Perfect Trust: A Rowan Gant Investigation Read online

  PERFECT TRUST

  A Rowan Gant Investigation

  A Novel of Suspense and Magick

  By

  M. R. Sellars

  E. M. A. Mysteries

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  PERFECT TRUST: A Rowan Gant Investigation

  A WillowTree Press / E.M.A. Mysteries Book

  All Rights Reserved

  Copyright © 2002 by M. R. Sellars

  Cover design by Johnathan Minton, Copyright © 2007

  Paraphrased Excerpts from Everyday Magic: Spells and Rituals for Modern Living Copyright © 1998, Dorothy Morrison, Used With Permission

  This e-book edition is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book edition may not be re-sold or given away to other people.

  If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission.

  For information contact: WillowTree Press on the World Wide Web http://www.willowtreepress.com/

  Smashwords Edition – 2010

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  There are so many people who have come into and gone out of my life over the years that I’ve lost count, and each of them is in some part responsible for what happens between the pages of my novels. It is literally impossible for me to thank each and every one of them here individually, but there are some who stand out in the crowd, and I feel it a moral imperative that they be mentioned—

  Dorothy Morrison, my own personal Goddess and friend extraordinaire. How I survived as long as I did without you in my life, I will NEVER understand. You, my dear, are the REAL Pro.

  Officer Scott Ruddle, SLPD. Best-Bud, confidant, and real life “copper”—the true inspiration behind Benjamin Storm.

  Trish and A.J. for their friendship through it all.

  Ravenspirit and Chell for their friendship and a place to crash.

  Randall and Angel; and everyone from Mystic Moon Coven. You are all part of my family.

  J.D.—Thanks for finding me when I was lost.

  Aislinn Awatake Firehawk for helping me breathe credible life into Helen Storm.

  My good friends from C.A.S.T., H.S.A., S.I.P.A., and S.P.I.R.A.L.

  Patrick—Thanks for all the cigars.

  My parents for making the written word so fascinating to me.

  Roxanne, Sharon, and Celeste, for reading, re-reading, and then reading some more.

  “Chunkee” for not only reading and re-reading, but for arguing with me when I was being stubborn—and for being a brother as much as a friend.

  Johnathan Minton for putting up with my endless changes of mind whenever he sets about the creation of a truly magnificent piece of cover art for me.

  My daughter for making each and every day an adventure.

  My wife Kat, who spent countless hours, both late and early, editing and then arguing her points when I was being too stubborn to listen. She has somehow put up with me throughout it all and for some unknown reason actually still loves me.

  Finally, and not the least of all, everyone who takes the time to pick up one of my novels, read it, and then recommends it to a friend.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE:

  While the city of St. Louis and its various notable landmarks are certainly real, many names have been changed and liberties taken with some of the details in this book. They are fabrications. They are pieces of fiction within fiction to create an illusion of reality to be experienced and enjoyed.

  In short, I made them up because it helped me make the story more entertaining, or in some cases, just because I wanted to.

  Note also that this book is a first-person narrative. You are seeing this story through the eyes of Rowan Gant. The words you are reading are his thoughts. In first person writing, the narrative should match the dialogue of the character telling the story. Since Rowan, (and anyone else that I know of for that matter,) does not speak in perfect, unblemished English throughout his dialogue, he will not do so throughout his narrative. Therefore, you will notice that some grammatical anomalies have been retained (under protest from editors) in order to support this illusion of reality.

  Let me repeat something—I DID IT ON PURPOSE. Do NOT send me an email complaining about my grammar. It is a rude thing to do, and it does nothing more than waste your valuable time. If you find a typo, that is a different story. Even editors miss a few now and then.

  Finally, this book is not intended as a primer for WitchCraft, Wicca, or any Pagan path. However, please note that the rituals, spells, and explanations of these religious/magickal practices are accurate. Some of my explanations may not fit your particular tradition, but you should remember that your explanations might not fit mine either.

  And, yes, some of the magick is “over the top.” But, like I said in the first paragraph, this is fiction…

  For Chris, Jo-Jo, Eliot, Kat,

  everyone on the hill that stormy afternoon,

  the ladies at the Highway K canoe rental,

  both sets of ambulance crews,

  the doctors and nurses at Ellington Hospital,

  the entire staff of Three Rivers Medical Center in Poplar Bluff,

  and most especially Dr. James W. Gieselmann.

  You all know why…

  Bide the Wiccan laws we must,

  In perfect love and PERFECT TRUST.

  Couplet One

  The Wiccan Rede

  Lady Gwen Thompson

  Original Printing—“Green Egg #69”

  Circa 1975

  Late February

  Old Chain of Rocks Bridge

  Saint Louis, Missouri

  PROLOGUE

  Eldon Andrew Porter was trying desperately to make sense of his current situation.

