Crone's Moon: A Rowan Gant Investigation (7 page)

She stopped dead in her tracks, staring at me
as her lips drew into a thin frown. After a brief pause, she
unbuttoned her jacket and marched toward the stairs, coming to a
halt in front of me and placing her hands on her hips.

“Would you mind explaining just exactly what
it is that you are doing here, Gant?” She spat the words more as a
demand than as a simple question.

She was slight but still altogether imposing
just given her attitude. Her appearance placed her somewhere in her
mid fifties even with her shoulder length hair having turned
prematurely white. She was dressed in a dark grey pantsuit that
looked like it came from an upscale department store. Felicity
probably could have taken one look and spouted off the name of the
designer, but as for me, well, all I knew was that it looked like
money was involved.

Her hands, strategically placed to reveal
more than just a glimpse of her sidearm, now pushed back the folds
of the double-breasted jacket. I’m sure it was an intimidation
tactic, probably something learned by all cops, but I had been
around this sort of thing far too much. The sight of a gun on
someone’s hip was old hat to me.

As in my past dealings with her, she was
coming across as the mother that every kid on the block was afraid
of, and she wasn’t planning to do anything to change that opinion.
If nothing else, I would say that she was trying to bolster it.

As usual, the gold cross was suspended from a
chain around her neck, obvious against the white background
provided by her blouse. The breast pocket of her jacket held her
badge case, shield flipped outward and prominently on display.

“It’s really a simple matter of being in the
wrong place at the wrong time, Lieutenant,” I answered with forced
civility as I rose to my feet.

I was mutely beating back my desire to launch
into a string of unpleasantries aimed directly at her. I knew such
an act would bring me nothing but trouble, but I was having a hard
time explaining that to my subconscious mind.

“Oh, I’m sure that it is,” she remarked
sarcastically. “Go on. Tell me.”

“Lunch,” I replied.

“Lunch?” she repeated.

“Yes,” I returned, pointing over her shoulder
at a group of officers near the actual scene of the abduction; in
particular, at Ben’s back. “Feel free to ask Detective Storm over
there. We were going to lunch and just happened to be waiting for
the elevator when it all happened.”

“Storm is here, too?” she barked, turning to
look in the direction I indicated.

“Yes, as a matter of fact…”

Her hand came up to cut me off as she spoke,
“You wait right here.”

“Sure,” I answered. “I’ve got no place else
to be.”

I don’t know if she heard me or not because
she was already stalking away toward Ben. While I couldn’t see her
face, I had the distinct impression she was no happier to see him
than she had been me.

* * * * *

“That was pleasant,” Ben muttered the
sarcastic remark as he cranked the steering wheel of his van and
backed it out of the parking space.

I didn’t wait for the follow-up I knew he was
going to utter, “Don’t say ‘like a root canal’, Ben.”

“How’d you know I was gonna say that?”

“Experience,” I replied.

“Hmmph,” he grunted. “So what’d she say to
you?”

“She demanded to know why I was here, so I
referred her to you.”

“Thanks a lot,” he told me with no sincerity
whatsoever.

“What about you?” I asked. “From where I was,
it looked like she was having a meltdown.”

“Yeah, pretty much,” he answered. “She was
just her normal pissy self up ‘til she found out I discharged a
coupl’a rounds into the vehicle. That’s when she lost it.”

“What did she expect you to do?”

“Hell, I dunno.” He shrugged then cranked the
steering wheel to guide us into the downward exit spiral. “Throw
myself in front of the fuckin’ car I guess.”

“You pretty much did,” I observed.

“Yeah, well I guess I didn’t get run over
enough for her liking.”

It was just before 2:30 in the afternoon, and
the scene had officially been cleared. Skid marks had been
measured, paint scrapings had been taken, and photographs snapped
from every imaginable angle. None of it seemed to me like it would
do any good, but there were procedures to be followed, and my
opinion of them amounted to very little— in fact, nothing.

“So what happens now?” I asked.

