Harm None: A Rowan Gant Investigation (11 page)

“So you don’t think he was capable of killing
her?” I questioned.

“Maybe,” Jennifer answered.

“I don’t know,” stated Shari.

“He was a little weird if you ask me,” Randy
spoke up.

“I’m askin’ you,” Ben told him. “You wanna
elaborate on that?”

“I dunno,” Randy proceeded nervously. “He
just struck me as kinda odd. He didn’t talk much, but he was really
into the whole ritual thing, you know?”

“Go on,” I prodded.

“Well,” Randy continued, “I’ve been
practicing for about six years now, and I don’t know about you,” he
focused on Felicity then me, “but I was under the impression that
Wicca is really about ‘deeds not words’ you know? Like, the ritual
is just a tool and not the main focus of the religion.”

“That’s how we look at it,” Felicity told
him.

“Well, not Devon,” he told
us. “The ritual was
it
for him. If it wasn’t exactly perfect, then as far as he was
concerned it wasn’t worth doing.”

“Randy’s right about that,” Cally said. “He
spent all kinds of time rehearsing rituals for Sabbats.”

“He even got real upset with me at a circle
once...” Shari intoned.

“...Because she didn’t recite something
exactly like he wrote it,” Jennifer added.

“See!” R.J. finally burst. “You all agree
that something was wrong with the guy. And Rowan just said that
whoever did this was into rituals.”

“You’re just jealous, R.J.” Jennifer
spat.

“What have I got to be jealous of?!” He was
practically out of his chair now.

“Come off it, R.J.,” Shari told him.
“Everyone knows you had the hots for Ariel too.”

“Sure we do,” Cally interjected. “You
followed her around like a lost puppy.”

“Shut up, Cally!” R.J. shouted.

“Or what?” she baited.

“Stop it all of you!” Felicity was on her
feet. “This is ridiculous. Your friend... Your sister in The Craft
has been murdered, and you’re sitting here arguing like school
children! Rowan and I studied with Ariel. I know damn well she
thought better of you, or she never would have stood in circle with
you then!”

The room fell silent. Each member of the
group looked self-consciously about the room as the gravity of
Felicity’s words set in. Chairs made shuffling noises as they
shifted in their seats and shamefully realized she was correct.

“Okay,” Ben inserted his voice into the
silence. “Now that that is finished... Did Miz Tanner happen ta’
mention to any of ya’ that she may have a reason to fear for her
life?”

Heads swiveled back and forth indicating the
negative amidst soberly mumbled “No’s” and “Not to me’s.”

“Out of curiosity,” I queried, “do you have
any other former members, and have you had trouble with any of them
getting involved in things they shouldn’t?”

“Not really,” Cally expressed. “At least I
don’t think so.”

“You haven’t kicked anyone else out?” Ben
posed.

“No,” she replied.

“How about members leaving of their own
accord?” Felicity interjected. “Has that happened recently?”

“There was Stacey and Roger,” Shari piped
up.

“And Will,” Jennifer added. “But they all
left a few months ago.”

Ben noted the names with his quick
scribbling. “Did they leave on good terms?”

“Pretty much so, I guess,” Randy, answered.
“Will moved to Florida for his job, or I’m sure he’d still be with
us.”

Nods of agreement circled the table at his
comment.

“What about the other two?” I pressed.
“Stacey and Roger was it?”

“Yeah,” he answered. “They just stopped
showing up.”

“Ariel said Stacey was just a poser,” Cally
explained. “Once she found out that she wasn’t going to learn how
to cast a spell on her ex-boyfriend, she lost interest. We figured
Roger was just there because of her, because as soon as she stopped
coming, so did he.”

There was nothing unusual about having a
poser enter and leave a coven. Some individuals would attempt to
embrace the Wiccan religion based entirely upon their
misconceptions about it. When they discovered that The Craft was
about a harmonious existence with nature and NOT about “casting
spells upon your enemies,” they would become almost instantly
disenchanted. Just like the two individuals that had just been
described, a poser would simply and harmlessly go away.

