“Yeah, don’t do me any favors,” I retorted. “Remember, I know the kind of hours you work.”
“Wuss,” my friend chuckled.
My ideas about getting caught up with the workload from my custom software consulting business had been declared null and void the moment Ben had called. At least he hadn’t gotten me out of bed. My wife had seen to that herself.
Felicity was into the second day of shooting with her client and had left the house well before dawn—but not before prodding me awake on her way out and instructing me to clean up the broken soup bowl on the office floor.
I had wanted to talk to her about my late night revelation but was denied the opportunity by the obligations of normal daily life. In some ways it was a minor relief because I wasn’t entirely certain how to approach what I wanted to say. If I was correct in my assessment, and I was on the killer’s list, then at some point he would be coming for me. When he did, I wanted Felicity as far away from ground zero as possible. Since I was ground zero that meant getting her far away from me. In her mind that would mean I was shutting her out once again.
It was no stretch at all to imagine—in my mind’s eye I could easily see her adamant glare and steadfast posture when she cocked her head and explained to me in her own patented fashion that she would be doing no such thing.
With that portion of my day’s agenda being forcibly rescheduled for a later time, I planned to bury myself in maintaining code for my client base. After cleaning up the mess the cats had made of my laziness and treating myself to an extra long hot shower, I settled in to do just that.
Following the trend that had already been set, I had barely gotten started on replies to my e-mail when the phone pealed out its annoying demand.
“Well, I appreciate ya’ comin’ down, white man,” he continued. “I know ya’ had work ta’ do and all.”
“That’s okay,” I offered as I followed him. “I was planning to call you later anyway.”
“Yeah, I figured ya’ would,” he remarked. “The answer is yes. I called Mandalay, and she filled me in on what happened to ‘er brother. Everything’s fine.”
“That’s great, Ben,” I told him in an absent tone that bespoke of my diverted attention. “That wasn’t actually why I was planning to call you though.”
Ben stopped mid-stride and turned to face me. “Somethin’ wrong, Row?”
“Yeah, I think so,” I admitted, shifting to the side to allow a secretary who was quite obviously on a mission to pass by. “If you’ve got time after we’re through talking to the old man, I’d really like to bounce it off you.”
“Hey, we can talk about it right now if ya’ want.”
I considered his offer and weighed the urgency of my request. Standing in the middle of police headquarters I was fairly certain that I was safe for the time being. “After the interview is fine.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah,” I finally acknowledge as I nodded. “Yeah, it can wait.”
“Okay, it’s up ta’ you,” he told me as we continued on our way through the Monday morning flood of uniformed cops and civilians alike. “By the way, I’ve got some paperwork in my desk for ya’ ta’ sign off on. We can do that after the interview too.”
“Paperwork?” I repeated the word with a puzzled tone. “Paperwork for what?”
“For the consulting fees I put ya’ in for,” he answered. “Won’t be much, but if we’re gonna keep draggin’ ya’ away from your real job ya’ oughta get somethin’.”
“You know that’s not necessary, Ben.”
“So donate it ta’ charity or whatever.” He shrugged to punctuate his reply. “I already got it approved, so ya’ might as well just sign the papers and take the check.”
“Thanks, Ben.”
“Not a problem, man. So anyway, like I was sayin’ on the phone, I got a wake up call at about half past still dark tellin’ me that Tracy Watson was droppin’ all the charges against the old guy. She even came down here this mornin’ ta’ see ‘im.”
“Sounds like she must have had a change of heart, then,” I said.
“It’s more likely that the station was lookin’ ta’ get some good spin on it,” he grunted. “She showed up with a couple of suits that breezed through here like they owned the place. She was all dolled up with a stack of publicity photos under her arm and had a cameraman surgically attached to ‘er ass.”
“Bet that was a circus.”
