“What do you want us to do?” Felicity interjected.
“At the moment, I doubt there’s anything that ya’ CAN do,” he answered. “Since no one here knows where this guy lives, and accordin’ to the DMV, he never got a license in the state of Missouri, we hafta wait until we get that employee file.”
“How soon do you think that’ll be?” R.J. posed.
“All depends on El Presidente,” he sarcastically referred to the bank official. “He wasn’t too excited about leavin’ his little shindig. If he doesn’t screw around, then we should have it within the hour.”
“What’ll you do once you get it?” I queried, though I was pretty sure I already knew the answer.
“Check his work schedule against the presumed time of the abduction,” he detailed. “Plus, see if anything matches up with the info from the Seattle PD. If he’s got half a brain though, I’m sure he’s usin’ an alias.”
“And if it looks like he’s the one?” I pressed.
“Then we get the warrant and go kick his fuckin’ door down.”
“I’m going with you,” I declared flatly.
“Wait a minute, I don’t know about that…”
Coming quickly up from the couch, Felicity joined his protest, “What do you mean you’re going with him?”
“I mean exactly what I said. I’m going along.”
Our two guests fidgeted nervously in their seats but remained silent. If either of them had an opinion on the subject, it appeared that it wasn’t going to be voiced in the immediate future. Having anticipated the objection, I steadfastly held Ben’s gaze and allowed myself to relax. I knew it was going to take more than just words to convince him.
“Listen, Row,” Ben put on his best sympathetic cop voice and began his explanation. “I realize you’ve been involved in this thing almost from the beginning, and without you, I don’t know if we’d have gotten as far as we have-at least not this fast-but, servin’ a warrant is a lot different than goin’ over a crime scene. Besides, I still hafta figure out how I’m gonna explain you to the Feebs.”
“Listen to Ben, Rowan,” Felicity agreed. “It’s too dangerous.”
“She’s right man,” he added. “What if this asshole has a gun or somethin’? I don’t need to worry about you gettin’ hurt.”
While the two of them were pleading their case, I was focusing my internal energies. My unwavering stare never left Ben’s own, and as they remained locked, I set mystical wheels into motion.
“I don’t need to worry about you either,” I told him in a tranquil, even voice.
“Whaddaya mean?” Ben blinked and looked over at my wife with a questioning glance. “What’s he talkin’ about, Felicity?” His gaze almost immediately returned to mine, drawn back by an unseen force. “It’s my job. I’m trained for it, you ain’t.”
“You’re trained to deal with normal criminals,” I maintained in the same even tone. “This one definitely isn’t normal. We still don’t know what he’s capable of.”
“We know he’s capable of torturin’ and killin’ four women-maybe five if you count Seattle. Plus kidnapping.” He shot back, but his eyes stayed locked with mine. “So I think we pretty much have the bases covered there.”
“That’s not what I mean, Ben. I’m talking about The Craft, or even more likely, ritual magick. He hasn’t played any of those cards yet. Not for real.”
I felt Felicity ease away from me as she realized what I was doing. To her, and anyone in the room other than Ben Storm for that matter, my speech probably sounded like a dull monotone. To my protesting friend, nothing would have changed. In his mind, we were simply carrying on a conversation through which he would explain to me the reasons I wouldn’t be joining him. He had no idea that in a way, he was being hypnotized. He was experiencing the true meaning of being bewitched.
“That stuff again?” he asked. “Look, you’ve made a believer outta me with some of this… You know, like the dreams and all that, but gimme a break. What’s he gonna do? Shoot fire out of his eyes or somethin’?” He chuckled lightly. “Even better, turn us all into frogs and make his getaway? Come on Rowan, get serious…”
“I never said anything like that,” I returned. “And I am serious.”
“What then?” he demanded. “What’s he gonna do?”
“I can’t say for sure, but I know there are any number of things that he might be able to do. I doubt you’d believe me if I told you what they were.”