“You’re in for a treat,” he returned. “We get
to go back to headquarters and tell our stories to some more
coppers.”

“I was afraid you were going to say
that.”

The syncopated tone of a cell phone began its
rising chirp. I didn’t recognize the tone, so I knew it wasn’t
mine. Ben reached to his side and fumbled the warbling device from
his belt, swallowing it in his large hand.

“Storm,” he huffed when he got it up to his
ear.

As if the mood in the vehicle needed any
further darkening, I felt it grow just that much colder in that
very instant. A swirling turmoil of pain, anger, and confusion was
emanating from my friend, and as I watched him listening to the
cell, I saw his shoulders physically droop.

“I know, I know,” he finally said. “But have
you noticed the news?”

He fell silent for a moment, and his
tumultuous emotions became even more tangible.

“Listen, I can’t do this right now…” he said
into the phone, voice rising slightly. “No… No, I’m not… Look,
we’ll have to talk about this later… I can’t…”

He stopped mid-sentence, pulled the device
away from his ear and regarded it with an angered glance. He
stabbed the off button with his thumb then threw it into the
console between us as he muttered, “Shit.”

We had just rounded the last turn of the
spiral and now sped down the exit ramp, finally coming to a halt at
the booth. Ben flashed his badge, and the attendant nodded as he
waved us through.

Remnants of the splintered
black-and-white-striped barrier gate were piled off to the side of
the concrete island. The metal portion of the lift arm protruded as
a twisted stub from the mechanism rendering it totally useless, all
of it the visual evidence of the kidnapper’s hasty exit.

My friend edged the van forward and after a
quick glance in either direction, pulled into the afternoon
traffic. I had always made a rule of staying out of Ben’s business.
If there were something going on in his life he wanted you to know
about, he would tell you in his own due time. Asking him before he
was ready only served to drive him away and make him bury the
subject even deeper.

However, in extreme cases I was known to
break my own rules, and this was one of them. I watched him in
silence as we navigated the traffic to the corner and then stopped
and waited for the traffic signal to turn.

“You okay?” I finally asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he answered tersely.
“Why?”

“I really couldn’t help but overhear…” I let
my voice trail off, leaving the rest of the sentence unspoken.

“Sorry about that,” he replied. “Forget about
it. It’s nothing.”

“It didn’t sound like nothing, Ben.”

“I said forget it,” he snarled.

We made the rest of the trip to police
headquarters in complete silence.

* * * * *

“Where are you?” My wife’s voice issued from
the speaker on my cell phone.

It was rapidly approaching six P.M., and I
was still downtown though fortunately, not sitting on the concrete
stairs in the parking garage. I had finally lost count of how many
times I had given my accounting of the events and to how many cops
I had given it. They eventually concluded that with the exception
of a few adjectives and conjunctions, the story was always the
same. No more or less information than the previous recitation.

I don’t guess I could blame them for trying.
I was as aware as anyone else of what can be seen but not
consciously remembered.

“What, no hello?” I asked.

“I said hello when I answered the phone,” she
replied. “Now, where are you?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Try me” came her guarded response.

“Downtown with Ben.”

“Tell me you’re at a bar, Rowan,” she half
asked, half instructed, but the tone of her voice told me that she
knew that wasn’t true.

“Sure,” I answered. “It’s called Police
Headquarters.”

“Oh Gods, Rowan,” she moaned, then asked,
“The seizure?”

“No… Yes… Maybe… I don’t know yet” was my
response, confusing as it was to us both. “Have you heard about
Brittany Larson?”

“How could I not? It’s been all over…” she
started then stopped herself mid-sentence. “Oh, Rowan, no… What?
What happened?”

“Kidnapped as far as anyone can tell right
now,” I answered. “Although I don’t think whoever did it has any
qualms about hurting her.”

“How do you know that?”

“Well… I kind of had the bad fortune of being
a witness to the abduction, and it was a bit violent.”

“You what? How?”

