Never Burn A Witch: A Rowan Gant Investigation (38 page)

Scraping.

Carving.

I continue my trek around the dying plant in
search of the source.

In a surreal wipe, the back of a robed figure
appears opposite me.

Finding myself devoid of words, I simply
stare in silence. The scraping sound ceases, and the figure cocks
its head to the side. Slowly and purposefully the figure reaches up
and pulls back the hood of the robe to reveal a tangle of fiery red
hair. The figure turns to face me.

Kendra Miller stares at me
with vacant eyes, in her hand an athamé. On the quickly rotting
tree trunk behind her is a
freshly carved
Monogram of Christ. With nothing resembling any form of emotion,
she raises her hand and points the athamé at me.

My confusion flees.

Fear returns in force, surging upward from
the depths of my bowels.

“Whereas you, Rowan Linden Gant have duly and
properly admitted your crimes, and having before us the Holy
Gospels that our judgment may proceed as from the countenance of
God, by this sentence we cast you away as an impenitent heretic and
sorcerer…”

The intermittent sounds of creaking punctuate
the sentences that spill imperiously from the dark voice.

“…
And do hereby deliver you
unto the power of our most Holy God. As you are damned in body and
soul, your sentence on this day is death. The sentence, to be
executed immediately and without appeal in the manner of
hanging.”

My eyes snapped open at the explosive sound
of a gallows trap door violently swinging wide.

The first thing I saw was the pitched ceiling
of the upper floor of my house. I tilted my head forward and
stopped the moment the sore ache shot from one side of my neck to
the other. Awakened by its friend in the upper vertebrae, a nagging
pinch began to dance about my lower back. Acute awareness of my
position in the chair told me I had been there far too long.

Slowly I allowed my head to begin its
forward tilt once again but decided to take things one-step at a
time and told the rest of my body to stay put. A well-worn
paperback copy of the
Malleus
Maleficarum
was splayed out on the desk in front of me
with my glasses placed carefully in the center. A half empty bottle
of beer sat to the right; next to it, a ceramic mug that had
contained willow bark tea.

The sound of the fan on my computer hummed in
a medium pitched drone punctuated by a regular staccato smacking
noise to my left. I shifted my bleary gaze in the direction of the
wet sound, and it came to rest on the corner of my workstation.

There, Salinger, our Himalayan was perched
carefully on the edge of the desktop peering wide-eyed at me over
the rim of a bowl. His wary feline gaze locked with mine, and he
tensed in preparation to bolt but continued to lap at the discarded
remnants of my dinner.

After a moment or two of playing stare down
with the fluffy cat, I shifted my weight and allowed the chair to
pivot forward. Salinger immediately leapt down as the springs
groaned in protest but took only a few quick steps before turning
and planting himself a short distance away with Emily and Dickens.
Apparently, the cats had been taking turns at the feeding trough
while the other two acted as lookouts.

I rubbed my eyes to dislodge the sleep still
clinging in them then slid my glasses onto my face as I stood. The
clock in the corner of my monitor read 11:17, so there was still
plenty of time for sleep before the sun made its way over the
horizon. Mechanically, I shut down my system and switched off the
master switch on the power strip before scooping up the open volume
from the desktop.

For a double beat of foggy consideration, I
pondered taking my dirty dishes down to the kitchen and at least
putting them in the sink. The tug of war over what to do ended as
soon as my muddy brain centered on the fact that the kitchen was
farther from my present location than the bedroom. That question
answered, I left the bowl for the cats to fight over.

As I started out the door, I realized
that I was unconsciously carrying the copy of the
Malleus Maleficarum
that had been in
front of me. I didn’t even remember why I had picked it up. I
started to toss it back onto the desk and noticed my finger was
thrust between the pages, physically marking the place I had
apparently left off.

Curiosity momentarily interrupted the desire
for sleep, so I flipped the book open and gave the text before me
the once over. The marked pages screamed back in crisp black and
white, starkly announcing the thirteenth method of arriving at a
definite sentence when a person is accused of heresy.

Question number thirty-two. The method to be
put to one who is convicted but who hath fled or who Contumaciously
Absents himself.

