Crone's Moon: A Rowan Gant Investigation (6 page)

Not knowing how hard he had been struck or
the extent of his injuries, I was fully expecting to see my friend
in a crumpled heap. Instead, I was greeted by the sight of him on
his feet, fully upright and very pissed off.

“Fuck ME!” he shouted across the lot as he
limped forward. “Sonofabitch!”

“Ben!?” I barely managed to call out against
my rapidly shortening breath.

He looked up and saw me running toward him.
“Backup, Row. Fuckin’ tell me I’ve got backup comin’!”

I waved the cell phone in the air then sucked
in a quick breath and called out to my friend as I continued toward
him. “The operator said units have been dispatched.”

Below us, the fading sound of the scraping
metal had now transformed into the clamor of squealing tires, and
out on the streets, angry horns were beginning to blare.

The wail of emergency sirens in the distance
was so faint they may as well have been a lifetime away.

“N
o, I don’t wanna go to
the freakin’ hospital,” Ben’s voice carried across the lot as he
shouted. He continued walking away from the paramedic but looked
back, pointing his finger as he added, “How many times do I hafta
tell ya? Now leave me alone and let me do my job.”

My friend was disheveled and still moving
about with a limp, but other than that, he didn’t appear to be
seriously injured. But then, this was Ben Storm we were talking
about. I’d seen him lie through his teeth to avoid going to a
hospital, all because he had a phobia about needles, go figure.

Even though he had relayed a description of
the vehicle to the 9-1-1 operator, it had all come down to
placement and timing, neither of which factored in our favor. The
car was gone before the first police cruiser even arrived on the
scene. Between Ben, the parking attendant from the booth
downstairs, and me, we had been able to provide miscellaneous
details about the sedan as well as a license plate number. Since
the car had Illinois tags, officials from that state’s patrol
division were already in the loop.

I was keeping my ears open for lack of
anything else to do. Thus far, from what I had been able to pick up
from the various conversations I overheard, there was presently an
alert out on both sides of the river but still no sign of the
vehicle.

I felt like I should be doing something. I’m
not sure what, but that wasn’t the point. I hated the idea of being
useless with regard to everything that had transpired. But, I
suppose being ordered to ‘wait over there until we need you’ can
tend to do that to a person. All in all, I was starting to feel
like an extra in a B-movie but without the paycheck or catered
buffet lunch.

At the moment, I was watching from the
stairwell, sitting on the third step up from the bottom and trying
my best to stay out of the way. So far, I had been managing to do
so but not without some shifting and shuffling to allow the
occasional cop to pass. From what I could see going on in front of
me, this was probably the only spot where I was going to have any
success whatsoever in the endeavor.

I looked away from the scene long enough to
glance at my watch. Somewhere around an hour and a half had slipped
past us since this all began: ninety minutes disappearing into
history only to be relived by eyewitness accounts, repeated over
and over to the point of tediousness. And then repeated again.

Still, even though I had only been asked to
tell my accounting a half-dozen times so far, it felt as if I had
been in this parking garage just shy of forever. On the other hand,
it seemed like the span of interconnected moments had gone by in a
sudden blur. I suppose it was yet another of those peculiar
stress-induced dichotomies that blindsides you following an
unexpected adrenalin rush.

As I watched, I took particular note of the
fact that the number of warm bodies occupying the parking garage
had increased several fold over what it had been just thirty
minutes ago. Now, while I was no expert, unfortunately, I was also
not a stranger to crime scenes. The ratio of cops to the
singularity of the crime seemed to me like it was already moving
beyond overkill. On top of that, something told me there would be
even more by the time it was all said and done. There was something
more to this than met the eye; even the eye of a witness, or so it
seemed.

