The Law Of Three argi-4 Read online

  Unfortunately, for me, I tended to be afflicted by these damnable things way too often.

  I ran my hand across the lower half of my face and felt the rough crop of stubble that, by now, was certainly shading my jaw line. Then I tugged at my goatee for a moment. The action prompted me to remember that I’d recently noticed the dark brown was being infiltrated by grey and white like a quickly spreading fungus. I absently considered a dye job for a moment then dismissed the idea as silly. I’d never been particularly vain before, so there was no reason to start now.

  I reached behind with both hands and massaged the back of my head for a moment, hoping that it might help quell the ache.

  It didn’t.

  Picking up my coffee cup, I took a swig of the remaining contents and noticed immediately that it had grown cold. I guess I’d been a little more caught up in solitaire than I’d realized. Oh well, it had kept my mind off the pain, at least a little.

  I pushed back and quietly got up, then carefully hooked around the small dining table where I’d been seated. I aimed myself toward the orange glow of the light on the coffeepot, using it as a beacon in the darkness. Since it was presently residing on the counter in the closet-sized room that was supposed to pass for a kitchen, I gave little thought to this being a problem. However, since I still wasn’t used to the layout of this apartment, in my single-minded quest for fresh java I cut my entry through the doorway far too shallow.

  There was a loud thump, followed by me quickly listing to one side, and then the ache in the back of my head was pushed aside in favor of a new sensation. Of course, that feeling was a sharp, and far more extreme, pain in my toe.

  I caught my breath, quickly swallowing the yelp that I’d managed to stop midway in my throat, and then fought to stifle a groan that quickly followed on its heels. A pitiful sounding mixture of the two managed to escape anyway.

  Just for good measure, I stuttered a few random selections from the big book of four-letter expletives, passing them as quietly as I could through clenched teeth. Finally, I half limped, half hopped into the kitchenette and leaned against the counter.

  I’d been propped there for no more than a minute when my muffled swearing was interrupted by a sleepy voice at the doorway.

  “Row? Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” I grunted with little conviction in my voice. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

  I hadn’t heard her approach, not that I was surprised. I was a bit preoccupied to say the least, and besides, she was far more graceful than I would ever be. I grimaced, not so much from the pain, but because waking Felicity was exactly what I had wanted to avoid.

  “What are you doing up?”

  “Just attempting to break my toe,” I muttered, turning my head and looking back toward her.

  “What happened?” my wife asked, her voice a quiet blend of two parts sleep to one part concern, all underscored by a faint Celtic intonation. “You’re sure you’re okay, then?”

  Felicity was second generation Irish-American, and she had spent an enormous amount of time in Ireland throughout her life. She was never completely free of the lilt, though it was most pronounced whenever she was overtired, under stress, or as in this case, half asleep. It almost always came bundled with a rich and colorful brogue to match.

  “Yeah, I’m okay,” I told her as I focused on her slight form. “Just stubbed it, that’s all.”

  She had propped herself in the doorway, using the back of her hand for a pillow as she rested it against the frame. In the dim light, I could see that her eyes were closed as she yawned. A loose pile of fiery auburn hair sat atop her head in a Gibson-girlish coif. Whenever she let the cascade of spiraling tresses hang free, it would easily reach her waist. Her pale skin seemed to almost glow in the darkness.

  She let out a heavy sigh and stretched slowly. She was clad in an oversized t-shirt, but her tight figure still managed to tug it into varying degrees of eye candy as she languidly arched her back. How she managed to look this good even when she had just climbed out of bed was something beyond my comprehension, but I certainly wasn’t going to complain.

  “Aye,” she said as she reached out and switched on the overhead light. “So tell me why you’re awake, then.”

  “Because I couldn’t sleep?” I offered, squinting against the sudden infusion of brightness.

  “Aye, don’t be a smart ass now. You know what I meant.”

  “Would you believe I was trying to get some work done?”

  “No.” She shook her head.

  “Getting a drink of water?”

