“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 sound 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
