Felicity was feeling the effects of her first actual bout of morning sickness when the phone rang the next day. As expected, the person at the other end of the line was Ben, however, this time he was calling from the Major Case Squad headquarters instead of my driveway. His voice, though somewhat somber, sounded much less weary than it had only a few hours before.
“So are you free to come down here?” Ben’s voice issued from the earpiece.
“Yeah, I don’t have any client meetings today, so I can shake loose for a while,” I replied. “Felicity’s not feeling too well though.”
“Get used to it,” he told me.
“So what’s up?”
“We got the kid down here,” he returned, referring to R.J. “Says he doesn’t want a lawyer, but he wants you here.”
“Did you arrest him?”
“No, one of the local muni’s picked ‘im up on a DUI about the time we were at the crime scene last night… this mornin’… whatever.”
“Driving under the influence, huh,” I mused. “How’d you find out about that?”
“Since we decided we wanted to question him,” Ben began, “and I couldn’t find ‘im yesterday, I decided to run his tags this mornin’. Sometimes crap like that pays off, and it did this time ‘cause there he was. He looks like he’s fightin’ a hell of a hangover, but other than that, he’s no worse for wear.”
“Why does he want me there?” I queried.
“Somethin’ to do with the whole Wiccan thing, I guess,” he replied. “When we said we wanted to ask ‘im a few questions about Ariel Tanner and Karen Barnes, he got kinda paranoid on us.”
“You didn’t mention Ellen Gray at all?”
“Not yet. I still have a few things to check out before I play that card.”
“But if he’s not under arrest,” I puzzled, “can’t he just walk out?”
“He got a bit rowdy with the officer that stopped him, so they decided to set an example,” Ben explained. “City of Andrew Heights is gonna hold ‘im over for arraignment on the DUI and a resisting charge. I just got the muni to let me have custody for a while.”
“Okay,” I told him. “Better let me grab a shower and all that. I’ll be there in about an hour.”
“We’re not goin’ anywhere.”
As I was hanging up the phone, Salinger jumped up to the corner of our entertainment center and seated himself. He looked up at me with his bewhiskered face and large eyes forming a caricature of a wizened prophet then let out a doleful meow.
“You don’t really think R.J.’s guilty, do you?” I asked him rhetorically as I scratched him behind the ears.
He replied only by closing his eyes and purring loudly.
“Aye, Rowan, was that Ben on the phone?” Felicity asked as she trudged slowly into the room with soda crackers in one hand and a cup of what smelled like ginger tea in the other.
“Yeah, that was him,” I told her. “He’s at the MCS headquarters. They’ve got R.J. down there, and he’s asking for me.”
“Did they arrest him?” she asked with a start.
“Yes and no.” I explained, “He was arrested on a Driving-Under-the-Influence charge early this morning. Ben went looking for him again using his license plate number this time, and that’s how he found him. He borrowed him from the municipality that arrested him, so he could ask him a few questions.”
“Why is he asking for you instead of an attorney, then?”
“Who knows?” I shrugged. “Probably because I’m a Witch-at least that’s Ben’s theory. Apparently, he got pretty antsy when they told him they wanted to ask him about Ariel and Karen.”
“Aye, wouldn’t you?” Felicity asked.
“I suppose I would.”
“So, how long before we have to be there? I don’t know if I’m over this nausea yet.”
“You don’t need to go,” I told her. “You can stay here and rest for a while, and I can fill you in later.”
“Are you sure?” she queried. “I don’t have a photo shoot scheduled until this afternoon, so I’ve got the morning free.”
“I’m sure,” I replied. “You need to get some rest. The accent is still a little heavy.”
“Oh, stop it, then.”
“Seriously though, honey. I can call you if anything happens.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Okay then.”
I left her lounging on the sofa in our living room, surrounded by three cats displaying curious concern as only they can do.
