The van lurched left then almost instantly to the right, narrowly missing a parked Thunderbird and tossing me against my door just as I was about to snap the buckle of the shoulder harness into place. Judging from the blotches of primer decorating the otherwise darkly hued T-Bird, if we’d made contact we wouldn’t have been its first scrape by far.
I hadn’t remembered noticing the vehicle in our subdivision before, but there was something terribly familiar about it, although I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what. Still, it was the kind of aggravating feeling that makes a person say to oneself, “Whoa, déjà vu.” The thought went as quickly as it came, however, since any further concentration on the subject was unceremoniously truncated by the sound of my friend’s voice.
“Asshole!” Ben exclaimed the epithet as we narrowly avoided slamming into the oncoming news van. “Learn ta’ fuckin’ drive!”
I straightened in my seat and returned to the task at hand, quickly coupling the safety belt before my friend’s infamous driving could send me tumbling again.
“So have you calmed down a bit?” I asked.
“Whaddaya mean?”
“I mean have you calmed down yet?” I repeated. “You just came through my front door like a runaway train, and so far you’ve been a little short on explanations.”
“I told ya’,” he offered. “That handwriting sample matched up ta’ Debbie Schaeffer.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” I started, “but if I’m understanding this turn of events correctly, Debbie Schaeffer has been murdered, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Which by definition would make her dead already, right?”
“Oh, yeah, she’s definitely dead. No two ways about that.”
“Okay, then. So, I hate to sound cold,” I said as a preface to my question, “but what’s the rush?”
“Simple,” Ben returned. “Because of a chucklehead with a big mouth, there’s about ta’ be a goddamned media circus bustin’ out all over this thing.”
“That’s to be expected,” I shrugged, not seeing the correlation. “It was news then, it’ll be news now.”
“Yeah, well did ya’ happen ta’ notice the logo on the side of the van that just tried to kill us? Whichever asshole leaked the info also knew about the handwriting sample and decided ta’ toss your name inta’ the mix. The circus is headin’ for your friggin’ front yard, Kemosabe. Shit, it looks like I just barely managed to beat ‘em there.”
“So that’s why you didn’t want Felicity to go by the house.”
“Exactly. I just hope she gets the message and doesn’t blow it off.” He let out a heavy sigh before continuing. “Look, it’s bad enough that you’re gettin’ dragged inta’ somethin’ like this again, ‘specially now. I just wanna at least make sure ya’ don’t get caught up in the hype this time.”
“I don’t see how you are going to keep that from happening, Ben.”
“By doin’ exactly what I’m doin’. Gettin’ ya’ the hell outta there.”
“Maybe that will work tonight, but what about tomorrow? And the next day? And the next?” I asked.
“There might not be a tomorrow, or a next day for ‘em. My plan is ta’ keep ya’ as far away from this as possible,” he told me.
“They’ll just camp outside my door.”
“Already on it. The coppers in Briarwood know what’s up and they’re gonna take care of it.”
“They can’t restrict the freedom of the press, Ben.”
“No, but they can protect the rights of a private citizen.”
“Okay, so then why didn’t they just take care of it now instead of this whole clandestine escape crap?”
“They are. We just gotta give ‘em some time to do it.”
“I really don’t think this is going to work, Ben.”
“Well, we’re gonna make it work,” he shot back.
“Think about it, Ben,” I appealed. “You just said yourself that I’m being dragged into this. The damage has already been done. I think at this point it’s out of your control.”
“Not entirely.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier if I just made a statement to the press telling them I’m not involved in this investigation?” I offered.
“No reason for them to believe ya’,” he answered. “Especially once they find out you’re lyin’.”
It took a moment for the balance of his comment to sink in. When it finally did, I almost stuttered my next question. “Just a second ago you said you were keeping me as far from this as possible. Did I miss something here?”
