Free Perfect Trust: A Rowan Gant Investigation by M. R. Sellars Page A

the pad full of paraphrased
prose came out of me involuntarily, and I didn’t find it amusing in
the least.
    “I’m being serious here, Ben,” I returned, my
voice dull.
    “Okay, okay.” He tossed the notepad onto his
desk blotter and leaned back in his chair. Propping one ankle
across his knee then clasping his hands behind his head, he gave me
a serious look. “I’m listenin’. What’s the deal with this
notepad?”
    I had called my friend as soon as I’d been
released from the hospital. The doctor still had no definitive
results back from the tests that had been run, but I was feeling
fine, so she’d relented and allowed me to leave. I knew full well
that I hadn’t had a stroke, but I wasn’t about to try explaining
what had caused my very pronounced symptoms. If I had, I’d probably
still be talking to the staff psychiatrist as well as being taken
on a tour of their lovely padded accommodations. I’d been down this
road before, and I was in no hurry to visit it again.
    You tend to get a small spectrum of
reactions when you look at someone and say, “I’m a Witch.” The
three biggies go something like this: One, they look at you like
you are crazy. Two, they try to introduce you to Jesus and save you
from yourself; or, three, they run screaming in the opposite
direction. In my case, being male, I also get the added, ‘”Don’t
you mean warlock?” This usually prompts me to give the actual
definition of the word warlock , that being “oath breaker.” The
resulting short explanation of the fact that male or female, a
Witch is very simply called a Witch, is usually a good one for
glazing over the eyes of the uninitiated in less than sixty
seconds.
    Though I don’t make a secret of my religious
path or even my mystical leanings, I’ve learned to avoid the
subject in given situations. Sometimes it just doesn’t pay to be
honest—plain and simple.
    When I’d made my call, I had found Ben behind
his desk at City Homicide working on the situation that had gotten
him out of bed only a handful of hours before. I’d suspected as
much would be the case and hadn’t even tried calling him at home.
When I told him what I wanted to show him, he’d suggested that I go
to my own home and get some rest. I doubt he’d really expected me
to follow the suggestion because he didn’t seem at all surprised to
see me coming through the glass-fronted double doors of his
department just over thirty minutes later.
    Felicity on the other hand, had been a
tougher sell. Though her outward appearance may be that of fragile
beauty, my wife was as headstrong as they came. I was fully aware
that what came across on the surface as stereotypical Irish
stubbornness and temper was truly born of intellect, will, and
protective instinct. Still in all, igniting that temper was
something better left undone unless you had a damned good reason. I
just didn’t feel I had a choice this time around, even if my reason
was no more than repeating pages of nonsensical rhyme on a notepad
and a gut-twisting bad feeling about them.
    In the end, it took me all of fifteen minutes
to convince her that if she didn’t take me by City Police
Headquarters on the way home, I would simply find a way to take
myself. She had finally given in, and at this particular moment she
was parked next to me in one of the stackable, molded-plastic
chairs the detectives used for visitors. It was no secret that she
wasn’t happy with me in the least, but I was betting she would get
over it. She always did.
    I shifted in my own seat, it also being a
refugee from the stack of seventies era furniture, and succeeded
only in moving the discomfort from one side of my body to the
other.
    “Did you happen to notice anything other than
the similarity to a children’s book about green eggs?” I asked.
    “You got nice handwriting.” Ben shrugged.
“Kinda pretty. I especially like that little curly-q thing you do
with the bottoms of the I’s.”
    “Exactly,” I