For the time being, it looked like I was
stuck here. Ben was still limping around angrily, but now he was
heading in my direction. He had been barking at anyone in a uniform
and even some who weren’t. This was far from the first time I had
ever seen him agitated, but there was something different this go
around. It wasn’t that this scene felt any more tense than any
other I’d been on, just different. There was an overtone of urgency
that went beyond any I’d felt before. To me at least, there was
even a palpable sense of personal fear coming from the cops on the
scene. Not just for the victim but for themselves as well. That was
something I had never before experienced at a crime scene, and it
bothered me.

I already knew my friend wouldn’t be going
anywhere for a while. His day off had ended the moment he heard the
woman scream. As for me, even if I wanted to get myself a taxi
home, I was a witness and I’d already been told that I would need
to give a statement. I had thought I’d already done that when I
told them what I saw the first six times, but apparently that was
not official. When they would be getting around to me again was
anyone’s guess.

“Hey, Row,” Ben greeted me sullenly as he
drew himself up against the stairwell railing.

“Hey, Chief,” I returned, starting to pull
myself to my feet. “You need to sit down?”

He motioned for me to stay seated. “Sit, sit.
I’m good.”

“You sure?” I asked, stopping mid-rise. “It
looked to me like you had a pretty serious limp there.”

“I’ll live.”

I lowered myself back to the step and
regarded him for a moment. “The paramedic threatened you with a
hypodermic, didn’t he?”

“Yeah.” He let out something between a laugh
and a sigh. “The words ‘tetanus booster’ got mentioned.”

“You probably need one.”

“We’ll see. Nothin’s broke.” He gave a slight
nod as he spoke, but the expression on his face was saying ‘hell
no.’

“So much for lunch, eh?” I offered after a
moment.

My friend was looking out across the lot,
massaging the back of his neck and lost in thought.

I spoke again, “Ben?”

He started and glanced over at me, “What? Oh,
yeah. That’s a bust for sure. Maybe dinner depending on how this
goes.”

He brought his hand up to smooth his hair
then allowed it to fall back down to his side. He huffed out a
heavy breath then addressed me with an added seriousness, “So
listen, Row, the Major Case Squad is gonna be runnin’ this
one.”

“Okay,” I acknowledged. “That’s not a big
surprise.”

“What I’m tryin’ to tell ya’ is that Bee-Bee
is on her way,” he emphasized. “Hell, she’s probably downstairs
already.”

“Bee-Bee,” I repeated and rolled my eyes.
“Just what I need.”

The moniker struck home. It was short for
Bible Barb, which was probably the least offensive of the nicknames
given to one Lieutenant Barbara Albright. She was a cop and a
self-serving bureaucrat all rolled into one package, and she was in
command of the MCS.

Like most of those her rank and above, she
spent the majority of her time pushing a pencil. But that is where
the similarity ended because unlike the others, she had a penchant
for getting directly involved. Unfortunately, her involvement was
not always a plus.

What had garnered her the various epithets
was her self-righteous attitude. That, combined with the fact that
she not only wore a badge but also a prominently displayed gold
cross around her neck, had earned her the reputation of ‘God’s
Personal Cop.’

She consciously built upon that distinction
as well. She wore her badge like a shield and wielded the cross
like a sword, using its symbolism like a heavy-handed weapon with
which to mete out her own interpretation of justice. To Lieutenant
Albright, the laws she was sworn to uphold were but secondary
suggestions to the commandments held within the Holy Bible; and she
was more than happy to tell you so in no uncertain terms.

While this didn’t necessarily make her
popular among the ranks, she still had her supporters, and there
were enough of them to make a difference. She managed to skirt
around various departmental policies and flaunt her religion
without reproach. Still, none of this would really matter at all
were it not for one simple fact: she absolutely despised me.

While her initial hatred of me began simply
because of my Pagan roots and religious practices, my being a Witch
was not the only reason for her disdain. Unfortunately, I had no
choice but to accept responsibility for a portion of it, as I had
been partly responsible for sparking an Internal Affairs
investigation of her.

Just a handful of months ago, I had been the
object of a madman’s quest to eradicate WitchCraft from the face of
the earth. Eldon Andrew Porter had taken the lives of several
innocent people in the process, two of them my friends. Before all
was said and done, I had come close to losing my own more than
once.

