Never Burn A Witch: A Rowan Gant Investigation (48 page)

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

“T
he 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.

I
t 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.

The man cast a glance in her direction and
allowed himself a brief, thin smile as she gazed back at him.
Reaching into his pocket, he withdrew a stone and worked it in the
palm of his right hand with his fingers. If one listened close, he
could be heard whispering softly as he looked hard at the smooth
rock.

“In you I place my fears, my regrets, and my
guilt,” he almost chanted. “From you I retain my hopes, my dreams,
and my strength. With you I cast away the negative and keep only
the positive. I am one. I am whole. I am free.”

At the end of the third repetition, the man
drew back his arm with a twist of his body then thrust it rapidly
forward, casting the stone into the spring air. He watched on as
the burdened rock fell in an arc until it disappeared from sight
and made the tiniest of imperceptible ripples in the water
below.

The woman had moved close and now slipped her
arm in about the man’s waist and laid her head against his
shoulder. The man allowed himself a short relieved sigh as he
hooked his own arm around her and pulled her tight.

With a short whistle they called the dogs
that had been waiting obediently and continued lazily across the
span of the pedestrian bridge. Among the faded graffiti that marred
the asphalt, a fresher, brighter grouping of spray painted lines,
only months old, resided where the man had been standing.

A circle, decorated with hash marks along the
side arcs, and encompassing a large letter X that was bisected by a
large letter P.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

An active member of the HWA (Horror Writers
Association), M. R. Sellars is a relatively unassuming homebody who
considers himself just a “guy with a lot of nightmares and a word
processing program.” His first full-length novel, Harm None, hit
bookstore shelves in 2000 and he hasn’t stopped writing since. He
says that the biggest adjustment he has had to make with his
writing career is coping with the time spent away from his family
while traveling on promotional tours. Still, he approaches it with
the same humorously deadpan and occasionally acerbic wit that he
applies to life in general.

All of the current novels in Sellars’
continuing Rowan Gant Investigations saga have spent several
consecutive weeks on numerous bookstore bestseller lists as well as
a consistent showing on the Amazon.com Horror/Occult top 100.

Sellars currently resides in the Midwest with
his wife, daughter, and a host of what he describes as “rescued,
geriatric, special-needs felines.” At home, when not writing or
taking care of the household, he indulges his passions for cooking
and hanging out with friends.

M. R. Sellars can be found on the web at:

www.mrsellars.com

Brainpan Leakage the M. R. Sellars Satire Blog

www.brainpanleakage.com

OTHER BOOKS BY M. R. SELLARS

The Rowan Gant
Investigations

HARM NONE

NEVER BURN A WITCH

PERFECT TRUST

THE LAW OF THREE

CRONE’S MOON

LOVE IS THE BOND

ALL ACTS OF PLEASURE

THE END OF DESIRE

BLOOD MOON

MIRANDA

(Available in both print and e-book editions)