As I read the words that followed, I imagined
for a moment that there was always the possibility that the lack of
sleep combined with re-heated Dublin Coddle could be responsible
for my most recent night terror. Unfortunately, there was no
denying that they couldn’t have been a factor the night before.

I carefully tucked a scrap of notepaper into
the binding and closed the cover before laying the volume back on
the desk. Now, I wasn’t entirely sure if I wanted to go back to
sleep.

I had to resign myself to the fact that I was
no longer just another Witch among the myriad of Pagans—closeted or
otherwise—that lived in this city. The fact that I was the official
Witch of the Major Case Squad wasn’t what now set me apart
either.

I had already been tried, convicted and
sentenced in the deranged court of a serial killer.

I was on the list.

“K
eep goin’ at this rate
and we’re just gonna need ta’ get ya’ a shield,” Ben mused as I
clipped a laminated visitors pass to my shirt. “You’d be the bad
guys worst nightmare—a Witch with a badge.”

“Yeah, don’t do me any favors,” I retorted.
“Remember, I know the kind of hours you work.”

“Wuss,” my friend chuckled.

My ideas about getting caught up with the
workload from my custom software consulting business had been
declared null and void the moment Ben had called. At least he
hadn’t gotten me out of bed. My wife had seen to that herself.

Felicity was into the second day of shooting
with her client and had left the house well before dawn—but not
before prodding me awake on her way out and instructing me to clean
up the broken soup bowl on the office floor.

I had wanted to talk to her about my late
night revelation but was denied the opportunity by the obligations
of normal daily life. In some ways it was a minor relief because I
wasn’t entirely certain how to approach what I wanted to say. If I
was correct in my assessment, and I was on the killer’s list, then
at some point he would be coming for me. When he did, I wanted
Felicity as far away from ground zero as possible. Since I was
ground zero that meant getting her far away from me. In her mind
that would mean I was shutting her out once again.

It was no stretch at all to imagine—in my
mind’s eye I could easily see her adamant glare and steadfast
posture when she cocked her head and explained to me in her own
patented fashion that she would be doing no such thing.

With that portion of my day’s agenda being
forcibly rescheduled for a later time, I planned to bury myself in
maintaining code for my client base. After cleaning up the mess the
cats had made of my laziness and treating myself to an extra long
hot shower, I settled in to do just that.

Following the trend that had already been
set, I had barely gotten started on replies to my e-mail when the
phone pealed out its annoying demand.

“Well, I appreciate ya’ comin’ down, white
man,” he continued. “I know ya’ had work ta’ do and all.”

“That’s okay,” I offered as I followed him.
“I was planning to call you later anyway.”

“Yeah, I figured ya’ would,” he remarked.
“The answer is yes. I called Mandalay, and she filled me in on what
happened to ‘er brother. Everything’s fine.”

“That’s great, Ben,” I told him in an absent
tone that bespoke of my diverted attention. “That wasn’t actually
why I was planning to call you though.”

Ben stopped mid-stride and turned to face me.
“Somethin’ wrong, Row?”

“Yeah, I think so,” I admitted, shifting to
the side to allow a secretary who was quite obviously on a mission
to pass by. “If you’ve got time after we’re through talking to the
old man, I’d really like to bounce it off you.”

“Hey, we can talk about it right now if ya’
want.”

I considered his offer and weighed the
urgency of my request. Standing in the middle of police
headquarters I was fairly certain that I was safe for the time
being. “After the interview is fine.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah,” I finally acknowledge as I nodded.
“Yeah, it can wait.”

“Okay, it’s up ta’ you,” he told me as we
continued on our way through the Monday morning flood of uniformed
cops and civilians alike. “By the way, I’ve got some paperwork in
my desk for ya’ ta’ sign off on. We can do that after the interview
too.”

“Paperwork?” I repeated the word with a
puzzled tone. “Paperwork for what?”

“For the consulting fees I put ya’ in for,”
he answered. “Won’t be much, but if we’re gonna keep draggin’ ya’
away from your real job ya’ oughta get somethin’.”

“You know that’s not necessary, Ben.”

