Crone's Moon: A Rowan Gant Investigation

by M. R. Sellars

  “Okay,” he replied. “First off, we’ve got a bit of a misunderstanding here. What was found today was skeletal remains. Not a fresh body.”

  “So this happened some time ago then?” Felicity interjected.

  He nodded. “Yeah. Matter of fact, the medical examiner is estimating somethin’ like two years, but that’s not a definite until they run some tests. However, the skull is missing, and there are saw marks on the vertebrae. So, add it all up, and it’s a good bet we’re dealin’ with the same asshole.”

  I still wasn’t finished being angry with myself, so I spat, “Well, then I should have picked up on it two years ago then.”

  “Give yourself a fuckin’ break, Row,” Ben offered with an impatient shake of his head. “Who knows? You were prob’ly all Twilight Zoned ‘bout somethin’ else when this one happened.”

  “That’s no excuse,” I grumbled.

  “Yeah, well deal with it,” he replied. “I need ya’ focused right now.”

  “What for? I snipped. “She’s already dead.”

  “Listen, drop the attitude before I kick your sorry ass around the block,” Ben said. “I already told ya’ you don’t have the whole story yet, and your not givin’ me a chance to tell it.”

  I wanted to fire off a retort, however, he was dead on the mark; so I kept my mouth shut and sat stewing in my own self-loathing.

  “Gods,” Felicity said. “Don’t tell me there’s more.”

  “Sorry, but there is,” he continued. “And, the way I got it figured the remains they found ain’t why you’re goin’ la-la all of a sudden, Row.”

  “What then?” my wife asked.

  He sighed and then gave his neck a quick rub. “This has been all over the news today, so I’m surprised you haven’t heard about it. At around seven forty-five this morning, one of the security cameras on the parking lot at Northwoods Mall caught somethin’. A young woman was abducted while she was on her way in to work. Went down pretty much the same way we witnessed it happen with Larson, white man. And, from what I saw on the tape, it was probably the same shithead doin’ it.”

  “Oh Gods,” Felicity moaned.

  I knew exactly how she felt. I was just too busy trying to ward off a sudden wave of nausea to be able to speak.

  “Yeah, well,” he continued. “The security guard who monitors the cameras was just comin’ outta the crapper, so he only caught the tail end of it happenin’. He called nine-one-one, but by then it was too late.”

  “Great,” I muttered sarcastically.

  “Yeah,” he returned and then paused for a moment. “The tape wasn’t the best. Got a make and model on the car but no tags. Doesn’t matter though ‘cause it’s prob’ly hot like last time. Nothin’ real clear on the bad guy either. Just average height, dark hair, and stocky build; again, pretty much the same as with Larson.”

  “So, who was the woman?” I asked. “Do you know?”

  I’m not sure what made me ask the question. It may have simply been the desire to hang an identity on the abductee. Perhaps it was a need to make her into something more than a nondescript entity, especially since I was apparently feeling her pain. Still, judging from the tickle in my brain, there seemed to be something more driving me when I spoke the words.

  He gave a nod. “Yeah. One of the other security officers managed to ID her as the manager of the Kathy’s Closet store there in the mall. Her car was…”

  “Wait a minute,” Felicity cut him off, a deeply concerned look washing over her face. “Kimberly was abducted?”

  Ben gave her a slightly confused glance while reaching into his pocket and pulling out his small notebook. He quickly flipped it open and glanced down. “Yeah. Kimberly Forest. You know ‘er?”

  “Aye, Kathy’s Closet is one of my big accounts,” Felicity replied. “I shoot all of their catalogs, and Kimberly has done some of the fill-in modeling. We got to know one another the past couple of years.”

  “Fuck me,” Ben muttered. “I’m sorry, Felicity. I didn’t know she was a friend.”

  “No,” I announced on the heels of his comment.

  “No, what?” he asked.

  “No,” I repeated, looking over at Felicity. “I know exactly what you’re thinking, and you aren’t going to do this.”

