CHAPTER 27
The steel trusses that make up the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge form a superstructure that rests upon beams and piers to span the five thousand plus feet to the other side of the Mississippi. In an angular trek they hopscotch across the water like an undulating multi-humped serpent before taking a twenty-four degree turn and continuing on their merry way to the other side. It was at the vertices of two of these truss sections that we went over the side.
In the pit of my stomach, I experienced an instant feeling of weightlessness followed rapidly by the heavy sense of impending death. I held tightly to the nylon rope as it slid quickly through my bare hand like a serrated knife. My palm burned, begging to let go, and I consciously gripped the lifeline even tighter.
There was a loud, clanging thump as our bodies impacted the wide steel support running beneath the joint of the trusses. We hesitated for a moment, and I felt myself continuing to fall as I slid between the decking and the beam. I continued downward for a handful of inches before the rope tightened around my forearm. Less than a foot later, I jerked to a sudden halt as the noose tightened and the line snapped taut.
I felt muscle tear as the inertia of my plummeting body was stopped cold by nothing more than my left shoulder being forcibly dislocated. I had cried out in pain so often in the past few minutes that my voice was completely raw, and all I could manage was a pathetic whimper.
Thus far my idea had worked. I was still alive.
Through the mist I could just make out the lights of the water treatment plant located in the distance, just south of the actual rock chain that gave the bridge its name. The normally lazy river rushed over this stone anomaly to create a dull roar below. My ever-present phobia of drowning sent a wave of fear to pierce my bowels and was rapidly joined by the terrifying realization that I was not all that fond of heights either.
Above, music still blared from my idling truck, and the mournful strains of a violin added sad emotion to a slowly rising bass hum. A heavy groan punctuated the music from somewhere near my head.
I was twisting slowly on the end of the rope and simply hung there trying to deal with the pain as I lazily spun around to face north. Prickling numbness was overtaking the pain in my hand and forearm as the tight nylon cord dammed off the blood flow. I was almost thankful as it began to ooze downward into my dislocated shoulder.
I could feel something in my right hand, and I slowly brought it up to my face. A large wad of dirty white hair was protruding from between my fingers as they remained in a death grip. Slowly, and deliberately, I forced my hand open and allowed the mass to fall. I watched it as it floated lightly away and melted into the thick mist.
In retrospect, I should have been paying attention to the activity immediately above and to my rear.
A cold palm came quickly against the back of my neck, and bony fingers slipped about my throat from the left. I gasped and kicked as the killer began squeezing as tightly as he could.
Evenly, and with great purpose, bass notes echoed with haunting measure into the night against the crying of the violin.
The smooth tempo of the movement began its migration toward a spastic rhythm.
I sputtered and bucked as I clawed at the massive hand that was threatening to crush my windpipe. I struggled to slip my fingers in behind his and pry them away, but his grip was too tight.
“As you, Rowan Linden Gant, are damned in body and soul,” his angry voice announced as if the words were necessary to validate his actions. “Your sentence on this day is death. The sentence, to be executed immediately and without appeal.”
The back of my head rang hard against the metal beam as I kicked the air and fought to breathe. I could hear my own gurgling as consciousness announced it would be leaving soon. I grasped weakly at his fingers before my arm fell away to my side and bounced against an annoying lump on my belt.
Frantic notes plucked sharply on the strings of a harp insinuated themselves into the ebb and flow of the music from above…
The melody continued from above as I tried to reason out what the annoyance could be. I told myself in no uncertain terms that this was neither the time nor the place to worry about such things. My arm spasmed and caught once again against the weighty protrusion at my side, urging me to think harder on its meaning. In a black and white silhouette against the inside of my eyelids, the nature of the object flashed to the front of my fading thoughts. My hand shook uncontrollably as I hooked my fingers beneath the retaining strap on the holster and pulled. They shuddered and numbly slid away with no effect.
A brace of violins engaged in an angry exchange bringing ever more urgency to the pace of the melody…
The killer was hanging precariously from the support beam, leaning out and downward to reach me. As he shifted for a better position, his hand loosened in a quick spasm. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. I gasped in a small slice of a breath and felt a brief moment of clarity surge through my body.
I pushed my still shaking hand back up to my side then thrust my thumb beneath the nylon strap and pushed outward. With a dull pop it released, and I immediately wrapped my hand around the grip of the pistol.
The miniscule piece of breath I’d been able to grasp was failing quickly, and my vision was darkening as my eyes started rolling back in my head. The abbreviated lesson in the use of the pistol flashed through my mind as just so much jumbled nonsense. I could find no way to apply the instructions to my present situation.
Being unable to aim, I centered on what was left of my strength and pressed the gun upward at an angle across my chest until it met resistance.
The panicked voices of various stringed instruments blended to a thick, disharmonious crescendo in my ears…
For a brief instant I considered the fact that my left arm was now completely numb, and I silently begged for the resistance I found to be his arm and not my own. Then, tensing my body, I pulled the trigger.
The muzzle flashed.
The explosion reported deafeningly in my ear.
The spent shell ejected directly toward me and transferred its searing heat to my cheek.
Thick blood spattered like heavy rain across the side of my face.
The cold fingers snapped open.
Something thudded heavily against me and fell away.
A tortured scream faded into the distance below.
A single violin cried into the night, fading with sorrowful purpose toward silence…
Everything went completely black.
The tinkling sound that met my ears made no sense at first. I couldn’t really place it as anything I was familiar with other than the fact that it sounded like metal against metal. Even at that it was competing with a thickness that filled my head and made everything muddy and dull.
Numbness still permeated my left arm as well as a good portion of my shoulder and upper chest. I could feel the dampness of the fog against my face but didn’t really care. Warmth was creeping into my body now to replace the chill, or so I believed. All I wanted to do was go back to sleep, but the annoying brightness of the noise was growing louder.
From somewhere in the back of my head, random voices began backfilling the silent spaces to push urgently in and out of my semi-conscious world. On the periphery of my senses, I could feel something immediately in front of me, and the sharp tinkle was emanating from it.
My slow twist halted, and I felt something warm pressing against the side of my neck. For a brief instant I considered the pistol still gripped tightly in my right hand and thought perhaps I should shoot the intruder. Fortunately for us both, the message traveled a maze of nerve endings and never found its way to the proper set of neurons in order to create the motion.