Crone's Moon: A Rowan Gant Investigation (24 page)

I quickly searched my memory but was too
preoccupied with worry to form a complete mental picture, so I
shook my head and gave him what I could. “V-X-N something.”

“Yeah,” he continued speaking into the phone.
“Partial Missouri plates, V-X-N. That’s Victor, X-Ray, November.
Got that?”

“Bumper stickers,” I blurted as the thought
struck. “She’s got a Pentacle on the spare tire cover, and on the
bumper she has one that says ‘Magick Happens’.”

Ben repeated the description to the Sergeant.
“Yeah… Yeah, she’s a Witch too… Yeah… Funny… Uh-huh… Yeah… Okay…
Yeah, I’d rather not get into that right now… Yeah, I know… Yeah,
but like I said before it’s just a theory I’m workin’… Yeah, could
be nothin’… Yeah, she’s just a little impatient… Yeah, do me a
favor; let your officers know she’s with us. I don’t want her
gettin’ hurt ‘cause of a gung ho rookie. Yeah… Let me give you my
cell number…”

“Rowan,” Constance poked her head in through
the doorway. “Has Felicity been to Woodcrest Park before?”

“Yeah, we both have,” I nodded as I
spoke.

“Would she be more likely to take Highway
Forty, then head south, or get off at Two-Seventy and head south
before going west?” she asked.

“Probably Forty,” I replied. “But in her
present state, who knows.”

My agitation seemed to have leveled off for
the moment. It wasn’t lessening, but at least it wasn’t getting any
worse. I turned back to Ben and mouthed the words ‘hurry up’. He
gave me a quick nod and finished the call as fast as he could.

“Marshall will be callin’ on my cell if she
shows up out there,” he offered as he hung up the handset then
glanced over at Mandalay. “Whaddaya got?”

“Only one road leading in to the park, and
that’s Piper Valley. From here she can come at it one of three
ways. Out Forty to Millstone which eventually turns into Piper
Valley; or Two-Seventy to Woodsbend which intersects Piper Valley
just before the park entrance. The third option would be to take
Two-Seventy to Forty-Four then up Woodsbend from the backside of
the park. But that would be going out of the way.”

He looked over at me. “Row?”

“Could be any of the three,” I returned. “It
all depends on what’s driving her.”

“Okay, lemme think.” He huffed the word out
as he smoothed his hair back then brought his hand to rest on his
neck. After a pair of seconds he spoke again. “Mandalay, you take
Forty, Rowan and I will take Two-Seventy. Sound reasonable?”

“That would be my call,” Constance
replied.

“What about Forty-Four?” I appealed.

“We gotta rule that out,” he answered
quickly. “Too far outta the way to make sense.”

“But we don’t know for sure,” I pressed. “I
can take my truck and…”

“Fuck no,” he cut me off. “One loose
cannon is enough right now. I don’t need you runnin’ around
all
Twilight Zone
too.
Besides, Woodcrest PD is gonna be lookin’ for her too.”

“Dammit, Ben, she’s my wife.”

“No shit,” he snapped back. “I was there,
remember? You ain’t goin’ off alone, end of story. Now lock it up
and let’s hit the road. Maybe we can catch up to her before she
pulls another Rowan.”

* * * * *

Neither of us had said a word since getting
into the van. I don’t know if it was because discussing the
possibilities only served to make both of us sick to our stomachs;
or, if it was simply because there was nothing more left to say on
the subject. In any case, silence had become the rule, and we were
making no move to break it.

We were winding down Woodsbend Road toward
Piper Valley, shrouded in darkness by the tall stands of trees on
either side of us. Technically, we were cutting through one edge of
the park itself, even though there was a sparsely populated
residential area to our right. Still, there was no actual access to
the interior roads until one went through the main entrance at the
end of Piper Valley, so that was where we were headed.

Slightly better than twenty-five minutes had
passed since we had set out from my house, and I still hadn’t
relaxed. In fact, the closer we came to the park without any sign
of Felicity the more stressed I became. Now that we had all but
arrived, I had become a knot of nervous energy with no place to
go.

Every muscle in my body was aching, almost
certainly from being tensed for what seemed like forever. My head
was throbbing, and while I suspected that some of it was ethereal
in nature, a good portion was nothing more than plain old stress
combined with a lack of sleep.