  “Aye, and you’re going to stop me?” she asserted.

  “If I have to.”

  “Try it,” she challenged, her voice taking on a hard edge.

  “Jeezus H. Christ, will you two stop it!” Ben interrupted sharply. “I ain’t got time for this crap. Look, we got a missin’ woman and no real leads except for your freaky-ass hocus-pocus shit.”

  We both looked back at him as he paused. There was a mix of pain and anger in his face, and even though his voice was harsh, it was underscored with a faint pleading tone. He was looking for help, not conflict.

  He cleared his throat then lowered his voice and continued. “Now, if this sick fuck follows the same time frame as he did with Larson, Kimberly Forest is gonna be dead inside of twenty-four hours. That doesn’t leave us much time.”

  “You’re right, sorry,” I apologized.

  “Listen,” he said. “I wasn’t even gonna call you. I know what you two have been through, and I hate the thought of draggin’ ya’ through it again. But… But, since you called me…” He allowed his voice to trail off, staring back at me with an apologetic look.

  “It’s okay,” I told him. “We all knew I’d end up in the middle again. It was only a matter of time.”

  “So, do ya’ think you can help?” he asked. “Or is this just gonna put ya’ through hell for nothin’?”

  “I don’t know. This seizure was just like before, Ben,” I explained. “I don’t remember anything.”

  “Shit. Not what I wanted to hear.”

  “I know, but I’m not going to give up yet.”

  “Row, after what happened a few months ago…” he began.

  “The hell is going to happen anyway, Ben,” I told him. “Look at what just occurred. Why Felicity called you. There’s nothing I can do to stop it, so I might as well try to use it to our advantage.”

  “How you gonna do that if you don’t remember anything?”

  “We’ll just have to try it again,” I offered.

  “Try what? You mean the hypnosis?” Felicity asked. “Like last time.”

  “Maybe,” I replied. “Or maybe something more direct.”

  “Rowan, what are you thinking?” Felicity asked. I could tell she was already preparing her own veto for my yet to be announced course of action.

  “Psychometry” was my single word response.

  “What the hell’s that?” Ben asked with a harrumph. “Math for Witches?”

  “Psychic impressions from physical contact,” Felicity explained.

  He nodded. “So you mean like when you go all la-la from touching a victim’s body?”

  “Exactly,” I replied. “But it’s also like when I ‘see’ things at crime scenes just by being there.”

  “Okay, so that’s what ya’ call it.” He raised an eyebrow and gave his head a quick, sideways cant. “So you wanna go to the site of the abduction?”

  “For starters.”

  “And if that doesn’t work?”

  “Let’s cross that bridge if we get to it.”

  CHAPTER 30:

  “So whaddaya need to do, Row?” Ben asked as he nosed his van into a parking space, levered it into park, and then turned in his seat to look back at me.

  Felicity was sitting directly behind him in the back seat, and I was on the passenger side near the door. Agent Mandalay was in the front with him, riding shotgun. She had returned Felicity’s call just as we were getting ready to leave, so we had waited for her arrival before making the trek to the Northwoods Shopping Mall.

  “Where did the abduction actually take place?” I asked.

  “Let me see,” he murmured, then began counting to himself as he lazily gestured out the window with his finger. “�
�Four… Five…. Six… That one. That should be it, right over there.” He pointed through the passenger side of the windshield. “See that light standard? That should be the one she was next to when she was grabbed.”

  I followed the line of his arm to the large concrete footing and towering light post some thirty to forty yards away in the opposite row.

  “You don’t know for sure?” Felicity asked.

  “I’m not actually workin’ this case,” he reminded her, then pointed out the passenger side window. “I know for sure it was on this lot. There’s the Kathy’s Closet store, over there, and that is the row Ackman said she was parked in. Right now I’m just goin’ by what I was told and the tape they showed me when I was asked to ID the shithead.”

  “If you aren’t on this case then what are you really supposed to be working on, Storm?” Mandalay asked.

  “Last week’s gang shooting,” he replied absently. “And about five more unresolved gang shootings. What about you?”