  “Rowan.” She cocked her head and shot me a frown as she paused-effectively impaling me with her I’m serious look. “I’m half asleep, but I’m not blind. You’ve coffee on, and you’ve been playing solitaire on your computer. Quit screwing with me, then.”

  “Okay,” I answered with a defeated sigh. “I’m waiting for Ben to call.”

  As absurd as it sounded, it was the truth.

  It may be the middle of the night, but I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the telephone was going to ring, and Detective Benjamin Storm was going to be at the other end. For me, very simply, this was a foregone conclusion.

  What’s more, it was not because he happened to be my best friend and that he just felt like talking at an odd hour. It was going to be something I didn’t want to hear but probably already knew. In any case, I knew it would be something that I had no choice but to deal with.

  Felicity closed her eyes and let her head tilt forward, dropping her forehead into her hand.

  “Nightmare?” she asked softly as she began massaging her brow. She was intimately familiar with the forms my precognitive intuition would sometimes take.

  “Headache.”

  “Humph,” she grunted, then asked hopefully, “Did you take anything just in case?”

  “Not that kind of headache,” I replied.

  “You’re certain, then?”

  Her question was answered by the grating peal of the telephone vibrating against the walls of the small room before I could even utter the “yes” that now lodged itself in my throat.

  My wife looked up at me with sadness in her jade-green eyes and then gave a slight nod to the coffeepot. “Aye, I’ll go put on some clothes. Best pour me a cup of that as well.”

  I started to protest. “I don’t think…”

  “…That I should go?” she shot back, filling in my sentence and cutting me off. “Are you planning to stay out of it?”

  I sighed and fidgeted at the sudden tension. She already knew what my answer would be.

  “Aye, I thought so. We’re not discussing this, Rowan,” she continued with a stern shake of her head. “If you go, I go. End of story. Now answer the phone, then.” She was already turning around the corner of the doorway on her way back to the bedroom as she issued the last command.

  I knew better than to press my luck, especially on this subject. We’d beaten it beyond recognition already, and we were both too stubborn to give in. I took a step forward, picked the phone out of its cradle on the fourth ring, and then placed it to my ear.

  “Yeah, Ben. I’m here” was all I said.

  “Awww, Jeezus H. Christ, Row… Jeeeez… Goddammit…” He launched immediately into a string of curses, his voice a peculiar mix of relief, anger, and disgust.

  Whenever my friend started a sentence this way, I knew that what followed probably wasn’t going to be good. Of course, I’d known that before the phone ever rang, but there was always that small inkling of hope that I might be wrong. Judging from the baseness of Ben’s first words, I knew that this would not be the occasion.

  “Porter?” I inserted my question into the lull that trailed along in the wake of his outburst.

  “Yeah,” he returned, his voice slightly calmer. “But that was a given, I guess.”

  In an instant, the “probably” became an absolutely, and the “wasn’t going to be good” was nothing less than a cold fact.

  “Uh-huh. Truth
is I’m surprised he waited this long,” I replied. “It’s been more than two weeks since he killed that woman in Cape Girardeau.”

  “Yeah.” He paused. “So, what gives? You sound like you were awake already.”

  “Yeah. I was.”

  “So what’s up? Don’t tell me you were waitin’ for me to call.”

  “Okay, I won’t.”

  “Jeez, Row…” The note of resignation in his voice was clear. “So, did you have one of those nightmares or somethin’?”

  “No. Just a headache.”

  “Bad one?”

  “Bad enough.”

  “Regular, or was it one of those hinky, weird-ass, Twilight Zone ones that you get?”

  “Something like that.” I shook my head even though he couldn’t see me.

  Twilight Zone. That’s what my friend liked to call it whenever I would engage in any form of psychic detection or supernormal communication. He was accustomed to the peculiar psychic events that had seemed to plague me for the past couple of years, but he still had his own unique branding for them. He had a whole handful of euphemisms-“la-la land,” “out there,” and even just plain “weird,” but Twilight Zone remained his favorite. I guess I couldn’t blame him for the interpretation though. Even I wasn’t always comfortable with the paranormal excursions myself, but then, I also didn’t always have control over them either. And, while a certain amount of mysticism comes along with being a practicing Witch, at times I felt almost as if I had plugged directly into the main switchboard of the “other side.”