“Missin’? No. Denyin’? Yeah, prob’ly. Gimme a break, I know how ya’ are.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You ain’t serious? I gotta spell it out for ya’?”
“Please.”
He huffed out a heavy sigh then launched into an explanation, “It means, number one, less than forty-eight hours ago ya’ just showed up at a crime scene right out of the blue, so somethin’ tells me ya’ just might do it again.” He paused as he hooked the van through a quick right turn and down the ramp onto the highway. “And number two, ya’ handed me a piece of paper with Debbie Schaeffer’s handwritin’ all over it that ya’ say ya’ wrote yourself. So, whether I like it or not, you’re already connected to all of this by some of that weird ass Twilight Zone shit.
“Believe me, this is a decision I did not wanna make,” he continued, “but the way I got it figured, I have two choices. Either I keep ya’ as isolated as possible and not even let ya’ know what’s goin’ on; or, I go ahead and bring ya’ in on it right from the git’go and try ta’ keep your involvement to a minimum.
“Considerin’ what you’ve already done and what I’ve seen ya’ do in the past, I doubt the first choice has any chance of workin’—period. That leaves me with nothin’ but option two. So I figure if I can exert some control over the contact you have with this case, then maybe ya’ won’t go off into la-la land on me.”
“That’s a pretty big maybe,” I told him. “I don’t exactly have control over it myself.”
“That’s why I want Felicity ta’ meet us,” he explained. “I want ‘er there with ya’ every goddamned second.”
“She might not have that much control over it either.” I shook my head at the comment. “Besides, you know she’s not going to be happy about this.”
“Whaddaya mean ‘not happy’?” he returned. “She’s gonna be freakin’ mad as hell. I just hope she leaves me some hair.”
“I wouldn’t count on it,” I told him. “So what are you going to do? Sneak me in and out of my back door?”
“If I hafta.”
“You know, they’ll get to me eventually.”
“As long as that eventually is after it’s all over and they’ve got no reason to put the spotlight on ya’, then I’m okay with it, ‘cause ya’ won’t be interesting to ‘em anymore.”
“I don’t think we’ll be that lucky,” I sighed, “but I do appreciate the effort.”
“Not a prob, Kemosabe.”
Having dispensed with my confusion over the immediacy of the situation, I moved on to the next point that needed clarification for me. “So how did you make this connection to begin with?”
“Don’t you watch the news, Row? Old dude out pickin’ up aluminum cans stumbled across a body wrapped up in a plastic drop cloth this morning,” he explained. “What was left of a body anyway—she’d been there for a while. M.E. says a couple of months probably.
“She was stuffed back up in the brush on a kinda isolated section of Three Sixty-Seven on the way ta’ the Clark Bridge. Best guess is that’s why she didn’t get found until now.”
Disgusting visions of a corpse left unattended for the better part of two months flitted through my head. Having never witnessed such a thing before in real life, the mental picture was an imagining based on remembrances of Hollywood special effects. The image was more than enough to turn my stomach, and I was afraid that the real t
hing might be far worse than anything I could conjure in my head.
I blinked back the imagining and willed away the sudden churning in my gut. “If she’d been out there that long, how’d you identify her so quickly?”
“We had our suspicions based on size, clothing, all that,” he explained, “but positive ID came this afternoon from matching dental records. They were already on hand at the coroner’s office from a check on another Jane Doe, so there was no waitin’.”
“Okay, but all this still doesn’t answer my first question. How did you make the connection with the handwriting?”
“Once this case went from a missin’ person to a homicide and got turned over to the MCS, the investigation went in an entirely different direction.
“The real deal is that most of the time the victim knows the killer. It’s standard procedure to look for anything in the personal effects that could give us a handle on who might’ve done it. So we spent part of the afternoon back at her parents’ house goin’ over everything in ‘er bedroom. The minute I looked in ‘er notebooks and saw that curly-q thing on ‘er I’s, I knew. I had the graphologist in the crime lab verify it, but Jeezus, I friggin’ already knew.”