I parked my truck behind City Hall and checked in at the desk. I was apparently becoming a familiar face, or I was anticipated, as the Sergeant had a visitor’s badge in hand as soon as he saw me. After checking in, I continued down the corridor and was met at the door by Ben and Detective Deckert.
“How’s Firehair?” Ben inquired, calling Felicity by one of his many nicknames for her.
“She was starting to perk up,” I told him as we continued farther into the bowels of the building. “I expect she’ll be fine.”
“Good, good,” his voice trailed off as we descended a flight of stairs, and he fell silent.
Detective Deckert’s face wore a somber expression, and his only greeting to me when I arrived had been a stiff nod. He was still silent as we rounded a landing and continued downward. It didn’t take the heightened senses of a Witch to feel the tension coming from the two. Tension directed toward me.
“So look, Rowan…” Ben finally broke the silence as we stopped in front of a heavy steel door. “I got somethin’ I need ta’ tell ya’, and I don’t think you’re gonna like it much.”
“I had a feeling,” I acknowledged. “It’s something about R.J. isn’t it?”
“Yeah, you could say that,” Deckert intoned.
Ben let out a heavy breath and smoothed his hair back. His brow was creased with apprehension as he wrestled with what he had to tell me.
“So there’s no way to sugar coat it,” he spoke. “I just got off the phone with the forensics lab a minute or two before you got here…”
“Something about that fingerprint?” I feared I knew what he was about to say.
“Yeah, that print,” he answered. “The muni that popped R.J. this morning entered his prints into AFIS, and the lab boys got an immediate hit.”
“It matched?” I stared at him in disbelief.
“Like an identical twin.”
“Damn,” I whispered. “I thought it was a partial print?”
“It was, but there was enough there to make a positive ID.”
“What about the wax from the other scenes?”
“They were clean, but that doesn’t matter. The one found last night matches. No two ways about it.”
“That’s not all.” Deckert expounded, “The M.E. came up with some long, dark hairs on the body as well as some other fibers.”
“And the lab ran a check on the semen found at the scene last night. Blood type O Positive,” Ben added. “Same as R.J.”
“If I remember correctly, O Positive is fairly common,” I protested. “Somewhere near forty percent of the population shares that blood type.”
“Yeah, it is,” Ben agreed. “But fingerprints ain’t. The lab’s gonna run a DNA analysis too, but that’ll take awhile.” He paused. “We got enough for a search warrant, Rowan… I’m sorry man, but I think R.J.’s involved.”
“What about his eyes, Ben?” I pleaded, unwilling to believe what I was being told. “What color are his eyes?”
“His eyes are brown,” he responded. “But like I told ya’, that’s inadmissible… Besides, maybe you made a mistake.”
“No,” I expressed, “I didn’t make a mistake.”
We stood in silence for a moment, Ben’s hand on the doorknob. My mind raced, trying to formulate a logical way to refute the evidence Ben had outlined. Even with my own suspicions about R.J., I was reluctant to believe he was the killer. There had to be an explanation, and it needed to be a good one.
“Are you charging him?” I questioned.
“Not yet,” Deckert returned. “We’re gonna see what turns up when we search his place first.”
Ben opened the heavy door, and we entered another corridor in the basement of the building. Fluorescent light fixtures were unevenly spaced along the acoustic drop ceiling, bathing the hallway in a harsh blue-white light. One of the older tubes would occasionally flicker into darkness then burn dull orange at each end before snapping back to life, if only for a moment. The glossy, painted, cinder block walls had aged from the original white to a sickly yellowish tone that was deepened at intervals by the orange glow. The walls felt close when combined with the low drop ceiling, and I fought back a thin wave of claustrophobia.
We continued down a cracked asphalt tile floor and came to a halt before a uniformed officer stationed at a large metal desk. Chips and gouges in the grey painted piece of furniture testified to its age and use. A green desk blotter, a telephone, and a sign-in sheet adorned its sparse surface. I couldn’t help but be somewhat amused by the fact that the pen accompanying the sheet was chained to the desk. A dilapidated drip coffeemaker, stained from years of use, sizzled and popped in the corner behind the duty officer-a careless spill being turned into yet another crusty residue on its heating plate.
