“Jeezus, Rowan,” he blurted, still shaking his head. “That was Brittany Larson.”
I looked back at him, stunned as the name sunk in, and my brain made the connection. “You mean…”
“Yeah, I mean Brittany freakin’ Larson,” he replied. “The goddammed mayor’s daughter.”
CHAPTER 6:
Ben was busy going over the turn of events with some other detectives when Lieutenant Barbara Albright arrived. She strode purposefully out of the elevator, headed straight for the door of the enclosure and whipped the door open with a swift yank.
Her low-heeled pumps were clacking out a determined cadence across the concrete decking of the parking lot as she started for the opposite end of the structure. I almost wish I’d had a camera on hand to catch the look on her face when she glanced to the side and saw me sitting on the stairs.
She stopped dead in her tracks, staring at me as her lips drew into a thin frown. After a brief pause, she unbuttoned her jacket and marched toward the stairs, coming to a halt in front of me and placing her hands on her hips.
“Would you mind explaining just exactly what it is that you are doing here, Gant?” She spat the words more as a demand than as a simple question.
She was slight but still altogether imposing just given her attitude. Her appearance placed her somewhere in her mid fifties even with her shoulder length hair having turned prematurely white. She was dressed in a dark grey pantsuit that looked like it came from an upscale department store. Felicity probably could have taken one look and spouted off the name of the designer, but as for me, well, all I knew was that it looked like money was involved.
Her hands, strategically placed to reveal more than just a glimpse of her sidearm, now pushed back the folds of the double-breasted jacket. I’m sure it was an intimidation tactic, probably something learned by all cops, but I had been around this sort of thing far too much. The sight of a gun on someone’s hip was old hat to me.
As in my past dealings with her, she was coming across as the mother that every kid on the block was afraid of, and she wasn’t planning to do anything to change that opinion. If nothing else, I would say that she was trying to bolster it.
As usual, the gold cross was suspended from a chain around her neck, obvious against the white background provided by her blouse. The breast pocket of her jacket held her badge case, shield flipped outward and prominently on display.
“It’s really a simple matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Lieutenant,” I answered with forced civility as I rose to my feet.
I was mutely beating back my desire to launch into a string of unpleasantries aimed directly at her. I knew such an act would bring me nothing but trouble, but I was having a hard time explaining that to my subconscious mind.
“Oh, I’m sure that it is,” she remarked sarcastically. “Go on. Tell me.”
“Lunch,” I replied.
“Lunch?” she repeated.
“Yes,” I returned, pointing over her shoulder at a group of officers near the actual scene of the abduction; in particular, at Ben’s back. “Feel free to ask Detective Storm over there. We were going to lunch and just happened to be waiting for the elevator when it all happened.”
“Storm is here, too?” she barked, turning to look in the direction I indicated.
“Yes, as a matter of fact…”
Her hand came up to cut me off as she spoke, “You wait right here.”
“Sure,” I answered. “I’ve got no place else to be.”
I don’t know if she heard me or not because she was already stalking away toward Ben. While I couldn’t see her face, I had the distinct impression she was no happier to see him than she had been me.
*****
“That was pleasant,” Ben muttered the sarcastic remark as he cranked the steering wheel of his van and backed it out of the parking space.
I didn’t wait for the follow-up I knew he was going to utter, “Don’t say ‘like a root canal’, Ben.”
“How’d you know I was gonna say that?”
“Experience,” I replied.
“Hmmph,” he grunted. “So what’d she say to you?”
“She demanded to know why I was here, so I referred her to you.”
“Thanks a lot,” he told me with no sincerity whatsoever.
“What about you?” I asked. “From where I was, it looked like she was having a meltdown.”
“Yeah, pretty much,” he answered. “She was just her normal pissy self up ‘til she found out I discharged a coupl’a rounds into the vehicle. That’s when she lost it.”
“What did she expect you to do?”
“Hell, I dunno.” He shrugged then cranked the steering wheel to guide us into the downward exit spiral. “Throw myself in front of the fuckin’ car I guess.”
“You pretty much did,” I observed.
“Yeah, well I guess I didn’t get run over enough for her liking.”
It was just before 2:30 in the afternoon, and the scene had officially been cleared. Skid marks had been measured, paint scrapings had been taken, and photographs snapped from every imaginable angle. None of it seemed to me like it would do any good, but there were procedures to be followed, and my opinion of them amounted to very little- in fact, nothing.
“So what happens now?” I asked.
“You’re in for a treat,” he returned. “We get to go back to headquarters and tell our stories to some more coppers.”
“I was afraid you were going to say that.”
The syncopated tone of a cell phone began its rising chirp. I didn’t recognize the tone, so I knew it wasn’t mine. Ben reached to his side and fumbled the warbling device from his belt, swallowing it in his large hand.
“Storm,” he huffed when he got it up to his ear.
As if the mood in the vehicle needed any further darkening, I felt it grow just that much colder in that very instant. A swirling turmoil of pain, anger, and confusion was emanating from my friend, and as I watched him listening to the cell, I saw his shoulders physically droop.
