The Law Of Three: A Rowan Gant Investigation (22 page)

My friend looked pretty much as he had when
I’d last looked at him. Soot streaked and well worn. He peered back
at me with a tired expression. “You gotta stop this shit, white
man,” he told me.

“What?” I croaked, my voice just as raw as
his.

“Floppin’ around like a fish outta water,” he
said.

“Yeah,” I agreed softly. “I think you’re
right.”

“Was it one of those outta body things?”

“Yeah.”

“Just checkin’. You weren’t sure last
time.”

“I’m pretty sure this time.”

“Get anything from it?”

“Bad taste in my mouth,” I replied.

“I would too.”

I didn’t bother to explain that my comment
wasn’t intended as a metaphor.

“Mister Gant?” A different voice called my
name.

“Yeah?” I grunted. “Who wants to know?”

“Mister Gant, my name is Rick,” the voice
returned. A pair of surgical-glove-sheathed hands came into view
and were followed by the face of a paramedic. “How are you
feeling?”

“Are you serious?” I asked.

“Are you having any trouble breathing?” he
continued, ignoring my sardonic query.

“No,” I returned.

He adjusted a plastic tube beneath my nose
then stole a glance at his watch. After a few seconds, I realized
that he had taken hold of my wrist. Once he finished taking my
pulse, he scribbled something on a clipboard. “Try to relax Mister
Gant. We’re only about seven minutes out.”

“Yeah, sure,” I answered.

I rolled my head slowly to the side and
brought my eyes back to Ben. He was sitting on the bench across
from the gurney, still holding his bandaged hands limply in his
lap. He had leaned back against the wall and had his eyes closed.
His chin was tilted up, and his jaw was set tight. I watched as he
reflexively reached up with his right hand and started to smooth
his hair back then winced before dropping the appendage back down.
He let out a heavy sigh and frowned even harder.

“Porter got away, didn’t he.” I finally made
the matter-of-fact statement.

“Yeah,” my friend answered dully. “Yeah, he
got away.”

“Any leads?” I asked.

He shook his head slowly and then opened his
eyes as he lowered his chin and looked over at me. “He dumped the
van five blocks away. They’re doing a house to house, and they
brought in a canine unit, but nothing yet.”

“He’s not stupid,” I offered. “He had an
escape plan this time around.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“What about the officer he hit?”

“Broken arm and prob’ly a concussion. Looks
like he’s gonna be okay.”

“Good.”

“Asshole wants you in a bad way, Row. And he
doesn’t care who gets hurt in the process. Not this time.”

“Yeah,” I muttered.

It was bad enough that I had to live my life
under a rock because of a demented killer, but everyone around me
now seemed to be at risk. Pagan or not. It definitely was not a
good feeling.

“Any word yet on Carl?” I asked.

His voice had a distant quality when he
answered. “No. Not yet.”

“Sometimes feelings can be wrong, Ben,” I
offered.

“Let’s hope you’re right.”

“We’ll be at the hospital in just about five
minutes,” Rick offered as a lull fell into the halting
conversation.

“I never did call Felicity,” I lamented.

“I called ‘er,” Ben told me.

“What did she say?”

“You don’t wanna know.”

“Is she mad?”

“You wanna think about that question and ask
it again?”

“Stupid question, huh,” I grunted.

“You said it, not me, but yeah, stupid
question,” he returned. “Gotta give her credit though, she seemed
like she stayed pretty calm considerin’.”

“That’s a plus.”

“Yeah, I guess, but she didn’t sound too
good, white man.”

“What do you mean?”

He shook his head. “She just didn’t sound
good, that’s all.”

“Is there something you’re not telling me?” I
pressed.

I waited, but he didn’t answer.

I moved on to the next question. “So can you
get someone to pick her up?”

“Mandalay’s already bringin’ her,” he
offered. “The way Constance drives they’re probably already
there.”

I tried to chuckle and it hurt. I winced,
then coughed, and then winced again.

“What’re ya’ laughin’ at this time?” Ben
asked.

“You talking about Mandalay’s driving,” I
told him as I forced myself to relax in an attempt to deal with the
aches. “Which one are you, the pot or the kettle?”