Ben and Deckert surrendered their sidearms to the uniformed man, and he locked them away in the desk drawer. With a wordless grunt, he indicated the sign-in sheet, and the three of us added our names to it. With this task completed, the voiceless guard led us farther down the corridor and unlocked the door to the first interview room. We stepped in-Ben, Deckert, and finally me. The weighty door swung shut behind us, and the lock dropped back into place with an audible metallic clunk that echoed from the bare cement walls. A plain wooden table with two chairs, much like one would find in a small kitchen, was positioned near the center of the room. A bedraggled, unshaven R.J. filled one of the chairs. He looked up with a nervous start as we entered. For the second time in less than three days, R.J. was in the custody of the police. His at once depressed and fearful expression showed that he was still no more practiced at it than he had been the first time.
“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” he ventured, looking at me.
“Why not?” I asked, advancing past Ben and Deckert then pulling out the chair opposite him.
“Because of how I acted Saturday night.” He looked at the floor then back at me as I took a seat. “I wasn’t exactly Mister Congeniality… Then, when you shook my hand and I blocked you…”
“I would have done the same,” I replied soothingly. “Hell, I had no business trying to feel you out like that. It was pretty rude.”
“I can understand why you did it,” he told me.
He seemed somewhat calmer than when we first entered, but he still looked around the room nervously, shifting back and forth from me to Ben and Deckert. He wrung his hands, and every now and again, his voice would quaver slightly. I could see, feel, hear and even smell the fear coming from him. The emotion that bothered me most though was the sensation of guilt.
“What’s going on?” he finally asked me. “Why do they want to talk to me about Ariel and the other lady? Am I a suspect or something?”
By now, Ben and Detective Deckert had moved farther into the room. Ben was standing to my right, and Deckert had propped himself in a corner, behind and to the right of R.J.
“Are you sure you don’t want an attorney?” Ben interjected.
“What do I need a lawyer for?” R.J. demanded fearfully.
As he spoke, I felt a sharp, piercing pain in the pit of my stomach. Ben didn’t reply. To an observer such as myself, it was obvious that he was using R.J.’s own fear as leverage against him. It was a wholly unpleasant and ugly side of my friend that I knew was a necessary evil for his line of work. It was a side, however, that I truly didn’t wish to see.
“You knew Ariel Tanner pretty good, didn’t you?” Ben continued.
“Yeah,” R.J. answered, “you know that.”
“Uh-huh,” Ben grunted. “How ‘bout Karen Barnes? You friends with her too?”
“I told you already,” R.J.’s voice implored, “I never heard of her until you asked me about her. Was she the lady that was killed Saturday?”
A ripping sensation tore painfully through my lower abdomen once again.
Ben still refused to answer him. “What were you doin’ at Ariel’s flat Saturday morning?”
“What’re they doing, Rowan?” R.J. begged. “They think I killed her? They think I’m the killer?!”
His voice went up in pitch and grew wilder with every word. He was stricken with absolute disbelief at what he felt Ben was implying.
“Were you there to pick somethin’ up, R.J.?” Ben continued. “Maybe something you forgot?”
“Like I said before,” R.J. explained almost angrily, “I was there to water the plants.”
“Saturday was a little soon, wasn’t it? I mean, you said she was s’posed ta’ leave Friday night. You don’t think she might have watered them before she left?”
“She asked me to keep an eye on her place!” R.J. screamed, jumping up from the chair. “I didn’t know I needed your fucking permission!”
“Now, R.J.,” Deckert’s calm voice expressed feigned concern. “Take it easy. They’re just questions.” He had left his position in the corner and was now resting a comforting hand on R.J.’s shoulder. “Detective Storm just gets a little carried away sometimes.”
