all
directions.

RJ’s mouth was open in preparation to say
something, but I never gave him the chance.

Words were spewing from my own mouth
automatically; the three word sentence came as a guttural bellow.
“WHERE IS SHE?!”

RJ
didn’t even try to
compete verbally with my frantic shouts. He simply gestured for me
to follow him as he turned and raced back down the stairs and then
continued across the front yard. He was only just barely ahead of
me when we hit the curb. In a quick motion, he unlatched the side
door of the still running mini-van.

In the recently fallen dusk, soft blue
shadows ran in oblique lines through the back of the vehicle,
muting the interior. A streetlight just up from us painted a harsh
glare across the tinted pane of glass to obscure it even more.
Still, beyond the swath of reflected brilliance, I thought I could
see movement in the back seat.

As RJ wrenched the sliding door back, dim,
yellow-white light flooded the inside of the van, emanating from
the dome light. The shrouded incandescent bulb struggled to chase
away the darkness, while my eyes fought to adjust to the rapid
changes in illumination they had been subjected to between the
front door and here.

At first, I saw only Cally sitting near the
door. When she looked up, I could see the same fear creasing her
face that RJ had—and still was— displaying. I could see that she
was rocking gently, and when she looked back down, I followed her
gaze with my own. Felicity was lying beside her in the seat, body
curled into a loose semblance of a fetal position. Her head was
resting in Cally’s lap, and the young woman had an arm wrapped
around my wife’s shoulders, holding her fast.