  He knew that he shouldn’t be unsteadily perched here on this cold steel girder high above the icy waters of the Mississippi river. He also knew that he shouldn’t be forced to finish by hand a job meant for, and started by, a hangman’s noose. But the most important thing he knew, without any sense of doubt, was that he was short on time.

  What he didn’t know was just how this peril had come to pass.

  The thing that kept going through his mind was that this very simply was not how it was supposed to happen. Still, no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t focus on exactly what had gone wrong.

  Once again, he mulled through the last few events leading up to this particular moment in time.

  He had lured the warlock to the bridge.

  He had applied the razors of the Malleus Maleficarum, a mere formality as such, because by the warlock’s own public actions and admissions he was quite obviously guilty of the sin of WitchCraft.

  He had even applied the test of “pricking” in order to be certain of the accused one’s guilt. Of course, the warlock had tried to deceive him in this test by screaming out in pain when the ice pick pierced his flesh, but Eldon knew this to be a ruse. A trick used by the impenitent sorcerer in order to avoid his due punishment.

  He had not been fooled.

  With the warlock’s guilt proven, Eldon had then set forth the judgment as decreed by Almighty God and the Holy Church.

  He had proceeded with the sentence by placing the noose about the man’s neck and pronouncing his punishment as death by hanging. And finally, he had executed that sentence by throwing the warlock over the side of the bridge…r />
  That should have been it. End of story. But something had gone quite terribly wrong.

  Eldon was finding it hard to think, his head ached so miserably. As he mulled over the events yet again, he vaguely remembered that for some reason he had pitched over the railing himself. Somewhere within that ghostly memory he also recalled feeling a jarring impact against the steel girder that stopped his fall. Then, everything had faded to black.

  The top of his head burned like fire whenever he touched it. There was a tortured spot on his scalp that seemed devoid of hair. It was damp and sticky and the wetness clung to his hand when he pulled it away. From its feel, he assumed it must be blood.

  The raucous clamor of loud music blaring from the warlock’s vehicle on the bridge above blended hesitantly with the eerie sounds of the ice-choked river. The cacophony was disconcerting, and when combined with the pain, it made it even harder for Eldon to concentrate.

  “What could have gone wrong?” he wondered silently.

  Again, he rewound the sketchy memories and thought through the scenario yet another time.

  He had lifted the warlock upward, pronouncing the punishment as he did so. Then, straining against the man’s weight, he had pushed his arms outward to thrust the condemned over the railing and into the foggy night.

  It was then that his head suddenly began stinging.

  His scalp had felt as if it was on fire, and he was instantly doubled forward against the railing himself. Gasping, he was deprived of the breath that had been forced from his lungs by the sudden crush against the blue and green steel barrier. The rest of it was a blur, and a split second later he had blacked out.

  The fact that he had blacked out was troubling. He hadn’t had any of those episodes for such a long time. Not since prison. He didn’t even want to think that it could possibly be happening again. It had been years since he had blacked out, hadn’t it?

  Or had it only been months? He couldn’t remember. The uncertainty forced him to consider another option. Could this predicament be his own fault? Had he simply fainted and fallen over the side?

  No, he decided. There was something different at work here. There was the burning in his scalp. His episodes had never been preceded nor followed by pain, ever. This felt like someone had physically ripped the hair from his head.

  But how could the warlock have done that?

  His hands were bound.

  He had tied the warlock’s hands, hadn’t he?

  Surely he had done so.

  The sudden rush of the real-time events brushed aside his fractured attempts at reasoning and flooded in to answer the question.

  Eldon watched his hand as he sought to choke the life from the warlock hanging in front of him. He also watched, as well as felt, a smaller hand desperately clawing at his own bony fingers.

  The warlock’s hands weren’t bound. They were free.

  Had he been in such a rush that he had merely forgotten to bind the hands of the condemned?

  No, he couldn’t have been that careless. He refused to believe it. He wouldn’t have forgotten to do so simple and necessary a task before hanging one accused of the heresy of WitchCraft.

  Somehow the warlock had tricked him. He had conjured a glamour that made him believe he had completed the necessary tasks when in fact he had not.

  But…that couldn’t be. He should be immune to the conjurings of the demonic, for he was righteous in his path. This revelation was almost as disturbing to Eldon as the fact that the warlock still lived. He felt certain that it bore a need for inner reflection and perhaps even judgment upon one’s self.

  But not right now.

  Not at this particular moment.

  There was a more pressing judgment at hand.

