I slowly opened one eye as I continued to feel the gentle pressure against my neck. Finally, partial focus sluggishly set in through the misty darkness, and I was greeted by the concerned face of a paramedic in full climbing gear suspended before me in the fog.
“He’s still alive!” I heard him say as he removed his fingers from my pulse point and began to carefully attach a safety harness about my waist. “Can you hear me, Mister Gant?”
I forced my other eye open and attempted to answer but was only able to emit a thin whisper that scarcely resembled a “yes.”
I barely remember anything that followed. Whether an hour passed or only five minutes, I couldn’t say. All that remains clear are the chaotic sounds of a crime scene investigation in full swing and Ben Storm’s concerned face, haloed in fog and flickering emergency lights, looking down at me as I laid on a gurney.
“Goddammit, white man. Ya’ just can’t stay outta the middle of shit, can ya’?” was all I heard him say before I slipped once again into nothingness
CHAPTER 28
“The plates were stolen,” Ben was telling me. “We tracked the VIN on the panel van but didn’t get much. The artist sketch from your description hasn’t matched up ta’ anything, and the prints he left on your truck were too smudged to be much good to us at all. The two partials the CSU pulled off the bruises on your neck still haven’t hit on AFIS yet, so that’s lookin’ like it’ll be a bust. Either way, we sent all of ‘em along with the blood samples to the crime lab in D.C.”
I was staring out the window of my hospital room, watching as winter tried to rally back with a sudden cold front. The grey sky spit wet flurries in a thwarted attempt at actual snow, and the look of it all gave me a slight chill. Gloomy was the only way to describe it, and it matched my mood well.
Five hours of surgery had gone into repairing my arm and shoulder, so I was told. All I knew of it consciously was the fact that my left arm was now completely immobilized, and the incisions were already starting to itch mercilessly as they began to heal. My voice was weak and hoarse from a bruised larynx, and the rainbow of colors ringing my neck formed a hand-shaped contusion that still throbbed with tender soreness. I didn’t even remember the CSU tech taking the close up photos of the two fingerprints that had been temporarily pressed into my flesh.
A burn scar in the perfect shape of a nine-millimeter shell casing graced my left cheek, and beneath the rope bruises on my forearm, a faint pink outline of Christ’s Monogram still remained. Other than that, physically I was on the mend. Emotionally, however, I still wasn’t entirely sure what kind of damage had been done. Daily visits from a psychiatrist didn’t do much to determine that fact, either.
I had given them my description of the killer shortly after waking up from a twenty-four hour sleep. To the best of my ability, I had relayed the events to Ben, and he had filled in some of the blanks for me.
Detective McLaughlin’s daughter had arrived home completely unscathed shortly after I had set out in pursuit of the killer. The present theory was that it was he who had called Charlee’s husband with the ruse. This theory only served to create more questions about how he knew who to call and where he might have obtained his inside information. Rumor was already bandying about that an internal investigation would be forthcoming.
My only other question had been how they had found me. To that, the answer had been simple. When the killer had knocked the cell phone from my hand, it had remained on and broadcasting. With the help of Special Agent Mandalay and the cell company, they had managed to triangulate the general vicinity of the broadcast. Also, a motion sensor at the end of the bridge had alerted the authorities that someone had passed by the locked gate on the grand Old Lady. And finally, a phone call from the night watchman at the water treatment plant who had noticed dim lights from the vehicles headlamps served to pinpoint the frantic search.
The first officers had actually arrived on the scene in time to hear the report of the Glock when I had fired it.
“Still too much ice in the river ta’ drag, but we did a full search of the surroundin’ area,” my friend continued. “The bastard’s body’ll prob’ly end up on the rocks in a month or two. Or maybe downriver with the floodin’ from the thaw… Hey, Row… You listenin’ to me?”
Ben’s sudden silence wedged its way into my ears, and his words registered in the moment that followed. “What? Yeah…” I croaked in a pained whisper. “Yeah, I’m listening.”
“So anyway,” he proceeded, “looks like we might not be able to identify this asshole unless we can find the body and come up with a dental record match. That’s assumin’ he’s had dental work. Of course, eventually there’s gonna be a house turn up empty with all that shit in the basement you described. If we’re lucky, whoever finds it’ll think it’s weird and call us. Maybe that’ll give us a clue about who this prick was.”
“You won’t,” I forced my voice through the dull ache.
“Won’t what?”
“Find his body.” I slowly shook my head. “He’s still out there.”
“Yeah. Suckin’ mud from the bottom of the river.”
“No. He’s still alive.”
“Get real, white man,” my friend objected. “You shot the bastard point blank.”
“I shot him in the arm, Ben,” I returned in rebuttal.
“With a high frag round that contained Teflon gel,” he detailed. “At point blank you prob’ly blew the fucker’s arm clean off, and besides, that gel’s toxic. Not ta’ mention that from your description of the events that followed, he fell off the bridge and into the river. No way he coulda survived.”
“I know all that, Ben, but it’s a feeling. He’s still out there. Alive. And he’ll be back.”
“Can’t go with ya’ on this one, Kemosabe. You’re just rattled. You must not be doin’ that groundin’ thing or somethin’. The asshole is toast, no two ways about it.”
I didn’t belabor the point. Maybe Ben was correct. I hadn’t exactly been walking a very balanced path over the past month, and what had occurred on that bridge a mere handful of nights prior was still pounding in the back of my skull. Guilt over not being able to stop this miniature Inquisition in time to save the lives of several innocent individuals, Pagan and non-Pagan, was an ever-present tingle along my spine as well. My intuition in this particular instant could very well be wrong.
At any rate, I could only hope that it was.
Three Months Later…
EPILOGUE
It was obvious even to the casual observer that the man was favoring his left arm. Whenever he would move it, he would do so stiffly and occasionally reach over with his right hand to give his shoulder a quick massage. Other than that minor point, he seemed non-descript enough. Long brown hair tied back in a ponytail, a neatly trimmed beard, and glasses. Less obvious and only upon closer inspection would you notice the odd pink scar on his forearm or the brooding gaze beneath his brow.
Sun shone brightly down upon the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge, and a warm spring breeze playfully wove itself through the green painted trusses that made up the superstructure of the Old Lady. The man lingered for a long while at the join of two of the metal beams where they created an inverted triangle. His gaze held fast across the muddy brown waters of the Mississippi river to the rock levy that caused them to roil and whitecap in a shallow defined arc across the full width of the river.
Nearby, a strikingly beautiful woman clad in a photographers vest commanded a pair of leashed canines to sit and stay. Brushing back her unruly mane of long red hair, she then brought a camera to her eye. Carefully bringing it to bear on the nearest of the pair of gothic looking water intake towers that rose majestically from the river on the south side of the bridge, she depressed a button and the shutter clicked, followed by the whirring motor drive as it advanced the film within.