“Put it this way, between the coppers that were droolin’ all over themselves and the ones that couldn’t get up from their desks for ten minutes, it would’ve been the perfect time ta’ rob a bank.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Can’t blame ‘em really. You’d have to check with Vice to be sure, but I’m bettin’ there’s at the very least one or two city ordinance violations for what she was doin’ ta’ that sweater with those things.”
“How about the old guy?”
“Starstruck, I guess,” he ventured. “Or boob struck. Pretty much just sat there starin’ at ‘er chest. When he did talk he just babbled somethin’ about a truck.”
“A truck?”
“Yeah. Who knows? Maybe he wants ‘er ta’ buy ‘im a truck. Nobody could make any sense of it.”
“So have you talked to him yourself yet?” I queried while following my friend down a flight of stairs.
“For a coupl’a minutes. He’s sober, but he still ain’t all there,” he acknowledged. “Only name we can get out of ‘im is Bob, and that damn near took an act of Congress. Still not sure if it’s for real or not. He’s got no priors, so ‘is prints didn’t help us at all. He’s just another discarded human being. We see ‘em every day.”
“That doesn’t make it any more palatable,” I asserted.
“No, it doesn’t,” he agreed. “But what’re ya’ gonna do? Some of ‘em like it that way. I seem to recall you tellin’ me once that I couldn’t protect the whole world. That applies to you too, ya’know.”
“I know, I know,” I acknowledged.
“Anyhow,” Ben continued filling me in, “I dunno how long they had this guy in the shower, but they managed ta’ get the stink off ‘im for the most part… And he got ta’ sleep in a warm bed last night, even if it was lockup… He’s had a decent meal for a change…Got ‘im some fresh clothes from one of the local shelters…Oh yeah, and the TV station Watson works for sent along a brand new coat for ‘im. Cheapest publicity they’ll ever get.”
“Maybe so, but at least he’s got a decent coat now.”
“Yeah, there is that,” he acknowledged.
We had pushed through the heavy door and had made our way down the familiar hallway while Ben rattled off the latest information on the old man. We now came to a halt in front of an interview room, and my friend paused with his hand on the doorknob.
“So I figure I’ll let you do the talkin’,” he told me. “Kinda do the hocus-pocus thing and see what ya’ can find out, ya know?”
“I’ll give it a try but I can’t make you any guarantees. It doesn’t always work like that.”
“I know.” He nodded as he twisted the knob and pushed the door open. “But I got faith in ya’.”
The old man was sitting at the small table that occupied the center of the room, and true to what my friend had said he was almost unrecognizable as the foul-smelling bum we had visited the day before. The untold layers of grime that had once painted him were now distant additions to the waters of the metropolitan sewer system, and his foul perfume had been replaced by the sharp tang of antiseptic soap. While by no means a perfect fit, he was clad in fresh clothing far less threadbare than his original attire.
His face was sporting a lurid grin that displayed several missing teeth, and he repetitiously fingered an eight-by-ten glossy that was gripped in his weathered hand. His intent gaze never left the crisp lines of the autographed photo even while Ben exchanged a few words with the uniformed officer who had been waiting inside the door. After sending the
guard on a break, my friend pressed the barrier shut and silently leaned against the wall next to it with his notebook at the ready.
I glanced at Ben, and he simply jerked his head toward the man at the table while looking at me expectantly. I was feeling more than just a little pressure, and it wasn’t helping my overall ability to ground and center. No matter what he had said out in the hall, it was plainly obvious that Ben didn’t truly understand the realities I had explained. He was expecting me to perform a feat of hypnosis on command and provide him with the answers he wanted, simple as that.
I suppose that in a way it was my own fault. I had worked so hard during the previous case to overcome his intense skepticism that I had now pushed him to the opposite end of the spectrum. Combined with his being present to witness the bizarre events that had attached themselves to me during this investigation, I should have expected something like this. I only hoped that I wasn’t about to let him down, but I already had a very nasty feeling that a rather large disappointment was peering angrily over the horizon in my general direction.