  Still, Eldon found himself unable to ignore the question of why the hangman’s noose had not done its job…

  In a burning fit of curiosity, he relinquished his single-handed grip around the man’s throat for an ever so brief moment and quickly felt for the nylon rope.

  It wasn’t there!

  In that fateful second, the warlock coughed and gasped, quickly sucking in the air he had previously been denied.

  Through the darkness and fog, Eldon could just make out the rope stretched taut from the railing above, thinly scribing a tight line in the night to finally disappear behind the man’s outstretched arm. He had thought perhaps the rope had merely twisted beneath the man’s shoulder during the struggle, but now he knew this was not the case. The noose was cinched tight about the warlock’s arm instead of his neck where it should have been. A triple twist of the rope serpentined around the man’s appendage and trailed through his tightly clenched fist.

  The warlock had managed to slip out of the noose and save himself. But he still couldn’t avoid his final judgment. Eldon would see to that.

  “It won’t be long now,” he thought, as he slipped his pale hand back around the man’s throat and compressed it tight with a renewed urgency. Just a few more moments and the sentence will have been carried out.

  The warlock would finally be dead.

  He was sure he could feel his victim’s windpipe starting to give way against the pressure of his long fingers. As his bony digits spasmed slightly from the force he was trying to exert, he was forced to stretch them quickly, fighting to keep his grip secure.

  Warlock.

  Witch.

  Sinner.

  Heretic.

  Different words but all the same. This one—the warlock Rowan Gant—was himself evil incarnate. A minion of Satan set forth on this earth to do the bidding of the Dark Lord. Surreptitiously spreading the vileness of sin and debauchery among the lambs of Almighty God under the false guise of goodness and light.

  Eldon could not allow it to go on. He could not allow those who worshipped the devil to remain among the righteous. Why no one could understand this was a fact he couldn’t fathom. Why no one realized what was happening by allowing these appalling sinners to cast shadows upon the earth, frightened him.

  But, it didn’t matter.

  He understood what needed to be done. He hadn’t at first. Not for the longest time. He had been just like everyone else. In fact, he had been worse. He had committed sins that had eventually put him in prison. But his time there had been a hidden blessing. It was prison where he had learned of his true purpose in life. It was there he had learned he was a part of God’s righteous army. It had taken that incarceration for him to discover he was chosen by God himself to eradicate the infestation of heresy.

  There would be others to help him of course; of that he was sure. He needed only to find these brothers and sisters, and then together they would show everyone the true might of God.

  The warlock was struggling. Not as much as he had at first, but he was still fighting. Now, something pressed upward from beneath Eldon’s arm, cold and hard against the flesh of his wrist.

  Puzzling.

  It must be the warlock clawing at his hand again.

  But this felt different. It didn’t feel at all like the hand that had fought to pry against his fingers moments before.

  This was cold.

  Hard.

  Metallic.

  A sharp, chemical odor blended with the moist air to tease Eldon’s nostrils. He knew that smell. Its pungent edge was painfully familiar to him.

  Gun cleaning solvent.

  In a panic he released his grip and rotated his arm quickly away. In that moment an explosion pierced his ears, and the muzzle of the handgun erupted with bright orange flame.

  He just didn’t rotate it quickly enough.

  * * * * *

  Harried voices barked commands with life and death urgency through the cold night air. The tinny bursts of police radios punctuated the sounds coming from the scene above, all mixed with the frenzied pace of the music. The activity sounded rushed but methodical.

  Intense.

  And all focused on the rescue of the warlock, Rowan Gant.

  A strong voice fille
d with authority but edged with what sounded almost like fear, parted all other sounds to make room for itself. “Goddammit, somebody shut that fuckin’ music off!”

  After a moment, the frenetic instruments fell quiet, in comparison bringing what almost seemed to be silence to the landscape even though the voices and activity continued on unimpeded.

  Fog was still clinging in a moist, grey shroud to anything and everything in its path, and most especially, to anyone. Eldon felt its clammy insistence as it pervaded his clothing, sending tendrils of cold dampness inward to chill him all the way past the bone and directly to the soul. Through his mist-soaked clothes, the cold metal of the girders pressed against him, mercilessly leeching the warmth from his body.

  The sharp sting in his scalp, which had earlier occupied the foremost position in his list of unwanted sensations, had now taken a back seat to the fiery burn in his left arm. The bullet, which had been expelled at high velocity and point blank range, had ripped into the soft flesh of his wrist and fragmented in a diagonal trajectory along several inches of his forearm. He wasn’t entirely sure, but judging from the amount of movement still left in the appendage, the wound involved only muscle and no bone.

  Even so, it hurt like hell.

  But he knew the fact that he was here, now, feeling the pain, was yet another of those hidden blessings, because it could have been far worse. In fact, it almost had been…