“I know, I know,” he finally said. “But have you noticed the news?”
He fell silent for a moment, and his tumultuous emotions became even more tangible.
“Listen, I can’t do this right now…” he said into the phone, voice rising slightly. “No… No, I’m not… Look, we’ll have to talk about this later… I can’t…”
He stopped mid-sentence, pulled the device away from his ear and regarded it with an angered glance. He stabbed the off button with his thumb then threw it into the console between us as he muttered, “Shit.”
We had just rounded the last turn of the spiral and now sped down the exit ramp, finally coming to a halt at the booth. Ben flashed his badge, and the attendant nodded as he waved us through.
Remnants of the splintered black-and-white-striped barrier gate were piled off to the side of the concrete island. The metal portion of the lift arm protruded as a twisted stub from the mechanism rendering it totally useless, all of it the visual evidence of the kidnapper’s hasty exit.
My friend edged the van forward and after a quick glance in either direction, pulled into the afternoon traffic. I had always made a rule of staying out of Ben’s business. If there were something going on in his life he wanted you to know about, he would tell you in his own due time. Asking him before he was ready only served to drive him away and make him bury the subject even deeper.
However, in extreme cases I was known to break my own rules, and this was one of them. I watched him in silence as we navigated the traffic to the corner and then stopped and waited for the traffic signal to turn.
“You okay?” I finally asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he answered tersely. “Why?”
“I really couldn’t help but overhear…” I let my voice trail off, leaving the rest of the sentence unspoken.
“Sorry about that,” he replied. “Forget about it. It’s nothing.”
“It didn’t sou
nd like nothing, Ben.”
“I said forget it,” he snarled.
We made the rest of the trip to police headquarters in complete silence.
*****
“Where are you?” My wife’s voice issued from the speaker on my cell phone.
It was rapidly approaching six P.M., and I was still downtown though fortunately, not sitting on the concrete stairs in the parking garage. I had finally lost count of how many times I had given my accounting of the events and to how many cops I had given it. They eventually concluded that with the exception of a few adjectives and conjunctions, the story was always the same. No more or less information than the previous recitation.
I don’t guess I could blame them for trying. I was as aware as anyone else of what can be seen but not consciously remembered.
“What, no hello?” I asked.
“I said hello when I answered the phone,” she replied. “Now, where are you?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Try me” came her guarded response.
“Downtown with Ben.”
“Tell me you’re at a bar, Rowan,” she half asked, half instructed, but the tone of her voice told me that she knew that wasn’t true.
“Sure,” I answered. “It’s called Police Headquarters.”
“Oh Gods, Rowan,” she moaned, then asked, “The seizure?”
“No… Yes… Maybe… I don’t know yet” was my response, confusing as it was to us both. “Have you heard about Brittany Larson?”
“How could I not? It’s been all over…” she started then stopped herself mid-sentence. “Oh, Rowan, no… What? What happened?”
“Kidnapped as far as anyone can tell right now,” I answered. “Although I don’t think whoever did it has any qualms about hurting her.”
“How do you know that?”
“Well… I kind of had the bad fortune of being a witness to the abduction, and it was a bit violent.”
“You what? How?”
I gave her a rundown of the day’s events since we had last spoken; all of which had finally culminated in me using my backside to warm a molded plastic chair next to Ben’s desk for the past few hours.
The promised lunch had eventually happened sometime around three in the afternoon. Unfortunately, it had taken the form of a stale jelly doughnut and a cup of what the officers of the homicide division referred to as coffee. My personal jury was still deliberating on that point.
I told her about that too.
“So anyway,” I continued. “Ben is going to be tied up down here for a bit longer, but they’ve given me the okay to leave.”
“Give me twenty minutes,” she replied to the unasked question.
“I’ll be waiting outside.”
CHAPTER 7:
“Bar food?” I said to my wife. “I’ve been stuck down here all day with nothing but a stale doughnut and bad coffee, and you want me to eat BAR food?”
“It’s not ‘bar food’,” she replied as she dropped the Jeep into third gear and veered onto the Kingshighway exit from westbound Interstate 64. “It’s PUB food.”
The top was down, and the warm wind was whipping through the open cab of the vehicle. There was still better than an hour of sunlight left in the day, so it was still hot and humid. Fortunately, the temperature had dropped off by a few degrees, so it wasn’t quite as bad as it had been earlier in the day; if you liked steam baths, that is. Although, I had to admit the artificial breeze generated by the motion of the Jeep went a long way toward making it tolerable.
“There’s a difference?” I asked with a chuckle.
“Aye, and you’ll be finding out soon enough, then,” she answered, dredging up her inherent Celtic brogue with no effort whatsoever. Truth was, it was probably more of an effort for her to hide it.
Felicity was second-generation Irish-American, but you wouldn’t know it to look at her- or especially at times, to hear her. In fact, one would think she had just stepped off an airplane direct from the Emerald Isle.