  He leaned forward and sent his eyes searching.

  “Miscellaneous bureaucratic paperwork,” Mandalay admitted, then continued her own line of questions. “So where does your lieutenant think you are right now?”

  “Day off,” he explained, his attention still directed elsewhere. “Had ta’ go see my lawyer. But, they called me in to look at the tape so I asked a few questions, and now I’m here.”

  “Unofficially, of course?” she half-asked, half-stated.

  “Well sure.”

  My friend stopped scanning and cocked his head, then pointed again, this time to a different post. “If I’m rememberin’ the angle right, that should be the security camera over there. It’s an older system, so like I said, the picture wasn’t the best.”

  I panned my gaze across the muted tableau. It looked dull and flat. Even the more brightly colored vehicles congesting the parking lot seemed subdued under a dusky grey film. Sunset was less than two hours away, and with the overcast skies already blocking a good percentage of the light, perceived nightfall would be coming even sooner than usual.

  I don’t suppose it made any difference one way or the other, whether it was day or night, with maybe one exception: We knew Brittany Larson’s body had been buried under the cover of darkness, and you can bet the others were as well. Since Kimberly Forest had been in the hands of the very same sadistic bastard for a little better than eight hours, I had to wonder if she was even still alive and if we should be staking out wooded areas near the Missouri River instead.

  The harsh reality was that we really had no way to know how much time she had left. With the exception of what had happened with Brittany Larson, we had no actual evidence of the lag time between abduction and disposal of the body. It was all guesswork on our part.

  In the back of my head— only because I didn’t have the stomach to voice it— I was hoping that the amount of torture Kimberly Forest could endure before her body finally shut down would be a deciding factor in her fate. As much as it sickened me to consider what was probably being done to her, even as we sat here looking across the parking lot from which she’d been taken, I was hoping she had a strong constitution.

  And, more importantly, an even stronger will to live.

  “Okay, I need to go over there,” I finally said, reaching for the door handle. “Just wait here.”

  “I’m going with you, then,” Felicity said.

  “That’s really not necessary,” I objected.

  “Aye, don’t start with me, Rowan,” she returned.

  “Don’t either one of ya’ start,” Ben announced. “We’re all goin’.”

  I didn’t argue. It wouldn’t have done me any good. Instead, I just continued lifting the lever and unlatched the side door, then slid it back on groaning tracks. Once we had all climbed out of the vehicle, and Ben had locked it up, we began wandering in the direction of the light standard.

  “Just so I know, are ya’ gonna go all Tee-Zone on us, Row?” Ben asked.

  “If we’re lucky, yes,” I replied.

  “Fuckin’ lovely,” he muttered. “What about you, Felicity?”

  “We’ll see,” she said, the tone of her voice offering no assurances whatsoever.

  “So whadda we do if ya both start floppin’ around like a coupl’a fish?”

  “If we say anything then take notes,” I offered.

  “Yeah, great,” he replied. “What else?”

  “Try not to let us hit the asphalt too hard,” Felicity returned.

  “Yeah,” Ben muttered. “Coupl’a fuckin’ comedians aren’t ya’.”

  We stopped talking but all smiled and nodded as we met a young couple heading in the opposite direction. They gave friendly nods in return, continuing along their way as they passed us by. A moment later, to our backs, we heard the clipped ‘whoop’ feedback of a car’s locks being unlatched by a remote key fob.

  “Jeez,” Ben exclaimed as he looked around the busy parking lot. “It’s five freakin’ P.M. on a Thursday. What’s with the crowd?”

  “You don’t shop much, do you Storm?” Constance asked.

  “Why would I?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she replied in a sardonic tone. “Clothes. Shoes. Underwear without holes in them.”

  “My undershorts are just fine, thank you,” he returned.

  Somewhere in the distance, I heard the driving thrum of heavy metal music blaring, or at least that is what I thought I was hearing. I glanced around, looking for the source, all the while having a sudden attack of déjà vu.