I gave her a rundown of the day’s events
since we had last spoken; all of which had finally culminated in me
using my backside to warm a molded plastic chair next to Ben’s desk
for the past few hours.

The promised lunch had eventually happened
sometime around three in the afternoon. Unfortunately, it had taken
the form of a stale jelly doughnut and a cup of what the officers
of the homicide division referred to as coffee. My personal jury
was still deliberating on that point.

I told her about that too.

“So anyway,” I continued. “Ben is going to be
tied up down here for a bit longer, but they’ve given me the okay
to leave.”

“Give me twenty minutes,” she replied to the
unasked question.

“I’ll be waiting outside.”

“B
ar food?” I said to my
wife. “I’ve been stuck down here all day with nothing but a stale
doughnut and bad coffee, and you want me to eat BAR
food?”

“It’s not ‘bar food’,” she replied as she
dropped the Jeep into third gear and veered onto the Kingshighway
exit from westbound Interstate 64. “It’s PUB food.”

The top was down, and the warm wind was
whipping through the open cab of the vehicle. There was still
better than an hour of sunlight left in the day, so it was still
hot and humid. Fortunately, the temperature had dropped off by a
few degrees, so it wasn’t quite as bad as it had been earlier in
the day; if you liked steam baths, that is. Although, I had to
admit the artificial breeze generated by the motion of the Jeep
went a long way toward making it tolerable.

“There’s a difference?” I asked with a
chuckle.

“Aye, and you’ll be finding out soon enough,
then,” she answered, dredging up her inherent Celtic brogue with no
effort whatsoever. Truth was, it was probably more of an effort for
her to hide it.

Felicity was second-generation
Irish-American, but you wouldn’t know it to look at her— or
especially at times, to hear her. In fact, one would think she had
just stepped off an airplane direct from the Emerald Isle.

Her looks were straight out of Celtic myth.
She was petite, standing shoeless only slightly more than five feet
tall. Her complexion was milky white and smooth like porcelain with
the only exception being a light spate of freckles across the
bridge of her nose. Bright, green eyes peered out of her doll-like
face, and the whole package was framed by spiraling locks of fiery
auburn hair that hung down past her waist. If a toy company were to
produce a doll to represent Ireland, my wife would make the perfect
model for it.

If the looks weren’t enough, she was also
possessed of the stereotypical temper that, whether politically
correct or not, was so often associated with both the ethnicity and
hair color. Fortunately, it wasn’t one that was easily ignited
although I had managed to spark it on a few occasions.

Growing up, she had spent almost as much time
in Ireland as the United States, even attending college there;
hence, she was never completely devoid of a light, Irish lilt in
her voice. However, get her around her family, get a few alcoholic
drinks in her, or wait until she got overly tired, and her guard
would drop. The lilt would morph into a thick brogue, replete with
slang and colloquialisms the average American was hard pressed to
understand. We’d been married better than twelve years, and she
still came up with some that perplexed me.

When she really got riled up, she would even
mix languages on you. While certainly not fluent in Gaelic, she had
more than a passing familiarity with it. That particular
vocabulary, however, consisted of innumerable curses and derisive
phrases born of the ancient language, and if provoked, she was more
than happy to use them.

On the flip side, she even knew a few of the
endearments, and I’d had the good fortune to hear them whispered in
my ear from time to time.

“I love it when you talk with an accent,” I
said, shooting her a grin.

“Aye, what accent?” she asked, still laying
it on thick and laughing as she spoke. “You’re the one with the
accent, then.”

“Right,” I answered. “Midwest plain and dull.
So what’s the name of this place again?”

“Seamus O’Donnell’s.”

“Sounds Irish,” I joked.

“Well, duh,” she returned.

“So it doesn’t sound familiar. Have we been
there before?”

“No.”

“Hmmm. I thought we’d been to every Irish pub
in Saint Louis by now.”

“They’ve only been open a few months.”

We had made the loop and merged into the
afternoon traffic. She sped up to the next intersection, just
catching the light before it switched and turned the vehicle to the
right from Kingshighway onto Oakland.