The Law Of Three argi-4

by M. R. Sellars

  Formidable was a word that came to mind at first glance; when he had still been a uniformed officer, just plain scary tended to be the more accurate description.

  He was looking back at me with dark, questioning eyes that peered out of angularly defined features and natural reddish-tanned skin-unmistakable visual evidence of his full-blooded Native American heritage. His large hand was tucked beneath a shank of collar length, jet-black hair, and he was slowly massaging the back of his neck. This was a common mannerism of his, and it told me that his mind was doing far more behind those eyes than simply waiting for me to say something.

  I said something anyway. “Was there a Bible?”

  While an outside observer might have found the question somewhat odd, it was something I was certain he had expected me to ask.

  “Yeah, that’s what they said when they called,” he told me, giving a short nod to the affirmative as he spoke. “Bookmarked and highlighted.”

  “Passage?”

  My friend stopped massaging his neck long enough to thumb through a small notebook then read his shorthand back to me, “At the mouth of two witnesses, or three witnesses, shall he that is worthy of death be put to death; but at the mouth of one witness he shall not be put to death. Deuteronomy seventeen, six.”

  “He’s working from his list again…” I muttered. “When you ID this guy, he’ll be someone that one of the original victims knew.”

  “Yeah,” Ben agreed. “That’s kinda what we figured.”

  The “he” I referred to was, of course, Eldon Andrew Porter. The list was exactly that, a list. It comprised the names of Witches, Wiccans, and various other Pagan individuals living in the Saint Louis metropolitan area. It was, of course, by no means a comprehensive census of persons engaging in what is often collectively referred to as alternative spirituality; however, the odds were that it wasn’t terribly short either. Porter had compiled it himself by way of various sadistic tortures, such as the one displayed above us now.

  A bookmarked Bible was his calling card and the highlighted passage, a message. What we were being told was the reason this particular victim had been chosen. His crime was that of being a Witch. We’d been here before, so that much was a given. And, just like the Bible verse said, he had been accused by more than one witness. There was never much reading between the lines necessary, for Eldon was nothing if not precise about the messages he left behind.

  Basically, Porter was a single-minded killer. What made him unique was his highly particular criterion for committing murder. Put very simply, he executed Witches.

  That was the short answer. The long answer went something like this: Porter was a highly suggestible sociopath with a mild paranoid psychosis. Several years ago he committed a crime, was caught, convicted, and sent to prison. That should have been the end of the story, but society simply wasn’t that lucky. While incarcerated he had been deeply affected by a fire-and-brimstone prison ministry. Something called a “God Pod.” Unfortunately, he completely missed the allegorical sense of biblical text and took much of it literally. In the end, what should have been a tool for rehabilitation had, in his case, created a serial spree killer.

  The man literally came to view himself as a modern day equivalent to the inquisitors of fifteenth century Europe, and just two months shy of one year ago, he had started his own series of Witch trials here in Saint Louis, Missouri. Far removed from medieval Europe in a geographical sense, yes, but he’d gone to great lengths to adhere to the tortures and execution methods of that long ago era as prescribed in the Malleus Maleficarum.

  Roughly translated from the original Latin, Malleus Maleficarum meant the Hammer of the Witches. In fact, the “hammer” was a book-an instructional manual written by a pair of inquisitors by the names of Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger. In its day, it had been the one true and official guidebook for the persecution of accused Witches and heretics.

  The language did not matter, however. Whether scribed in Latin or English, the tome was most definitely not my favorite piece of literature.

  At the time of Porter’s original killing binge, I’d been asked by Ben to consult on the case because of a symbol found carved into the flesh of the first victim. My own spiritual path and studies of various religious practices had helped my best friend solve a crime before, so I guess I had seemed like a natural choice at the time.

  The truth is that unbeknownst to me, I was already being sucked into it by an ethereal beckoning. Once I became directly involved on this plane, those forces came to bear with a vicious intensity. After that, it had all been downhill for me.

  Much to Ben’s horror, I had even ended up becoming one of Porter’s prey; on a very foggy night, on a pedestrian bridge spanning the Mississippi River, February last, the self-proclaimed “Hand of God” had almost succeeded in making me his seventh victim.

  “Yo, white man, you okay?” Ben asked.

  It took a moment for the words to register, and I realized that I was just staring at him. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “You don’t look fine. You were kinda zoned there for a minute.”

  “Have you looked in a mirror?” I asked in retort.

  “Yeah. Funny. Ya’know, I’m still not all that keen on you bein’ here, Row,” was his answer. “Felicity either.”

  “Yeah, you’ve told me that several times already.”

  “I’m serious,” he added.

  “I know you are.”

  “For one thing, it’s only been a coupl’a weeks.”

  “I know.” I nodded assent as I spoke.

  The pair of weeks he was referring to amounted to the period of time it had been since I had played a fairly significant role in the capture of a serial rapist. In and of itself a good thing, except that due to various factors in the investigation-both seen and unseen-I hadn’t been coming across as particularly stable lately. Of course, considering my gift-or curse, depending upon how you viewed it-it was the unseen that really caused the problems.

