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.
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
