The Law Of Three: A Rowan Gant Investigation (20 page)

“Yeah. Explosion. Ringing.” I sputtered once
again as my breathing started to come under control for the first
time in what seemed like forever. “He okay?”

“He’ll be fine, sir,” she told me.

“Ben?”

She pointed above and to my left, so I
twisted my head to have a look. My friend was remaining staunchly
by Deckert’s side as the paramedics were loading him onto a
backboard.

Ben pulled a clear, plastic oxygen mask away
from his face and sputtered, “I’m here, white man.”

I made out what he was saying more from
reading his lips than actually hearing him.

“Can you walk, sir?” The firefighter was
talking to me again.

I turned my face back to her and managed a
weak grin. “I was before you tackled me.”

She smiled back. “You didn’t give me much
choice. We were coming around the back to vent the structure, and
the first thing we saw was the three of you running like maniacs.
We couldn’t seem to get your attention though.”

“Well, there was this fire you see…” I let my
voice trail off.

“Yeah, that’s what I hear,” she answered with
a grin. “So, we need to get this coat off of you.”

I swallowed hard and looked back at her as if
she had lost her mind. “You did notice that it’s snowing out here,
didn’t you?”

My wry comment was peppered with small fits
of coughing.

“Yes,” she nodded as she spoke. “But
apparently you DIDN’T notice that you were on fire.”

The abrupt tackle suddenly made all kinds of
sense. The light must have snapped on behind my eyes because she
just looked back at me and grinned.

“I thought someone was attacking me,” I
offered.

She nodded. “I pretty much got that from the
roundhouse. Can you sit up?”

I pushed myself up and felt half the joints
in my body pop and creak as I did so. I winced and continued until
I was fully upright. The firefighter gingerly extracted my arms
from the heavy winter coat, and without hesitation, the cold air
wrapped itself around my sweaty body, bringing an instant chill.
The snow beneath me was already melting from my body heat and
soaking into my pants, leeching the warmth from me. Sitting there,
I started to realize just how miserable I felt.

The firefighter worked her fingers through
the elastic strap on another oxygen mask and pulled it over the
back of my head then adjusted the business end over my nose and
mouth.

“Just breath normally,” she instructed.

I nodded as I sucked in the fresh oxygen then
spit out a quick cough.

“I know it’s hard, but don’t gulp it,” she
told me again. “Just breath normally.”

I stared across the yard at the back of the
house and saw that with the exception of the smoke billowing from
the basement door, the outer structure seemed relatively intact. Of
course, I had no idea what the damage was like from the front. In
any case, the blurry scene before me sat farther in the distance
than I had expected. Apparently, we had been covering ground at a
pretty good clip when we escaped.

“You’re lucky,” my rescuer told me as she
shuffled around and draped a blanket across my shoulders. “It looks
like your coat took it all, except maybe…”

“Except maybe…” I started to ask then pulled
the mask out from my face for a moment. “Except maybe what?”

“Did you happen to have a ponytail?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Well… Not so much anymore.”

* * * * *

The front of the house was a somewhat
different story as compared to the back. Although it could have
looked far worse, it was obvious upon first glance that the
structure had been involved in a fire. A portion of the roof had
been burned through, and all of the windows were broken. Smoke
still streamed out of any open orifice, mixing itself with the
falling snow to form an eerie curtain of haze.

Firefighters were still entering and exiting
the home, attacking what remained of the blaze with hoses that
trailed in through the front door as well as around to the back
side. Still, from outward appearances, it didn’t look anywhere near
as bad as it had been on the inside.

Being mid-afternoon on a weekday, there was a
noticeable absence of onlookers; something I’m sure made life
easier on the professionals trying to do their jobs. One of the
firefighters had told us, however, that a news crew was on the
scene.

Ben and I were presently parked in the back
of an ambulance, watching the goings-on through the open back door.
Carl Deckert had already been rushed from the scene in a different
life support vehicle, siren blaring and emergency lights strobing.
The last thing we had been told was that he had gone into a
full-blown cardiac arrest but that the paramedics had been able to
defibrillate his heart. He certainly wasn’t out of danger, but he
had a strong, regular pulse and was stable for the time being.

