All Acts Of Pleasure: A Rowan Gant Investigation by M. R. Sellars

there were still a good number of
questions for which I needed answers. I suppose for that reason the
process had actually become more than mere research. In its own way
it was a ruthless obsession. If I wasn’t working or taking care of
some chore around the house, I could be found reading, searching
the web, or making calls to purported authorities on the subject in
hopes of gathering more information. With both Felicity and me cut
out of the loop on the Wentworth and Hobbes homicide cases, as well
as her being a subject of that ongoing investigation, it was all I
had left that I could do.
    I certainly understood why we had been shut
out, but that didn’t mean I had to like it or like that my friend
was now ignoring my calls. In fact, even though Helen had reassured
me on that point, I still found it very disturbing.
    Of course, it only stood to reason that we
would be more or less disavowed given that the microscope was now
aimed at my wife. They couldn’t very well have us being privy to
what they might be looking for to use as evidence against her. Not
that I believed there really was anything for them to find, mind
you, and I was certain their legwork would soon prove that out.
Still, I simply couldn’t sit idly by and wait for them to finish
because I also wasn’t necessarily willing to trust the police in
this specific endeavor.
    The fact is, there were some serious
underlying issues at play. I had begun consulting for the Greater
Saint Louis Major Case Squad somewhere around five years ago. Ever
since the first time the tortured spirit of a murdered young woman
had chosen to slap me across the back of the head with an ethereal
two-by-four and beg my help. It hadn’t been easy getting someone to
listen, even my close friend, Ben. But, eventually he had come
around, as well as a few others within the local law enforcement
community. Since then, I’d racked up more than my share of unwanted
press clippings, but that was something that came with the
territory. Headlines like “Self-Proclaimed Witch Solves Serial
Murder Case” tend to sell papers. Unfortunately, it got to be my
not-so-smiling face displayed beneath the bold type.
    The real problem, however, was that while
there were those who realized I could be a benefit, I also had some
extremely vocal detractors. There were more than a few who felt my
ethereal visions were just parlor tricks and bids for attention.
Others literally claimed it to be the work of Satan. Those were the
ones who even went so far as to publicly denounce me purely because
of my chosen religious path.
    Under different circumstances I would have
just tried to ignore them like I usually did, but this was a
completely different situation. It was largely because of the fact
that some of these individuals held fairly high-ranking positions
that I wasn’t convinced of a fair and impartial investigation. In
my mind, finding the real killer was the best way to be sure
Felicity wouldn’t get railroaded as a way of getting to me. I
tended not to voice that too much because I knew that it sounded
like the convoluted plot of a Hollywood conspiracy thriller, but
the truth is that it was pretty much my life in a nutshell.
    On top of it all, my need to clear Felicity
hadn’t completely overshadowed the fact that a terribly sick
sociopath was still out there. A sexual sadist none of whose games
were safe, sane, or consensual. It didn’t take an advanced degree
to surmise that she was going to kill again. Since I knew for a
fact the police were looking in the wrong place and were showing
all the signs of continuing to do so, it fell to me to do something
about it before she produced another victim.
    Adding up everything I already knew, it
seemed that finding out all I could about Voodoo would be the best
course of action under the circumstances. I hoped that the
knowledge would provide the clues necessary to track down the
person responsible, and some of the primary leads I was following
were the