“Good morning,” I finally said to the old man as I ventured farther into the room.
He continued to grin, occasionally smacking his lips as he emitted guttural grunts and chirping noises. His stare never left the photograph, and his fingers lovingly caressed the crisp greys that formed Tracy Watson’s image, lingering with each pass on the shadows that outlined her ample chest.
“They tell me your name is Bob,” I volunteered. “Mine is Rowan.”
No response.
I stepped closer to the table and listened. Between the chirps and gurgles, he seemed to be muttering something under his breath. I strained to understand the muted words and found only an endless loop of “Tracy, Tracy, I love Tracy.”
After a short wait I pulled out the chair opposite the man. “Mind if I sit down, Bob?”
Still no response.
Just the almost musical repetition of his undying love for Tracy Watson.
I went ahead and took a seat. The old guy was so enraptured by his visit from the television meteorologist that nothing else existed for him in this space and time. The reinforcement of his fixation wasn’t going to make my task any easier.
Reaching across the small table, I passed my hand back and forth through his tightly focused stare. “Bob, are you listening to me?”
His gaze never wavered. No motion or sound from him gave any indication that he was even aware of anyone else’s presence in the small room. It became immediately obvious that approaching him purely on the physical plane was going to be useless.
I pressed myself for a moment to find the balance I would need in order to even begin making an attempt at what Ben wanted me to do. If I was going to avoid a repeat of yesterday’s pounding headache, or even achieve a small modicum of success in this task, I was going to have to anchor myself in one place for a change. Drifting haphazardly about and allowing random ethereal events to play themselves out through me wouldn’t do us any good in this case. I was still entertaining doubts that any of the ones I had been tortured by so far had done us any good to begin with.
I closed my eyes and took a deep, cleansing breath, steadily in through my nose then slowly out through my mouth. As I exhaled fully I began systematically relaxing my body, starting at my toes and working my way up. I was engaging myself in the simplest of methods to attune to one’s surroundings. An exercise pulled straight from WitchCraft 101.
Grounding and centering was the most basic of all things a Witch would do. The process in and of itself quickly became second nature to anyone who studied The Craft for any period of time. While the process remained the same, after awhile it became nothing if not automatic. To have to take the time to actually concentrate on grounding was a rarity brought on by unusual circumstance. The fact that I was now sitting in a quiet room with no real distraction, but still had to consciously force myself to follow these simplistic steps, made me feel like a clumsy neophyte.
What had been almost instinctively happening for my entire adult life, and in less than sixty seconds, was now taking intense thought and more than five minutes. I knew I was off-center, but this was much worse than I had originally thought. This latest realization didn’t help me at all.
When I finally opened my eyes, the old man was still fingering the photo and was giving no indication whatsoever that he even knew we were in the room with him. Over my left shoulder I could feel impatient expectance swirling around Ben in a slowly expanding eddy.
My ethereal connection to an earth ground was complete but tenuous. There was no doubt in my mind that it wasn’t going to last.
Focusing my gaze on the unresponsive man, I opened my otherworldly senses and summoned a calm, soothing energy to fill my voice. “Bob,” I began in a near monotone, “I’d like to talk to you for a little while, if that’s okay?”
Slipping in under the plane of everything physically tangible, my words centered themselves on the old man and drove inward with the singular task of gaining his attention. As they struck their intended mark, he furrowed his brow slightly and ceased his barely intelligible noisemaking.
With his stare seemingly interrupted by something unseen by anyone but him, he slowly lifted his eyes to meet mine and blinked groggily toward focus. The grin had melted from his face momentarily to become an expressionless sag but now returned in a wide swath as he tilted the eight-by-ten in my direction.
“Tracy” was all he said.
“I know, Bob. She’s very pretty,” I said with a nod, keeping my voice even. “But I was wondering if we could talk about something else for a moment. What do you think?”