Good cop, bad cop. I couldn’t believe Ben and Deckert were playing that tired game. Anyone who had ever seen a cop show on television, good or bad, knew the routine. I could only assume that being in the hot seat made R.J. vulnerable enough to fall for it.
Pain shot through my stomach once again, more intense than before. Extreme enough to make me wince as it hit. I assumed I was simply feeling empathy for R.J., and I took a moment to focus my concentration on blocking the spasms as he slowly lowered himself back into his seat.
“You showed up late at our meeting Saturday night.” Ben began hammering at him again. “Where were you?”
“My mom’s cat got hit by a car,” he explained. “I had to bury it for her and get cleaned up before I could come over.”
Suddenly Dickens’ and Salinger’s reactions to him made sense. A cat’s heightened sense of smell would have detected not only the scent of the other animal but any blood he might have gotten on himself, even if he washed. The cats HAD smelled death, just not the death of a human.
“I assume that can be verified,” Ben retorted.
“You can ask my mom,” R.J. shot back. “And you can dig up the cat if you don’t believe her.”
“We just might.”
Ben scribbled purposefully in his notebook. The scratch of the pen against the paper was the only sound in the room, and it was earsplitting in the silence.
Ben interrupted the quiet. “You mind lettin’ us in on why you were drivin’ around shitfaced early this morning?”
“I dunno.”
“Come on, man.” Ben’s voice took on an accusatory edge. “You’ve gotta have a reason for getting’ hammered on a Sunday night.”
“Sunday’s just like a Saturday to me,” R.J. rebutted, maintaining a modicum of nerve. “Sunday and Monday are my days off.”
“Good for you.” Ben’s words were sheathed in sarcasm. “That still doesn’t tell me why you blew close to the legal limit and had an open beer in your hand when you were stopped.”
“I had a fight with my girlfriend,” R.J. returned. “I guess I just lost it for a little while.”
“What time would that have been?”
“I dunno. Around five I guess.”
“What’s your girlfriend’s name?”
“I wanna leave her out of it.”
“C’mon, R.J.,” Deckert’s soothing voice issued from behind him once again. “I’m sure she’d be happy to help you out. We can’t verify your story unless you give us her name.”
The discomfort struck my abdomen again, penetrating the mental defenses I had erected to stop it. A dull, throbbing ache followed and refused my attempts to evict it-so much for mind over matter.
R.J. remained steadfastly silent, displaying a hardened resolve. Even I was curious as to why he was so adamant about concealing the identity of his girlfriend.
Deckert spoke again. “Don’t you think she’s probably worried about you? You never know, she might have called to try and make up.”
“Why’re you guys so worried about who my girlfriend is?” R.J. spat. “What’s she got to do with anything?”
“Why are you tryin’ so hard to keep her a secret?” Ben retorted. “I would think you’d be happy to have an alibi.”
“An alibi for what?” R.J.’s confused voice squeaked slightly. “We had the fight yesterday.”
“Exactly.”
“Whaddaya mean, ‘exactly’?”
“Another young lady was murdered last night,” Deckert filled in the blank.
“I’m gonna tell ya’ a story, R.J.” Ben pressed on, slowly pacing three steps past him and three steps back. “It’s a story about a sick asshole that likes to torture young women and kill them. Ya’ see, this psycho thinks he has a purpose for doin’ this, but it’s all just somethin’ he dreamed up in his twisted little mind.” He punctuated his statement by pausing and poking his index finger at R.J.’s forehead. “So, every time he kills one of these young ladies, he feels really bad…”
Ben was obviously telling his tale in order to force him to crack. I knew that it wouldn’t be long before he started plugging R.J.’s name into the story here and there to turn the screws.
“So when Mister Sicko feels bad, he hides behind a little religious ritual he learned,” Ben continued, “and whaddaya know, BAM! He forgives himself, and everything’s okay again. You know that little ritual, don’t you, R.J.?”
“I didn’t kill anyone” was his measured reply.
