Love Is The Bond: A Rowan Gant Investigation by M. R. Sellars Page B

involved with a homicide
investigation. Maybe I had finally managed to simply forget.
Whatever the reason, I had been forced back across the line between
callousness and humanity. I had been living in a calm, safe world
long enough now that in a single instant I discovered I wasn’t
nearly as jaded as I had once feared.
    Unfortunately, that realization was forced
completely out of my mind by the acrid tang of bile on the back of
my tongue. I heard Felicity call out a description followed by a
focal length and light source just as she’d been doing earlier.
However, I was completely unable to write it down, especially not
now that I had my head hanging almost between my knees, and I was
struggling to control my breathing. The bright stab of the strobe
flash flickered red through my tightly shut eyelids, and I heard my
wife saying something again, but I was still unable to respond.
    In some small way, I suppose I should have
found it comforting that the reason for my preoccupation was the
fact that, at the moment, I was desperately trying not to
involuntarily expel my morning coffee.
     
     
     
     

CHAPTER 6:
     
     
    My mouth was still somewhat watering from the
nausea, but the major wave seemed to have passed for the most part;
at least I hoped that it had. I was still keeping my eyes closed,
but the image I’d seen was freshly imprinted on my retinas, so I
suppose it didn’t really matter. I was going to see it one way or
the other, and I suspected that my rampant imagination was probably
coloring my memory of the sight to appear much worse than it
actually was.
    “Rowan?” Felicity’s worried voice filtered
into my ears, and I felt her hand softly pressing against my
back.
    “I’m okay,” I mumbled after puffing out a
heavy breath.
    “Keep yourself grounded,” she told me, her
tone wavering as I heard the note of concern begin to rise.
    “No,” I slowly shook my head. “That’s not it.
Don’t worry.”
    “What is it then?”
    I swallowed hard and opened my eyes, then as
I slowly brought myself upright, I pointed past her through the
doorway. “Just a little queasy, that’s all.”
    The first thing that had caught my eyes was
the very point that now had me transfixed. A large splotch of blood
intermixed with what was presumably brain tissue and bone fragments
formed a hideous blot against the dingy tile of the bathroom’s back
wall. My suspicion, in this case, had been dead wrong. My
imagination hadn’t even begun to do justice to the horror that now
fell directly in my line of sight. It was all I could do to keep
from staring at it, and truth be told, even that wasn’t enough. I
was losing the battle with each passing second.
    I tried to calm my churning stomach by
forcing myself to detach from the reality of what I was seeing and
view it from an analytical standpoint. It wasn’t easy, considering
the circumstances, but after a moment I managed to invoke the thin
delusion out of self-defense. It was no panacea, but it helped,
even if only a little.
    Judging from the density of the smear along
with the shattered tile, the point of the matter’s impact appeared
to have been just over halfway up the wall. From there, it
continued to spread heavily along its vertical path. Above that,
the splatter arced outward in a wide pattern, eventually becoming a
light spray of rusty red upon the dull surface. Below the broken
squares, blood and bits of flesh trickled downward, streaking the
ceramic and eventually pooling on the bathtub ledge. I finally
allowed my gaze to roam as I followed the drizzles of crimson
downward, inevitably coming to rest on the victim himself.
    Wentworth, or what was left of him, was a
gross adornment to the already dirty floor. He wasn’t what you
would call a small man, but he also wasn’t exactly enormous either.
Still, his bulk went a long way toward filling the tile floor of
the small bathroom. He was visibly overweight by a good margin and
certainly out of shape, both facts