“Gimme a break.” He rolled his eyes and then
sat quiet for a moment before taking on a serious tone once again.
“So listen, Kemosabe, I need to talk to you about somethin’.”

“I’m sorry,” I told him. “I didn’t mean to
insult your driving.”

“Not that.” He scrunched his face and waved a
gauze-covered hand at me. “I think we need to get you and Felicity
outta town for a while.”

“You mean you think I should run from this,”
I said.

“The wingnut’s on a mission, Row,” he
returned. “I think it would be the best way to go. Not just for you
but for Felicity and everyone else too.”

I was chagrined. “So, it’s more like you want
to get me out of the way before someone else gets hurt.”

“Yeah,” he admitted. “Maybe. I guess that’s
part of it. But mostly it’s for you and Firehair.”

“What aren’t you telling me, Ben?” I
asked.

“Man…” he let his voice trail off for a
moment. “Row,… Jeez… Listen to me, Felicity’s with Mandalay so
she’s safe, okay?”

I couldn’t keep the sharpness out of my
voice. “Tell me what’s going on Ben.”

“The S.O.B. had already called Felicity’s
cell phone when I got ahold of her. He told her you were dead and
that she was next.”

I suppose it was a good thing that I had been
strapped to the gurney. Not that anyone in the immediate vicinity
was in any physical danger from me, of course, especially
considering the shape I was in; but what my friend had said
produced a result similar to that of mixing fire and gunpowder.

By the time it was all said and done, I
couldn’t begin to remember everything I had said—or to be more
accurate—screamed. What I could recall were several targeted
expletives and a devout promise that I would kill Eldon Porter as
soon as I had the chance. My rant lasted from its inception in the
back of the ambulance, through the lobby of Emergency, and right on
into the treatment room. It had finally taken the threat of
sedation to get me to calm down.

In reality, all the threat did was get me to
shut up, because calm I definitely was not.

“Jeezusaychchrist!” Ben made the exclamation
in an almost monosyllabic burst as he jerked away from the doctor
who was treating him. “Do ya’ think you stuck that damn thing in
there far enough?!”

My friend had not allowed himself to be
separated from me. He insisted that we be treated in the same room
and had staunchly refused to have his sidearm secured anywhere
other than within his immediate reach. As long as Porter was loose,
he didn’t plan to take any chances, and he was less than trusting
of the hospital’s security staff. In fact, he publicly referred to
them as rent-a-cops, and he didn’t mean it in a good way. Not that
it was any great consolation, but so far, he hadn’t been doing any
better at making friends than me.

He was currently sitting in a chair with his
hand resting on a small, wheeled table. The doctor was seated
across from him and peering at the appendage through a magnifying
lamp while working with a pair of tweezers. Fortunately, for Ben,
those were the least dangerous looking of the stainless steel
implements he had laid out on the side. Of course, that is probably
one of the reasons that until his most recent exclamation, Ben had
kept his eyes focused on the door instead of the procedure in front
of him.

I was sitting on the end of the examination
table watching the pair with only passing interest. Truth be told,
I wasn’t really paying that much attention. I was still stewing
about Porter’s call to my wife, and my brain was splitting its time
between formulating a plan for revenge and processing the sensory
input. Neither one seemed to be winning out, and all I was truly
accomplishing was making my headache worse.

Just in case that wasn’t enough to deal with,
for some reason there was a song playing in the back of my head,
and I was having a hell of a time attaching a name to it. I knew
I’d heard it before, but the title, artist, and everything else was
escaping me.

I thought for a moment that if I gave up
trying to place it then it would probably come to me. That’s how
things always seemed to work. Unfortunately, the more I thought
about not thinking about it, the more I dwelled on it. Once again,
a prime example of how things always seemed to work.

I staved off another twinge of pain from
somewhere around the back of my grey matter and decided to ignore
the tune. For the moment, paying closer attention to the goings on
before me seemed the most logical way to do so.