We had been down this path before. I knew for a fact he wouldn’t believe me. The only way I was going to prove my point was with a demonstration, and as much as I hated to do so, that was exactly what I had been preparing. Through the practiced use of both my voice and my eyes, in the past few moments I had set the stage. I had transfixed him on an ethereal level. Within the next few seconds, I would use the power of suggestion coupled with just a dash of the supernatural to put on the show.
“Yeah, I thought so. Look, I appreciate your concern and all, but I gotta draw the line somewhere. Since I’m the one with the badge, I’m goin’ and you’re stayin’.”
Ben moved past me as he made the declaration. I waited until he reached the front door before I released the compact ball of energy I had formed inside my mind. It sailed invisibly along a crackling ethereal arc and enveloped my friend with a light aura of static. Its earthly manifestation came with a familiar electric snap when he reached for the doorknob. The only thing that remained for me to do was make a suggestion.
“If that’s the way you feel, okay,” I called after him. “By the way, what’s that crawling on your arm?”
Ben looked down at his sleeve absently, and his eyes suddenly grew wide in horror. His face began to pale as he slapped at his arm and let out a surprised yelp. The rest of us in the room saw nothing. Only I knew what he was witnessing, and that was only because I had been the one to create the illusion. An illusion that took advantage of my friend’s irrational fear of spiders and was done in the name of making my point.
“Jeezus!” he shouted aloud as he whipped about, quickly slipping himself out of his sport coat and shaking it violently. “Holy fuckin’ shit! How the hell did that goddamn thing get on me?!”
“Calm down, Ben,” Felicity told him. “It’s gone.”
She was correct. In truth, it had never actually been there. What he had seen had only been in his head, and that spectre could last no more than a few brief seconds. It was definitely gone.
“Whaddaya mean gone?” he shouted, still slapping his jacket against the door. “Did you see that fuckin’ thing? It was huge! It was a goddamn tarantula!”
“She’s right, Ben, it was never even there,” I expounded. “It was just a glamour.”
“There’s nothin’ glamorous about it!” he shot back, still visibly shaken but starting to calm. “It’s a friggin’ spider.”
“No, Ben,” Felicity corrected, “a glamour, not glamorous. It was an illusion. A phantom image. All courtesy of your best friend here.”
“Whoa, cool,” R.J.’s voice came from behind us, followed by Cally sternly shushing him.
“You mean like it was a spell or somethin’?” he asked as he gingerly inspected his jacket, holding it at arms length.
“You could call it something like that,” I explained. “It’s really just some basic hypnosis, the power of suggestion, and admittedly a little psychic energy thrown in for good measure. Sorry, but I figured you’d be a little more receptive to the idea if you experienced it first hand.”
“You’re tryin’ to tell me that this asshole might be able to do somethin’ like that?” He was carefully slipping his sport coat back onto his large frame, still appearing somewhat uneasy and keeping an eye out for the imagined spider.
“Maybe. Maybe not. I just don’t know.”
“So what if he can? What’re you gonna do about it?” he queried.
“Catch it before it happens. Try to block it. Warn you,” I outlined. “I don’t know. In any event,
I’ll be much better prepared to recognize a glamour than you will.”
“Well, as long as I ignore spiders crawling on me, I should be okay,” he protested.
“He would most likely do something worse. Remember, I just scared the hell out of you, and I’m your best friend. Like I said, I used only a small”-I laid heavy emphasis on the word small-“amount of the psychic energy I could muster. I doubt he’ll be anywhere near as nice.”
“Is he shittin’ me?” Ben asked Felicity seriously.
“As much as I wish he was,” she frowned, “no. He’s telling you the truth.”
“Lovely. You know I oughta kick your ass for that stunt,” Ben told me with a slight grin then glanced back to my wife as if for approval.