My cheek was throbbing where an EMT had
extracted a piece of shiny, brass-colored metal about the size of
the nail on my pinky finger. From the look of it and the
circumstances of it embedding itself there, we decided that it was
probably a piece of the collar surrounding the deadbolt.

Ben was seated across from me in the back of
the ambulance. He had been far from immune to the flying shrapnel
himself. He was presently slouched forward with his elbows on his
knees, quietly staring out the opening in the back of the vehicle.
His hands were wrapped in loose windings of gauze that were stained
bright red in the spots where blood had soaked through, and he
allowed them to hang limp.

I hugged the blanket tighter about myself and
reached around to carefully feel the back of my neck. There was
some minor soreness but nothing worse than one would get with a
mild sunburn. However, just as the firefighter had told me earlier,
where there had once been eight inches of hair gathered into a
ponytail, my hand felt a singed stump of bristles.

“You needed a haircut anyway, white man,” my
friend said with little emotion as he glanced in my direction.

Neither of us seemed to be able to muster
much feeling other than exhaustion. My hearing had begun to return
although my ears still felt stuffy, and there was a faint ring in
the background. Ben complained of the same, but at least we were
able to carry on a conversation without shouting at one
another.

The ambient noise of thrumming diesel engines
on the emergency vehicles drifted in low, and we could hear radios
and various voices of the firefighters on the scene.

“Maybe so,” I returned. “But I can think of
an easier way to have gone about it. How are your hands?”

“Fuckin’ killin’ me,” he answered in a flat
tone. “How ‘bout your face?”

“About the same.”

One corner of his mouth turned up in a weak
attempt at a grin. “Yeah, it ain’t doin’ me any good either.”

I shook my head. “You must be feeling okay.
You’ve still got your sense of humor.”

“I’m alive,” he agreed. “So are you. So’s
Deck… For now… That’s somethin’.”

“He’ll make it.”

“Yeah.”

My shoulder was throbbing, and I reached my
right hand up to massage it. The over-the-counter painkiller
Felicity had dosed me with earlier had long since dissipated from
my system, and I was starting to wish for something a bit stronger.
I had all but forgotten about my ethereal migraine when the
situation in this plane of existence had demanded my full
attention; however, now that I was beginning to relax, it was
starting to rap on the back of my skull, insisting that it be
permitted entry.

“Really, Ben. He’ll make it. It’s not his
time.”

“You got some hocus-pocus goin’ on there?” He
raised an eyebrow.

Under different circumstances, he would have
looked pathetic. He still had soot streaking his face although one
cheek had been cleaned where he had an abrasion. His lower lip was
swollen, and his reddish skin peeked out around his mouth where the
dirt had also been wiped away. There were rings around his eyes.
The whole picture came together with fuzzy edges due to my missing
spectacles, and when he arched his eyebrow, I had the overwhelming
need to chuckle.

“What’re you laughin’ at?” he asked.

“You should see yourself,” I offered.

“Yo, Kemosabe, you got an Al Jolson thing
goin’ on yourself.”

“Yeah, so I guess we’re both a sight.”

“Prob’ly. So, you never answered me. The
thing with Deck. You got some inside info from the great
beyond?”

“Just a feeling.” I shrugged.

“I hope you’re right.”

“We just have to believe that I am,” I
offered.

He fell quiet for a long measure and stared
at the floor of the ambulance. When he finally spoke again, his
voice was heavy—weighted with a level of seriousness that made me
listen intently.

“Ya’know, cops get that too.”

“What’s that?”

“Feelings. Kinda like intuition or
somethin’.”

“Everyone does to some extent,” I
replied.

“Yeah, I guess.” He nodded then looked up at
me. “I ever tell you about Chris?”

“Wasn’t he your partner when you first got
out of the academy?” I asked. “The one that…”

He finished the sentence for me. “…Got
killed, yeah, that’s him.”

“You’ve never really talked about it to me,
no.”

