“That’s fine.” She held up her hand to stop him. “Like I said, I don’t want to know. I’ve already covered for you, and as far as I’m concerned this never happened. However, things have taken a turn, and I just need you to straighten up and get back on board here. Sooner, not later. As in right now.”
“Finally get a ransom demand?” he asked.
She clucked her tongue and took in a breath. “Not exactly.”
“What?” he asked, trepidation apparent in his voice.
“Rowan?” She turned the floor over to me.
Ben shot a glance over at Felicity then back to me. “You two go all Twilight Zone again?”
“Yeah,” I responded. “Unfortunately.”
“Aww, Jeezus…” he groaned. “Larson’s dead isn’t she?”
“If we’re right, yeah, she is.”
“Yeah, like you’ve been wrong about shit like that before,” he replied with a sarcastic note. “Dammit. When?”
“Our first inkling of it came just a little while after you crashed,” I told him. “So about three and a half, maybe four hours ago, I guess. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t actually happen earlier, or even yesterday.”
“I still don’t understand what you meant about ‘no head’ though,” Felicity said as she turned to face us and leaned back against the kitchen counter. She began absently drying the freshly washed blender parts as she looked at us.
“What?” I asked.
“That’s what you said when you first came to,” she replied with a dismissive shake of her head. “Brittany. No head.”
The biting pain in the back of my neck suddenly made all the sense in the world.
Just as it had happened with Felicity, the vision had faded away as quickly as it had come, and I didn’t even remember uttering the words. In the wake of everything that had happened over the course of the evening, this was actually the first time it had even been mentioned.
I wasn’t at all surprised that Felicity didn’t understand what the comment meant because I hadn’t told her what Ben had confided in me earlier in the day. But, I knew full well what the words implied, and so did Ben and Constance.
My friend slowly moved his hand aside and stared at me. I just stared back.
“You sure that’s what he said?” he finally asked without turning.
“Positive,” she replied. “Do you know what it means?”
“It means we have a serial killer who just claimed a third victim,” Constance announced flatly.
“Hey you three,” Felicity said. “I’m obviously not blonde, but maybe I’m having a moment here. A little help, then?”
“Tamara Linwood and Sarah Hart.” Ben explained, “Both corpses were found minus their heads.”
“Oh Gods…” she murmured softly.
“The initial theory on Hart was that it might have been due to predation,” Constance offered. “But then the medical examiner found seven grooved striations on the posterior of the remaining C-six vertebrae. The tool marks lab matched them to a manual hacksaw, most likely with a fourteen TPI bi-metal blade.”
“Good memory,” Ben said. “I didn’t know you were on that case.”
“I wasn’t.” She shook her head. “It came up as an NCIC match when we ran Larson’s abduction profile. Secluded parking lot, missing twenty-something-year-old woman, etcetera.”
“And you got all that from a NCIC hit?”
“Not all of it.” She shrugged. “I had a few minutes this morning, so I read the file.”
Ben raised an eyebrow and looked back at her incredulously. “And you remembered all that?”
“Well sure,” she replied.
“Jeezus, Mandalay, you’re almost as weird as these two.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment, Storm.”
“Well, I hate ta’ say it, but we still got another problem,” he ventured.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“We got no way to prove any of this stuff about Larson is true.”
“Unless we can find the body,” I offered.
“That’s a big ‘unless’, Rowan,” Constance expressed.
“What’re ya’ thinkin’ white man?” Ben queried. “You got that hinky look goin’ on.”
“I’m thinking that I obviously saw something while I was ‘under’ so to speak,” I explained. “So maybe I saw more than just the ‘no head’ thing.”
“Yeah, but apparently you didn’t even remember that, so how are you gonna remember anything else?”
“It’s a long shot, but…”
“NO.” Felicity’s austere voice cut me off.
“What?” Ben turned his head and asked her. “Was he gettin’ ready to say he wanted to do somethin’ stupid?”
“Yes,” she replied, her tone still harsh.
“How do you know what I was going to say?” I asked, slightly annoyed.
“She’s married to ya’, Kemosabe,” Ben huffed with almost a note of pained disgust in his voice. “She knows everything. Even what yer gonna say next.”
I sped immediately into an explanation, hoping to overshadow his words and more importantly, his tone. “I was only going to recommend we do a regression.”
“Like a past life thing?” Constance asked. “Hypnosis?”
“Similar,” I nodded as I answered her. “But instead of past life, I’d just be going to a previous point in my own.”
“Breugadair,” my wife spat, resorting to a Gaelic epithet for liar. “Someone else’s death is what you mean.”
“We don’t have much choice in the matter,” I contended.
“Rowan, not an hour ago your heart stopped beating for almost two minutes.”
“DO WHAT?!” Ben exclaimed, whipping his gaze back around to me.
“You were still passed out,” I explained quickly. “Besides, she’s making it out to be worse than it is.”
“I am not,” she defended herself.
“Yer fuckin’ heart stopped?” Ben pressed.
“Not according to the paramedics,” I said.
