“Like I’d give you the pleasure!”
A brief lull insinuated itself into the argument, brought on I can only assume by the intensely personal level of the attacks. But though it slipped suddenly in like the eye of a hurricane, its tenure was far shorter.
“Felicity, come on,” Ben pleaded, once again making an attempt at reasoning with her. “Rowan is my best friend.”
She wasn’t having any of it. “You’ve an odd way of showin’ it.”
“Listen, do you really think…”
“What I really think is that you’ve lost your mind!”
“You know as well as I do…”
“What?! What do I know as well as you do?!”
“I’m tryin’ to tell you…”
“Come on, then! Tell me! What is it?!”
Her relentless attacks finally brought the roiling argument beyond the red zone it had consistently occupied. What had started as a simmer, then progressed into a rapid boil, now erupted like steam from a burst pipe.
“JEEZUS FUCKIN’ CHRIST, FELICITY!” Ben shouted in exasperation. “Will’ya’ just shut up for a minute and lemme finish?!”
At that moment, for lack of a better description, my wife “pulled her face off.” Her tight frown and locked jaw opened wide into what could be metaphorically pictured as a fanged maw, allowing her own anger to explode outward.
“FINISH WHAT?! FINISH KILLING MY HUSBAND?!” she screamed as she physically rose from her chair. “DAMMIT, BEN, YOU PROMISED ME YOU WOULDN’T DO THIS!”
“SO I BROKE THE FUCKIN’ PROMISE! DEAL WITH IT!” he returned in the same demonstrative tone, rising from his seat as well.
Even with the table between them, he towered over my petite wife. They locked spiteful gazes with one another and a tense silence slid smoothly in as if to underscore their words.
A period of time that felt to be the greater portion of a quarter hour, but that in reality was surely less than a single minute, oozed by as I watched them. Even with the quiet permeating the room, I didn’t know if the conflict was fully over. I wasn’t entirely sure that it would be to my advantage to make another try at interjecting my opinion-or if it would even be heard if I did.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t by my own choice that I interrupted the terse mood that was now blanketing the scene. In fact, I didn’t even realize I had done so until Ben and Felicity turned their stares away from one another and sighted them in on me.
The first sound I noticed came as a thin, rapid scratching that held an even and almost hypnotic rhythm.
The second sound came as the first abruptly ended then was replaced by a rustling of paper-like the sound of a page being flipped.
The third sound announced its presence as a recurrence of the first, matching rhythm perfectly with the point where it had suddenly ended.
I didn’t want to look. I already knew what I was going to see, but I also knew that ignoring it wouldn’t make it go away. I followed their gazes down to the tabletop and joined them in watching as my left hand methodically defaced the pages of the comb-bound cookbook-scribbling quickly and evenly across the paper, moving of its own accord.
With a little concentration, focusing on the fluid scribbling and ignoring of the preprinted words that made up the recipes, one could make out the repetitious couplets.
Hey, hey, hey, whaddaya say!
Don’t ya know I’m dead today!
Hey everyone, I’m here to say!
I’m dead today! I’m dead today!
Gotta let Rowan come out and play!
Gotta let him do it ‘cause I’m dead today!
I looked back up as Ben huffed out a haggard breath and turned his gaze back to Felicity. My hand continued to move, though it now seemed to be slowing and had begun to falter at the end of each line. An effect, I assume, of the fact that I was now fully aware of its activity.
In a calm voice my friend finally asked, “So, ya’ wanna keep arguin’ about this, or do ya’ wanna help me keep ‘im from doin’ somethin’ stupid?”
My wife kept her eyes locked with mine and let out her own resigned sigh. “Aye…it looks like I don’t really have a choice, then.”
CHAPTER 7
The hands of the clock were firmly pressed up against midnight when we arrived at the Saint Louis City Morgue. Situated on Clark Avenue, the building was flanked by police headquarters on one side, an on-ramp to Highway 40 on the other, and across the street from the rear entrance of city hall. All in all, the structure was less than obtrusive in appearance-simple brick and mortar construction with nothing that would make it stand out, architecturally at least-against the rest of the buildings in the area. In reality, there would be nothing outwardly distinctive about it at all if it weren’t for the small, black-on-white, block lettered sign above the main entrance that stated simply, MEDICAL EXAMINER.
Even though it was clearly marked, it was easily possible for someone to drive past the building on an almost daily basis and not even realize just exactly what it was. It looked like nothing more than just another office building, and even the sign above the door didn’t truly betray the fact that inside was the final stop for those departed from this world under suspicious circumstances. In fact, it was more than likely that the majority of the civilian population of Saint Louis didn’t even know that this was more that just a business office, it was the place where bodies were dissected in search of hidden answers.
But, unlike the majority, I knew those details all too well.
I’d been here more than once, and each time when I had taken my leave, I’d been completely devoid of any desire to ever return. Still, it seemed that I always ended up back here whether I truly wanted to be or not. Even worse, it was sometimes at my own behest.
Like right now.
It had taken a good while to talk Ben and Felicity into allowing me to come here and view the remains of Debbie Schaeffer. Neither of them was particularly keen on the concept, least of all my wife, so she had taken the most convincing by far. If that weren’t bad enough, my friend was absolutely no help. I had been completely on my own in accomplishing the task.
I suppose in some ways it was understandable. For one thing, Ben was already treading on thin ice with her, and both their tempers were only now beginning to cool as it was. Add to that the fact that my coming into direct contact with the young woman’s remains didn’t exactly fit with his concept of keeping me as far removed from the investigation as possible, and there you had it. The combination was easily more than enough to make him unwilling to help me plead my case.
Considering the fragility of the current truce between Felicity and he, I can’t say that I blamed him.
Not much anyway.
I might have simply given up, gone ahead without her, and then suffered the consequences later if it hadn’t been for one simple fact-I needed Ben in order to get into the morgue, and his tenuous agreement with the plan was entirely contingent upon her being present to keep an “ethereal eye” on me just in case I started to slip.
At one point, in a failed attempt to change his mind, I had made the mistake of again mentioning the fact that Felicity may not be able to do anything about it whether she was there or not. For that remark I promptly ended up working double time, not only to win over my wife but to re-convince my friend as well.
When all was said and done, it was already half past eleven when we climbed into Ben’s van and made the trek downtown. The intensity of my own stress level finally decreased a fraction as soon as we were under way. Unfortunately, the quiet ride also allowed for earlier forgotten nuisances to return full force.