As if on cue, the end of Cally’s statement
was punctuated by a quiet, evenly spaced, electronic beep that
became increasingly louder with each pulse.

“Can I use your phone?” Ben asked me,
switching off his pager.

“Sure,” I replied. “You want to use the one
in the bedroom?”

“If you don’t mind.”

“You know where it is.”

The tension had ebbed once again, and
Felicity took her seat at the table once more. The group started
muttering apologies to one another, and faces were starting to
break back into weak smiles.

“Hey, Rowan,” Ben called from the bedroom
down the hall. “Can I talk to ya’ for a minute?”

I excused myself and made my way back to
where he was. We spoke in hushed tones, and he explained to me what
the phone call had been all about. After listening attentively to
what he had to say, I called for Felicity to come back and join us.
I heard her excuse herself and tell the group she would only be
gone a moment, then seconds later she entered the room and shut the
door behind her.

“What’s going on?” she whispered, leaning
against the doorframe.

“Do you think you can take over here and get
these kids to comprehend what it means for a Witch to cross over?”
I asked her gravely. “I need to go with Ben.”

“Why?” She bolted up from her relaxed
position. “What’s wrong?”

“That page was from my lieutenant,” Ben
answered. “The Major Case Squad is taking over the investigation...
Rowan was right, it looks like this psycho hit again.”

A
predicted weather system had been moving in throughout the
afternoon and evening, and before Ben and I left for the crime
scene, a warm, gentle rain had begun to fall. Felicity, though not
happy about being left behind, realized the importance of looking
after the spiritual well being of the group seated at our dining
table and immediately shifted into a nurturing maternal mode. Six
pairs of questioning eyes fell upon us as Ben donned his sport coat
and announced that we were leaving.

“Who is it?” Cally asked.

“We don’t know yet,” he told her. “I just got
the call.”

“Where did it happen?” Randy intoned.

“The body was found in a park here in the
county,” Ben stated irritably. “That’s all I know until we get
there. You ready yet Rowan?” He gave me an anxious look.

“In a sec...” I answered.

Felicity was stuffing a small camera bag with
various pieces of equipment and film I had requested. The fact that
she made her living as a professional photographer afforded me the
luxury of having a better than average camera on hand whenever the
need arose.

“I thought you were a city cop,” R.J.
announced. “Why are you investigating a murder out here in the
county?”

“Normally a muni would handle its own case
load,” Ben stated, noticing that I still wasn’t prepared to leave.
“But this crime got flagged ‘cause of the similarity to the Tanner
case. Ya’see, back in nineteen eighty-one, the Greater Saint Louis
Major Case Squad was formed as a multi-jurisdictional task force.
Pretty much it’s a collective of departments around the Metro area
that investigates highly publicized or related crimes. Ariel’s
murder was my case, and so now that they have been given
jurisdiction over it, I’ve been temporarily re-assigned to head up
the investigation. I go wherever the scene is.”

“Here,” Felicity was telling
me. “You’ve got the
PZ-1
with a 28-to-80 and macro. It’s loaded with high
speed transparency, and I put fresh batteries in it and the
Sunpak
.”

“Thanks,” I said and kissed her on the cheek.
“I don’t know how long this is going to take.”

“Don’t worry,” she answered. “I’ll take care
of everything here.”

While waiting for me, Ben quickly jotted down
everyone’s phone numbers in order to contact them with any further
questions and then handed out his business cards. We expressed
hurried goodbyes to the overwhelmed group and hastily headed out
into the dense melancholy of the stormy night. I pulled Felicity
aside on the front porch as she saw us out, lagging for a moment
behind Ben who had already ventured forth into the rain and was
starting his van.

“Look, I don’t know if you noticed or not,” I
stated, “but Salinger and Dickens seem to have some kind of problem
with R.J.”

“Don’t worry,” she answered. “I’m sure you’re
just being overly suspicious because of everything that’s going on.
It’ll be okay.”

“I just want you to be careful,” I
continued.

“I’ll be fine,” she admonished. “Now go,
then. Ben’s waiting.”

