Harm None: A Rowan Gant Investigation (30 page)

“I’m sorry,” I heard her say, rapt concern
flooding her voice.

I pulled her close.

It was my turn to cry.

“How many?” she asked softly after my sobs
had waned. “How many of these nightmares have you had?”

“Four,” I choked, pulling back from her and
pressing the heels of my palms against my eyes.

“They’re getting worse, aren’t they?”

“Yes,” I affirmed, “they’re getting
worse.”

My wife rolled to the side and fluidly got
out of bed. She continued to stare at me as she slipped into her
bathrobe, her expression rapidly beginning to show irritation on
top of the concern.

“Why haven’t you told me about this?” she
demanded angrily as she knotted the belt.

“I started to this morning.” I swung my legs
over the side of the bed and hauled myself up. “But that media
circus was waiting for us, and then everything else...” I let my
voice trail off.

“Well,
everything else
is over,” she flatly
rebutted my objection. “We’re going to talk about it
now.”

“I’ll be all right,” I protested. “We can
talk in the morning.”

She glared back. “Now.”

The tone of her voice told me in no uncertain
terms that I shouldn’t argue. I finished pulling myself from the
bed and stood shakily, still rubbing my eyes.

“Can I take a shower first?” I queried.

“I’ll be in the kitchen,” she answered.

* * * * *

I felt somewhat better after standing under
the cool spray of the shower for a few minutes. At the very least,
I was no longer drenched in sweat, and I had stopped shaking for
the most part. Felicity was seated at the breakfast nook, cradling
a mug of freshly brewed coffee in her hands when I entered.
Salinger, Dickens, and Emily lined the wide window sill, staring
back at me through slit eyes, ears cocked out to the sides of their
heads as if they were three wise, albeit small and furry,
prophets.

I pulled down a mug from the cabinet and
poured myself a measure of the black caffeine-laden brew.

“Feeling better?” Felicity asked as I
poured.

“A little,” I replied and then slid in across
from her. I had quickly recorded my latest nightmare in my Book of
Shadows before showering, and it was now tucked beneath my arm. I
pulled it out and dropped it to the table with an audible smack.
The trio of felines followed its course in unison, from my hand to
the table, and then looked back at me expectantly. “I’m still
feeling rattled though.”

“So you want to fill me in, then?” My wife
peered at me over the rim of her cup before taking a sip.

I tapped the bound sheaf of papers that was
my dream diary. “I’ve written them all down. The first one was
Saturday when I fell asleep on the couch.”

“I remember,” she confirmed.

“I didn’t have one that night though,” I
continued. “I guess I was too exhausted.”

“So, is it a recurring nightmare?”

“In some ways I guess it is, but not really.”
I thoughtfully fingered the rim of my coffee cup. “Ariel is always
in them. She’s always dressed in white lace, and by the end of the
nightmare, she’s always dead.”

“That’s pretty straightforward,” Felicity
told me, analyzing my words carefully. “Just think about what
you’ve seen.”

“It’s bad enough seeing her die over and
over,” I outlined. “But she always says something like, ‘Why don’t
you stop him?’”

“Subconscious reaction to a feeling of
helplessness?” she proffered. “You want to be able to save her, but
you can’t. It’s probably your own psyche saying it.”

“That’s what I thought at first too,” I
partially agreed. “But there’s too much detail, and the variations
in the dreams seem to form a pattern. It’s as if Ariel is trying to
tell me something. Like she’s trying to give me clues to the
identity of her killer.”

“So you don’t think these are just nightmares
then?”

“Not since the third one,” I answered.
“They’re just too damn real...And they keep getting more
intense.”

“What kind of clues do you think she’s giving
you?”

“I’m not exactly sure. One of the things that
has recurred in the past two nightmares was the Seven of
Pentacles.”

“The tarot card?”

“Yeah. In the third dream anyway.” I flipped
through the pages of the Book of Shadows halfway hoping an answer
would leap out at me. “Ariel always was fascinated with tarot.”

“What do you think it means?” Felicity
queried.

“The inherent meaning of the
card is something like
hard work and
patience brings growth
... and something to
do with money, if I’m remembering correctly. I was never that
interested in the cards.”

