I was gnawing my way through yet another piece of nicotine gum and, for the moment, wasn’t feeling nearly as jittery as I had fifteen minutes before. I’d been home for several uneventful hours now and was actually in the process of throwing together dinner when Ben first assaulted the front doorbell. Felicity and I had intended to spend the evening going over our plans for the upcoming Yule ritual. Unfortunately, the frenzied tone of my friend told me that was about to change.
He completely ignored my jibe and using one of the handful of nicknames he’d assigned to my wife asked, “Is Firehair home?”
“Not yet, why?”
“Shit. She got ‘er cell phone with her?”
“Probably. What’s going on, Ben?”
“Well, we can’t wait, so ya’ better call ‘er and tell ‘er ta’ meet us. Make sure ya’ tell ‘er ta’ not even come home first.” He shot his hand up to rub his neck as he began to pace. “Jeezus she’s gonna freakin’ kill me for this.”
“Why not? Meet us where? What are you talking about?”
He didn’t seem to hear me and instead of answering simply muttered, “Dammit, white man, you are just too fuckin’ spooky.”
“BEN!” I exclaimed, raising my voice to capture his attention. “Would you mind telling me what the hell you’re going on about?”
He stopped and looked at me with a deadly serious gaze then shook his head. “Ya’know your little foray inta’ the world of sick poetry?”
“What about it?”
“Well the handwritin’ might not have belonged ta’ Paige Lawson, but it sure as shit belonged ta’ Debbie Schaeffer.”
“Debbie Schaeffer? Why does that name sound so familiar?”
“Because she’s been all over the friggin’ news. She’s the college cheerleader that went missin’ about two months ago.”
D-E-A-D-I-A-M!
D-E-A-D-I-A-M!
What’s that spell?
Dead I am!
Louder!
Dead I am!
One more time!
DEAD I AM!
The words rang inside my skull with painful clarity, and the exuberance of the morbid cheer was now sharply obvious. Ben didn’t need to say anything more for me to know that Debbie Schaeffer was no longer a missing persons case. Her legacy now belonged to homicide and the Greater Saint Louis Major Case Squad.
“Where should I tell her to meet us?” I asked quietly as I turned toward the phone.
I had no doubt it was going to be a very long night, in more ways than one.
CHAPTER 6
My wife’s cell phone was either off or out of range, and based on the way her schedule often ran, I wasn’t exactly certain when she would be home. Ben seemed almost in a panic, edged with a sense of urgency that he’d thus far left a mystery. He made it clear that he wasn’t at all interested in waiting for her to call back, and he insisted upon us leaving immediately. Knowing him like I did, I elected not to press for any further explanation until his adrenalin level started to drop off. As much as I hated to, I had done the only thing I could and left a quick message on Felicity’s voice mail telling her to meet us at his house.
My keyed up friend was already navigating his van out of the subdivision before I could get fully into my seatbelt. The sun had fallen past the horizon almost an hour before, and the light of the waxing crescent moon was diffused into a weak halo by thin, wispy clouds that fell across it like a shroud of frost.
For some unknown reason, Ben cranked the van into a quick right turn onto the side street that was positioned diagonally across from our driveway. Considering where we were headed, I thought it odd since it wasn’t exactly the shortest route to the highway. Out beyond the windshield, darkness overwhelmed a no-man’s land of unlit asphalt that stretched at regular intervals between the streetlamps. I caught only a brief glimpse of motion as a vehicle came barreling toward us from one of the puddles of blackness.
The van lurched left then almost instantly to the right, narrowly missing a parked Thunderbird and tossing me against my door just as I was about to snap the buckle of the shoulder harness into place. Judging from the blotches of primer decorating the otherwise darkly hued T-Bird, if we’d made contact we wouldn’t have been its first scrape by far.
I hadn’t remembered noticing the vehicle in our subdivision before, but there was something terribly familiar about it, although I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what. Still, it was the kind of aggravating feeling that makes a person say to oneself, “Whoa, deja vu.” The thought went as quickly as it came, however, since any further concentration on the subject was unceremoniously truncated by the sound of my friend’s voice.
“Asshole!” Ben exclaimed the epithet as we narrowly avoided slamming into the oncoming news van. “Learn ta’ fuckin’ drive!”
I straightened in my seat and returned to the task at hand, quickly coupling the safety belt before my friend’s infamous driving could send me tumbling again.
“So have you calmed down a bit?” I asked.
“Whaddaya mean?”
“I mean have you calmed down yet?” I repeated. “You just came through my front door like a runaway train, and so far you’ve been a little short on explanations.”
“I told ya’,” he offered. “That handwriting sample matched up ta’ Debbie Schaeffer.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” I started, “but if I’m understanding this turn of events correctly, Debbie Schaeffer has been murdered, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Which by definition would make her dead already, right?”
“Oh, yeah, she’s definitely dead. No two ways about that.”
“Okay, then. So, I hate to sound cold,” I said as a preface to my question, “but what’s the rush?”
“Simple,” Ben returned. “Because of a chucklehead with a big mouth, there’s about ta’ be a goddamned media circus bustin’ out all over this thing.”
“That’s to be expected,” I shrugged, not seeing the correlation. “It was news then, it’ll be news now.”
“Yeah, well did ya’ happen ta’ notice the logo on the side of the van that just tried to kill us? Whichever asshole leaked the info also knew about the handwriting sample and decided ta’ toss your name inta’ the mix. The circus is headin’ for your friggin’ front yard, Kemosabe. Shit, it looks like I just barely managed to beat ‘em there.”
“So that’s why you didn’t want Felicity to go by the house.”
“Exactly. I just hope she gets the message and doesn’t blow it off.” He let out a heavy sigh before continuing. “Look, it’s bad enough that you’re gettin’ dragged inta’ somethin’ like this again, ‘specially now. I just wanna at least make sure ya’ don’t get caught up in the hype this time.”
“I don’t see how you are going to keep that from happening, Ben.”
“By doin’ exactly what I’m doin’. Gettin’ ya’ the hell outta there.”
“Maybe that will work tonight, but what about tomorrow? And the next day? And the next?” I asked.
“There might not be a tomorrow, or a next day for ‘em. My plan is ta’ keep ya’ as far away from this as possible,” he told me.
“They’ll just camp outside my door.”
“Already on it. The coppers in Briarwood know what’s up and they’re gonna take care of it.”
“They can’t restrict the freedom of the press, Ben.”
“No, but they can protect the rights of a private citizen.”
“Okay, so then why didn’t they just take care of it now instead of this whole clandestine escape crap?”
“They are. We just gotta give ‘em some time to do it.”
“I really don’t think this is going to work, Ben.”
“Well, we’re gonna make it work,” he shot back.
“Think about it, Ben,” I appealed. “You just said yourself that I’m being dragged into this. The damage has already been done. I think at this point it’s out of your control.”
“Not entirely.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier if I just made a statement to the press telling them I’m not involved in this investigation?” I offered.
“No reason for them to believe ya’,” he answered. “Especially once they find out you’re lyin’.”