  “And then there’s…” he began, but seemed to purposely allow his voice to die away on the wind. I noticed then that he was staring past me and at Felicity.

  What he left unsaid was the fact that the rapist had come after her, actually managing to effect a kidnapping if for only a few short hours. Even though we’d stopped him before he could go any further, in her case, it made it only slightly less traumatic. In light of those events, I could certainly understand his concern.

  I looked over at my wife and saw that she was still staring upward, oblivious to our exchange. “I know, Ben. Believe me, I know.”

  “You know, Rowan, we set you two up in that apartment for a reason.”

  The point he was trying to make was simple: Porter was going to be after me, no two ways about it, and my friend didn’t want me out in the open.

  Of course, if your aim is to kill Witches, you might as well go after the real thing, and I definitely made no bones about being just that. Considering everything that had gone on in my life over the past couple of years, I was just about as far “out of the broom closet,” so to speak, as one could be. Therefore, I was not very hard to accuse. I had already admitted it in public-which, by the way, Porter had been sure to remind me of as he pronounced my condemnation and attempted to throw me over the side of a bridge with a noose around my neck.

  Thankfully, much of that night had now become a blur. I still had nightmares about it and probably always would, but they were finally starting to fade into two-dimensional representatives of what they had once been. Dulled and flattened, they were much easier to take than the full-blown, Technicolor reenactments. Still, I was looking forward to a future when they would be visited upon me with less frequency.

  I knew that day wouldn’t come as long as Porter was free.

  Of the things I recalled clearly from that night, I knew that in my bid to escape I had shot him. I definitely remembered pulling the trigger, and there was even a blood spatter at the scene that provided physical evidence
that I’d hit him. Nevertheless, when the police arrived, there was no body to be found.

  No lifeless remains.

  No hard and fast proof of his demise.

  I had blacked out at almost the same instant the handgun had discharged, so I was no help in the eyewitness department. At the time, Ben had been convinced that Porter had fallen from the bridge to a certain death in the icy river below. The other members of the Major Case Squad on the scene concurred.

  For them, it was all over but the paperwork-one of my friend’s favorite cliches and one that I’d heard him quip several times before.

  But for me… Well, I was the proverbial odd man out. I held the one dissenting opinion in their clutch of optimism. Something in the back of my head told me that Porter was still alive, that the wound I’d inflicted was not so grievous as to take his life, and that he had disappeared into the fog-not the water. That inkling had eventually become an issue of extreme contention between Ben and me-to the point where I finally just kept my nagging intuition to myself.

  Well, for the most part anyway.

  Unfortunately, when all was said and done, I was the one with the correct answer to the sixty-four thousand dollar question: Eldon Andrew Porter was alive and still just as demented-if not more so-than before. It had merely taken him ten months to come out of hiding.

  Now that he had surfaced, I found myself wishing that I had been a better shot.

  *****

  “It’s a bit of a climb,” the patrol officer ahead of us said over his shoulder. “We have to go up to the fourth floor, then over to the roof access.”

  My eyes were still adjusting to the darkness inside the building as we climbed the debris-strewn concrete stairs. The faint nasal bite of urine, both stale and fresh, joined in a pungent reek with feces and rotting trash to foul the gelid air.

  “Careful there,” he warned, directing the beam of his flashlight on a crumbling step.

  We picked our way around the hazard, single file-Felicity in front of me and Ben bringing up the rear.

  “There’re a lot of homeless that crash here, what with the ministry across the street handing out free lunches and all,” the officer continued, offering up an explanation for the background stench. “Actually smells quite a bit worse over at the freight elevator shaft.”

  “Any of ‘em in here when you arrived?” Ben asked.

  “No, not when I got here,” he answered. “Stockton was first on the scene though.”

  “He up there?”

  “No, he’s the green one downstairs tossing his cookies.”

  “Friggin’ wunnerful,” Ben spat with more than just a note of sarcasm. “He say if he saw anyone?”

  “Just the dead guy.”

  Ben grunted his displeasure before moving on to his next question, “Who’s runnin’ the scene?”

  “That would be Lieutenant Albright.”

  “Whoa.” Ben all but halted on the stairs. “Not Barbara Albright… Tell me you’re not talkin’ about ‘Bible Barb.’”

  The uniformed officer stifled what might have been a knowing or perhaps a nervous laugh. Maybe even both. It was hard to tell. “Yeah. That’s the one.”

  “Shit! What the hell did I do to deserve this?”

  “What’s the problem, Ben?” I asked back over my shoulder as we began ascending the next flight of stairs.

  “Well, I know ya’ know Arthur McCann with the county police,” he offered.

  There wasn’t a Pagan in St. Louis who didn’t know McCann. He was a devout Christian with a badge who claimed to be an expert on occult religions, and he used his position within the police department to preach his own brand of intolerance and hatred. I’d had more than one run-in with him myself.

  “Yeah, sure,” I answered.

  “Well, stick him in a skirt and give him a little authority and you’ve got Barbara Albright.”