“Now, it all starts out when our asshole gets himself a crush on a young lady who, shall we say, attends the same church. Let’s call this young lady, Ariel, just for the sake of argument. Now, Ariel doesn’t like Mister Asshole the same way he likes her, you see… Just a second… You had a crush on a young lady named Ariel, didn’t you? What a coincidence.”
“I didn’t kill Ariel,” R.J. insisted, raising his voice. “How many times do I have to tell you, I didn’t kill anyone?”
Ben paused and engaged himself in a tremulous staring contest with R.J. When the young man finally shifted his gaze downward, Ben looked quietly from Deckert’s face to mine. I managed to find a small bit of solace in the fact that my friend’s expression showed me without a doubt that he wasn’t enjoying what he was doing to the young man.
“Let’s skip the rest of the story,” Ben finally said. “How about if we get back to a few questions.” He pulled out his small notebook again and began leafing through it, eventually stopping at a page and tucking the others back. “So, are you familiar with a Miz Ellen Gray?”
R. J. bolted upward from the chair, his red-rimmed eyes widened and wild. I could physically see his muscles tense throughout his body as he fought to bring himself under control.
“Why are you asking about her?” he demanded. “What happened?”
Deckert rested his hands on R.J.’s shoulders once again and gently but firmly guided him back to his seat.
“Tell me!” he appealed.
“She was the girlfriend you were trying to protect, wasn’t she?” I broke my self-imposed silence, as the reason for his feelings of guilt became instantly clear. “You two were having an affair, weren’t you?”
He never answered me. I could feel his anguish and confusion as he silently held his head in his hands. If it wasn’t obvious to Ben and Deckert, it was at the very least obvious to me. R.J. was not the killer. Of this, I was completely sure.
“She’s dead, isn’t she?” R.J. finally asked, lifting his head slowly. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that Ellen Gray had been the third victim, but the tone of his voice told me that he had already figured that out. I could only look away as he stared sullenly into space.
“Now I want a lawyer,” he stated flatly.
The solemn atmosphere of the room was disturbed suddenly as a key audibly turned in a lock, and the heavy steel door was pushed open, revealing the hardened face of the guard.
“Detective Storm,” he stated with businesslike brevity. “Phone call.”
Ben excused himself and left the room. Detective Deckert and I remained behind, locked in with a stubbornly silent R.J. His gaze remained fixed upon an invisible spot on the wall behind me. Deckert and I simply stared at one another.
Only a few brief moments passed before Ben returned to the interview room. His jaw was set grimly, and his eyes held more than just slight concern.
“Carl,” he addressed Deckert. “Can you see that our friend here gets his phone call? I’ve got somethin’ ta’ take care of.”
“Sure,” Deckert replied coming instantly more alert. “Is everything okay?”
“I’ll let ya’ know,” Ben told him, then turned his attention to me. “C’mon, Rowan, I need you ta’ come with me.”
I was perplexed at first, then morbidly hopeful as the thought that another murder might have occurred crossed my mind. I disdained the concept of such a thing happening, but it would go a long way in clearing R.J. of the crimes.
“What’s up,” I asked as Ben and I hurried up the hallway. “Has there been another murder?”
“No,” he replied as he signed us out and slipped his weapon back into its holster. “Not another murder.”
“Then what?” I pressed. “What was that call about?”
“Let’s just get goin’,” he ordered, grabbing my shoulder and nudging me forward.
“What the hell?!” I exclaimed. “What’s going on Ben?”
He let out a heavy breath, and his hand shot up to smooth his hair back and then came to rest massaging his neck.
“That call was Allison,” he finally said.
“Yeah,” I urged, instantly feeling concern for him and his family. “Is everything okay? Is the little guy all right?”
“They’re fine,” he answered without concern. “They’re just fine.”
“Then what’s going on?” I demanded.
“Allison’s on duty today,” he finally told me. “She called because an ambulance just brought Felicity in to the E.R. at her hospital.”