“Listen, I’m almost to my car,” she replied. “Why don’t you go ahead and answer the call. I’ll get back to you when I get to the police station and have a handle on things.”
“Don’t you want me to meet you there?”
“Absolutely not. There’s nothing you can do at this point, and emotionally you’re a bomb looking for a place to explode. You’d do nothing but cause trouble and make things worse. Just stay right there while they’re searching the house, and don’t do anything stupid.”
The insistent beep chimed in again.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean just stay there and don’t do anything,” she instructed, heavily emphasizing the last word. “I need to concentrate on your wife right now, so I don’t need to be worrying about you too.”
I answered in a clipped tone. “Yeah. Fine. Okay. Later.”
I didn’t wait for her to say goodbye. I reached out and stabbed the off-hook switch on the telephone’s base with my finger, held it for a second, and then released it. A second later I heard the telltale click rattling in the earpiece as the call I had just been on was disconnected.
“Hello?” I said into the mouthpiece.
“Rowan,” a familiar voice floated into my ear. “How are you doing?”
I sighed, half from relief and half from frustration. It obviously wasn’t a hang-up, but it also wasn’t someone calling to tell me this had all been a terrible mistake either. Of course, logically I knew that wasn’t going to happen, but under stress we tend to create fantastic resolutions for situations simply in order to maintain hope, and that was but one of the happy endings bouncing around inside my skull at the moment.
“I’ve been better, Helen,” I replied, my tone flat.
“I know, Rowan. Benjamin just called and told me what happened.”
“I suppose he wants you to find out if I’m still mad at him,” I quipped.
I knew I shouldn’t be taking my anger with her brother, and the situation, out on her; but I just couldn’t help myself. The way I saw it, everyone in my path was a potential enemy at this point.
“Actually, Rowan, no, he does not. I believe he is fully expecting you to be angry with him for some time to come. He has resigned himself to that.”
“Very astute observation on his part,” I asserted. “Mainly because he’s right.”
“He was forced to make an extremely hard decision.”
“Well, I’ve got some bad news for him. He decided wrong. Felicity is innocent and he knows it.”
“I am speaking of his decision to handle the arrest rather than allow someone else from the department to do so.”
Apparently, Jackie had been correct. Still, it didn’t change the fact that he had led my wife out of the house in handcuffs.
“Yeah, well, he just might have been wrong on that count too.”
“Be that as it may, it really is not my point, Rowan.”
“I’m listening.”
“He is concerned.”
“Yeah, well no offense, Helen, but I’ve got other things on my mind right now, so if he’s looking for absolution tell him to try a confessional.”
“He is not concerned about forgiveness. He is worried about you.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
“Rowan,” Helen’s voice took on a stern quality I wasn’t used to hearing when speaking with her. “Stop this. I know that you have a dire situation with which to cope. And, after our talk yesterday I think that I, better than anyone, know the stress you have been facing lately.
“I want you to understand that I am certainly not begging sympathy for my brother. However, as both a therapist and as your friend, I am telling you that you simply must let go of some of this anger.”
“I can’t, Helen. It’s all that’s keeping me afloat right now.”
“In the short run, I would say that is a good thing. However, I know you, Rowan. You will not let this subside, and you will continue feeding it. If you do that, then it is no longer a good thing. It becomes unhealthy.”
“Well, we all have our addictions, don’t we?” I replied, making a veiled reference to her chain smoking. “I guess this one will be mine for the time being.”
I was sorry I made the stab as soon as it came out of my mouth, but what was done was done. I’m certain she caught my meaning, she was too smart and far too quick not to. Still, she graciously ignored it. I suppose she was used to people lashing out when under stress.
“If so, then I suspect you will again be needing my services when you finally sink,” she told me in an almost purely clinical voice. “Because trust me, you are going to be hitting the bottom very fast and very hard. I am serious, Rowan. Very hard.”
“Then I suppose I’ll just have to hope you can dredge me up and put me back together when the time comes.”
“I believe we will both be hoping for that,” she offered and then paused. I could hear her let out a small sigh before continuing, “You are a very stubborn man, Rowan. I hope you realize that I did not call to argue with you.”
I closed my eyes and shook my head. For the first time in the past few hours, the motion didn’t cause me excruciating pain. My headache had mellowed down to a dull thud for the moment, but I wasn’t expecting it to stay that way for long.
“I know, Helen,” I told her. “I’m just not in a very good place right now.”
“I know. And trust me, Benjamin is truly concerned for your well being right now. As am I.”
“Join the club. That seems to be the order of the day.”
“Did you have the nightmare again?” she asked, momentarily switching the subject.
“Yeah. Three times last night.”
“And, how did you feel?”
“Scared.”
“Yes, but what about the other issue. The one involving your wife.”
“It’s a non-issue.”
“Good. Your faith in Felicity is going to be monumentally important in the coming days, Rowan.”
“Yeah,” I grunted. “Tell me about it.”
I happened to look up toward the stairs as I made the comment and noticed a crime scene technician on his way down, arms filled with books.
He called past me to another tech in the living room, “Looks like we’ve got something here.”
I could see that the “something here” he had in hand was every text on Voodoo and Afro-Caribbean Mysticism I had purchased, or checked out from the library, in the past week.
“Those are mine,” I called out to him.
He continued down the stairs, ignoring me completely.
“I said, those are mine,” I stressed. “I just bought them.”
Helen was calling to me from the earpiece, “Rowan? Rowan, what is wrong?”
The technician finally shot me a glance and shook his head. “Sorry sir. Now they’re evidence.”
My hand was already moving to hang up the phone even as I spoke. “Helen, I’ve got to go.”
CHAPTER 6:
“Exactly which part of ‘I just bought those’ are you having trouble understanding?” I barked. “And, if you’ll look closely you’ll see I got a few of them from the library as well.”
My objections had gone unheeded for the most part, and me simply being angry was starting to become me being flat-out, livid pissed. Even as I spoke, the stack of books was being placed in a paper evidence bag.
“Dammit! You aren’t taking those!” I almost shouted.
“Calm down, Mister Gant.” The lead crime scene technician tried to soothe me as his subordinate continued the process of securing the evidence, tagging it, and adding a description to the log.
“Calm down? My wife’s been arrested, you’re tearing my house apart, and now you’re going to take something that belongs to me and has nothing to do with this, all so you can use it against her? Calm down my ass!”
I would have simply pushed the man aside and gone after the technician who was actually bagging the books, but the situation had recently taken on a new layer of complexity. That layer came in the form of two uniformed Briarwood police officers who were presently standing in very close proximity to our heated disagreement. They had arrived at the house within a scant few minutes of the evidence technicians and had been quietly surveying the goings on from the middle of the dining room ever since. Until now, that is.