  Disconcerting is just about the nicest word I could use to describe it. You don’t want to hear the others.

  “So why didn’t you call me?” he asked.

  “And do what? Tell you I had a headache?”

  “Hasn’t stopped you before.”

  “Actually, when I’ve called you in the past I’ve had a little more to say.”

  “Yeah. Maybe so.”

  “So, do you want me to meet you?”

  “For what?”

  “To go to this crime scene?”

  “No, actually. I was just calling to make sure you were okay.”

  The meaning behind his words was quickly apparent to me. For a number of reasons, I was most likely at the top of Porter’s hit list; not the least of which was the fact that I had shot him. Of course, he was trying to kill me at the time, so I didn’t have much choice. However, since he had already tried once, we had every reason to believe that he would do it again.

  This was exactly why Felicity and I had spent the past two weeks residing in a tiny, unfamiliar apartment in a secure building instead of our own home. We were in hiding, and it was starting to get on my nerves.

  “So, the victim is male?” I asked

  “That’s what they said. I just got the call a few minutes ago.”

  “So where is the scene?” I pressed again.

  “No way. Stay put, Row. Let us handle this.”

  “You know I can’t do that, Ben.”

  “You don’t have a hell of a lotta choice now do ya’?” he shot back.

  “I’ll just show up,” I told him calmly. “I can find out where the scene is without your help.”

  “And I’ll fuckin’ arrest your sorry ass if you do.”

  “Ben…” I just allowed my voice to trail off.

  “You know, Rowan, we ain’t just a bunch of bumblin’ idiots. Cops solve murders all the time without your help.”

  “I know, Ben, but this is different.”

  “Yeah, I know you think it is, but it’s not. Why can’t you just stay put where I know you’re safe, and let me handle this?”

  “Because I want my life back, Ben.”

  “Gettin’ yourself killed would kinda defeat the purpose now wouldn’t it?”

  “We’ve had this discussion before, Ben.”

  “And I don’t recall bein’ convinced that time either.”

  “I need to do this,” I appealed.

  He huffed out a heavy sigh after an extended silence. “Fine. Jeez. Okay. At least if you’re with me, I can keep an eye on ya’. I’ll swing by and pick you up. But listen, Row, you’d damn well better tell Felicity before I get there. I don’t have time for an argument like last time.”

  “Don’t worry. She’ll be coming with us.”

  “Both of you?” he groaned. “Sheesh. Lucky me.”

  “Hey, it’s not my idea.”

  “Are you willin’ to stay home and let me handle this?” he queried flatly.

  “I thought we’d already established that as a no,” I replied, somewhat confused by the question.

  “Then quit tryin’ to blame her. It IS your fuckin’ idea,” he huffed. “Meet me in the lobby. I’ll be there in fifteen.”

  CHAPTER 2:

  “This is fucked…” Ben spat, shaking his head in a display of disbelief and looking upward as he spoke. “This S.O. B is just plain sick.”

  It was just after four a.m. by the time we arrived, and we found ourselves standing in the middle of Locust Street downtown. We had signed in on the scene log with Felicity and me listed as consultants and allowed in only by Ben’s graces.

  Stepping onto the active participant side of the bright yellow strip of barrier tape that cordoned off the street was akin to entering another world. I glanced around, feeling both out of place and right at home in the same instant. In the past two years, I’d visited more active homicide crime scenes than many cops see in their entire careers, and I didn’t even have a badge. Something seemed very wrong about that, but it was a fact I simply could not change. I didn’t find it reassuring at all that I was becoming so accustomed to it.

