Perfect Trust: A Rowan Gant Investigation (15 page)

I was completely out of nicotine gum, and my
inexplicable desire for a cigarette was now reaching unnatural
proportions. What was worse, I still had no idea why the cravings
had come upon me. I hadn’t even been this bad when I was actually
addicted to them. It was becoming increasingly harder for me to
keep the outward manifestations at bay. At the moment I was only
slightly to one side of irritable, and I was traveling directly
toward it at high speed.

The impending collision wasn’t going to be
good at all.

* * * * *

“You ain’t plannin’ on doin’ any of
that hocus-pocus stuff where you become
one with the corpse
, are you?” Ben asked me as
he levered the gearshift into park and switched off the van’s
ignition.

“That’s not something I actually plan, Ben,”
I answered with an impatient edge to my voice. “It just has a
tendency to happen.”

My wife expressed her feelings on the subject
in a single terse sentence. “It might not if you kept yourself
grounded.”

“I do.”

“Yeah, right.” Her voice held more than a
hint of sarcasm.

“Don’t even go there.”

Felicity paused for a moment, obviously taken
aback by the sudden bite of my words. “Excuse me?”

“Forget it,” I answered, shaking my head.
“Just forget it.”

Emotionally, I was poised to bite her head
off. Logically, I knew she was correct and that I had no valid
reason to do so. But, that bit of reality didn’t make the urge any
easier to quell.

I simply couldn’t afford to take it any
further. If I let the comment bait me, it would only serve to
re-kindle the argument we’d just barely settled less than thirty
minutes ago. With all of us on edge as we were, such an altercation
could turn ugly fast.

Given my current state,
very
ugly,
very
fast.

“Look,” Ben interjected. “I’ve had enough
arguin’ for one night. Now, the last time we were here I seem to
remember ya’ havin’ ta’ come outside to get away from all the
ghosts or whatever ya’ see in there.”

“Lost souls,” I offered flatly.

“Fine. Lost souls, ghosts, ooga-boogas,
whatever…it’s all the same ta’ me ‘cause I can’t see ‘em. I just
wanna know if all that shit is gonna send ya’ over the edge or
somethin’ like last time.”

“They weren’t the real problem last time,” I
explained, fighting to keep the annoyance out of my voice. “It was
the fact that I was channeling the actual death of a victim
that…”

“Don’t split hairs with me, Row,” he
interrupted. “I need ta’ know whether ta’ take ya’ in there or
start the fuckin’ van and get outta here right now.”

“We already talked about this back at the
house, Ben,” I shot back a harsh rebuke.

“Yeah, well B.F.D. Is it gonna be a problem
or not?”

I gave up and told him what he wanted to
hear. “They won’t be a problem.”

Apparently, he was a little short on trust at
the moment.

“Is he yankin’ my chain?” He directed his
question to Felicity.

“Aye, he is. But if we take some precautions,
I think it will be okay.”

“You
think
it’ll be okay?”

“What do you want? It’s not like I do this
every day, you know.” A mild spark of anger flashed in her voice.
She was tired; we all were. Her own irritability was showing just
as Ben’s was, and I’m certain my uncharacteristic moodiness wasn’t
helping in the least. As I had suspected it would, the night was
getting longer by the moment.

“Okay, okay,” Ben returned, a slight
defensive note in his voice. “I’m not exactly an expert on
this
Twilight Zone
crap
myself y’know.”

“Are we going to sit here and fog up the
windows, or are we going to go in?” I asked impatiently.

“When I’m ready,” Ben said. “Why don’t ya’
tell me again just what it is that you’re expectin’ ta’ find
out?”

“We’ve already discussed this too.”

“Yeah, and we’re discussin’ it again.”

Truth was, I didn’t really have a good answer
for the question. All I knew was that someone was communicating
with me from the other side, and all indicators now pointed to that
someone being Debbie Schaeffer. Coming here was the only way I knew
to “complete the call,” so to speak.