“So donate it ta’ charity or whatever.” He
shrugged to punctuate his reply. “I already got it approved, so ya’
might as well just sign the papers and take the check.”

“Thanks, Ben.”

“Not a problem, man. So anyway, like I was
sayin’ on the phone, I got a wake up call at about half past still
dark tellin’ me that Tracy Watson was droppin’ all the charges
against the old guy. She even came down here this mornin’ ta’ see
‘im.”

“Sounds like she must have had a change of
heart, then,” I said.

“It’s more likely that the station was
lookin’ ta’ get some good spin on it,” he grunted. “She showed up
with a couple of suits that breezed through here like they owned
the place. She was all dolled up with a stack of publicity photos
under her arm and had a cameraman surgically attached to ‘er
ass.”

“Bet that was a circus.”

“Put it this way, between the coppers that
were droolin’ all over themselves and the ones that couldn’t get up
from their desks for ten minutes, it would’ve been the perfect time
ta’ rob a bank.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Can’t blame ‘em really. You’d have to check
with Vice to be sure, but I’m bettin’ there’s at the very least one
or two city ordinance violations for what she was doin’ ta’ that
sweater with those things.”

“How about the old guy?”

“Starstruck, I guess,” he ventured. “Or boob
struck. Pretty much just sat there starin’ at ‘er chest. When he
did talk he just babbled somethin’ about a truck.”

“A truck?”

“Yeah. Who knows? Maybe he wants ‘er ta’ buy
‘im a truck. Nobody could make any sense of it.”

“So have you talked to him yourself yet?” I
queried while following my friend down a flight of stairs.

“For a coupl’a minutes. He’s sober, but he
still ain’t all there,” he acknowledged. “Only name we can get out
of ‘im is Bob, and that damn near took an act of Congress. Still
not sure if it’s for real or not. He’s got no priors, so ‘is prints
didn’t help us at all. He’s just another discarded human being. We
see ‘em every day.”

“That doesn’t make it any more palatable,” I
asserted.

“No, it doesn’t,” he agreed. “But what’re ya’
gonna do? Some of ‘em like it that way. I seem to recall you
tellin’ me once that I couldn’t protect the whole world. That
applies to you too, ya’know.”

“I know, I know,” I acknowledged.

“Anyhow,” Ben continued filling me in, “I
dunno how long they had this guy in the shower, but they managed
ta’ get the stink off ‘im for the most part… And he got ta’ sleep
in a warm bed last night, even if it was lockup… He’s had a decent
meal for a change…Got ‘im some fresh clothes from one of the local
shelters…Oh yeah, and the TV station Watson works for sent along a
brand new coat for ‘im. Cheapest publicity they’ll ever get.”

“Maybe so, but at least he’s got a decent
coat now.”

“Yeah, there is that,” he acknowledged.

We had pushed through the heavy door and had
made our way down the familiar hallway while Ben rattled off the
latest information on the old man. We now came to a halt in front
of an interview room, and my friend paused with his hand on the
doorknob.

“So I figure I’ll let you do the talkin’,” he
told me. “Kinda do the hocus-pocus thing and see what ya’ can find
out, ya know?”

“I’ll give it a try but I can’t make you any
guarantees. It doesn’t always work like that.”

“I know.” He nodded as he twisted the knob
and pushed the door open. “But I got faith in ya’.”

The old man was sitting at the small table
that occupied the center of the room, and true to what my friend
had said he was almost unrecognizable as the foul-smelling bum we
had visited the day before. The untold layers of grime that had
once painted him were now distant additions to the waters of the
metropolitan sewer system, and his foul perfume had been replaced
by the sharp tang of antiseptic soap. While by no means a perfect
fit, he was clad in fresh clothing far less threadbare than his
original attire.

His face was sporting a lurid grin that
displayed several missing teeth, and he repetitiously fingered an
eight-by-ten glossy that was gripped in his weathered hand. His
intent gaze never left the crisp lines of the autographed photo
even while Ben exchanged a few words with the uniformed officer who
had been waiting inside the door. After sending the guard on a
break, my friend pressed the barrier shut and silently leaned
against the wall next to it with his notebook at the ready.