involving acts of violence committed by sleepwalkers, but this one simply does not fit the pattern.”
“How’s that?”
“The tragedies like this that have occurred during episodes of nocturnal automatism have been driven by emotion. Responses to stimuli the sleepwalker experienced during waking hours. Stress and emotional upset. And while there may be a triggering incident, in most cases the stimulus has been in place over a long period.”
“Well,” I said, “stress is apparently what brought me here to begin with, right?”
“Yes, but let me finish,” she urged. “The crimes committed by sleepwalkers are commonly very brutal and born out of passion. For instance, there was a man who repeatedly stabbed his mother-in-law with a hunting knife; another bludgeoned his mother-in-law to death with a tire iron. Still another repeatedly stabbed and then drowned his wife.
“There is a definite pattern established here with this type of crime. The attacker knows his or her victim intimately, and the evidence left behind is abundant. There is no conscious, calculated attempt to cover it up, so to speak.”
“There’s a first time for everything.” I continued my protest, though more as a devil’s advocate than anything else because I desperately wanted to believe her. “Maybe I’m an isolated case.”
She shrugged. “I suppose that is always a possibility, but I do not believe it for a minute. Neither should you.”
“Trust me. I don’t want to.”
“Then don’t, because you did not kill that woman.”
There was a brief lull as I pondered her comments. I wanted to believe what she said was true, and in reality she had made some very strong arguments. To the contrary, they were stronger than mine when you got right down to it. Still, I was at a loss to explain my presence at that crime scene, and it had become like a terrible itch that I couldn’t reach, no matter how hard I tried.
By some convoluted reasoning it seemed almost logical that I might have murdered someone. The only thing that kept me from going over the edge was the fact that the reasoning was just exactly that-convoluted.
“I wonder if this whole idea crossed Ben’s mind at all?” I speculated aloud.
“Possibly,” Helen allowed. “Quite probably, in fact. But you can be certain he dismissed it fairly quickly.”
“Why do you say that?”
“If Benjamin had any inkling that you were responsible for the murder, you would be under the microscope at this very moment.” She made the matter-of-fact statement as she stared out at the muted sky, then turned she back to face me. “Had he any evidence to support such an idea, you would already have been arrested.”
“Do you think so? I mean, we’ve been friends a long time. You don’t think he’d hold back a bit?”
“Not if he had any evidence, most definitely. Not even if he had an intuition that you had committed a murder. As his friend you must certainly know that the only loyalty he holds in higher stead than to his friends and family is loyalty to his job as a police officer. No, Rowan. If he thought you did it, you would be in custody. Friend or not.”
“Yeah,” I agreed quietly. “Ben Storm, supercop.”
“It is a large part of who he is,” she explained. “We all draw our identities from different sources. For Benjamin, it is his work. He is at his most comfortable as he is defined by his job. In a way, you could say that it is his destiny.”
“Which would make mine to be what? The flaky, new-age sidekick?” I mused.
“Your life is not defined by his, Rowan. It is defined by you and your choices.”
“Maybe, but it seems that my choices over the past couple of years have put me smack in the middle of his world.”
“Yes, they have,” she conceded. “But in doing so you have been instrumental in bringing down two serial killers. Is that such a bad thing?”
“At what cost to me though?” I said. “I’ve got no idea which end is up anymore.”
“I will admit that the cost to you on an emotional level has been substantial,” she replied. “But that cost is not a permanent deficit. That is why you are here talking with me.”
“You really think I’m going to come out of this okay?”
“Of course you are, Rowan. You are far stronger than you give yourself credit.”
“I wish I’d never gotten involved in that first case to begin with,” I sighed heavily.
“You know you do not mean that,” she rebutted. “Be honest with yourself. If you were in that same situation again, you would make exactly the same decision you did then.”
“Yeah, probably,” I admitted. “So I guess that makes me a bit of a masochist.”
“It makes you exactly what your name purports you to be. A person of strength; a protector.”
Had it been anyone else, I believe I would have been taken aback by the explanation. There aren’t many people who know the inherent meaning of the name Rowan right off the top of their heads, and those who do are usually Pagan. It seems we Pagans have a penchant for knowing the significance behind our appellations. For some reason, however, it came as no surprise to me that Helen Storm would know this, and I took great comfort in it.
Thick silence cloaked us once again as she allowed me to continue mulling over her well thought out rebuttal to my hasty revelation. The fear had not yet vacated the premises, but it had at least settled into dormancy for the time being.
“Just as long as I don’t have to wear tights,” I finally said.
“I’m sorry? I am not sure I understand.”
“If I’m going to be Ben’s sidekick,” I explained. “I can’t wear tights. I just don’t have the legs for them.”
What had been an emergency hour of psychotherapy had turned into almost two hours of deeply thoughtful banter. I was feeling better than I had when I arrived, but I was by no means out of the woods. While I no longer harbored any serious suspicions about being guilty of murder, I couldn’t shake the sense that I was somehow involved more deeply than it appeared on the surface. Whether directly or indirectly, I just knew there was something about Paige Lawson’s death that connected solidly with me. I also had no doubt whatsoever that she was the victim of more than a random accident. I just had no way to prove it…yet.
As I strode down the corridor toward the elevators, I was repeatedly turning the plague of confusing thoughts over in my head-inspecting each, moving on to the next, and starting the cycle anew when I reached what I believed to be the last one. Here and there along the hall, some of the doors were open. To my left, the happy, synthesized chords of Mannheim Steamroller’s rendition of “Deck the Halls” issued from the interior of an office; through another doorway to my right, the angst-ridden voice of Ozzy Osbourne was heading for derailment on his “Crazy Train.” The two songs met in the middle, intertwined, separated, and then competed for my attention, neither of them ever actually winning the contest. Although, I did have to admit that the helpless anguish being described by the heavy metal lyrics on my right came closest to describing my mood.
When I reached the end of the hallway, I punched the recessed call button and waited before the polished metal doors of the elevator. Eventually an electromechanical ding announced the arrival of the car, and the doors slid open with a slight rumble to reveal the empty interior. A heavily syncopated version of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” filtered outward from an overhead speaker to join the struggle begun by the other two songs. I stepped in and double tapped the button labeled with an L.
The even mechanical rumble began again as the two halves of the door began their journeys toward the middle. They would have met had it not been for a feminine hand thrusting quickly between them and engaging the safety. The split doors immediately reversed direction and slid back into their pockets as a harried, young blonde, balancing a stack of files in one arm, rushed through the opening.
“Sorry,” she apologized as she shifted the healthy stack of folders into both arms. “It’s just, sometimes this elevator takes forever.”
“That’s okay. Sorry I didn’t see you coming,” I told her. “Which floor?”
“Three, please. Thank you.”
I leaned forward and punched the button for the third floor as I said, “No problem.”
The young woman remained standing immediately before the doors, obviously in a hurry. She was petite and