I was almost certain that I was going to have
a bruise across my chest from where I had been straining against
the safety harness. I had been pitching myself forward every time
we spied a set of taillights, and then I would remain there,
staring intently through the windshield until we came close enough
to identify the vehicle we were approaching. Invariably, when the
necessary details came into view, it would not be Felicity’s. I
would then slump back into my seat, even more agitated than I had
been the moment before. But, even sitting back, I couldn’t force
myself to relax because we would almost immediately spot yet
another pair of red, glowing pinpoints in the distance, and I would
begin the cycle anew.

Ever since we had exited the highway and
continued our trek along the serpentine, downward slope of
Woodsbend, we had been the solitary vehicle in the darkness. There
was nothing for me to crane my neck or strain my eyes to see,
except the reflective dividing line down the center of the asphalt
before us. Still, proximity to the park kept me wrapped so tight
that I felt as if I was about to burst out of my own skin at any
moment. And, I almost did just that when Ben’s cell phone chirped
then moved immediately into its ever-increasing warble.

“Storm,” he said after fumbling the device
off-hook and placing it to his ear. “Yeah… Yeah… Okay… Yeah, I
think we’re pretty close right now… Uh-huh… Thanks…” He reached
over to the passenger seat and handed me the cell phone. “Hang that
up, will’ya?”

“What?” I demanded as I took it, thumbed it
off, and then dropped it back into the center tray. “Who was
that?”

“That was Marshall,” he replied. “She says
they found Felicity’s Jeep on the shoulder of Woodsbend.”

“Is she okay?” I asked with a note of
relief.

“All they found was the Jeep, Row,” he
replied, keeping his voice as businesslike as he could. “We should
be comin’ up on ‘em in just a sec…”

The phone began warbling again, and Ben
repeated his earlier grope. “Storm… Yeah, Marshall just called me…
Yeah, be there in a minute… Bye.”

He handed the phone to me again, this time
without a word, and I simply disconnected the call. My fleeting
moment of relief had now become alarm. “Who was that?”

“Calm down. It was Mandalay. She just got
there.”

“Ben, if Felicity isn’t with her Jeep, she’s
already in the park,” I told him.

“Yeah, Row. I know.”

“Then we’ve got to get in there,” I
implored.

“We’re workin’ on it, Row. Calm down.”

We continued down the sloping road, easing
slowly into a particularly tight bend of which we had been
forewarned by a yellow caution sign emblazoned with a sharply
twisted arrow. As we started into the switchback, we could see an
undulating glow against the trees. The farther into the turn we
went, the brighter and more frantic they became. Finally, we hooked
around the opposite side of the angle and were greeted by
flickering emergency lights atop a patrol vehicle.

Ben slowed the van and brought it to a halt
behind the squad car then levered it into park and switched off the
engine. I was already unbuckling my safety belt before we had come
to a complete stop.

Ben grabbed my arm as I began to shoulder the
door open. “Let me and Mandalay do the talkin’. Understand?”

“Yeah, whatever,” I answered absently.

“I’m serious, Row,” he told me.

“Yeah, fine,” I barked back. “Let’s just find
Felicity before it’s too late.”

“That’s the plan, Row.”

The bright beam of a flashlight hit Ben as
soon as he was out of the vehicle and then slid over into my face,
effectively blinding me. Ben called out to the uniformed officer as
we walked toward the Jeep. “Detective Storm. I’m the one who
called.”

The light came down out of my eyes, and I
blinked to re-acclimate my sight to the darkness. I could hear
Agent Mandalay talking to the officer and verifying our
identities.

“You the one who found it?” Ben asked,
continuing forward.

“Yeah,” the officer said as we approached.
“Found it a few minutes ago, just like this.

The door of the Jeep was hanging open, and
though the engine was switched off, the keys were still in the
ignition. The officer shone the flashlight around the interior of
the vehicle and then aimed it toward the nearby tree line.

He nodded toward the point no more than a
dozen feet away where the light fell against a chain link fence,
then played it upward to the strands of barbed wire across the top.
There, hanging across the barrier was what looked to be one of the
floor mats from the Jeep.

“Looks like your suspect might have gone over
the fence there.” he said.