“He was a good guy. Big S.O.B. Biggern’ me.
Good copper. You knew you could count on ‘im to have your back. I
learned a lot from ‘im.”

I just nodded acknowledgement and let him
talk.

“Anyway, the night he was killed we were
workin’ third. He was actin’ pretty nervous, real squirrely like.
We stopped to grab some coffee, and he finally opens up and tells
me that he’s got a weird feelin’ like it’s his night or somethin’.
Like he’s wearin’ a target. He said he’d had it all day and that
when he left his house, he turned around and went back in twice to
call in sick, but didn’t do it ‘cause he felt guilty.

“I didn’t think much of it at the time, but
he’d told me before that you develop a kinda sense about stuff.
Told me not to ignore my gut, ‘cause it was one thing a copper had
that could save his ass. Anyway, half an hour later we responded on
a liquor store holdup. He was hit the minute we got outta the car.
He was wearin’ a vest, but it didn’t matter ‘cause he got hit in
the neck. Last thing he said to me was ‘I shoulda stayed home
today.’”

I watched him as he fell silent, and then I
finally asked, “Have you talked to someone about this?”

“Hell yeah,” he returned, slightly more life
in his voice than there had been during the morose reminiscence.
“Helen got me through it a long time ago. I’m just sayin’ that
coppers get those feelings too.”

There was still a strange undertone in his
voice. Something told me that there was more to this story than
just an idle observation. It took a moment to dawn on me, but when
it did, it struck me like a hard slap.

“Did Carl say something to you?” I asked.

“When we got here,” he finally said with a
nod. “Told me he had a weird feelin’ like maybe he shoulda stayed
home today.”

“And how are you gentlemen doing?” The
paramedic asked almost cheerfully as he climbed into the back of
the ambulance with us and levered the door shut.

“Horrible,” Ben answered.

I felt like adding “and terrible” as my
answer to the question, but I really had no complaints that he
could help me with, so I elected to keep my mouth shut. My migraine
had returned full force, and it seemed to have inextricably
attached itself to the pain in my shoulder. The alliance that was
formed was executing a battle plan that included a full-scale
invasion of every nerve ending between the two points. While
something in the way of a nice analgesic sounded like a good idea,
considering the source of the ache, I wasn’t sure that it would do
any good.

“What seems to be the problem?” he asked my
friend, taking on a concerned tone.

“Ignore him,” I offered, wincing as I turned
my head. “He’s always like this. Have you heard anything about
Detective Deckert’s condition?”

“Not yet, but we can check on him,” he told
me.

“We’d appreciate it.”

“So how long are we gonna sit here?” Ben
interjected.

“We’re getting ready to transport you both to
the hospital in just a few minutes,” he told us.

“Guess I’d better call Felicity,” I said
aloud.

“Sucks to be you,” Ben told me.

“Thanks,” I gave him a sarcastic retort as I
sent my right hand toward my coat pocket only to realize that I no
longer had one. “Dammit! My cell phone was in my coat. Do you still
have yours?”

“Yeah,” he said as he nodded at me. “I think
so. Lemme see…”

He began to gingerly slip his gauze-wrapped
hand into his own coat pocket while looking over at the paramedic
who was making some notes on a clipboard. “So what’s the
holdup?”

“The police are doing a little crowd control
right now,” he answered without looking up.

“Crowd?” I asked.

“Well, not really a crowd,” he explained.
“But we got a few onlookers, and one of them has a vehicle blocking
the street.”

“Roads gettin' that bad?” Ben asked.

“Yes and no,” he answered, holding his hand
out and giving a little side to side wiggle. “This guy’s got a big
van, and he’s having a little trouble turning it around.”

“How hard can that be?” Ben spat. “What’s he
like a moron or something?”

“Ben!” I admonished.

“He seemed like a nice enough guy,” the
paramedic shrugged. “A little weird, but hey, live and let
live.”

“Weird how?” Ben asked.

“You know,” he returned. “One of those
religious types. When I walked by, he was saying something about
the Lord and consuming a fire or something like that.”