“We love you too,” Felicity replied sweetly. “Now drink.”
He lifted the glass up to his face and peered into it with one eye then passed it under his nose. He wrinkled his forehead and then put the glass back down as he announced, “Smells like shit.”
“Constance,” Felicity said.
“Storm,” Mandalay returned amid the metallic clink of her handcuffs slipping out of their case.
“All right, all right,” he returned, then picked up the concoction again.
“Just hold your nose,” I offered the bit of advice. “And drink it as fast as you can.”
“Yeah, right,” he sneered back at me, then put the glass to his lips and tossed it back.
Halfway through the first gulp he started to grimace. As the glass started back down, Felicity quickly placed her fingers against its base and forced it back up. He gagged for a moment then swallowed hard and finished the drink.
My wife wrapped her hand around the bottom of the glass then deftly took it from him as he pitched his head back forward and began to sputter.
“JEEZUS! Fuck me!” he exclaimed, waving his hands in the air and working his mouth in an attempt to evict the lingering flavor. “What the hell is that shit? It tastes like somethin’ died!”
“It’s not that bad, then. It’s just egg yolk, tomato juice, brewers yeast, Tabasco, vinegar, salt and a few other things,” Felicity returned. “Oh, and a couple of anchovies. Mustn’t forget those.”
“Jeez…” he continued, face screwed up in disgust. “Fuckin’ hairy fish?”
“Fish don’t have hair, Ben,” I told him.
“Bullshit. Anchovies got hair.”
“Those are small bones.”
“You call it bones, I call it hair. What’re ya’ tryin’ ta’ do, Felicity? Kill me?”
She ignored the question as she began disassembling the blender and washing the various parts in the sink.
“No,” Constance told him. “She’s trying to wake you up, so I can kill you.”
“Oh yeah? So what’d I do to you?” he grumbled.
“Briefing. Seven-thirty. Mandatory attendance,” she returned succinctly.
If the few hours of sleep combined with my wife’s home remedy hadn’t sobered him up yet, Mandalay’s words did so post haste. A pained look of realization washed over my friend’s features as he closed his eyes and dropped his forehead into his palm. “Oh jeezzzz… Fuck me…”
“Yeah, fuck you is right,” Constance agreed. “Look, Storm, I’m not even going to ask what your problem is. I don’t want to know. Rowan says you’ve got your reasons, and I’m willing to leave it at that.”
Ben shot me a startled glance from beneath his hand, and I just gave him a nod of reassurance as I mouthed the word ‘later.’
“Listen, Mandalay,” he groaned. “I’m sorry… I”
“That’s fine.” She held up her hand to stop him. “Like I said, I don’t want to know. I’ve already covered for you, and as far as I’m concerned this never happened. However, things have taken a turn, and I just need you to straighten up and get back on board here. Sooner, not later. As in right now.”
“Finally get a ransom demand?” he asked.
She clucked her tongue and took in a breath. “Not exactly.”
“What?” he asked, trepidation apparent in his voice.
“Rowan?” She turned the floor over to me.
Ben shot a glance over at Felicity then back to me. “You two go all Twilight Zone again?”
“Yeah,” I responded. “Unfortunately.”
“Aww, Jeezus…” he groaned. “Larson’s dead isn’t she?”
“If we’re right, yeah, she is.”
“Yeah, like you’ve been wrong about shit like that before,” he replied with a sarcastic note. “Dammit. When?”
“Our first inkling of it came just a little while after you crashed,” I told him. “So about three and a half, maybe four hours ago, I guess. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t actually happen earlier, or even yesterday.”
“I still don’t understand what you meant about ‘no head’ though,” Felicity said as she turned to face us and leaned back against the kitchen counter. She began absently drying the freshly washed blender parts as she looked at us.
“What?” I asked.
“That’s what you said when you first came to,” she replied with a dismissive shake of her head. “Brittany. No head.”
The biting pain in the back of my neck suddenly made all the sense in the world.
Just as it had happened with Felicity, the vision had faded away as quickly as it had come, and I didn’t even remember uttering the words. In the wake of everything that had happened over the course of the evening, this was actually the first time it had even been mentioned.
I wasn’t at all surprised that Felicity didn’t understand what the comment meant because I hadn’t told her what Ben had confided in me earlier in the day. But, I knew full well what the words implied, and so did Ben and Constance.
My friend slowly moved his hand aside and stared at me. I just stared back.
“You sure that’s what he said?” he finally asked without turning.
“Positive,” she replied. “Do you know what it means?”
“It means we have a serial killer who just claimed a third victim,” Constance announced flatly.
“Hey you three,” Felicity said. “I’m obviously not blonde, but maybe I’m having a moment here. A little help, then?”
“Tamara Linwood and Sarah Hart.” Ben explained, “Both corpses were found minus their heads.”
“Oh Gods…” she murmured softly.
“The initial theory on Hart was that it might have been due to predation,” Constance offered. “But then the medical examiner found seven grooved striations on the posterior of the remaining C-six vertebrae. The tool marks lab matched them to a manual hacksaw, most likely with a fourteen TPI bi-metal blade.”
“Good memory,” Ben said. “I didn’t know you were on that case.”
“I wasn’t.” She shook her head. “It came up as an NCIC match when we ran Larson’s abduction profile. Secluded parking lot, missing twenty-something-year-old woman, etcetera.”
“And you got all that from a NCIC hit?”
“Not all of it.” She shrugged. “I had a few minutes this morning, so I read the file.”
Ben raised an eyebrow and looked back at her incredulously. “And you remembered all that?”
“Well sure,” she replied.
“Jeezus, Mandalay, you’re almost as weird as these two.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment, Storm.”
“Well, I hate ta’ say it, but we still got another problem,” he ventured.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“We got no way to prove any of this stuff about Larson is true.”
“Unless we can find the body,” I offered.
“That’s a big ‘unless’, Rowan,” Constance expressed.
“What’re ya’ thinkin’ white man?” Ben queried. “You got that hinky look goin’ on.”
“I’m thinking that I obviously saw something while I was ‘under’ so to speak,” I explained. “So maybe I saw more than just the ‘no head’ thing.”
“Yeah, but apparently you didn’t even remember that, so how are you gonna remember anything else?”
“It’s a long shot, but…”
“NO.” Felicity’s austere voice cut me off.
“What?” Ben turned his head and asked her. “Was he gettin’ ready to say he wanted to do somethin’ stupid?”
“Yes,” she replied, her tone still harsh.
“How do you know what I was going to say?” I asked, slightly annoyed.
“She’s married to ya’, Kemosabe,” Ben huffed with almost a note of pained disgust in his voice. “She knows