“Paramedics?” he exclaimed. “Jeezus H. Christ! What the hell else did I miss?”
“Rowan,” Constance said, ignoring Ben’s query. “Maybe Felicity is right.”
“It’s not as dangerous as she’s wanting you two to believe,” I appealed.
“All right. Fine.” Felicity leveled her determined gaze directly on me and pushed away from the counter as she announced, “Then how about if I do it.”
CHAPTER 16:
Talking myself into corners was something I excelled at on various occasions. Most especially when it came to trying to convince my wife that I was prepared to handle anything the ethereal world could throw at me. Of course, over the past few years she had seen more than her share of my experiences with such, and she knew better than to believe me. Therefore, it always took some creative explaining to convince her otherwise; or try to at least, because as of late, invariably I would lose the verbal scuffles.
So, getting into the corner was easy. Escaping from it once I found myself pinned was definitely something at which I needed more practice. As it happened, this was rapidly becoming a perfect opportunity for just such an experience. Since my back was now so firmly pressed into the metaphorical niche that it was beginning to take on a similar angular shape, I had nothing to lose by trying.
I blurted the second thing that came to mind, “No way.”
I chose the second thing to pop into my head because the first phrase was more along the lines of, ‘it’s too dangerous.’ Quite obviously, echoing my wife’s very sentiment would have been equivalent to surrendering my king before the first pawn had been moved. I already wasn’t sure that I was going to be able to talk myself out of this one, but I wasn’t going to simply give up. I knew my response was less than inspired, but my creative juices were failing me miserably at the moment. Still, I charged ahead, making a bid to break free of the ‘rock and a hard place’ of my own making.
“Why?” Fe
licity asked coolly and then baited me with, “Because it’s too dangerous?”
“No. Because it wouldn’t do any good,” I told her. “You didn’t see the things that I saw.”
“How do you know that?” she asked, crossing her arms beneath her breast. “Neither one of us can remember anything except what the other one said.”
“Right,” I agreed. “And you didn’t mention anything about her being headless.”
She arched her eyebrows as she gave her head a slight shake. “So?”
“So I must have seen more than you did.”
“Oh come on,” she exclaimed. “You don’t buy into that any more than I do.”
Ben voiced his own observation. “Jeezzz, Row, even I know that’s a lame argument.”
“You aren’t helping,” I returned.
“Look,” Constance spoke up. “I don’t know as much about this as you two do or even Storm for that matter…”
“Hey, you see a broom between my legs?” Ben objected. “Leave me outta this.”
“…What I’m trying to ask,” she continued, glossing over his interruption. “Is that if it’s dangerous for Rowan wouldn’t it be dangerous for you too, Felicity?”
“Not as much,” she replied.
All bids to get myself out of the corner were immediately null and void. I knew the next words out of my mouth would sabotage my own argument, but I was unable to keep myself from calling Felicity on her comment.
“Okay, so who’s blowing smoke now?” I chided.
“All I did was pass out, Rowan,” she asserted. “My heart didn’t come to a screeching halt like yours did.”
“Will you get off that? The paramedics told you I was fine.”
“Aye, they did,” she shot back. “But I didn’t believe it then, and I don’t believe it now.”
I literally threw up my hands in exasperation. “Okay, so what do we do then? You don’t want me doing a regression, and I don’t want you doing one either. So where does that leave us?”
“Okay, like I said, I don’t really know that much about all this,” Constance started in again. “Just what I’ve seen you do here and there, and, well… It’s usually pretty freaking bizarre to be honest… But, that’s beside the point. Anyway, here’s my idea. What if you still did it, but in a controlled manner?”
“What do you mean by controlled?” I asked.
“Yeah, Mandalay,” Ben voiced. “I think I know where you’re headin’ with this.”
“I mean what if you, or Felicity, or even both of you underwent hypnosis by a third party. That way if it gets too weird then you could be snapped out of it right away.”
“That’s a thought,” Felicity said.
Constance shrugged. “We sometimes use various forms of forensic hypnosis with witnesses to help jog repressed or misplaced memories, so why not with you two?”
“She’s right,” Ben added. “Charlee McLaughlin was tellin’ me she used it with a rape victim a few months back. What they got from her was inadmissible in court, but it gave ‘em enough to get a decent lead on the asshole. After that, all they had to do was gather evidence.”
“The rules of evidence are pretty dicey when it comes to information retrieved via hypnosis,” Constance agreed. “But we aren’t after that in this case. We’re just looking for a location on Larson’s remains.”
“I’m not sure it would work.” I shook my head. “Since the experiences were ethereal to begin with, for all intents and purposes, they took place on another plane of existence.”
“But wouldn’t the memories still be there?” she asked. “Just inaccessible to the conscious self.”
“That’s the unknown variable here,” I replied.
“But, they could be there, right?” she reiterated.
I pondered the question for a moment. I’d never really given the idea much thought, until now.
“She might have a point, Row.” Felicity broke the short silence. “You’ve always retained memories from psychic episodes before.”
