M Sellars - Harm none

“No offense, white man, but do ya’ know how many parks with lakes and geese we have in the metro area alone? Not to mention the state.”

“Too many.”

We continued down the small incline, past a wide opening in the chain link fence that ran alongside the ramp. I watched out my window as the obese moon lumbered across the night sky, arcing high above the trees. Apparently, a slight breeze was blowing, as I noticed the boughs of a stand of pine trees were gently waving. A line of tall pines obscuring all but the smallest glimpses of the lake behind them.

“Stop,” I almost whispered at first and then spoke louder. “STOP!”

Felicity immediately cranked the steering wheel to the right, pulling us onto the shoulder. The tires ground coarsely against the loose gravel when she jammed on the brakes and brought us to a sliding halt.

“What? What’s wrong?” she appealed.

Similar questions, only spoken by Ben’s voice, were issuing raspily from the cell phone as I handed it to her and opened my door. Slowly, I covered the short distance between the Jeep and the fence, staring out across the moonlit landscape. I twined my fingers through the links and pressed my face against the warm, galvanized metal, intently studying the scene.

A line of tall pine trees reached upward to the star- speckled night. Between them, I could see the occasional shimmer of moonlight reflecting from rippling water. At the head of what appeared to be a trail, a small white and black rectangle was affixed vertically to a short post. It was too far away to read with the unaided eye, but I didn’t have to make out the words to know that it simply said, PLEASE DO NOT FEED GEESE.

I turned my gaze upward at the almost perfectly round disk floating in the sky. Marbled grey and white, its luminescence cast the view in an eerie glow. In my mind, I could see the minute hand relentlessly chasing its smaller and slower rival about the surface. Overtaking it and repeating. Overtaking it and repeating.

A familiar, searing fire sprinted suddenly up my spine, bringing with it a dark foreboding. The hair stood out from the back of my neck, and my body felt like a living pincushion in a vat of alcohol as every other follicle stiffened to attention. Crackling static danced across my skin, setting its already tortured surface ablaze.

“ Hey, mister, what time is it?” The little girl tugs on my sleeve. “I have to go soon. What time is it? Hey, mister!”

The hardened steel wedge of realization buried itself soundly between the hemispheres of my brain and drove relentlessly inward. I scrambled back to the Jeep in a frenzy, awkwardly slipping and falling on the loose gravel twice before making it. Felicity had the cell phone pressed to her ear and was apparently filling Ben in on my sudden, inexplicable behavior. Sensing what I was after, she handed me the device before I could snatch it away from her.

“It’s happening now, Ben!” I fired into the phone with absolute certainty.

He began protesting immediately, “Wait a minute, you said the full moon would be on Friday.”

“It’s after midnight, Ben,” I appealed, fighting to keep from shouting. “It IS Friday. Look at a calendar or a newspaper or something. What is the exact time the moon will be full?”

“Hold on…”

I could hear the door swing open and his distant voice as he called out for a calendar. Quickly, he returned, joined by the sound of rustling papers and other voices.

“It’s not on here, Rowan,” he responded in exasperation. “It’s got the phases but not the times. Wait a minute… what’s that?” One of the muted voices interrupted him, and he left me hanging for a thirty-second eternity. I could hear frantic muttering in the background before he returned. “Benson’s kid is an astronomy student. He got her on the horn and she says that in our time zone, it’ll be one-thirty-seven A.M.”

“What time is it now?” I appealed to my wide-eyed wife.

“Ten till one,” she answered.

“Less than an hour, Ben,” I told him insistently. “He’s going to kill her in less than an hour.”

“But where? He could be at almost any park in the state. Shit, he might not even be IN Missouri anymore.”

I realized that in my rush to convince him of our severe deficit for time, I had not yet voiced my other revelation. “No Ben, he’s still in Missouri. In fact, he’s right here. Right now. I can feel him.”

“Right where?”

“Wild Woods Park, just inside the city limits of Overmoor.” I turned to face the gently waving pine trees once again. “I’m standing right outside the fence.”

“Are you sure about…” He cut himself off before he could finish the question. “Forget I said that. Stay right where you are, Rowan. You understand me? I’m callin’ Overmoor and gettin’ some squad cars over there right now. We can be there in fifteen minutes, twenty tops. Don’t go in until we get there, Rowan. You hear me? Don’t go in the fuckin’ park.”

True to what Ben had said, two Overmoor squad cars descended upon us at almost the same instant I switched off the cell phone. At my urging, we moved the three vehicles farther down the shoulder in order to remain out of the line of sight of anyone in the park. Seventeen lethargically oozing minutes later, Ben and Detective Deckert arrived, followed hotly by a dark sedan bearing U.S. government plates.

Special Agent Constance Mandalay looked far more intimidating than attractive in the muted glare of the distant streetlamp. The strict angular shadows that sliced through the sodium vapor glow painted her slight figure in an almost violently imposing likeness as she fixed her angry gaze on me.

“Did I not make myself clear, Mister Gant?” she javelined the query tersely. “You are no longer a part of this investigation. Period. Now, since Detective Storm seems intent on following you blindly about, you’ve not only bought yourself a world of trouble, you’ve managed to jeopardize his career as well.”

My head was still being relentlessly hammered from the inside, and fire danced up and down my spine, making me painfully aware of Roger’s presence in the moonlit park. The seemingly endless misery coupled with our race against time had begun deeply affecting my overall disposition. I was walking nothing other than the paper-thin edge between steady calm and explosive anger. The instant Agent Mandalay inserted herself into the grotesque equation, I lost all semblance of balance.

“Go fuck yourself,” I told her drily.

“EXCUSE ME?” she demanded incredulously, visibly taken aback by my uncharacteristic and graphic instruction.

The low chatter among the uniformed officers came to an abrupt halt, and everyone present turned their eyes upon the close-quartered standoff that had materialized between us.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” I apologized for my rudeness but still maintained my umbraged tone, “but you’ve had it in for me from the very beginning, and I have no idea why. To be honest, I don’t care that you don’t like me. Whether you want to believe it or not, Roger Henderson is in this park.” I stole a quick glance at my watch and then displayed it to her. “And in less than twenty-five minutes, the sonofabitch is going to stick his hand into a little girl’s chest and rip her heart out. Now, if arresting me makes you happy, then be my guest. Just do that little girl a favor and wait until after we’ve stopped this asshole from killing her.”

Agent Mandalay stared back at me with a slackened expression. A retort half formed, her lips parted suddenly then almost immediately closed without revealing the substance of the comment. The only sound to escape her was a reluctantly acquiescent sigh. “Okay. Fine. We’ll search the park, but rest assured, Mister Gant, I am not through with you.”