  A loud burst of static sounded ahead of us, overcoming the background chatter that had been issuing from the officer’s radio. The tinny hiss was followed by a questioning voice, “Unit Fourteen?”

  The officer thumbed his microphone and answered, “Fourteen.”

  “Fourteen, Lieutenant Albright wants to know if Detective Storm has arrived on scene yet. Over.”

  “That’s affirmative,” he returned. “I’m bringing them up right now. Over.”

  “Fourteen, be advised that Lieutenant Albright is requesting that Detective Storm come up alone. Copy.”

  “Say again?”

  “Fourteen, switch up.”

  The officer reached to his belt and twisted a control knob on his radio, changing to a clear frequency, then spoke again. “Yeah. Go ahead.”

  “Yeah, Shelton, she doesn’t want any civilians up here,” the voice answered.

  “Tell him they’re consultants,” Ben instructed. “They’re logged and cleared for the scene.”

  “Yeah, Detective Storm says they are consultants, and they’re cleared,” the officer relayed into his microphone.

  A short burst of static followed then was replaced by silence. We had halted midway up the second set of stairs when the original call came over the radio, and we now waited in the cold darkness a half dozen steps below the second floor.

  The pop and crackle of interference once again broke the silence and the disembodied voice of the other officer audibly sighed before continuing. “Shelton, here’s a direct quote, ‘tell Storm to leave his devil worshipper downstairs where he belongs.’”

  Ben’s own words came in a slow drone directly behind the echo of the radio. “Fuuuuck me. Just fuuuuck me.”

  CHAPTER 3:

  I protested, but it didn’t do any good. This time it was out of Ben’s control, and no amount of complaining from me was going to accomplish anything positive. Besides, he was on my side, or at least that is what I thought. In the end, he continued up the stairs, and we were escorted back out onto the street.

  The wind had picked up as a storm front rolled in, so we were waiting in my friend’s van with the engine running and the heater on. He had been somewhat reluctant to relinquish the keys, and I guess I could understand why, since he had just gotten it back from the shop a week ago. I’m sure the fact that I was the one responsible for putting it in there to begin with was a big stumbling block for him as well-but that was another story.

  I suppose that is probably why when he finally gave up the keys it was to Felicity instead of me, which also was why she was sitting in the driver’s seat.

  “You’ve been pretty quiet.” I leaned back in the passenger seat and let my head roll to face her as I spoke. The vehicle’s heater had not yet defeated the chill, and my words vented outward on an opaque cloud of frost. “Are you doing all right?”

  Felicity looked back at me with a flat expression. It was apparent that she was tired, but more than that, it was plain to see that she was overwhelmed. “Aye, that would depend on your definition of all right, wouldn’t it, then?”

  “Pick one,” I offered.

  She took a deep breath and exhaled heavily, then reached to the dash and clicked the controls to dual-duty-vent and defrost. The warm air slowly started clearing the fog that had formed on the inside of the windshield. “I’m not going to throw up if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “That’s a start.”

  “What about you?” she asked.

  “I’m fine.” I shrugged, rolling my head back to face out the window. I watched as the arc of clarity inched its way up the glass from the bottom. “Still have the headache, but I expect that will be with me for a while.”

  “Any worse yet?”

  “Yeah. Still tolerable, but it’s ramping up.”

  She reached out and laid the palm of her hand across the back of mine. After a moment she spoke, “Aye, you’re well-grounded for a change. And without my help.”

  My ability, or lack thereof I should say, to center my energies and maintain a solid connection with the Earth had been a concern as of late. In the psychic
realm, grounding was your first line of defense and one of the most basic of all abilities. During the past year, Eldon Porter’s attempt on my life had taken its toll, leaving me just about as grounded as a runaway helium balloon. It was only recently that I had recaptured the simple ability.

  “Can’t stay dependent on you forever, can I?” I shot her a tired grin.

  Our impending moment was interrupted by a sharp rap on the passenger-side window. I turned to see my friend’s face staring back at me. Even though the frost had all but completely cleared from the windshield, I hadn’t noticed his approach. His brow was entrenched in a deep furrow and his jaw clenched so tight it made my headache worse just to look at him.

  I quickly rolled down the window. “What’s the story?”

  “Don’t ask,” he returned with a curt shake of his head. “You don’t wanna know. So, listen, you think you can come up with somethin’ off this scene?”

  “That’s why I’m here,” I replied, somewhat puzzled by the question.

  “You’re sure?”

  I shook my head and stammered for a second, searching for the words to form an answer. “Well… Ben… You know I can’t say that. You know as well as I do, that’s not how it works.”

  He shook his head vigorously and held up a hand. “Just friggin’ tell me if you can get somethin’ off this scene or not.”

  “Maybe.” My voice took on a defensive tone. “I won’t know until I try.”

  Ben rubbed his eyes then sent his hand back to massage his neck and muttered, “Shit.”

  “What’s going on, Ben?” I asked again.

  After a moment, he began shaking his head as a decision visibly fell upon him and his shoulders drooped.