“I don’t know.” I gave him the only answer I
could. “A clue or something. You know, it’s not like this is the
first time we’ve ever done this.”

“Yeah, I know,” he affirmed, “but in the
times I’ve seen ya’ do this I’ve also seen it go south. Way south.
You’ve almost died on me twice. Three’s a charm, white man. That’s
‘zactly what we’re tryin’ ta’ avoid in case ya’ missed that
earlier.”

“Think positive,” I grumbled.

“I am thinkin’ positive. I’m positive I ain’t
willin’ ta’ trade your life for a handful of flaky clues in a
murder investigation.”

“Look,” I sighed, desperate to at least get
out of the confines of the van. “It took me half the night to
convince you two that we should come down here, so can we just
dispense with this never ending committee meeting or whatever the
hell you want to call it?”

“I just wanna make sure we’re doin’ the right
thing here,” my friend expressed. “’Cause somethin’ in my gut tells
me I should put some distance between you and this place and not
look back. I tend ta’ trust my gut.”

“That’s just you being
overprotective,
again
,” I
countered.

“There’s no such thing as bein’
overprotective when dyin’ is one of the possibilities.”

“Well, that’s why you wanted Felicity here,
right?”

“Don’t be trying to use me as a pawn, then,”
my wife declared. “I want to hear you rationalize this too.”

I hadn’t been backed completely into a corner
yet, but it was getting very close. I’d had my fill of the
ping-pong oration I’d had to repeatedly deliver just to get this
far, and it didn’t seem there would ever be an end.

I was exhausted.

I was ready to kill for a cigarette.

But the worst of it was that I was getting
very tired of being treated like a child. My resolve was set in
concrete, and I wasn’t about to let them make me turn back now.

I knew that exploding wasn’t going to get me
anywhere even though it was what my knee jerk impulse was telling
me to do. I drew in a deep breath and held it for a moment before
exhaling heavily. In my head I’d made a connection that they
apparently had not. Thus far, I’d managed to hold it back as my one
trump card, and it appeared that now would be a good time to toss
it onto the table.

“Look,” I verbally threatened, “we can either
do it this way, right now, or we can just wait until I go out
sleepwalking again and see where that takes us.”

“What’s that got to do with it?” My wife
shook her head slightly as confusion contorted her brow.

“Yeah, white man,” Ben added, “ya’ wanna
expand on that?”

“Debbie Schaeffer went missing two months
ago, right?”

“Yeah, so?” he returned.

“So, I started sleepwalking two months ago.
You do the math.”

My friend puffed out his cheeks and expelled
a deep breath as he sent one large hand up to massage the back of
his neck.

“Shit. There’s just no winnin’ with you” was
all he said.

* * * * *

Luck seemed to be on our side for a change,
as Ben knew the security guard on duty for this shift, so there
were no prying questions or even odd looks. The two simply
exchanged pleasantries, including what I’m certain was a tired joke
about cadavers escaping, and then we were in. The watchman seemed
perfectly content to return to the game of solitaire that was
occupying the screen on the computer at the reception desk.

The dim lighting at this time of night lent
an eerie feel to the corridors of the city morgue. Pale shadows
tempted your mind into playing sadistic tricks on your eyes, seeing
movement where there was nothing to move.

Seeing light where there was dark.

Seeing dark where there was light.

In reality, some of those sadistic tricks
weren’t tricks at all, but anomalies within the veil between the
worlds.

If they chose to listen, even those with
closed minds could hear the tortured cries of spirits in
transition—some in acceptance of their fate, some in utter
disbelief, but all with one thing in common. Each of them was
trapped between the worlds of life and death, never making it fully
to the other side.

Unfortunately for me, I didn’t have the
luxury of choosing to listen, or to ignore. It had been made for
me. A relentless cacophony echoed from the walls to assault my
senses even before we passed through the door. It was much like
walking into a crowded party; only this party was one where most of
the guests are screaming and sobbing with pain. It took almost
everything I had to put up a mental shield and block them out. Even
then they remained, a static-plagued radio, tuned between stations
and set at low volume, interrupted every now and again with a burst
of angry noise.