I watched as the intern regarded the
industrial-sized Native American in front of him with an exhausted
gaze and then took hold of his hand once again. “Detective Storm,”
he stated. “You are the one who refused to have a local anesthetic.
Perhaps you would like one now?”

“I already said no,” Ben answered.

“Then I suggest you find a way to deal with
it.”

“I don’t like needles,” my friend
muttered.

“Not many people do,” he returned. “But it
would hurt a lot less if you had the local.”

“No.”

“Fine, if that is your choice. However, you
are going to have to stop flinching. You still have some metal
fragments in your hand, and we need to get them out.”

“Well don’t you think you can be a little
gentler or somethin’? I mean do you have to dig around like
that?”

“Detective,” the intern began, clearly at the
limit of his patience. “I don’t tell you how to do your job, please
refrain from telling me how to do mine.”

Personally, I thought the doctor was handling
the situation well considering that this outburst had made
something on the order of the fifth time Ben had jerked his hand
away—and, that’s not to mention that he hadn’t shut up either.

During their exchange, the door had swung
open, and a nurse entered, armed with some fresh gauze and
washcloths. She had been assisting with both of us earlier, and she
now set about cleaning the area surrounding the wound on my cheek.
I simply tilted my head to the side without a word, shifting my
gaze between her and the floorshow. I couldn’t help but notice that
she wore a bemused expression as my friend bickered with the intern
behind her.

“So much for bedside manner,” Ben huffed.
“Freakin’ Marcus Welby you ain’t.”

“Marcus who?” the intern asked in an absent
tone.

My friend raised an eyebrow and cocked his
chin down as he stared at the doctor. “How old are you?”

“I don’t really think that has any bearing on
your treatment, Detective.”

“Doctor Drew may be young,” the nurse offered
aloud without looking away from her task at hand, “but he knows
what he is doing, Detective Storm.”

Ben glanced over at the back of her head and
then returned his gaze to the doctor. “You really don’t know who
Marcus Welby is?”

“No, I don’t,” he replied.

“Jeez. What’s this world comin’ to?”

“You said it yourself earlier, Ben,” I
offered in a flat tone, speaking for the first time since I’d been
threatened with a hypodermic full of sedative. “We’re getting
old.”

“Yeah, well, old is one thing,” he agreed,
“but that’s no excuse for…”

The repetitive electronic refrain of his cell
phone interrupted him, and he reached around to his belt with his
free hand. He fumbled for a moment since the appendage was securely
wrapped in fresh gauze but managed to grasp the small device. As he
brought it up, he gestured at me and then to the intern with the
stubby antenna while it continued to trill. “It’s no excuse for him
not knowin’ who Marcus Welby is.” He finished the admonishment then
thumbed the phone to life and put it to his ear. “Yeah, Storm
here.”

“Is he always like this?” the nurse asked in
a quiet voice as she swabbed my cheek with cold antiseptic. A
light, southern lilt underscored her words.

I grimaced as the sting set in and tried not
to flinch then shifted my eyes over to her. “Pretty much. Don’t let
it bother you though. He’s really a good guy.”

My own voice still sounded rough, and its
tone remained emotionless and tired. I realized when I heard myself
that I didn’t sound particularly convincing.

“I’ll have to take your word for it, Mister
Gant,” she returned with a smile.

“No, really, he is.” I tried to sound more
sincere. “And please call me Rowan. Every time I hear ‘Mister Gant’
I think my father is here.”

She chuckled. “All right then, Rowan. You can
call me Dorothy. I am afraid, however, that I will still have to
take your word for it on Detective Storm.”

“He grows on you,” I offered.

She pressed something to my cheek that I
later discovered was a butterfly closure and then inspected it
closely. “There. All done.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem,” she told me. “Doctor Kirkman
will be back in shortly. He wanted to go over a few things with
you.”

“That’s fine,” I said then shifted to look at
her. “Oh, my wife is supposed to be here.”

She nodded. “Detective Storm told us. Someone
will bring her back as soon as she arrives.”

“Thank you.” I tried to inject some
enthusiasm into my still flat voice. “I really appreciate it. And
there’s just one more thing.”

“Certainly,” she said as she cocked her head
to the side and gave me a questioning look.