“Hey, it’s between you two.” She held up her hands in a mock leave-me-out-of-it gesture and then suddenly grew earnest. “Do me a favor, Ben. If you’re going to take him with you, this time don’t bring him home with any stitches.”
“Count on it.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I mumbled.
“She just knows your track record, white man,” he turned back to me. “Just one question. Why’d you hafta pick spiders? You know I can’t stand the things.”
“Actually, I didn’t, you did. All I said was ‘what’s that crawling on your arm?’ Your own fears and imagination did the rest of the work for me.”
He shook his head. “Just what I needed ta’ hear.”
I was still clipping my visitor’s badge onto my pocket when Carl Deckert met the two of us at the door to the MCS command post. His normally laid back demeanor had been replaced by one of frantic urgency as he held the door open and hustled us into the room.
“I’ve got something you might want to have a look at,” he told us as he excitedly waved a sheaf of papers at us. “You’re not gonna believe it.”
“What?” Ben queried, following him to a nearby desk. “Whaddaya have?”
Shadows fell darkly across the corner area from the flickering fluorescent tubes in the ceiling lights as they dimly sputtered away towards uselessness. Deckert reached out and craned the flexible neck of a small lamp forward and switched it on, effectively illuminating at least part of the desk’s scarred surface.
“I just got this right after you hung up,” he spoke rapidly as he shuffled through the papers and slid an eight-by-ten photo beneath the puddle of light. “The lab lifted this from the little girl’s vinyl book bag.”
The black-and-white-toned image depicted a curving pattern of lines arcing around into what might have been a tight whorl. Might have been, because they abruptly ended in a blank, smeary looking splotch.
“This one is from the Barnes woman,” he continued and slid a similar grey-toned image in next to the original.
“Son-of-a-bitch,” Ben slowly enunciated the words as he leaned forward to inspect the fingerprint photos more closely.
Not being familiar with fingerprint analysis, I appealed, “Somebody want to fill me in?”
“It’s a partial right thumbprint,” Detective Deckert explained. “The one you turned us on to with your vision or whatever you call it.”
“Yeah, I kinda caught on to that,” I acknowledged. “But I thought it was too smudged to do anything with.”
“That’s what we thought,” he continued. “But that was before we got the second print which just happened to be quite a bit clearer.”
“They both look smudged to me.”
“It’s a scar,” Ben volunteered, completing the explanation for me, then turned to Deckert. “Any hits from AFIS?”
“Not yet,” he returned. “It’s been scanned, and they’re trying to do a digital image match, but that takes a little longer. The first one didn’t hit, but this one is clearer, so maybe…”
“One of you Detective Storm?” a voice issued from behind us.
We turned to find a uniformed officer peering at us expectantly, a manila envelope tucked under his arm.
“That’s me,” Ben answered.
“Got something here from Capitol Bank for you.” The officer held out a clipboard and pen. “I need ya to sign for it.”
Ben quickly scribbled his signature on the paperwork then exchanged the clipboard for the envelope and muttered a quick “thanks.” He was already ripping it open before the officer was out the door.
“Hey Storm!” another voice called from across the room. “Got a cellular call from a Special Agent Mandalay on line two. Wants to talk to you.”
“Tell ‘im I’m not here,” he shouted back as he rifled through the contents of the envelope.
“He’s a she,” the voice returned.
“Then fuckin’ tell HER I’m not here,” he shouted back angrily.
“What are you looking for?” I queried as I watched him quickly shuffling through the papers.
“Ten print card,” he answered. “All bank employees are printed for security and exclusionary purposes.”
“Exclusionary purposes?”
“Like if the bank gets broken into or robbed,” Deckert explained. “Employees’ prints are going to be all over the place, so we need copies in order to exclude them from any of the prints lifted during the investigation.”
“Here it is,” Ben intoned urgently and tossed the heavy stock card face up on the desk.
Each of the outlined squares contained a neatly inked copy of Roger Henderson’s fingerprints. The black and white study of irrefutable personal identification stared back up as the three of us brought our eyes to bear on the right thumbprint.