Her looks were straight out of Celtic myth. She was petite, standing shoeless only slightly more than five feet tall. Her complexion was milky white and smooth like porcelain with the only exception being a light spate of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Bright, green eyes peered out of her doll-like face, and the whole package was framed by spiraling locks of fiery auburn hair that hung down past her waist. If a toy company were to produce a doll to represent Ireland, my wife would make the perfect model for it.
If the looks weren’t enough, she was also possessed of the stereotypical temper that, whether politically correct or not, was so often associated with both the ethnicity and hair color. Fortunately, it wasn’t one that was easily ignited although I had managed to spark it on a few occasions.
Growing up, she had spent almost as much time in Ireland as the United States, even attending college there; hence, she was never completely devoid of a light, Irish lilt in her voice. However, get her around her family, get a few alcoholic drinks in her, or wait until she got overly tired, and her guard would drop. The lilt would morph into a thick brogue, replete with slang and colloquialisms the average American was hard pressed to understand. We’d been married better than twelve years, and she still came up with some that perplexed me.
When she really got riled up, she would even mix languages on you. While certainly not fluent in Gaelic, she had more than a passing familiarity with it. That particular vocabulary, however, consisted of innumerable curses and derisive phrases born of the ancient language, and if provoked, she was more than happy to use them.
On the flip side, she even knew a few of the endearments, and I’d had the good fortune to hear them whispered in my ear from time to time.
“I love it when you talk with an accent,” I said, shooting her a grin.
“Aye, what accent?” she asked, still laying it on thick and laughing as she spoke. “You’re the one with the accent, then.”
“Right,” I answered. “Midwest plain and dull. So what’s the name of this place again?”
“Seamus O’Donnell’s.”
“Sounds Irish,” I joked.
“Well, duh,” she returned.
“So it doesn’t sound familiar. Have we been there before?”
“No.”
“Hmmm. I thought we’d been to every Irish pub in Saint Louis by now.”
“They’ve only been open a few months.”
We had made the loop and merged into the afternoon traffic. She sped up to the next intersection, just catching the light before it switched and turned the vehicle to the right from Kingshighway onto Oakland.
“So how do you know this so called ‘pub food’ is any good if we haven’t been there?” I asked, shooting a glance over at her.
Her hair was pulled back, but loose strands were whipping about her face as she looked over and smiled at me. “I said we haven’t been there before. I never said that I hadn’t been there.”
“Oh,” I exclaimed playfully. “So you went there without me, did you?”
“Hey, a girl’s got to have lunch, doesn’t she?” she laughed.
“Yes, I suppose she does,” I replied. “So do they have colcannon and Dublin coddle?”
“Among other things, yes they do.”
“And Guinness, of course?”
She glanced at me and raised an eyebrow, giving me an unmistakable stare.
“Okay,” I held up my hands in surrender. “I know, I know. Stupid question.”
“Well, it IS an Irish pub, Rowan,” she laughed.
She downshifted as the traffic signal ahead of us winked yellow, and we rolled to a stop at the white line just as it switched over to a glaring red.
Considering the events of the day, I was surprised to find myself in such a good mood. Truth is, even if today had never happened, I still would have been surprised. I hadn’t felt this good about life since the first time I’d been cold-cocked by an unwanted ethereal vision of a horrific murder
; and that had been almost four years ago.
A far cry from past experiences, my seizure-induced headache had faded relatively quickly. None of the typical creepy sensations that always accompanied these events had plagued me in the least. Even though I could still feel a troubling shadow falling across my life yet again, it was faint and nebulous. Nothing like the dark foreboding that always forced me into a brooding stupor.
I didn’t know if it was some sort of artificially conjured euphoria brought on by my wife’s contagious good mood, or what. Maybe I was just getting better at keeping myself grounded and centered. As basic a task as that is for a Witch, it was something I’d been having trouble with for some time now. In the end, I simply didn’t care what it was, but I knew one thing for sure- I planned to enjoy every minute of it.
I simply felt good. I was truly relaxed and happy for the first time in a very long while.
I felt my wife’s fist thump hard against my shoulder as she playfully punched me. “What are you grinning about, Row?”
I hadn’t realized that the broad smile had carved itself into my face, but I suppose it was just part of the mood. “Nothing,” I replied, rolling my head to the side so I could look at her. “Not a thing.”
“Sure, whatever,” she replied with her own smile, then asked, “So, did Ben say when he would be getting out of there?”
“Probably in a couple of hours is what he said. Why?”
“Well, it’s only a little after six right now, so that would still be early yet,” she replied, pulling her hand across her forehead and dragging some of the wild strands of hair from her face. “Maybe he and Allison could join us later for a pint or two.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” I replied, remembering that I had purposely not told her about the phone call I’d overheard. Truth was, I didn’t actually know to whom Ben was talking on the other end, but I had my suspicions. Still, it was best not to start a rumor, even if it was only between us.
“Come on,” she urged. “It’ll be fun. The Don’t Be Brothers are supposed to be playing tonight.”
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