“Tracy came to see me,” he muttered. “She luvz me.”
“I’m sure she does,” I agreed. “But I really need to talk to you about something else, Bob. Do you think we could do that?”
“An ah luv her.” He started nodding.
“Bob, I’m serious.” Without thinking I projected urgent anger into the flow of energy as I spoke. “I really need to talk to you about something else for a minute.”
The old man grew very still and almost visibly inched away from me. I wordlessly chastised myself for losing patience so quickly. I could already feel my hold on the ground weakening.
Bob stared at me for a long measure, brow creased and a frown pursed on his chapped lips. I mentally beat down my impatience and imbued my voice once again with calm.
“I’m sorry, Bob. It’s just that this is very important.”
“We kin talk if you want,” he answered slowly, blinking at me with a somewhat confused expression. It was as if he was unsure as to why he was bothering with me in the first place.
On a supernatural level I had managed to capture his fleeting attention. Now I had to keep it. Whatever form of mental disability this man had been cursed with, it was manifesting itself as a mélange of unfocused and simplistic behavior. I felt like I was talking to a small child. In some very real ways, I suppose I was. It should have made my task just that much easier. Instead, the randomness of his jumbled thoughts was only serving to make my head hurt.
“That would be great,” I replied. “Yesterday you and I were talking about a Bible you had in your pocket. Do you remember that?”
“Yes,” he nodded vigorously. “I ‘member. You wanned uh’know ‘bout thuh fire.”
“That’s right,” I echoed in a soothing voice. “You were telling me about the fire and something that was in it.”
“Ah found sum cig’rettes.” He grinned at me proudly. “Whole pack. I wuz gonna smoke um too. Till thuh lady wit the pritty hair mashed um up.”
“Bob, what about the fire?”
“Uh lady.” He cocked his head slightly and nodded at me. “Summon put uh lady in it. She had pritty hair.”
“The lady in the fire?”
“No, thuh lady what hurt me. She wuz mean but she had pritty hair. She mashed up mah cig’rettes.”
“She’s not here right now.” I locked my g
aze with his and struggled to keep him on a track I could follow. “She’s not going to hurt you. Now tell me about the lady in the fire.”
“Didju know Tracy come to see me tuhday?” he answered matter-of-factly. “Ah toad her ‘bout thuh truck.”
My ground was continuing to strain and weaken as I fought to insinuate myself into the old man’s stream of thought. I was embarrassed and even somewhat horrified that such a plebian task should be so difficult for me to perform. At the very least I should be able to maintain a simple ground without expending all of my energy on it.
“What about the lady in the fire?” I pressed. “Did you see who put her there?”
“Ah got a new coat too. Tracy gived it to me. Did’ju see thuh truck too?”
“What truck, Bob?”
I didn’t know it was happening until it happened. The very last thing I could recall was reaching frantically for an imagined handhold as my ground severed in a blue-white shower of ethereal sparks. Every last erg of energy I had generated was catapulted forward like a rubber band stretched to its limit, and then released. No longer doled out in a controlled fashion, the rush of supernatural static impacted the old man full force before rebounding threefold. I didn’t even begin to have a chance to erect a defense against the returning tidal wave of energy. Not that I could have done anything to protect myself against an onslaught of my own making anyway.
In less than one second I became painfully aware of the sensation that follows the deployment of an airbag.
* * * * *
“Are ya’ gonna talk or did ya’ go mute on me?” Ben’s voice reflected from the tiled walls of the men’s room. Its sharp echo died a quick and painless death after a single hard repetition.
I had yet to say a word since leaving the interview room. All I’d been able to do was nod the affirmative each time Ben asked me if I was okay. The moment I had stepped into the freedom of the hallway, I wordlessly made a beeline for the nearest restroom with my friend trailing along behind.
“I can talk,” I answered him softly.
Never Burn A Witch: A Rowan Gant Investigation Page 29