I watched her wave to us
then turn and go into the house as we backed out of the driveway. I
wasn’t sure that she was correct, but then, after all that I had
been through, it was possible that I had become more suspicious
than usual. Maybe Ben was rubbing off on me. In any case, I knew my
wife well, and she would be just fine. I also knew that she had
almost instant access to a loaded
Ruger
.357 magnum, for neither of us
was naive enough to think that the rest of the world believed as we
do. The very concept of “live and let live” seemed almost alien to
the general populous anymore, and the headlines of the newspaper or
a quick glance at the evening news gave testimony to that fact. At
Ben’s urging, for our own protection, Felicity and I had purchased
the weapon and been rigorously trained in its proper use by him. If
it came down to a matter of life or death, I was certain my wife
wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger.

“So,” I asked Ben as we motored down the
street, its shiny wetness reflecting the glare of the streetlights.
“Exactly where are we headed?”

“Some park called Thayer,” he answered. “You
know where it is?”

“Yeah, it’s not far from here. Hang a right
at the next stop sign.”

* * * * *

We arrived at the park and
turned in to the main access road, following it past the ball field
and darkened pavilions. Ben had placed a magnetic bubble light atop
the van and plugged it into the cigarette lighter receptacle as we
entered. The red light flickered eerily across the face of the
uniformed officer at the gate and reflected brightly from his
rain-slicked yellow poncho. Ben rolled down the window and held out
his ID to the officer, who illuminated it with the bright beam of a
three cell
Mag-Lite
.

“Evening, Detective,” he said and brought the
beam to bear on me. “Who’s that with you?”

“Consultant,” Ben answered him
authoritatively.

The sodden officer nodded and pointed the
long flashlight up the road. Its beam, though powerful, eventually
dissipated into the murky darkness.

“Just over that rise, sir,” he told Ben.
“Then about two hundred yards. Evidence unit is all over the place,
you can’t miss it.”

Ben thanked him and rolled up his window,
pushing the van into motion up the slight grade. The wind and rain
were beginning to pick up, and a few distant flashes in the western
sky were testimony to a rapidly approaching thunderstorm.

“Look behind your seat,” Ben was telling me
as we topped the rise. “Should be some rain slickers back
there.”

I turned in the seat and rummaged about in
the dark. My hand brushed against what felt like a gym bag, and I
yanked it from beneath the seat and tugged on the zipper.

“In this bag back here?” I asked.

“Yeah, prob’ly.”

I could feel the van slowing and pitching
slightly to the left as Ben took a wide turn into a parking space
and brought us to a halt. I quickly found the rain ponchos I sought
and with them in hand, turned back around in my seat.

The spectacle outside the windshield was
illuminated like a toppled-over Christmas tree stuck in overdrive.
Red lights, blue lights, and white lights on emergency vehicles,
even yellow caution lights on sawhorses blinked randomly in the
night. The lack of sync in the pulses seemed to bring even more
chaos to what appeared to be an already disordered scene.

Ben reached out and grabbed one of the
slickers from my motionless hand, taking notice of my blank stare
and mouth agape.

“Welcome to my world,” he told me, then
paused. “Sucks don’t it? Go ahead an’ put your poncho on.”

I broke from the short stupor and began
pulling the yellow plastic rain gear over my head. The extra room
in the cab of the van made me realize why Ben refused to get rid of
the decrepit vehicle.

“How should I introduce ya’?” Ben asked,
unlatching his door. “I doubt if they’ll go for Good Witch of the
East.”

“How about, Alternative Religion Specialist,”
I replied.

“Sounds good ta’ me.”

A distant streak of lightning followed by a
sharp crack and low rumble of thunder alerted us to the
ever-increasing violence of the storm as we stepped out into the
downpour. We walked across the parking area, past the flapping
yellow tape that cordoned off the crime scene. I was concerned that
important evidence might be washed away, but my fears were soon
allayed when I noticed the core of the activity involved the cinder
block building that housed a set of the park’s restrooms.

“Ben Storm,” my friend told another
detective, displaying his badge as we approached him. “City
Homicide Unit. I’m assigned to the MCS.”