mix of voices began ricocheting around us.
“I said, NO COMMENT!” I heard my friend shout over the unintelligible questions as he folded his large frame in through the opening and levered the door shut.
The intensity of the clamor was once again suppressed, but the beams of garish light still sliced through the shadows. If they were to be denied a sound byte then they were intent on fighting like a pack of wild dogs for the best clip of video.
“Thanks, Rowan,” Ben snarled at me with thick sarcasm in his voice as he thrust his keys into the ignition and started the van. “Thanks a whole hell of a lot. Just what the fuck did you think you were doing?!”
“Giving them what they want!” I barked in return.
“Have you lost your goddamned mind?! Where the hell do ya’ think that’s gonna get ya’?!”
“Someone has to tell them what’s going on.”
“That’s for the public relations officer to handle, not you.”
“I’m talking about that bitch upstairs! Someone’s got to tell them what she’s doing!”
“Don’t you get it?!” he declared, thumping his fingertips against his forehead and gesturing angrily. “Have you suddenly gone stupid on me or somethin’? You run off at the mouth about Albright, and you’re screwed! Like it or not, in this situation, you’re the odd man out. They’ll spin the whole fuckin’ thing to make you look like a freak, and the way you’re actin’ right now it wouldn’t be hard!”
It took a moment for what he said to sink in, but I knew he was correct. I was as out of control as I had ever been.
“I’m sorry,” I exclaimed. “But there was no call for what she did. It was a power play, and you know it.”
“Yeah, it was,” he admitted as he pulled the gearshift down into drive and pounded his fist twice on the horn before letting off the brake. “I told ya’ how she was…” He took a moment to direct an exclamation toward the windshield. “Get outta my way you friggin’ asshole, or you’re gonna get run over! Jeezus!”
My friend twisted the steering wheel and nudged the vehicle slowly forward through the group of reporters and camera operators as they began parting. As he brought the van around and rotated the wheel back toward center, he shot me a quick glance.
“Listen, Kemosabe, I had no idea that was what she had planned, but it doesn’t surprise me. I told you what she thought of ya’.”
“But that whole exercise was done for no other reason than to get under my skin.” I asserted.
“Uh-huh,” my friend grunted. “That’s how she plays the game.”
“Well, her rules suck.”
“Aye, but that doesn’t matter,” Felicity said from behind me. “She succeeded in exactly what she set out to do. Look at yourself, then. I’ve never seen you lose your temper like this.”
“Yes you have,” I shot back as I turned in my seat to face her. “You just don’t remember it because a sick sonofabitch had you drugged up on Rophynol.”
“Aye,” she answered with an uncharacteristic hardness in her voice. “He did at that, but I remember more than you know, Rowan Linden Gant. More than you know.”
As she slumped back in her seat, she continued to stare at me with a cold fire in her jade green eyes. I knew at that moment that I had flipped the wrong switch.
I hoped my chosen deities were listening.
In keeping with the theme set forth by Lieutenant Albright, the security guard at the Saint Louis City Medical Examiner’s office had been phoned about our impending arrival. He let us in while on his way out the door to grab a smoke. He had been instructed to tell us to wait in the lobby until she arrived. Another tactic on her part, obviously, but there was nothing we could do. The door that led farther into the building was locked. I knew, because I succeeded in raising Ben’s anger a notch by ignoring his vehement instructions not to check it.
Remnants of the recent holiday season still visibly occupied the reception area of the office. Customarily, the room was bland and functional, so the ornamentation was quick to conjure a “what’s wrong with this picture” feeling.
Intertwined silver and gold garland still hung in shallow swags along the edge of the counter with a dozen or so holiday cards folded over them and on display. The screen saver on the computer behind the desk offered a snowy scene, complete with an inviting-looking log cabin and a twinkling Christmas tree. Here and there, other decorous attentions to detail could be picked out-a coffee mug emblazoned with a picture of Santa Claus; a wreath on the door leading back to the offices, also locked; and even a half-depleted bowl of festively-wrapped candies. All of them came together to form the whole: an unlikely clutch of cheer in the midst of a place that seemed overwhelmed by depression. I didn’t know about anyone else, but it just wasn’t working for me.
I’d seen the inside of this building too many times, not only in my waking hours but in nightmares as well. I had grown to despise its plain facade over the past couple of years. Still, as much as I hated it, I couldn’t escape. If it was nothing more than morbid fascination that brought me here, at least I could seek help, but I wasn’t fortunate enough to have a sickness to blame. I had become a permanent satellite inextricably gripped by the gravity of circumstance; my erratic orbit inevitably intersecting with an occupied autopsy suite. As often as not, I felt compelled to bring about the collision myself, and right now, I was at ground zero of yet another impact. Even though I was not at fault this time around, the ever-associated migraine was looming like a dark shadow over me.
This place was always a seething well of pain for me, and this morning was no different; of course, my irascibility factor being off the scale as it was didn’t help matters at all. I had started hearing the voices of the dead-screams mostly-the moment we turned onto Clark Avenue. Staving them off became a somewhat violent internal struggle as soon as we entered the building.
I sought refuge from the ethereal by embracing the mundane. I occupied my mind with trivial tasks in order to erect a mental barrier-anything from mutely reciting the alphabet in reverse to intensely pondering a shadow on the wall. At one point, I even found myself wondering about the holiday cards. Considering that the clientele of a morgue are normally beyond any need for celebration, they seemed out of place to me. I reached down and flipped one of the greetings partially open to reveal the inscription, which showed it to be from a sales rep at Stryker Corporation, a well-known maker of medical implements. I checked another and saw that the sender was a local wholesaler of surgical supplies.
I guess I had been over thinking the situation. Of course, in my agitated state, perhaps I was not truly thinking at all.
Unfortunately, seeing the names of the companies led me to dwell on such things as powered bone saws and stainless steel scalpels, which in turn brought back memories of post-mortems I’d witnessed first hand. Fearful cries from the other side rose in volume for a brief moment as I rushed to switch channels on my thoughts before they could suck me in.
“Aye, Ben. How long do you think we’ll be waiting, then?” Felicity asked aloud, her voice thankfully snatching my attention away from the place I’d been heading.
There had not yet been enough time for me to redeem myself, and I was still firmly entrenched on her bad side. She hadn’t spoken directly to me since my offhanded comment over half an hour ago, and it wasn’t looking like she intended to change that any time soon.
I looked over and focused on her. She was seated in a chair across from us, her leather jacket unzipped and revealing the stylized logo of a previous year’s Kansas City Pagan Festival that adorned the front of her sweatshirt. Her legs were crossed, and one foot was bobbing in time with music only she could hear.
I absently pondered the wisdom of the logo on her shirt being visible, given the current situation. For the first time in years, I was actually considering not being quite so open about my spirituality. Of course, once you’ve taken as many steps out of the broom closet as we had, getting back in was almost impossible, so the idea was moot. Still, calling attention to it might not be the best course.
She looked up from her wristwatch and gazed toward Ben with an expectant expression that barely masked the fatigue showing in her face. “It’s been almost twenty minutes now.”
He pushed away from the counter then looked out the doors and through the glassed-in foyer. “Who knows? Bee-Bee probably wants Row to stew long enough to do somethin’ stupid.”
