Never Burn A Witch: A Rowan Gant Investigation by M. R. Sellars Page B

verse may have been nothing
more than an afterthought at the first scene crossed my mind. It
was something I didn’t believe but at the same time couldn’t
dismiss, so it remained cocooned in my brain as a minor bother
until such time as it could emerge as a full-fledged
aggravation.
    With the mobilization of the MCS, Ben had
pulled some strings in order to get the body of the latest victim
transferred to the city morgue where Doctor Sanders could be in
charge of the postmortem. The county coroner had put up a minor
fuss, citing jurisdiction and various boundaries, but whomever Ben
had in his corner had made short work of the red tape and the
unprecedented occurred. With all the I’s dotted and T’s crossed,
the case was transferred to the city without delay. By the time I
had returned from my visit to the ER, the remnants of the woman’s
charred corpse had been carefully removed and were already en-route
downtown. It was there to which we were now endeavoring to
return.
    The crisp halogen beams of the headlights
seemed, from one moment to the next, to be more hindrance than help
in the near blizzard conditions. Cacophonous rumblings overhead
were randomly punctuated with still louder aerial booms, each one
seeming to add another measure to the deluge of fluffy white
flakes. For the first time in many years, Saint Louis was
experiencing the meteorological phenomenon aptly called “thunder
snow.”
    “Plan is,” Ben continued, throwing a quick
glance at me, “ta’ go with your theory that this asshole is
creatin’ his own Inquisition, or whatever, and assume he’s not
gonna stop at two.”
    “He won’t,” I asserted.
    Ben slowed the vehicle and ignoring the
barely visible signal, cautiously hooked a sweeping right turn
through an empty intersection. The road conditions were
deteriorating with each passing minute, and he didn’t dare come to
a complete stop for fear of becoming stuck. He gave me an animated
nod and spared only a quick glance in my direction as he spoke.
    “I believe ya’, and apparently so do a few
people in important places. Not that anyone is happy ‘bout the
theory, mind you. At any rate, word came down from on high while
you were gettin’ patched up. The chief wants ya’ involved... Every
step of the way.”
    “I can think of a lot of other things I’d
rather be involved in,” I said. “But it’s nice not to be considered
a crackpot for a change.”
    “I’ll be honest with ya’, Row. I told ‘im I’d
ask ya’, but I also let ‘im know I wasn’t all that keen on it
and...”
    “I thought we had this conversation this
morning, Ben.” I cut him off with an exasperated sigh and prepared
to refute another episode of his self-imposed guilt.
    “Yeah, well that was before ya’ ended
up bein’ some kinda mystical carvin’ board,” he shot back. “But
lemme finish, will ya’... Like I said, I told ‘im I wasn’t keen on
the whole idea and that I ‘specially didn’t like bein’ put in the
position of askin’ you just because we’re friends...” Before I
could voice another objection, he drew in a deep breath and
continued. “Then, I told ‘im that knowin’ you like I do and
considerin’ what you’ve seen so far today, I figured we’d be hard
pressed to keep ya’ out of it
without lockin’ ya’ up.”
    After a short pause, he added, “The decision
is still yours to make, though. Ya’ don’t have to do this.”
    “Well, since I’m the one that wanted to head
down to the morgue in this mess, I guess you already know what that
decision is,” I said. “So that’s a moot point. If it would make you
feel any better though, tell him that next time he can ask me
himself.”
    “I already did.”
    “I guess I should have known you would.”
    Ben tacked the lumbering van down the
snow-packed avenue and fell in behind a city maintenance dump
truck. In the hard swaths of the headlights, we could make out the
attached salt-spreader spewing bluish granules of