What met our triple-barreled gaze was a curving pattern of lines arcing around into what might have been a tight whorl. Might have been, because the lines ended abruptly in a blank, smeary looking splotch.
“It’s him,” I whispered.
“Get the prosecuting attorney on the horn,” Ben ordered Deckert calmly as he handed the rest of Roger Henderson’s employee file to him. “Then call Benson. I want a warrant yesterday.”
“I’m on it,” Deckert was already dialing the phone.
“Detective Benjamin Storm?” a demanding, almost angry, female voice came from behind us.
We turned once again and were greeted by an attractive brunette woman who appeared to be in her late twenties. She was dressed in a nicely fitted grey suit that scarcely managed to conceal the forty-caliber bulge at her right hip.
“Yeah,” Ben answered.
She thrust her hand forward. In it was a large leather case, held deftly open with her index finger as she prominently displayed her badge and FBI identification.
“Special Agent Constance Mandalay,” she announced indignantly. “I thought you weren’t here?”
Ben looked her coolly in the eyes without blinking and answered her accusation head on. “I lied.”
CHAPTER 22
The two of them engaged in a short-lived staring contest as Agent Mandalay slipped her identification back into her jacket and folded her arms across her chest. Petite-framed and standing no taller than five-foot-six, she was forced to look up at Ben, but that wasn’t unusual as most everyone else had to do the same.
Ben stood with his hands on his hips, eyes tightly locked with hers. To the outside observer, they seemed to form a brief living caricature of David and Goliath. Had the urgency and gravity of the current situation been of a lesser degree, I am certain the standoff would have elicited a number of laughs.
“Well, at least you’re honest about that.” Agent Mandalay maintained her resentful demeanor as she spat the comment. “How long did you plan to keep ducking my calls? You had to know I’d show up here eventually.”
“For as long as I needed to,” Ben retorted, continuing with the precedent he had set for truthfulness. “And unfortunately, yes, I knew some Feeb would come walkin’ through the door at some point. Hell, I’m surprised ya’ waited this long.”
“Had it been up to me, we wouldn’t have,” she shot back. “I was ready to come down here when you made your queries through V
ICAP. You should have called the Bureau for help with the first homicide. We have a lot more experience in this field than you do. We have experts on occult practices that…”
Ben cut her off mid-sentence, “I got my own expert, thank you.”
“Who? Him?” she stated incredulously as she waved her hand in my direction. I assumed she recognized me from the media coverage. “He claims he’s a Witch, for Chrissake! I’m talking about people with PhD’s, not some flake you picked up off the street.”
I was mildly insulted, but then, I was also quite used to the ridicule and demeaning commentaries from uninformed, closed-minded individuals. The fact that I made no secret of my religion forced me to deal with it on a daily basis. Fortunately, witch burning was no longer an accepted practice, so verbal debasement and occasional graffiti were pretty much the worst I had to face. Because I had become so jaded to it, her comment was easily and quickly disregarded.
Ben, on the other hand, was furious. Ever since I had known him, he had been very protective of his family and friends. Even though he had wallowed in his own disbelief until just recently, he had never passed judgment upon my religion or me. The look that suddenly crossed his face was testimony to the fact that he was not about to allow someone else to do so.
“You wait just one goddamn minute!” he asserted, angrily thrusting his index finger at her. “Don’t come in here with your holier-than-thou attitude and start insultin’ people you don’t even know. Whether you like it or not, Rowan Gant is part of this investigation. A VERY IMPORTANT part.”
“Yes he is. He should be a suspect.”
“Don’t even go there! If it weren’t for him, we’d all still be scratchin’ our asses tryin’ to figure out what’s goin’ on. I’ll put him up against your PhD’s any day of the week.”
“Is that why you have four homicides and a kidnapping to deal with?” Thick, bitter sarcasm dripped from her comment.
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