  Cold wind sliced in a linear gust down the thoroughfare, flaring the band of plastic tape as if to highlight the repeated imprint of block letters along its length. Bold strokes formed words that had become all too familiar to me-CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS. The temperature was settled for the moment at an even thirty-six degrees, but the computed wind chill pushed the overall feeling downward into the range of the mid-twenties.

  There were a half dozen crime scene technicians milling about on the ground, while another handful could occasionally be spotted working on the roof of the building that was before us. The medical examiner’s hearse had already arrived, and the area was illuminated by the visual insanity of flickering light bars on idling emergency vehicles.

  When the street-level scene was taken as a whole, my friend’s candid observation simply became a commentary that mirrored my own feelings. Unfortunately, he was talking about something far worse, for what was taking place on the tableau of the cold asphalt was only a supporting backdrop for the spectacle above.

  My gaze followed Ben’s, coming to rest between the second and third floor windows of the four-story, brick building. There, carefully directed spotlights illuminated the centerpiece of this nightmare. Garish shadows molded themselves in a shroud about the nude and blood streaked corpse of a man. Suspended by a rope tied about his ankles, he was hanging upside down. His head was obscured by an executioner’s hood, and his arms were splayed out to the sides, perpendicular to the rest of his body, as if to form an inverted cross. The appendages were held stiffly in place by what looked like a two-by-four across his shoulders. At this distance, I couldn’t be positive, but the piece of wood appeared to be held fast by something encircling his wrists and neck.

  This, in and of itself, was macabre enough to make anyone believe that it could only be a Hollywood “slasher flick” in the making. If only that were true, for it didn’t end there. From the victim’s groin, downward to a point in his mid-torso, his abdomen was split open. There, protruding from the ragged tear like a grey-white serpent, his intestines cascaded across his chest to hang in a pendulum-like loop several feet beneath. Each time the wind would pick up, the sash of organ tissue would move with the breeze, undulating like heavy drapes next to an air vent. Blood still dripped at protracted intervals from the exposed viscera to plop wetly onto the dark sta
in that now graced the sidewalk below.

  Behind us, a loud and very wet sounding splatter tore our attention away from the scene as a patrol officer involuntarily launched the contents of his own stomach onto the pavement.

  I looked back over my shoulder in response to the sound and then glanced over at Felicity. She was clutching my arm tightly and staring upward while absently chewing at her lower lip. She had been to a few crime scenes before but had not been subjected to anywhere near as much of this grisly scenery as I had. Still, she looked stable for the moment, so I returned my stare to the three-dimensional horror show that was playing out in front of me. I swallowed hard, because to be honest, I was only a half step away from heaving myself.

  “Ya’know, Doc Sanders told me once that the average adult has about thirty feet of intestines.” Ben paused for a moment after reciting the fact. “Man, I’ve seen a lotta crap in autopsies, but I never really expected to see anybody’s guts stretched out like that.”

  “Disembowelment was not uncommon during the Inquisition.” I spoke quietly, struggling to keep my voice even. “Actually, it was a favored form of punishment and torture.”

  “You mean he did that to ‘im while he was still alive?” Ben asked with a thin strain of disbelief in his voice.

  “Oh, yes,” I nodded as I spoke, then swallowed hard again. “Probably rather slowly…”

  As I’d known it would, my headache was starting to get worse. The stark chill of fear climbed up my vertebrae and began clawing at the base of my neck. There was something unseen here that was begging my attention, and I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to give it.

  “Jeezus…” He shook his head. “Guess I shoulda suspected that, considering…”

  I knew full well what his unspoken words implied. Eldon Porter made a habit of torturing his victims mercilessly before finally bringing about their end. During his last spree, he had even burned two of them alive.

  I allowed my gaze to fall away from the corpse as I turned my head, but I didn’t have to let it fall far. I was of average height, but I still had to crane my neck back to look up at Ben’s face; average in stature he definitely was not. His particular pencil mark on the doorjamb had hit six feet when he was in junior high school, and he had still proceeded to grow another six inches after that. He was no stranger to the weight room either, and the rest of his physique made a perfect match for his elevated height.