  “Boxers or briefs?”

  “None of your business.”

  “So, I guess your wife did all the shopping for you?” Mandalay contended.

  “Pretty much, yeah,” he agreed.

  “Yeah, well you’ve been on your own for a while now, and you said your divorce is going to be final in a couple of months.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Yeah, so you’d better learn to shop. Either that, or get yourself a girlfriend who wants to do it for you.”

  “You volunteerin’?”

  “Yeah, right,” Mandalay replied, actually laughing as she made the sarcastic remark. “In your dreams, Storm.”

  “Maybe,” he casually snipped. “But I’m pretty sure the woman in my dreams is taller than you.”

  I glanced over at Felicity and saw that she seemed to be handling the conversation well, considering. There was a time when I personally would have been almost livid about the insensitivity of their exchange in light of what was happening. To be honest, it still bothered me a bit, but to a large extent I had grown used to this sort of thing. I knew that the jokes and nonchalant conversations were just a defense mechanism that most anyone in their profession quickly developed. It was either that or the job would eat them alive, and I certainly couldn’t fault them their sanity. I suppose in a way I was a bit jealous that I couldn’t turn off the horror and hide behind the mundane as easily as they.

  “I’m betting she has a set of thirty-eight double-D’s too,” Mandalay baited my friend with a note of disdain.

  “Nope.”

  “Excuse me,” she chided. “Forty-fours then.”

  “Nope. Not really all about the boobs,” he replied with a shake of his head. “I’m more of a leg guy.”

  Constance grew quiet for a split second. The pause would have been almost imperceptible except that time seemed to be expanding all around me. When she spoke again, I could have sworn I picked up a hint of surprise in her voice, but then, the growing roar in my ears was making everything sound odd.

  “Really?” she said, voice phasing through a shallow echo.

  “Yeah, really.” Ben’s languid words flowed in behind hers.

  I was just getting ready to call out to everyone that something was wrong when the thrum ended with an unceremonious crash, and the world around me phased into solid reality. I caught myself as I stumbled

  “Row,” Felicity asked, taking hold of my arm. “Are you okay?”

&nbs
p; Ben and Constance stopped dead in their tracks and turned the moment she asked the question.

  “Yeah,” I replied, nodding. “Must be some residual dizziness or something from the seizure earlier.”

  “You sure, white man?” Ben asked.

  “I think so.”

  “That’s not what I asked you,” he replied.

  “Okay, yeah, I’m fine.”

  “Rowan…” Felicity began.

  “Really,” I told her. “Whatever it was, it’s over now. I’m fine.”

  Ben looked me over as if he were sizing up a suspect, then muttered, “Okay.”

  My friend turned and started walking again. We all fell in step with him.

  “So, I take it Albright is still running the investigation?” Constance asked, changing the subject.

  “Yeah,” Ben nodded. “You don’t think she’d miss a chance to score points with the mayor, do ya’?”

  “It figures,” Constance replied. “But I was hoping maybe she’d handed it off to an underling by now.”

  “She did,” he said. “While it was cold, but she took it back before the poor bastard had a chance to finish his first cup of coffee this mornin’. Now she’s right back in the fuckin’ limelight.”

  “Okay, so what if we hit on something here? How are you going to get it past her?”

  “I was hopin’ you’d tell me,” he said.

  “Me?” she asked. “I’m not assigned to this anymore.”

  “Yeah, well you’re one up on me. I’m flat out banned from it.”

  “So what does that have to do with me?”

  “Your badge is fancier than mine.”

  “Dammit, Storm,” she admonished. “You know if you keep butting heads with Albright, you’re not going to have a badge at all.”

  “Yeah, I know. That’s why you’re here.”

  “Well I don’t know that there’s going to be anything I can do,” Constance offered.

  Ben turned to face her and said, “Well, it’s either that or we find the fucker and I just cap ‘im myself.”

  “I’m not listening,” she replied without missing a beat.

  “Yeah, well,” he said. “This has gotta stop.”