Never Burn A Witch: A Rowan Gant Investigation (10 page)

“I’ll be honest with ya’, Row. I told ‘im I’d
ask ya’, but I also let ‘im know I wasn’t all that keen on it
and...”

“I thought we had this conversation this
morning, Ben.” I cut him off with an exasperated sigh and prepared
to refute another episode of his self-imposed guilt.

“Yeah, well that was before ya’ ended
up bein’ some kinda mystical carvin’ board,” he shot back. “But
lemme finish, will ya’... Like I said, I told ‘im I wasn’t keen on
the whole idea and that I ‘specially didn’t like bein’ put in the
position of askin’ you just because we’re friends...” Before I
could voice another objection, he drew in a deep breath and
continued. “Then, I told ‘im that knowin’ you like I do and
considerin’ what you’ve seen so far today, I figured we’d be hard
pressed to keep ya’
out
of it
without lockin’ ya’ up.”

After a short pause, he added, “The decision
is still yours to make, though. Ya’ don’t have to do this.”

“Well, since I’m the one that wanted to head
down to the morgue in this mess, I guess you already know what that
decision is,” I said. “So that’s a moot point. If it would make you
feel any better though, tell him that next time he can ask me
himself.”

“I already did.”

“I guess I should have known you would.”

Ben tacked the lumbering van down the
snow-packed avenue and fell in behind a city maintenance dump
truck. In the hard swaths of the headlights, we could make out the
attached salt-spreader spewing bluish granules of chemical
deterrent in tired, jerky bursts. If the temperature fell to the
lows predicted for later this night, the corrosive sno-melt would
be well beyond its threshold of usefulness, and Mother Nature would
be winning this skirmish. Considering the current conditions, my
money was on her.

Visibility had dropped to zero, and we
tracked the plow by the evenly spaced flares of yellow brilliance
emitting from the pulsing warning lights. A twenty-minute long half
mile later, Ben suddenly cranked the steering wheel hard to the
left, and the rear end of the van fishtailed in an oblique arc.

“Shit! Almost missed it!” he exclaimed.

The tires spun with a raspy crunch until they
chewed through the loose ice and bit into pavement. With a short
squeal of rubber against asphalt, we were launched forward over a
small snow dike and bounced our way once again into the
near-deserted parking lot of the Saint Louis city morgue.

Once Ben parked the van in what he declared
to be a valid space, we braved the cold wind and deepening drifts
to hurry inside. We both took a moment to shake off in the outer
foyer before pushing through the second set of double doors and
embracing the welcome warmth of the building’s interior.

Ben had just unzipped his coat and was about
to display his badge to the receptionist when she spoke up. “Was
that you that just pulled in the lot?”

“Yeah, that a problem?” he responded as he
held the gold shield up for her to see.

“Haven’t you been listening to the
radio?”

Ben looked at me then back to her and raised
an eyebrow. “Should we have?”

“The snow is coming down at over an inch per
hour,” she explained with mild exasperation in her voice. “All city
and county streets are closed to traffic except emergency vehicles
and road crews until further notice.”

“So, did the body make it in from the
county?” Ben queried, dismissing what he had just been told without
acknowledgement.

“About two hours ago,” she returned. “Doctor
Sanders is back there with her now.”

I looked at the clock on the wall behind the
young woman’s desk and then drew in a deep breath. It was already
approaching seven p.m.

“Excuse me,” I addressed her politely, “but
could you direct me to a phone I can use? If we’re going to be
stuck here, I need to call my wife.”

* * * * *

“I just saw you on television,” Felicity told
me as soon as I had finished explaining where I was, along with the
fact that I wouldn’t be home anytime soon.

“Wonderful. I hope they got my good side,” I
returned without even trying to hide the sarcasm. “What are they
saying?”

“A lot of speculation for the most part,” she
answered. “The popular theory at the moment is that a cult is
getting their revenge for that whole thing last year.”

“Cult, huh? They just love that stuff, don’t
they?”

“Row, what’s really going on?” I could hear
mild concern in her voice. “And what was all that about you being
wounded?”

