M Sellars - Never Burn A Witch

Her hair was pulled back in a loose French braid that poured down her back in an auburn stream, and she was casually dressed in a pair of jeans and a denim shirt. Her waist length leather jacket was hanging open, and her matching gloves peeked out of a pocket in the insulated lining. She looked up at me with tired green eyes as she brushed a fugitive strand of her fiery mane from her face and tucked it behind her ear. Even slightly disheveled she was absolutely gorgeous.

“I’m only kidding and you know it.” I grinned. “I don’t think much rubbed off on you, although you’ll probably want to get your jacket cleaned.”

She nodded in agreement. “Aye, I was thinkin’ just that.”

“How’s the hangover?” I questioned.

“Gone for the moment. Well not so much gone but at least forgotten. I still surely feel like I need some real sleep then,” she expressed and absently began to chew at her lower lip. “Row, about last night…”

“Forget it,” I told her before she could continue. “You were upset and rightfully so… I should have realized you would be feeling what I was going through, especially considering that it has happened before… I just wasn’t thinking.”

She stared past me into the distance for a moment, continuing to gnaw at her lip, then returned her gaze to mine. “I just don’t want you to shut me out then. Even if you think you’re protecting me. We both know that won’t work, and it will just cause problems for us in the long run. Better you let me face it with you… Still, I shouldn’t have been such a mess when you arrived home.” She sighed heavily. “Not exactly very supportive of me now, was it then? And if you had actually ended up going to a hospital or something…”

I detected a slight catch in her voice as it trailed off, and I knew she was choking back a tear. As my lovely wife would tend to do, I knew that inside she was unnecessarily beating herself up over something she couldn’t change.

I reassured her with another tight squeeze. “Ssshhh. Don’t worry about it. That’s all over and done with. I know I’ve been keeping you at a distance on this.” I paused for a moment to collect my own thoughts before letting out my own tired sigh. “Honestly, I don’t think I’ve been very good about staying grounded myself, and I think that might be affecting me. The whole idea of what this guy is doing has me kind of rattled.”

“And it should.” Felicity nodded. “But you’re just one man, and you can’t be taking the responsibility of stopping him on yourself alone.”

“It’s my nature, Felicity.”

“Aye,” she nodded again. “And it’s my nature to change that about you, Rowan.”

“There she is!” Ben’s voice interrupted as he sidled up to us. “The Red-Haired Terror of Cole Street.”

“So I’m an urban legend, am I now?” Felicity forced a light chuckle as she pulled back from me and quickly whisked away an escaped teardrop from the corner of her eye.

Ben tactfully ignored the motion and threw me a quick glance. I simply nodded and smiled.

“That’s what I’m hearin’ from the witnesses,” he answered as he gave her shoulder a light squeeze. “You okay? You don’t smell so good.”

“Aye, not you too?” She rolled her eyes at him and smiled. “And yes, I’m fine. I swear, everyone has been acting like I just single-handedly captured someone from the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list or something.”

“She doesn’t know?” Ben looked over at me questioningly.

“No.” I shook my head. “Hadn’t gotten that far yet.”

“Know what, you guys?” She swung her glance back and forth between us. “And just what would you two be talking about?”

“Well,” he began, “the bum you tackled might not’ve been on the Ten Most Wanted list, but he had somethin’ in his pocket that we’ve been lookin’ for.”

“What?” she asked. “Come on now. Out with it.”

“A Bible,” I told her.

“Okay…” She looked at me and shook her head slightly, while giving me one of her trademark ‘so what?’ shrugs. “And?”

“Part of the killer’s M.O. has been ta’ leave behind a Bible with a verse highlighted and bookmarked,” Ben explained.

“Except for the second scene,” I continued for him. “There wasn’t one, and it’s been eating away at me ever since that day. It looks like the Bible this guy had in his pocket may very well be the one that was missing.”

“You don’t think this old homeless man is the murderer, do you now?” She searched my face with wide eyes.

“No, not at all,” I returned. “But I think he was at the second murder scene and picked up that Bible.”

“So I guess I’m still missing something,” she appealed. “What does having this Bible do for you?”

“Probably nothin’ in and of itself,” Ben answered her. “Considerin’ that all of the others have been clean, and especially since this one has been in the possession of this bum for a week. But…” He held up a finger. “It sure as hell places ‘im at the scene, and that makes ‘im a potential witness.”

“Miz O’Brien?” The same tall uniformed officer we had come downstairs with now injected himself into our conversation. “We need to get your statement now.”

“Go ahead,” I urged and gave her a quick peck on the cheek. “I’ll be here when you’re through.”

“Just have someone bring ‘er up to Homicide when you’re done,” Ben instructed the officer then looked over at Felicity and winked. “I’ll make sure he’s here. Oh, and by the way…”

“Aye?”

“Lovin’ the accent.”

“We haven’t been able to get anything out of him, not even a name,” the uniformed officer told us as we approached the door to the interview room. “We already took care of prints and pics. Booked him as a John Doe. PD’s office has been notified, and the on-call legal beagle should be on the way.”

“So is he waitin’ for the attorney?” Ben queried the patrolman.

“Dunno,” the young man shrugged. “He hasn’t said much of anything except for yammering about Tracy Watson every now and then. Mainly he just sits there and stares off into space. There was a bottle of booze in his pocket, and he blew about two points over the limit.”

“Great. So we got a liquored up JD runnin’ around tweakin’ television personalities tits, and he just happened to have that Bible in ‘is pocket.”

“That about sums it up,” the officer replied. “So I don’t know what you’re going to get out of him until he sleeps it off.”

“You pretty sure he understood ‘is rights?”

“He indicated that he did, but in his condition…”

“Yeah…” Ben nodded and let out a sigh as he gripped the doorknob and gave it a twist. “Wunnerful.”

The old man was still wearing handcuffs when we entered. They had endeavored to clean him up to some extent, but the telltale stain of his encounter with a large double latte was still drying on the front of his ragged overcoat. In actuality, the hot drink had succeeded in washing away some of the accumulated filth from his face, and a few weathered blotches of almost clean skin peeked through the dirt randomly. His chin was bristling with at least a month’s worth of scraggly beard, and his grey hair was matted and stringy.

Felicity’s comment about the old man being a bit rank had been a kind one. In the confines of the small room, the stench of stale urine and long fermented human sweat was almost overpowering. The smell of decaying garbage hovered about the bum like a halo, intermixing with the other putrid odors to form an invisible eye-watering haze of foulness. It was a small wonder she hadn’t picked up more of the offending scent than she had.