“Storm,” Ben answered with a sharp, frenetic tenor to his voice.
“Ben, it’s Rowan. I remembered some of the vision.”
“Hold on a second…”
I could hear him exchanging words with someone in the background. Various noises were issuing from the small speaker in the handset. Those sounds, coupled with his tone of voice, led me to believe that all hell had broken loose, and the MCS command post was at ground zero.
“What’s the story?” Felicity queried, noticing my expectant silence.
“He’s got me on hold,” I answered. “It sounds like everything’s hitting the fan over there. I guess we can go ahead and get moving. No use in just sitting here.”
She nodded and reached for the ignition. There was a muffled plastic rattle on the other end of the phone and the clunk of a door being shut, followed by a relative hush.
“Sorry ‘bout that,” Ben’s voice issued forth again. “It’s a fuckin’ circus down here.”
“What’s going on?”
“Aww, the parents made an appeal to the kidnapper on the ten o’clock news. We’ve been gettin’ crank calls ever since you and Felicity cut out. Forget about that, whaddaya got?”
The engine on the Jeep had sparked to life and was now idling smoothly. Felicity popped the vehicle into gear and started rolling forward.
“I remembered the vision,” I expressed. “I’m not sure what all of it means, but I’ve got some ideas.”
“Shoot.”
“Well, I’m pretty sure he’s going to do the ritual outdoors where he can see the moon. I think he might be planning to do it in a park or something.”
“Any idea which one?”
Felicity gunned the engine slightly and eased from the bus turnout onto the off-ramp leading into the city limits of the small Saint Louis suburb of Overmoor.
“Not for sure. In the vision, I saw trees and a small lake,” I explained further. “The only specific thing about it I can remember is a sign that said ‘please do not feed geese’.”
“No offense, white man, but do ya’ know how many parks with lakes and geese we have in the metro area alone? Not to mention the state.”
“Too many.”
We continued down the small incline, past a wide opening in the chain link fence that ran alongside the ramp. I watched out my window as the obese moon lumbered across the night sky, arcing high above the trees. Apparently, a slight breeze was blowing, as I noticed the boughs of a stand of pine trees were gently waving. A line of tall pines obscuring all but the smallest glimpses of the lake behind them.
“Stop,” I almost whispered at first and then spoke louder. “STOP!”
Felicity immediately cranked the steering wheel to the right, pulling us onto the shoulder. The tires ground coarsely against the loose gravel when she jammed on the brakes and brought us to a sliding halt.
“What? What’s wrong?” she appealed.
Similar questions, only spoken by Ben’s voice, were issuing raspily from the cell phone as I handed it to her and opened my door. Slowly, I covered the short distance between the Jeep and the fence, staring out across the moonlit landscape. I twined my fingers through the links and pressed my face against the warm, galvanized metal, intently studying the scene.
A line of tall pine trees reached upward to the star- speckled night. Between them, I could see the occasional shimmer of moonlight reflecting from rippling water. At the head of what appeared to be a trail, a small white and black rectangle was affixed vertically to a short post. It was too far away to read with the unaided eye, but I didn’t have to make out the words to know that it simply said, PLEASE DO NOT FEED GEESE.
I turned my gaze upward at the almost perfectly round disk floating in the sky. Marbled grey and white, its luminescence cast the view in an eerie glow. In my mind, I could see the minute hand relentlessly chasing its smaller and slower rival about the surface. Overtaking it and repeating. Overtaking it and repeating.
A familiar, searing fire sprinted suddenly up my spine, bringing with it a dark foreboding. The hair stood out from the back of my neck, and my body felt like a living pincushion in a vat of alcohol as every other follicle stiffened to attention. Crackling static danced across my skin, setting its already tortured surface ablaze.
“ Hey, mister, what time is it?” The little girl tugs on my sleeve. “I have to go soon. What time is it? Hey, mister!”
The hardened steel wedge of realization buried itself soundly between the hemispheres of my brain and drove relentlessly inward. I scrambled back to the Jeep in a frenzy, awkwardly slipping and falling on the loose gravel twice before making it. Felicity had the cell phone pressed to her ear and was apparently filling Ben in on my sudden, inexplicable behavior. Sensing what I was after, she handed me the device before I could snatch it away from her.
“It’s happening now, Ben!” I fired into the phone with absolute certainty.
He began protesting immediately, “Wait a minute, you said the full moon would be on Friday.”
“It’s after midnight, Ben,” I appealed, fighting to keep from shouting. “It IS Friday. Look at a calendar or a newspaper or something. What is the exact time the moon will be full?”
“Hold on…”
I could hear the door swing open and his distant voice as he called out for a calendar. Quickly, he returned, joined by the sound of rustling papers and other voices.
“It’s not on here, Rowan,” he responded in exasperation. “It’s got the phases but not the times. Wait a minute… what’s that?” One of the muted voices interrupted him, and he left me hanging for a thirty-second eternity. I could hear frantic muttering in the background before he returned. “Benson’s kid is an astronomy student. He got her on the horn and she says that in our time zone, it’ll be one-thirty-seven A.M.”
“What time is it now?” I appealed to my wide-eyed wife.
“Ten till one,” she answered.
“Less than an hour, Ben,” I told him insistently. “He’s going to kill her in less than an hour.”
“But where? He could be at almost any park in the state. Shit, he might not even be IN Missouri anymore.”
I realized that in my rush to convince him of our severe deficit for time, I had not yet voiced my other revelation. “No Ben, he’s still in Missouri. In fact, he’s right here. Right now. I can feel him.”
“Right where?”
“Wild Woods Park, just inside the city limits of Overmoor.” I turned to face the gently waving pine trees once again. “I’m standing right outside the fence.”
“Are you sure about…” He cut himself off before he could finish the question. “Forget I said that. Stay right where you are, Rowan. You understand me? I’m callin’ Overmoor and gettin’ some squad cars over there right now. We can be there in fifteen minutes, twenty tops. Don’t go in until we get there, Rowan. You hear me? Don’t go in the fuckin’ park.”
CHAPTER 27
True to what Ben had said, two Overmoor squad cars descended upon us at almost the same instant I switched off the cell phone. At my urging, we moved the three vehicles farther down the shoulder in order to remain out of the line of sight of anyone in the park. Seventeen lethargically oozing minutes later, Ben and Detective Deckert arrived, followed hotly by a dark sedan bearing U.S. government plates.
Special Agent Constance Mandalay looked far more intimidating than attractive in the muted glare of the distant streetlamp. The strict angular shadows that sliced through the sodium vapor glow painted her slight figure in an almost violently imposing likeness as she fixed her angry gaze on me.
“Did I not make myself clear, Mister Gant?” she javelined the query tersely. “You are no longer a part of this investigation. Period. Now, since Detective Storm seems intent on following you blindly about, you’ve not only bought yourself a world of trouble, you’ve managed to jeopardize his career as well.”