“Neither was I,” she echoed then paused. “You
said it was a tarot card in the third dream. What was it this
time?”

I scribed in the air with my finger while
taking a sip of my coffee. “The symbol, from a card, only it was on
a pair of tickets and a program.”

“What, like concert tickets or
something?”

“Tickets to a play. Or I guess it was a
play.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” I sighed. “In this nightmare, I went
to what appeared to be a play, but there was this little girl with
me. I’m pretty sure she’s Ariel as a child,” I explained. “Anyway,
she told me that it was just a dress rehearsal.”

“What was the play about?”

“The murders,” I answered flatly. “The
curtain opens up and there are three faceless women on the stage. A
strawberry-blonde in the center, a brunette on her left, and a
blonde on her right.”

“Ariel, Karen, and Ellen.”

“That’s what I’m figuring,” I agreed.
“Anyhow, all three of them are dressed in white lace gowns, and
there is this grey mist that keeps spilling off the stage. It
creeps across the floor like some kind of fog and just keeps
getting deeper. It paralyzes me and holds me in the seat, so I have
to sit there and watch as this shadowy figure kills them one by
one. Ariel, then Karen, and then Ellen.”

“What does the little girl do?”

“She just sits there and watches. For some
reason, the fog never touches her.”

“And she told you it was just a dress
rehearsal?”

“Yeah. After the shadowy figure kills all
three women, this plume of mist rises up, and then as it
dissipates, there is this other woman...” I stopped mid-sentence as
the portion of the nightmare I had just described replayed itself
in my mind like an endless loop of film. The realization suddenly
struck me like a fist between the eyes. “DAMMIT! How could I have
missed it!” I exclaimed.

I leapt from the table, sending the
heretofore-quiescent cats into a frenzied rush to escape. They
bolted in three separate directions and in the same direction all
at once, sending saltshakers and other table adornments to the
floor. Coffee sloshed from my cup, and my wide-eyed wife shot
upward from her seat.

“Rowan! What’s wrong?!”

“Another woman appeared on the stage, and the
bastard killed her too,” I spoke quickly, advancing across the room
and snatching the telephone from its cradle. “He killed again! The
son-of-a-bitch has killed again!”

I punched the lighted buttons, frantically
dialing Ben’s home number.

“Aye, are you sure?” Felicity appealed as she
tended to the spilled coffee.

“It has to be,” I answered confidently and
then began impatiently urging the phone. “Come on, come on, pick
up!”

I pressed the handset tightly to my ear,
listening to the electronic vibrato of the ring at the other end of
the line. If nothing else, this portion of the nightmare was
suddenly clear to me. Ariel was telling me that there was either
going to be another murder or that another had already occurred. A
gnawing hollowness in the pit of my stomach insisted that it was
the latter.

“Rowan, don’t you think...” Felicity
started.

I brought my hand up sharply and waved to cut
her off as on the fifth ring, the receiver at the other end was
picked up.

“Hello,” a rough, hazy voice, still thick
with sleep issued from the earpiece.

“Ben, it’s Rowan,” I blurted into the
handset. “There’s been another murder.”

“Do what?” Ben’s voice came back to me. “What
are ya’ talkin’ about?”

“The killer, Ben. He’s still out there, and
he’s killed again,” I insisted urgently.

“Slow down, man. Where are ya’?”

“I’m at home.”

“The killer murdered someone at your
house?”

“No, no. Nobody at my house. Listen to me,
R.J. isn’t the killer. The bastard is still out there, and he’s
killed someone else.”

“Who, Rowan? Who’s dead?”

“Another young woman. I don’t know her
name.”

“How do you know this?” Ben’s voice sounded
much more alert now.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” I
expressed. “Just trust me on this.”

“Well, where did this murder take place?” I
could hear him shuffling paper, preparing to take notes.

My mind had been working so fast I had rushed
ahead of not only the rest of the world, but myself as well. I
motioned to Felicity to hand me my Book of Shadows and began
leafing through the last few pages, scanning them as fast as I
could. As I had feared, there was nothing to indicate where the
murder might have taken place.

“Rowan? You still there?” Ben’s voice
crackled from the earpiece.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m here.”

“Well? Where’d this happen?”

