“You’re in a rut, Storm,” she told him with a grin of her own as she turned and headed back up the short aisle.
“Hey, Wendy,” Ben called after her, a good-natured tone underscoring his words. “Tell Chuck I said don’t be so friggin’ stingy with the onions this time.”
He had purposely spoken loud enough to be heard by virtually anyone in the diner but most especially the fry-cook. His answer came as a grumble and a mock threatening wave of a spatula from the large man behind the grill. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, Storm. Yer always complainin’ about somethin’.”
The exchange was met with a few lighthearted chuckles from some of the other regulars in the diner, along with some additional friendly jibes. Chuck finally laughed then threw up his hands in an imitation of surrender, announcing in the process, “Hey, if youse don’t like it, go eat somewheres else.”
The restaurant settled quickly back into its morning routine, leaving our booth in a quiet wake.
“Okay,” I finally said after taking a healthy swig of coffee and giving Ben a solemn look. “So what’s up? It’s been my experience that when you offer to buy me a meal, something is going on, and it’s usually not good.”
“Hey,” he feigned insult. “Did’ya ever think I might just wanna buy ya’ breakfast and visit with ya’?”
I nodded. “It crossed my mind, but then reality got in the way.”
“Jeez, white-man.”
“So, am I wrong?” I asked. “Is this just social? If so, I apologize.”
He sat mute, took a sip of his coffee, and then stared out the slightly fogged window next to us for a moment before turning back to me. “Well, no, but it ain’t necessarily a bad thing. Maybe.”
“Okay.” I shrugged. “So what is it, maybe?”
He sent his large hand up to the back of his neck and gave it a quick massage as a mildly troubled expression panned across his features. After a moment he reached down into the seat next to him and brought his hand back up with what looked like an oversized index card in it.
“Porter, Eldon Andrew,” my friend told me succinctly, tossing the name out as a raw fact for me to digest.
“Sounds like a beer,” I replied.
“Just look at the picture,” he returned as he handed over the black and white mug shot.
I took the card and stared at the muddy grey tones of the photo as I leaned back in my seat, feeling a slight wince of pain in my shoulder in the process. The twinge might very well have been psychological, but the surgery to repair the joint and its associated musculature was still less than a year old. If I could believe the doctor, whom I had no reason to doubt, an occasional pain wouldn’t necessarily be all that unusual for a while yet.
I suppose that when you consider all the facts, a minor pain should actually be welcome. I mean, first, a madman bent on ushering me across into the world of death rams an ice pick into my left shoulder. Nearly up to the handle… Twice… Planting it firmly into bone on the second plunge I might add. And, if that weren’t enough, I ended up plummeting off the side of a bridge, only to have the very same shoulder forcibly dislocated by the sudden stop at the end of the fall. Of course, I suppose I should be thankful that the rope held, or the sudden stop would have been farther down and more along the line of fatal. And finally, I proceeded to hang from the damaged joint while the crazed serial murderer attempted to finish the job he’d started. I was lucky to even be alive, much less to still have the arm intact and functioning.
Still, looking at the photo that was officially labeled Texas Department of Corrections brought that night back to the forefront of everything with painful clarity. A finger of acidic fear tickled the pit of my stomach, threatening to invoke nausea. I ignored it and continued to stare at the picture.
The countenance depicted in the photograph was younger than I recalled and lacking the greasy shag of white hair that had framed it earlier this year. In fact, in the photo his head was shaved. His cheeks were fuller, and though the picture was black and white, one could tell from the grey scale tones that his complexion held a healthy color. The gaunt mask I had faced ten months before had been almost devoid of such pigment, appearing pasty and ghostly white in pallor-the color of death. Even so, his eyes hadn’t changed at all. Dark and sunken, almost hidden in their deeply shadowed sockets, they burned with a furious malevolence. Just as they had done when I stared into them months ago.
When last I had seen this face, it had been firmly attached to the ice pick wielding lunatic.
The self-proclaimed Witch hunter…
The modern day, self-appointed inquisitor with a singular purpose-to eradicate from the world those he perceived as heretics. Being a Witch, and a male one at that, I matched up easily with his set of criteria for those belonging on his hit list.
He had managed to kill six others before getting to me, two of them not even actual Pagans. Why he had not yet killed again, I was at a loss to explain.
If you asked the authorities why-even the cop sitting across from me now that I call my best friend-you would be told that it was because he was dead.
You would be told that I had shot him in self-defense, perhaps mortally, though no one could be sure. And even if the wound was not fatal, it didn’t matter because he had then fallen to his certain death from the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge into the ice-laden Mississippi river.
That was the official story. But I knew better.
Yes, I will admit that I had most definitely shot him. However, I fired the round into the arm he was using to try to choke me to death. And while there was plenty of solid evidence that I had not missed when I pulled the trigger, something told me that the wound wasn’t nearly so grievous as others believed. That same something also told me that he did not in fact fall into the river that night, but instead, escaped.
How? I couldn’t begin to tell you, but it was a feeling far in the back of my head. One of those sensations that begins as a slight itch that can’t be quelled by any means and then quickly grows into a fearful foreboding. The kind of mysterious intuition you just don’t ignore-especially if you are a Witch.
I think I might have breathed an inner sigh of relief while I stared at the picture. I had fully expected Ben to produce a case file or crime scene photo from beneath the table that would somehow tie into my current unexplained somnambulistic excursions. On second thought, the sigh might not have been only one of relief but of disappointment as well. I really did need to figure out what was going on, and the sooner the better.
“I’ve been carryin’ that damn thing around for a week,” my friend told me, gesturing toward the photo. “I wasn’t sure if I should even show it to ya’ or not.”
I could sense the concern in his voice, and the careful way in which he was watching me was physically palpable. I looked up from the mug shot and noticed that his jaw was held with a grim set. This expression wasn’t a hard one for him to achieve, what with his deeply chiseled features and dusky skin that visually announced his full-blooded Native American heritage. Even sitting, he was better than a full head taller than me. Standing, he measured six-foot-six and was built like an entire defensive line. The nine-millimeter tucked beneath his arm in a shoulder rig and the gold shield clipped to his belt made him appear just that much more formidable.
His hand went up to smooth back a shock of his coal black hair and lingered once again at his neck, a mannerism that told anyone who knew him that he had something on his mind.
“You worry too much,” I said as I dropped my eyes back to the photo.
“Yeah, you keep sayin’ that, but I know how ya’ are,” he returned.
He was correct. He did know how I was. Until recently, he knew most of the details-though certainly not all-of the nightmares I had experienced, both during and after the investigations surrounding two separate serial killers. Both of which had terrorized Saint Louis in the span of less than one year. He had personally witnessed me involuntarily channeling the victims-and their horrific ends. He had even saved my life in both instances when I had recklessly taken on the killers myself.