“Suspect!” I blurted, starting forward.

Ben’s hand clamped onto my shoulder and
pulled me back. He stepped forward himself, interposing his huge
frame between the officer and me.

Agent Mandalay was already on the defense.
“She’s not a suspect.”

“Listen,” Ben spoke, voice calm but adamant.
“Let’s get one thing straight right now, she’s a consultant, and if
she gets hurt I’m holdin’ you responsible.”

I’d had enough. Standing here bantering with
the Woodcrest cop wasn’t accomplishing anything other than raising
my ire. Not to mention, every moment that passed was taking
Felicity closer to a possibly fatal decision, if she hadn’t arrived
there already.

I glanced around and saw that the three of
them were intent on one another at the moment, so I began moving
toward the fence.

Behind me I could hear the officer talking to
Ben. “Yeah, okay, so what’s a consultant doing trespassing in a
state park in the middle of the night?”

“Makin’ my life hard, obviously,” Ben
returned.

“What case are you working anyway?” the cop
demanded.

“Nothin’ that concerns you right now,” Ben
shot back.

“It’s got to be something big,” the officer
pressed. “A city homicide detective and a Fed out here in the
dark…”

“Look, Officer…” Constance started.

“Martin,” he replied.

“Officer Martin,” she continued. “We’re
working against the clock here, and we don’t have time for this.
Now, has anyone gone in?”

I was only a few steps from the fence now,
and I knew that I was going to be discovered at any moment. I was
going to be very hard to miss when I started climbing.

“Not yet,” the officer replied. “Dispatch is
sending a car to the main gate.”

“Good, I’ll go meet them,” Constance
announced. “Storm, why don’t you and Rowan…”

The moment I heard my name, I knew my time
was up. I took the last two steps at a run and launched myself up
onto the fence. Twining my fingers into the metal links, I kicked
the toes of my shoes into the small holes finding any kind of hold
I could as I scrambled to pull myself upward.

“Rowan!” Agent Mandalay exclaimed, obviously
noticing me.

“Jeezus H. Christ!” came Ben’s bellowing
voice amid the sounds of them starting to move. “Rowan! Stop!”

My only saving grace was that they were
stunned enough by my action not to have started moving immediately.
The delay, brief as it was, allowed enough time for me to put
distance between the ground and me.

By the time they reached the fence, I was
already pitching my waist over the rubber mat and rolling forward.
I wasn’t about to win any medals for my dismount, but I still
managed to drop myself to the ground on the opposite side with only
a minor stumble.

As soon as I gained my footing, at my back I
could hear Ben’s exclamation, “Goddammit, Rowan, STOP!”

My gut reaction was to simply start running
as fast as I could in the opposite direction of the fence. I looked
forward into the woods, following the filtered beam of the
uniformed officer’s flashlight that was apparently aimed at my
back. I hesitated and then took a step toward the dense
thicket.

“Dammit, white man, I said STOP! What the
hell are you doing?” Ben yelled at me through the fence.

I froze and cast a glance back in his
direction.

“She came in this way, Ben,” I shot back.
“She had to have a reason.”

I couldn’t see his expression. The flashlight
was aimed at my face, and the glare blinded me to any details. Ben
was a massive silhouette against the chain link, flanked by the
smaller shadows of Agent Mandalay and the patrol officer. I held up
my hand in an attempt to block the light.

“Wait up,” my friend finally said with
a heavy sigh, then turned to the Woodcrest officer. “Gimme the
flashlight.” Surprisingly, the officer didn’t argue and instead
simply handed over the multi-cell
Mag-lite
without a word.

“You stay here,” Ben instructed him as he
switched off the light and tucked it into his belt. “Mandalay, you
meet the other uniforms at the main gate and work your way in. If
you find her first, call me on my cell.”

“How will you know where you’re going?”
Mandalay asked quickly.

“Hell if I know,” Ben spat as he hoisted
himself onto the fence and began to climb. “Ask Rowan.”

T
he bulk of the nearly two
thousand acre park was a woodland refuge, bordered along the
western edge by the Missouri River. Taken in that context, finding
a solitary, petite, redheaded woman amid it all presented itself as
an overwhelming task. Fortunately, we knew where she had entered,
and she probably had no more than a thirty-minute head start. We
hoped.