M Sellars - Harm none

“Then fuckin’ tell HER I’m not here,” he shouted back angrily.

“What are you looking for?” I queried as I watched him quickly shuffling through the papers.

“Ten print card,” he answered. “All bank employees are printed for security and exclusionary purposes.”

“Exclusionary purposes?”

“Like if the bank gets broken into or robbed,” Deckert explained. “Employees’ prints are going to be all over the place, so we need copies in order to exclude them from any of the prints lifted during the investigation.”

“Here it is,” Ben intoned urgently and tossed the heavy stock card face up on the desk.

Each of the outlined squares contained a neatly inked copy of Roger Henderson’s fingerprints. The black and white study of irrefutable personal identification stared back up as the three of us brought our eyes to bear on the right thumbprint.

What met our triple-barreled gaze was a curving pattern of lines arcing around into what might have been a tight whorl. Might have been, because the lines ended abruptly in a blank, smeary looking splotch.

“It’s him,” I whispered.

“Get the prosecuting attorney on the horn,” Ben ordered Deckert calmly as he handed the rest of Roger Henderson’s employee file to him. “Then call Benson. I want a warrant yesterday.”

“I’m on it,” Deckert was already dialing the phone.

“Detective Benjamin Storm?” a demanding, almost angry, female voice came from behind us.

We turned once again and were greeted by an attractive brunette woman who appeared to be in her late twenties. She was dressed in a nicely fitted grey suit that scarcely managed to conceal the forty-caliber bulge at her right hip.

“Yeah,” Ben answered.

She thrust her hand forward. In it was a large leather case, held deftly open with her index finger as she prominently displayed her badge and FBI identification.

“Special Agent Constance Mandalay,” she announced indignantly. “I thought you weren’t here?”

Ben looked her coolly in the eyes without blinking and answered her accusation head on. “I lied.”

The two of them engaged in a short-lived staring contest as Agent Mandalay slipped her identification back into her jacket and folded her arms across her chest. Petite-framed and standing no taller than five-foot-six, she was forced to look up at Ben, but that wasn’t unusual as most everyone else had to do the same.

Ben stood with his hands on his hips, eyes tightly locked with hers. To the outside observer, they seemed to form a brief living caricature of David and Goliath. Had the urgency and gravity of the current situation been of a lesser degree, I am certain the standoff would have elicited a number of laughs.

“Well, at least you’re honest about that.” Agent Mandalay maintained her resentful demeanor as she spat the comment. “How long did you plan to keep ducking my calls? You had to know I’d show up here eventually.”

“For as long as I needed to,” Ben retorted, continuing with the precedent he had set for truthfulness. “And unfortunately, yes, I knew some Feeb would come walkin’ through the door at some point. Hell, I’m surprised ya’ waited this long.”

“Had it been up to me, we wouldn’t have,” she shot back. “I was ready to come down here when you made your queries through VICAP. You should have called the Bureau for help with the first homicide. We have a lot more experience in this field than you do. We have experts on occult practices that…”

Ben cut her off mid-sentence, “I got my own expert, thank you.”

“Who? Him?” she stated incredulously as she waved her hand in my direction. I assumed she recognized me from the media coverage. “He claims he’s a Witch, for Chrissake! I’m talking about people with PhD’s, not some flake you picked up off the street.”

I was mildly insulted, but then, I was also quite used to the ridicule and demeaning commentaries from uninformed, closed-minded individuals. The fact that I made no secret of my religion forced me to deal with it on a daily basis. Fortunately, witch burning was no longer an accepted practice, so verbal debasement and occasional graffiti were pretty much the worst I had to face. Because I had become so jaded to it, her comment was easily and quickly disregarded.

Ben, on the other hand, was furious. Ever since I had known him, he had been very protective of his family and friends. Even though he had wallowed in his own disbelief until just recently, he had never passed judgment upon my religion or me. The look that suddenly crossed his face was testimony to the fact that he was not about to allow someone else to do so.

“You wait just one goddamn minute!” he asserted, angrily thrusting his index finger at her. “Don’t come in here with your holier-than-thou attitude and start insultin’ people you don’t even know. Whether you like it or not, Rowan Gant is part of this investigation. A VERY IMPORTANT part.”

“Yes he is. He should be a suspect.”

“Don’t even go there! If it weren’t for him, we’d all still be scratchin’ our asses tryin’ to figure out what’s goin’ on. I’ll put him up against your PhD’s any day of the week.”

“Is that why you have four homicides and a kidnapping to deal with?” Thick, bitter sarcasm dripped from her comment.

“I’ve got four homicides and a kidnappin’ to deal with because there appears to be a bumper crop of sick assholes this year,” he echoed. “Now, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m busy. Because of Rowan, we know who the sonofabitch is, and I’m tryin’ ta’ get a warrant, so we can stop him from killin’ this little girl. If you wanna help, fine. If you wanna cop an attitude and cause me a lotta grief, then you can take your fuckin’ Ivy-league-piled-high-and-deeps and shove them up your…”

“Ben!” Carl Deckert’s voice sliced surgically through the air as if on cue, preventing Ben from completing his verbal instructions to Special Agent Mandalay. “The warrant’s signed. Benson’s on the phone.”

“Tell ‘im to get his ass back here now,” Ben turned and barked over his shoulder. “I want everyone in the conference room in fifteen. And have somebody get a map of the streets around this shithead’s house.”

Detective Deckert acknowledged and immediately relayed Ben’s message into the phone before hurrying off to set up the meeting. Ben turned his attention back to the thin-lipped, staunchly staring face of Agent Mandalay.

“Like I said, Special Agent, I’m busy. If you’re still interested in helpin’, the tactical meeting is in fifteen minutes.”

Her expression never changed as she hissed venomously, “I’ll be there.”

“How in the hell can you stand wearing one of these things?” I whispered my question to Ben through the darkness behind his van.

I was trying to force myself to ignore the itching sensation that was erupting over the majority of my torso as we took our positions in the shadows. The air was unmoving and viscous with humidity, and though it was already after ten in the evening, the mercury had only dipped into the mid-eighties.

Rivulets of sweat brought on by the tenseness of the situation, as well as the heat, were tickling my chest and back as the force of gravity inched them slowly downward. Mid-chest, a particularly sensitive bundle of nerves began to complain. The more I tried to keep my mind off it, the more intense it became, until finally, a violent itch burst forth. Instinctively, my hand shot up to relieve the prickling sensation with what promised to be an ecstatic scratch. Unfortunately, instead of giving me the relief I sought, my fingers impacted with a dull thud against the object of my earlier vocal disdain-a Kevlar flak vest.