“Did you find anything else worthwhile?” I asked solemnly.
“Not really. We got a coupl’a leads ta’ run down, but I don’t think they’ll go anywhere.”
“So if you’re pulling me in on this, why are we going to your house instead of the morgue or a crime scene or something?”
“Because right now I just wanna keep ya’ out of the spotlight while I figure out what ta’ do,” Ben answered. “Not to mention gettin’ Firehair on board before I go any further with this.”
“Have you figured out how you’re going to do that yet?”
“I was thinkin’ I might start with beggin’ ‘er not ta’ kill me.”
* * * * *
“What happened to the promise you made me, then?” Felicity asked in a carefully measured cadence that audibly displayed the weakening foundation of her composure. Her outrage was more than palpable; it was literally filling the room with tension, and at the moment, she was ground zero to what I’m certain was soon to be a catastrophic explosion of anger.
The three of us were seated around a small dining table that occupied one wall of Ben’s kitchen at the rear of his house. Felicity was directly across from Ben, and I had taken up residence next to her.
My friend had at least been farsighted enough to send his wife and young son out to a local pizza parlor before my wife had arrived. He was expecting the worst, and it was looking very much like he was going to get it.
What had been a guarded smile on my wife’s lips when she first walked in had morphed instantaneously into a thin-lipped frown the moment Ben outlined the reason for her being here. That frown had grown thinner and more severe with every word that came out of his mouth. The current set of her jaw was visible evidence of her tightly clenched teeth.
“I’m sorry, Felicity.” He shook his head.
“You’re sorry?” she spat incredulously. “You’re sorry? Is that the best you can come up with?”
“Whaddaya want me ta’ say?” He held his hands out, palms upward as he shrugged surrender.
“Aye, for starters I want you to tell me this is all some sort of sick joke, then,” she hissed.
“I wish I could, but…” He allowed his voice to trail off without completing the sentence.
“Then why don’t you tell me you aren’t really dragging him into another murder investigation.”
“Me draggin’ ‘im in? I don’t suppose ya’ noticed that he’s not exactly kickin’ and screamin’ here.”
“Are you two going to spend the whole night talking about me like I’m not even sitting here?” I interjected with a perturbed edge to my voice.
“You stay out of this,” my wife commanded as she flashed an angry glance my way.
“Why would I stay out of it?” I shot back. “I’m the one who’s being talked about here.”
She ignored me and turned back to Ben. “You know how he is. But you’re still bringing him into this even after everything that’s happened.”
“Well, if ya want the truth, he pretty much brought ‘imself into it.”
“He’s right.” I nodded in agreement.
“And how would that be?”
“Well you were there when he handed me that writin’ sample,” he answered.
“So?” she shot back. “You didn’t have to take it.”
“I didn’t see you do anything ta’ discourage it,” he returned. “So you’re just as much at fault as me.”
“Go n-ithe an cat thú is go n-ithe an diabhal an cat!” Felicity snarled.
“Excuse me?” Ben’s face was washed over with abject confusion as he cast his questioning glance from me to my wife and then back again. “What the hell was that?”
“It’s Gaelic,” I told him, having heard the Celtic epithet from her before. “She just said something on the order of ‘May the cat eat you, and may the cat be eaten by the devil.’”
“Do what?”
I glanced at my wife and she was still seething, so I continued with the explanation. “It’s a traditional Irish curse. One that she’s particularly fond of using when she’s angry.”
“Fuckin’ great,” he huffed. “Now I got a curse on me?”
“Not exactly…” I answered. “Besides, it was pretty mild. You don’t really need to worry until she starts tossing in the Gaelic profanity.”
“Damnú, I told you to stay out of it then!” she ordered, shooting her glare my way as she rejoined the conversation.
“Like now,” I said to Ben before casting my own stern look at Felicity and adding, “And I told you, I don’t think so. I’m not some little kid who can’t make decisions for himself you know.”