A brief glance told me that Felicity was
feeling a similar buzz inside her own head.

Earlier this year I had actually spent the
night in this place when the worst snowstorm we’d had in a decade
had brought Saint Louis to all but a complete standstill. Ben and I
had been trapped here with the chief medical examiner and a
severely charred corpse whose spirit staunchly refused to move on.
My ethereal dealing with that victim was yet another piece of the
puzzle that made up the current fractured state of my psyche. I can
say without a doubt that, to date, those dark hours had been the
longest night of my life.

* * * * *

In the back of the building, we were met by
the night morgue attendant. Ben simply flashed his badge and told
him that we needed to view the remains of Debbie Schaefer. The
pallid young man never even uttered a word and simply handed a
clipboard to my friend so he could sign us in. That completed, he
mutely led us into the cold storage area, flipping on the overhead
lights as we entered.

The right wall of the tiled room was lined
with rectangular stainless steel doors. Each of them was a gateway
to an individual compartment where a corpse would spend its stay
with the medical examiner. On the opposite wall there were two
large sinks, each equipped with a table capable of holding a body.
Here were also such things as examination gloves and implements I
wasn’t the least bit interested in knowing the purpose of.

At the back of the room was another set of
doors that led, as I was told later, to the garage which was
accessible from the back of the building. This was where recovered
bodies were brought in and would begin their journey through the
various stages of the postmortem process.

The attendant took us to a wheeled table
positioned near the individual storage compartments. On it was a
rubberized body bag, an identification tag affixed to the
heavy-duty zipper pull. The faint malodor of decay had been
noticeable ever since we entered the back area of the building.
Upon entry into the cold room, the intensity of the strange funk
began to increase several fold. Now as our proximity to the remains
was within a matter of feet, the foulness was thick in the
atmosphere.

“That’s great, thanks,” Ben told the
attendant who was just starting to pull on a pair of latex gloves.
“We can handle it from here.”

The young man stopped in the middle of
sheathing his hands. Frozen in place like a statue, he simply
stared at Ben as if waiting for him to say that he was only
kidding.

“Really.” My friend nodded and coughed,
wrinkling his nose at the smell. “We’ll call ya’ when we’re
finished.”

I was right there with my friend, and I’m
sure Felicity wasn’t far behind. My stomach was already starting to
churn, and it was all I could do to keep from screwing up my face
in disgust.

Giving a slight shrug the attendant pointed
toward the sinks and, displaying perceptible effort, muttered,
“Gloves.”

With the one syllable utterance out of the
way, he left us alone in the chilled room.

“That was a little bizarre,” Felicity
commented quietly after the young man disappeared out the door.

“If ya’ ask me, all of ‘em that work here are
fuckin’ nut cases,” Ben asserted as he stepped across the room and
began pulling a pair of oversized latex gloves onto his hands. With
a nod, he indicated for us to do the same then turned his attention
directly on my wife. “You said there were some precautions we need
ta’ take for this?”

“Do you think he’s going to come back anytime
soon?” She cocked her head toward the door.

For some wholly bizarre and unknown reason, I
took great notice of the way her hair almost shimmered in the light
when she tossed her head. The perfection of her auburn mane as it
cascaded down her back in a fiery plume of loosely spiraling curls.
The way it softly brushed against the ivory skin of her neck when
she tilted her head to the side.

“You mean Mister Personality? Not likely,” he
answered.

“It would be best if he doesn’t,” she
continued. “Because what I need to do might look a bit strange to
someone who doesn’t understand.”

“What, like he’s not strange enough on ‘is
own?” Ben offered a rhetorical answer.

“Aye, but that’s beside the point.”

I watched her closely—observing the way the
layered cut of her hair framed her face and accented her dainty
features. I was amazed that I had never noticed it in such intense
detail before.

“So how strange are you gonna get?”