Free The Law Of Three: A Rowan Gant Investigation by M. R. Sellars Page B

everyone, including me. “Bitch.”
    The thick calm that enveloped her as she
spoke was something I had seen only once before and was in no hurry
to see again. The button that had now been pushed was well up the
column from what I’d done earlier. I wasn’t sure if there were
enough Gods to create a pantheon that was capable of quelling the
fire that had just been ignited.
    I actually saw a wash of surprise flow across
Lieutenant Albright’s features as she stared back at the redheaded
tempest in front of her. It was obvious that Felicity’s outburst
had blindsided her.
    “What did you just say?” she asked.
    “I think you heard me, then,” my wife
answered with frigid purpose in her voice as she cocked her head to
the side and glared. “But I’ll be more than happy to repeat it for
you if you’d like.”
    The door on the back wall of the lobby
clicked loudly and then whooshed open just as Albright started to
open her mouth. A pale young man with a stoic expression and
scraggly goatee poked his head through the opening and regarded us
with general disinterest. After a moment, he pushed the door wider
and held it open with his back against it.
    “Doc says for you to come on back” was all he
said.
    Albright swung her gaze from the young man
back to Felicity and shook her index finger perfunctorily as she
mustered a menacing tone. “We will finish this discussion
later.”
    “Aye,” my wife retorted as she gave her a
curt nod, but still never broke eye contact. “I’ll be looking
forward to it, then.”
     
    * * * * *
     
    “Johnathan, could you please turn that down?”
The medical examiner on duty called out to the diener who had led
us back to the autopsy suite, raising his voice to be heard over
the music that filled the room.
    On the opposite wall, the young man was
standing at a stainless steel sink performing what must have been
some daily routine considering the mechanically adept way he was
approaching it. Whatever it was, it involved angry-looking medical
implements that appeared as though they would be more at home on
the set of a horror movie.
    Aphrodite’s Child’s “Four
Horsemen” was blaring from the speakers of a compact
stereo nestled on a shelf in an out of the way corner. Considering
the tune was one that came from my generation, it was not the type
of music I would have expected to appeal to someone as young as the
assistant, but to each their own.
    He wordlessly abandoned his task for a moment
to step over and spin the knob on the bookshelf sound system. He
dropped the volume out of our range of hearing just as the chorus
was about to inform us as to the color of the fourth horse.
    It didn’t matter. Like most anyone, I already
knew the color and what it represented. I found no particular
amazement in the coincidental symbolism either. It was the sort of
thing that seemed to be happening to me constantly these days, and
I’d grown jaded to it.
    “Thank you,” the M.E. stated aloud, the tone
sounding as though the words came more from habit than actual
courtesy.
    We were standing next to a metal table in the
tiled room. The form resting atop it was zipped partially into a
body bag that could be seen at the foot. From the vicinity of the
waist upward, it was also covered by a white sheet, a necessity
because of the two-by-four that was still attached to the
corpse.
    The weathered length of wood jutted out on
either side, exposed for all to see. Randy’s pale hand was twisted
into a pained claw, his wrist mottled purple and swollen where
several circlets of bailing wire held it fast to the wood. Frozen
blood streaked the appendage and glistened wetly as it thawed.
    I stole a glance at Felicity. She was holding
her eyes tightly shut with her fist pressed against her lips. Her
visceral anger had been replaced for the moment by bitter
anguish.
    I took a deep breath of the frigid air in the
suite as I struggled to maintain control, myself. The smell of
death and raw meat stung my