What I was about to say was sure to portray
me as a lunatic. I only wished I had another choice. “I don’t
know.”

“You don’t know?” Ben’s incredulous voice
issued again. “Whaddaya mean, you don’t know?”

“I mean I don’t know where it happened, I
just know that it has,” I answered in a pleading tone, knowing full
well that my words now sounded hollow and empty.

“Lemme get this straight.” He ran down the
high points. “The killer is still out there, and he’s killed
another young lady. You don’t know who, and you don’t know where,
but you just know it happened. So, you decided to call me at...” He
paused, I assume to check the clock. “At quarter of four in the
morning ta’ tell me all this?”

“Yeah,” I muttered.

“And how you know this, I wouldn’t believe,
even if you told me?”

“Yeah.” I couldn’t think of anything else to
say.

“Try me.”

I was dejected. I was frustrated. I was angry
that I had no way to make him believe me. I did the only thing I
could think of to do. I told him the truth.

“A vision. Okay?” Discontent permeated my
voice. “It’s something I saw in a vision when I went to sleep
tonight.”

“Jeezus, Fuck, Rowan!” The earpiece buzzed as
he shouted. “Are you kiddin’ me?! You called me at almost four in
the mornin’ because of a goddamned nightmare?!”

“It’s not just a nightmare, Ben,” I plead.
“It’s more than that. You don’t understand...”

“Hell yes I understand!” he cut me off. “You
got some kinda bug up your ass about R.J. not bein’ the killer, and
ya’ can’t leave it alone. Now you’re havin’ nightmares about
it.”

“No, Ben, that’s not it,” I insisted. “I know
it sounds that way, but trust me...”

“Look, Rowan,” he spoke slowly. It was
obvious he was trying to hold back anger. “You’re just gonna have
ta’ accept it. The D.A. is filin’ charges against R.J. tomorrow
mornin’, and that’s the end of it. Now drink some warm milk or
somethin’, and go back to bed. We’ll talk about this in the
mornin’. Goodbye.”

“No, wait, Ben? Ben?”

I was talking to dead air.

I slowly settled the receiver back into its
base and stared at it, silently cursing myself for being unable to
convince him.

“He hung up,” I finally said.

“Aye… I got that feeling. I’m sorry Ben
didn’t believe you,” Felicity told me in a mild voice. “I was
trying to stop you before you called him.”

“I should have listened,” I granted. “He’s
been pretty understanding about everything so far, but this...I
know I must have sounded like I was nuts.”

She slipped her arms around me and nuzzled in
close, slowly rubbing my back in a comforting manner. “You sounded
concerned, and convinced.”

“I sounded nuts,” I repeated. “You don’t have
to sugar-coat it. I’ve just never had involuntary visions this
intense before. I’m not quite sure how to handle it.”

“I don’t know if I would either.”

“If I just had something tangible,” I mused.
“Some kind of concrete proof.”

“Maybe it hasn’t happened yet,” Felicity
returned. “Maybe there is still time to convince him, then.”

“Maybe, but I really doubt it. I’ve got a bad
feeling that I’m a day late and a dollar short.”

The relative stillness of the room was broken
by the clamor of the phone as it began to ring. Without releasing
my grip on my wife, I reached for it just as STORM, BENJAMIN and a
number played across the liquid crystal face of the caller ID
box.

“Hello,” I answered, fully expecting to be
chewed out by my friend or even his wife.

“Good, you’re still up.” The earlier anger in
Ben’s voice had been replaced by something resembling horrific awe.
“Better get dressed. I’ll be there to pick ya’ up in a half
hour.”

“Someone found a body,” I ventured, already
knowing it to be true.

“I’m just glad you’re on our side,” he
muttered, “’cause you ain’t natural, paleface. You just ain’t
natural.”

D
arla Anne Radcliffe,” Carl Deckert was telling me as we stood
in the bedroom of the Westview area apartment. “Twenty-five years
old, flight attendant.” He was reading mechanically from his small
notebook. His grey hair was disheveled, angling up in the back
where his head had only recently been in contact with a pillow.
“The redhead out front is her roommate. They both work for the same
airline, and she just got in from a flight at two A.M.” He motioned
to the scene before us. “When she got home, this is what was
waiting for her.”