During a single day that had been spawned by
nothing less than hell itself, far too many things had gone
horribly wrong. Information had been leaked; potentially dangerous
mistakes had been made, and events that could have only been
deliberate sabotage had occurred. All of these things had placed my
life in jeopardy at every turn and had almost allowed Porter to
escape. I, among a few others, believed that ‘Bible Barb’ had been
responsible for it all.

While in the end she had admitted to using me
as the bait to draw Eldon Porter out of hiding, she had been
officially cleared of any other wrongdoing and was given nothing
more than an administrative slap on the wrist. As for me, I was
never fully convinced of her innocence and didn’t know that I ever
would be.

At the same time, her own convoluted thinking
made her believe that I was the root of the problem. She had even
commented during a newspaper interview that had it not been for me,
at least two of the victims would still be alive. I was already
torturing myself over that very fact on a daily basis, and I sure
as hell didn’t need her fueling the fire for me. I was doing a fine
job of that all by myself.

“Look, Row, if it was up to me, I’d get you
outta here right now before she gets here,” Ben offered. “But we
both know that ain’t gonna happen.”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “It’s okay.”

“If it’s any consolation,” he added, “I ain’t
exactly one of her favorite people either.”

“Yeah, I know.”

He wasn’t lying. He had gone toe to toe with
her for the sole purpose of defending me and had done serious harm
to his career in the process. While my friend was still a homicide
detective, Albright had seen to it that he was no longer allowed to
work as a member of the Major Case Squad as long as she was in
command. That serious blow to his advancement was yet another thing
I held myself responsible for, even if he didn’t.

“So, I don’t want to sound crass,” I said.
“But what’s so important about this particular case that she feels
like she needs to get her fingers in it?”

“Nice try,” he returned. “But it ain’t
funny.”

I shook my head and looked back at him with a
puzzled expression. “What are you talking about?”

“C’mon, Row,” he chided.

“No, really.”

He arched an eyebrow then cocked his head to
the side, squinting while looking at me hard. “You aren’t friggin’
serious are you?”

“Serious about what?” An audible note of
annoyance crept into my question.

“Do you have any clue at all what you just
witnessed?” he asked.

“I’m guessing a kidnapping.”

“Yeah, and?”

“And what?” I asked, growing more
impatient.

He shook his head and gave me an incredulous
look. “Don’t you ever watch TV?”

“Sometimes. So what?”

“You watch the news, right?”

“Ben, will you just spit it out?” I
demanded.

“You’re gonna sit there and tell me you
didn’t recognize the woman who was grabbed?” he asked.

I flashed on a quick memory of the blonde
victim and remembered having had a passing thought that I should
know her.

I shook my head and shrugged. “Not really.
She looked a little familiar, but other than that…”

“She’s all over the news,” my friend
returned, shaking his head as well. “The Gateway Club Telethon, all
kinds of charity events… You know, anything with a cause and a
donation jar.”

“I’m sorry, Ben,” I barked the words. “But I
still don’t know who she is. Now, would you please quit trying to
make me feel stupid, and just clue me in?”

“Jeezus, Rowan,” he blurted, still shaking
his head. “That was Brittany Larson.”

I looked back at him, stunned as the name
sunk in, and my brain made the connection. “You mean…”

“Yeah, I mean Brittany freakin’ Larson,” he
replied. “The goddammed mayor’s daughter.”

B
en was busy going over
the turn of events with some other detectives when Lieutenant
Barbara Albright arrived. She strode purposefully out of the
elevator, headed straight for the door of the enclosure and whipped
the door open with a swift yank.

Her low-heeled pumps were clacking out a
determined cadence across the concrete decking of the parking lot
as she started for the opposite end of the structure. I almost wish
I’d had a camera on hand to catch the look on her face when she
glanced to the side and saw me sitting on the stairs.