“That? It was nothing.”

“Rowan…”

“Seriously, just a minor cut. No big
deal.”

“You’re positive?”

“Yes, honey,” I assured her. “A doctor has
already looked at it.”

“Okay,” she conceded. “But you still haven’t
told me what’s really going on.”

“Well,” I exhaled the word heavily. “It’s not
something I can get into over the phone except to say that it’s
pretty bad.”

“As bad as last summer?” she prodded.

“Worse... Potentially, a
lot
worse.”

I could hear her measured breathing on the
other end of the line and knew she was digesting what I had just
said. I suppose I could have told her more, but I saw no reason to
subject her to the same fears I was barely holding at bay this
particular moment. Especially not while she was alone.

“You can tell me about it tomorrow then,” she
said, realizing fully that I was simply trying to protect her. She
allowed the subject to drop for the time being, but I knew she
would expect a full explanation soon enough. “Oh, by the way, I was
cleaning up around here and I found a note you left next to the
phone. Did you need to keep it?”

“Note?” I echoed in a puzzled tone.

“Well, I guess that’s what it is,” she
explained. “It’s mainly just scribbling, except for a number.
Two-two-one-eight.”

All that happened today had managed to push
the haunting, senseless number out of my mind. Now, it returned
with a vengeance, tattooing itself across the front of my grey
matter and refusing to be ignored. Demanding my full and absolute
attention, of this I was certain, for I had thrown that note
away.

“Where did you say you found it?”

“Next to the phone,” she replied. “It looked
like it had been crumpled up and then smoothed back out. Like maybe
you decided not to throw it away or something.”

A Wiccan poem known as
The Rede
scrolled through my brain as
I mentally weighed what Felicity had just said. Without realizing
it I mumbled aloud the snippet of verse that had parked itself in
the forefront, “When the wind blows from the west, departed souls
will have no rest...”

“What was that?”

“Huh? Nothing. Nothing... Just... Just hang
on to it for me, okay?” I said hesitantly.

“Rowan, is something wrong?” Her earlier
troubled tone embraced the words. “Does this mean something?”

“Yes... I mean no...” I stumbled over the
answer. “I mean I’m fine. Everything’s just fine.”

“Rowan...”

“Really. I’m okay... Listen, I’ve got to get
off the line here. I’ll explain it all to you in the morning,
okay?”

“Well, okay,” she reluctantly agreed. “Be
careful. I love you.”

“I love you too. Stay warm. Bye.”

“Bye-bye.”

I left my hand resting on the handset after
lowering it back into its cradle. The number twenty-two eighteen
did in fact mean something. It was a warning. An ethereal signal
meant to get my attention, and when it hadn’t worked, the harsher
measure of physical pain had been employed through the wounding of
my arm. Even with that, however, the note had returned. Placed back
into prominence by one unseen in the physical world.

The number’s significance, at least on the
surface, was something I had known all along but had no reason to
remember until now. I made a conscious decision to keep this entire
incident to myself for the time being—at least until I could figure
out just who was telling me this and why.

“I should have seen it,” I finally
muttered aloud to no one but myself. “Exodus twenty-two
eighteen.
Thou shalt not suffer a Witch to
live.
”

“H
ere.” Doctor Sanders
handed me a small glass jar and brushed at her upper lip with her
index finger. “Put some of this under your nose. It will help a
little with the smell.”

I took the offered container of Tiger Balm
and did as she instructed. The sickening reek of scorched flesh had
been intense at the crime scene, and that had been outdoors. Here
in the enclosed autopsy suite, the odor was nearly intolerable.

The infinitely more pleasant menthol-clove
perfume of the waxy salve competed with the airborne foulness as I
dabbed it around my nostrils. While there was no one true victor in
the battle, as long as I kept my breaths shallow, the atmosphere in
the room became at least bearable. I then passed the container
quickly on to Ben who already had his hand extended.

Doctor Sanders had just finished tucking her
shoulder-length, salt and pepper hair beneath the elastic band of
her cap and was now pulling on a second layer of latex gloves.

