“Either of them.”
“Well, then, what about some hocus-pocus,” he pressed. “Like ya’ did earlier.”
“I could try, and I will, but I doubt it’s going to do any good. I probably just got lucky earlier,” I said and then looked away for a moment before adding, “Besides, that won’t help Kimberly Forest.”
“Well whadda we do?”
“We have to make it stop.”
“Okay, how?”
“By finding Kimberly and ending the torture.”
He shook his head and reached up to smooth his hair. “Rowan, even if I walk in there and tell ‘em to fuck off, we’re leavin’, we still got no idea where she is.”
“That might not be a problem.”
“Come again?”
“Felicity showed you something on the map, right?”
“Yeah, the other fuckin’ side of the river,” he answered in conjunction with an animated nod. “Like I said earlier. Not much help.”
“Well…” I started and then looked away, ashamed of what I was about to say.
“Well what? Did she remember somethin’ else?”
The thought I was about to voice was the one that had struck me when I was back at the van. The very notion that I had considered it then, made me ill. The fact that I was now about to verbally suggest it, made me want to vomit.
“Right now Felicity is totally connected with her. She’s more or less like an ethereal metal detector,” I replied. “Only instead of metal, she’s tuned in to Kimberly Forest. If I’m right, the closer she gets to her physically, the…” I stopped and swallowed hard, mutely damning myself for the words that were coming out of my mouth.
“What, Row?” Ben urged.
I took a quick breath and blurted the offending sentence, “The closer she gets to her physically, the more intense the pain will become.”
CHAPTER 36:
“Listen, I don’t know how you handle investigating a shooting in the city,” the detective said. “But in the county, we make damn sure we dot all the I’s and cross all the T’s.”
We were standing on the periphery of the crime scene, away from the physical investigation, which was still in full swing. The lead detective had come out to talk to us and was now positioned with his arms crossed and a stony look on his face. His proverbial five o’clock shadow had already gone several hours past maturity, and it made his countenance just that much more severe.
His suit was rumpled, and the knot of his tie was pulled down at least three inches. The top button of his shirt was undone, revealing an indelible ring around the inside of the fabric. A stain, coffee from the looks of it, browned a small patch of his shirt around mid chest.
Simply by his appearance, he painted a picture of a long day that was just getting longer with each passing minute. It was obvious that he was beyond tired and in no mood for anything that was going to stand between him and bringing an end to the shift.
Unfortunately, even with the nondescript expression he was forcing onto his features, I got the distinct impression that having something else piled on him, such as our irregular request, had just gone a long way to sour his demeanor even more.
“We do the same thing,” Ben replied, annoyance in his voice. “So let’s not even go there.”
“Fine,” the county detective replied. “So we don’t have much to discuss, do we?”
“Look,” Ben outlined. “Alive and in peril beats dead and growin’ cold any day of the week. We both know that.”
The detective gave him a curt nod. “Yes it does. I’ll give you that in a heartbeat. So what you’re saying is that you know where this kidnapped woman is?”
Ben looked over at me then back to the cop. “Not exactly.”
“Can you maybe define ‘not exactly’ for me?”
“We’ve got a rough idea.”
“How rough?”
Ben danced around the question. “A general vicinity.”
“Major Case doing a search?”
“Not exactly.”
“You’re ‘not exactly’ sure of much are you?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Simplify it for me.”
Ben shook his head. “It ain’t that easy.”
“Okay,” the cop said with a shrug. “Like I said, nothing to discuss.”
“We don’t know where she is exactly, but we can find her,” I interjected.
The detective thrust his hand out and held a finger up in my face. “Sir, I need you to stay out of this.”
“He’s right,” Ben told him.
“Yeah, okay,” the detective said with an air of skepticism, then pressed for more. “So if she can be found then why isn’t the Major Case Squad handling it?”
Ben huffed out a sigh and reached up to smooth his hair. As his hand slid back and began working at the muscles on the back of his neck, he recited his own version of something I’d said to him many times before. “Look, I told ya’ it’s a long fuckin’ story, and you’d think I was nuts if I tried ta’ explain it.”
The county cop regarded him with a raised eyebrow and then looked over at me. “Okay sir, now how is it that you’re involved?”
At this point, I had no interest in skirting the issue nor making friends for that matter, so I replied, “I’m the long fucking story.”
“Yeah? So would you like to tell it?”
“Not particularly.”
“Jeezus, I wish Deckert never freakin’ retired,” Ben mumbled, mentioning the name of a former Saint Louis County homicide detective we had both worked with.
The cop turned quickly to my friend. “What did you say?”
“Nothin’,” he returned. “Don’t worry about it.”
“No,” the cop insisted. “Did you know Carl Deckert?”
“Yeah,” Ben replied, shrugging it off. “We worked together a few times.”
“Wait a minute,” the detective mumbled, his forehead creasing with a nagging thought. He shook his index finger in the air and then cocked his gaze back toward my friend. “Ben Storm. Yeah. You worked those occult homicides with Carl a couple of years back, didn’t you? The media freaks called you guys ‘The Ghoul Squad’.”
Ben nodded. “Yeah, that was me,” he said, his tone uneasy. The reputation he’d gained from that case had never ceased to haunt him, courtesy of a local television reporter with a penchant for sensationalizing every story she did. It didn’t help that she and Ben had been at odds almost from day one. Because of that, the notoriety didn’t always work to his advantage- especially with other cops.
“Yeah,” the detective said as he returned the nod. “That’s been bugging me all evening. I knew I’d heard your name before.”
“Well do me a favor,” my friend said. “Don’t hold it against me.”
“Are you kidding?” the cop said. “Deckert couldn’t say enough good about you.”
“Well, he was a hell of copper himself.”
“Yeah. Sure was. Too bad the heart attack forced him to retire,” the county cop mused and then glanced back over at me. “So that would make you the warlock, right?”
“Witch,” I corrected him.
“Oh, yeah, right.” He nodded. “Carl talked about you too. He thought a lot of you and your wife.”
“Did he talk about us enough for you to understand why we have to go?” I asked.
“You know,” he replied. “Carl Deckert was one of the best cops I’ve ever worked with. He had this way of cutting right through bullshit and getting to the truth. He could talk to someone for five minutes and tell you if they were legit or lying through their teeth. Never seen anything like it.”
The detective paused. I didn’t know if he was waiting for a response or just sizing me up. I simply looked back at him wordlessly.
“Makes sense now,” he finally said, looking over at Ben.
“What’s that?” my friend asked.
“Why Major Case isn’t hot on this with you,” he explained. “What with the ‘church lady’ running things.”
“Yeah, ‘zactly.”
The county cop reached into his pocket, withdrew a business card and handed it to Ben. “You know, I have to apologize. I really hate to inconvenience you Detective Storm, but it’s getting late, I’ve got a witness to interview, and a ton of paperwork to do.
“Do you think you would mind coming in tomorrow to give your statement instead of tonight? And, maybe you could bring Mister Gant and his wife along as well?”