“Aye, I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Look what you’ve done to yourself so far.”
“You know as well as I do that I haven’t got any control over this.”
“Damn your eyes, but you do!” she snapped. “You didn’t have to run off chasing a maniac in the middle of the night!”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.”
“But it’s what I’m talking about, then! If I let Ben drag you into this you’ll just do something stupid again.”
“That’s what I’m tryin’ to tell ya, Felicity,” Ben interjected. “I’m not gonna let it get that far.”
“Like you think you can stop it, then?” she chided before mumbling, “Tá tú glan as do mheabhair.”
“What?”
“You’re crazy,” my wife spat the general translation.
“Maybe so, but what makes ya’ think I can’t stop it?” he shook his head. “Look, Felicity, I wish it wasn’t this…”
“Don’t you ‘look Felicity’ me!” She cut him off. “We had an agreement!”
“I know,” he pleaded. “But…”
“But what?!” she demanded. “It wasn’t convenient for you, then? Fekking breugadair.”
“Jeezus, speak English will’ya’… And, no, it’s just that…”
“Aye, what then? Your career is suddenly more important than your best friend’s sanity?”
“Now dammit, you know better’n that.”
“I’m not so sure I do.”
“Oh come on, Felicity...” I tried to wedge myself back into the dispute.
“No, Rowan.” Ben held up his hand and sharply cut me off. “Stay out of it. This is between me and her.”
“Excuse me?!” I rejoined. “Hello? Do you hear what you’re saying? What the hell has gotten into you two? You’re arguing about me here, so I think I have a right to voice my opinion.”
He didn’t seem to hear me. With each word, their voices had grown louder and even more strained. Ben’s heretofore-defensive posture was starting to lean further and further toward the offensive. I could tell by the look on his face that there was next to nothing holding him back. My wife’s ham
mering staccato of interruptions were taking a toll on his patience as the escalation of tempers progressed.
“So just what the hell are ya’ tryin’ ta’ say here, Felicity?” Ben demanded.
“What is it you think I’m sayin’, then?” she spat.
I desperately wanted to defuse the situation, but I had no real clue how I was going to do it. My temper was flaring just as much as theirs were, and that wasn’t going to do any good. Thus far, every time I opened my mouth I only seemed to stoke the fire burning beneath them, and that blaze was starting to grow rapidly. In a very short time they’d reached a level where I wasn’t entirely sure that they were even acknowledging my presence in the room any longer.
It had now become plain to see that the issue was one that was most definitely between the two of them. It was also clear that it had festered for several months, and recent events were simply bringing it to a head.
“Goddammit, dontcha’ think I have enough guilt over what happened on that bridge?”
“Well if you do, then maybe you should think about all this a bit harder then!”
The sharpness in their voices had intensified several-fold. I had no choice but to resign myself to the fact that we wouldn’t get anywhere until this was played out to conclusion. Since they had drawn a bead on one another, for all intents and purposes ignoring me, I could only watch.
“What? Ya’ think I haven’t?!”
“You’re askin’ to bring him into another investigation, aren’t you?!”
As angry as I was at being treated like a fifth wheel, I fought to stifle it. “Fine,” I finally muttered, though I sincerely doubted either of them heard me. “Go ahead and kill each other. Give me a call when you’re finished.”
With that, I pushed my chair back from the table, placing some small, symbolic amount of distance between them and me. Hard as it was to stay out of it, I made a half-hearted attempt to distract myself by leafing through a cookbook that had been holding down a sheaf of papers on one corner of the table. However, just as I was afraid it would, the growing conflagration won out over recipes for such things as Beef Wellington and Broccoli-Onion-Cheese Casserole. Like a horrific train wreck that you just can’t stop staring at, I again returned my attention to the duel between my best friend and my soul mate.
Perfect Trust: A Rowan Gant Investigation Page 10