“I don’t know how you did it, Storm, but in
all my years with this office, I’ve never seen a body from an open
investigation transferred across jurisdictional boundaries,” she
said. “This is definitely a first.”

“Guess it’s just my charming personality,”
Ben replied.

“Sure it is,” she grumbled, her voice
sarcastic. “Or maybe you just can’t stand to see me have any time
off.”

“What can I say, Doc? I like working with the
best of the best.”

“So you’ve told me numerous times before,
Detective.” She sighed. “Anyway, surprisingly enough, your corpse
wasn’t as frozen as one might have thought, so I decided that if I
was going to be stuck here all night, I might as well get some work
done.” Her back was still to us as she spoke from across the room.
“I wasn’t really expecting to have an audience, however.”

The double gloving completed with a loud
snap, she returned to the stainless steel table centered in the
room and slipped a wide pair of clear safety shields over her
prescription frames. “Am I correct in assuming this is the first
time you’ve ever witnessed an autopsy, Mister Gant?”

“Yes, you are,” I responded.

“Well, I can’t say that this is the one I
would have picked were I in the same position,” she expressed.
“Storm, why don’t you make yourself useful for something other than
creating more work for me and start the CD player.”

“Yeah, no prob, Doc.” Ben took the mock
insult in stride and did as she asked before dragging a tall stool
out from the tiled wall and perching his large frame upon it.

Blending into the background from
unseen speakers, music began to play on low volume. It took only a
moment for me to recognize the beginning notes of
Black Cow
.

“Steely Dan?” I mused aloud.

“Absolutely,” she replied, giving a tray of
instruments a quick once over. “I saw the reunion tour out at the
amphitheatre a few years back. There are other CD’s over there if
you don’t like the selection.”

“No, it’s fine. I’m just surprised is all. I
figured you more for the Bach or Brahms type.”

“Catch me in the morning, although it’s more
likely to be Tchaikovsky or Copland.” She paused for a moment then
adjusted the overhead light more to her liking. Satisfied, she
carefully drew back the crisp white sheet.

Nothing in the way of obvious identifying
characteristics appeared to have survived the conflagration. In
fact, little more than charred bone remained below the waist of the
blackened corpse. The only blatant attribute of the partially
intact torso seemed to indicate the female gender—something I had
already deemed as accurate by less corporeal methods. Her hair had
been completely singed away, as well as most of her scalp. As it
had been at the scene, her jaw was locked open in a tortured wail;
so intensely silent, it overpowered all sound in the autopsy
suite.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought I
could hear her screaming.

“Everyone left before the snow storm really
got going,” Doctor Sanders explained as she began, keeping her eyes
fixed on the remains and penning notes on an acrylic clipboard.
“Everyone except Cecelia that is. Sometimes I think she’s too
dedicated for her own good, but there isn’t a day that goes by that
I don’t wonder what I’d do without her. Anyway, this will go a
little slower than usual since I don’t have a P.A. here to
help.”

After setting the paperwork aside, she
adjusted a gooseneck microphone then engaged a recorder, “Case
number oh-two-oh-three-oh-oh-dash-seven. Doe, Jane. Remains appear
to be that of a Caucasian female, mid to late twenties. The body
was subjected to intense heat and flames, effectively incinerating
the soft tissues on the lower extremities and just below the pelvic
region. Withering of the phalanges and metacarpus is evident.”
Shooting a brief glance in Ben’s direction and making a claw-like
gesture with her hand, she added, “The fact that her fingers curled
into her palms protected the tips. I was able to obtain a decent
set of fingerprints for both right and left.”

“What about dental records?” he asked. “I can
run a check against missing persons... ’Course she might not have
been reported yet.”

“I finished shooting those films just before
you arrived. We’ll get them processed as soon as possible.”

I was keeping my distance from the autopsy
table—visibly at least. My breathing was thready and thin. I stood
transfixed by the process as each passing moment drew me further
inward; every second that ticked by was bringing me that much
closer to the horror the young woman had faced. The events of the
day were exacting their toll. I was tired, both mentally and
physically.