Read Harm None: A Rowan Gant Investigation for Free Online

scene that wasn’t in the
photos?”
    “Hopefully something that will tell me if
this guy is for real or just trying to make it look that way.”
    “And that somethin’ would be?”
    “I won’t know until I see it...or feel it,” I
explained. “What I’m looking for might not be visible to the naked
eye.”
    “You mean like some
kinda psychic thing? You know I don’t believe in that stuff.”
    “I know, but I do, and if it gives you a
solid lead, what does it matter?”
    “Okay, tell me this.” He skipped past
answering my question and proceeded into another of his own. “You
ain’t lookin’ for revenge or somethin’ are you?”
    “No. Not at all,” I answered with unabashed
honesty. “There’s no need. What goes around comes around. He’ll get
what’s coming to him whether I help you or not…Eventually.”
    “Yeah, well that’s a pretty idealistic
sentiment.”
    “It comes with the religion.”
    Ben grunted and stared thoughtfully into the
depths of the mug held between his large hands. After a short
period of suggestive silence, he looked up at me with deadly
serious eyes. “Mind if I ask where ya’ were Wednesday evenin’?”
    I was taken aback by the question and what it
implied. At first I was hurt and then angry. It took less than a
second for the anger to be replaced by understanding. I knew the
victim, and I knew The Craft. The symbols and words in the pictures
were no great mysteries to me. I was sure that Ben didn’t truly
suspect me of the crime, but if he was going to bring me into this
investigation, someone was bound to ask the question. He was
correct to assume that I would prefer it came from him.
    “Felicity and I had dinner with my dad,” I
answered. “We went over to his place around four-thirty and left
from there.”
    “Where’d you eat?”
    “Union Station,” I told him. “There’s a
restaurant down there with a fantastic mixed grill. Before you
ask,” I added, “we got home around nine-thirty.”
    “Your old man can verify this, right?”
    “The phone’s right there.” I pointed at the
bookshelves. “His number is on the speed dial. I’m sure the receipt
is upstairs if you want a copy of that too.”
    “I’m sorry, man.” He looked back down at his
drink. “You know I had ta’ ask...”
    “...Or somebody else would,” I finished the
sentence for him. “It’s all right. I was a little miffed at first,
but I understand.”
    “Okay,” he answered, then drained the coffee
from his cup and set it on the table before him. “Let’s go do
this.”
     
    * * * * *
     
    Ariel Tanner had lived on the first floor of
a four-family flat on a street called Shenandoah within the city
limits of Saint Louis. From my house in the suburbs, it took the
better part of thirty minutes to reach it even though the Saturday
morning traffic was light. The morning sun was already climbing in
the sky when we rolled into the alleyway behind the flat and Ben
pulled the Chevy into something resembling a parking space.
    “This is it,” he told me, switching off the
knocking engine and pushing open his complaining door.
    I climbed out as well, and we stood in the
small patch of grass that served as a backyard, quietly studying
the rear entrance of the building. A short flight of wooden stairs
led up to a whitewashed exterior door. The porch light, fitted with
a dim yellow bulb, still burned in the crisp shadows caused by a
small overhang jutting from the brick wall to cover the
landing.
    “The apartment next to hers,” Ben told me,
“and the one directly above are currently unoccupied.” He pointed
to each of the windows. “The other upstairs apartment belongs to a
forty-year-old woman who’s stone deaf. Besides, she wasn’t even
home.”
    A ghostly flash of noise battered my eardrums
for a moment. The briefness and ethereal quality of the mechanical
rumble told me it was only in my head, but I knew immediately what
it meant.
    “And the air conditioner was running,”