“Yeah,” I replied slowly. “That’s true.”
“Aye, so it’s worth a try at least,” Felicity said.
Mandalay glanced at her watch and looked thoughtful for a second then said, “I can make a couple of calls. I’m not sure if we have anyone available on this short of notice though. It may have to wait until tomorrow or even Monday.”
“But wouldn’t there be a better chance of any latent evidence still being intact if the scene is located sooner?” I asked.
“Of course,” Ben answered for her. “Fresher the crime scene the better. That’s a given.”
“Then we need to do this now,” I declared.
“Like I said,” Constance offered. “I can make some calls.”
“I’ll go you one better,” I said as a vague memory edged into focus. “Ben, your sister performs hypnosis in her psychiatric practice, doesn’t she?”
“Yeah, I think she does,” he replied with a nod.
“Do you think she’d be up for this tonight?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Hell, she never does anything other than work or sit at home reading, so I don’t see why not. One question though.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Actually it’s for Mandalay,” he replied as he looked over at her. “Say one of these two Twilight Zone’s us a crime scene. What’s the next step?”
Constance wrinkled her forehead and gave a knowing nod. “Guess we’ll have to go verify it.”
“And after that?” Ben pressed. “Which one of us is gonna tell Albright how we found it?”
“As much as I’d like to do it,” she told him. “I’d sure hate to steal your thunder, Storm.”
“Yeah, funny. Like I haven’t heard that one before.”
* * * * *
As it turned out, my friend had been incorrect this go around. His sister had in fact been out to dinner and not holed away in her house reading as he had said she would be. We were lucky, however, as her home number had been forwarded to her service and no sooner had Ben left a message than she called back. Fortunately, not only was she more than willing to come by the house, she was less than fifteen minutes away.
When Helen arrived, Felicity was in the kitchen starting a fresh pot of coffee, and Constance was hiding away in our bedroom for a few minutes so she could return some calls. Ben was expectantly standing at the open door when she pulled into the driveway. He met her on the sidewalk and immediately renewed the brotherly interrogation he’d originally launched on the phone.
Now that they were in the house, I was standing back and quietly watching the continuation of the small family skirmish that was taking place in my living room.
“I am a grown woman, Benjamin.” Helen Storm looked up into her brother’s face. Her voice was calm, but the words were underscored with an unmistakable note of no-nonsense finality. “Not to mention that I am your older sister. I can certainly go out on a blind date without your approval.”
There was no way one could miss the relationship between the two of them. The family resemblance was more than obvious even though Helen was of average height as opposed to her towering sibling. Both were possessed of the same dark eyes and typical angular profiles. Although in most ways they were the same, Helen’s features were far softer. Her pretty face was framed by a cascade of thick, black hair, streaked randomly with strands of grey. The touch of silver was the only visible indicator that she was actually older than her brother.
Having been in some sense a patient of hers, in both official and unofficial capacities, I was used to seeing her in conservative business attire. This evening, however, she was projecting a vastly different outward image via a somewhat flirtatious cocktail dress.
“That’s not what I’m sayin’, Helen,” my friend objected. “There’re a lotta nutjobs out… And that dress is…”
“My dress is just fine, dear brother,” she replied in the wake of his stammering. “And, I met him at the restaurant so that I would h
ave my own car. I am quite capable of making rational decisions.”
“Yeah, but what’d you know about this guy?” he continued. “For all you know he’s a wingnut with a…”
“End of discussion, Benjamin,” she replied, cutting him off mid-sentence.
He stared back at her and shook his head but kept his mouth shut.
“I’m sorry we interrupted your evening, Helen,” I offered, slipping the apology into the mildly uncomfortable void that fell behind her last declaration.
“Don’t worry over it, Rowan,” she replied as she cast a pleasant smile toward me. “Benjamin sometimes forgets that I do in fact have a social life. The truth is, I was actually considering a trip to the ladies room just so I could page myself. I needed an escape, so as it turns out, your call was serendipitous.”
“Escape?” Ben asked.
“He was boring me to tears, Benjamin,” she said as she turned back to him. “That’s all, nothing more. Stop imagining the worst, please.” She cocked her head to the side and gave him a curious stare. “You have been drinking haven’t you?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“It would certainly explain your mood this evening,” she replied. “You are even more overprotective than usual.”
“So sue me.”
“And would I happen to know what prompted this little binge?” she pressed.
He brushed off the question. “It’s not important.”
“Yes, I thought as much,” she replied with an understanding nod, gleaning untold information from his evasive words. “We should discuss that later. At the moment, however, I seem to recall something being said about a murder investigation and the need for a hypnotist. Well, here I am.”
CHAPTER 17:
The flame on the candle reached upward, stretching into a thin tongue as it licked at the air. It undulated in an ever-increasing rhythm until it seemed to almost vibrate then it began to die back downward. I watched intently as the threadlike wisp collapsed into itself to finally become a flickering teardrop of yellow-orange that cast a soft glow into the dimness of the room.
Crone's Moon: A Rowan Gant Investigation Page 13