The Law Of Three: A Rowan Gant Investigation (35 page)

“We’ve got five minutes,” Ben yelled into my
ear. “They’ll have us there in two!”

“What about Constance?!” I screamed back at
him.

“The paramedics will be here any minute!” he
returned.

“Aye,” Felicity’s voice rose in my other ear.
“I’ll stay with Constance, then. You go!”

I snapped my head around to look at her. “Are
you sure?!”

She nodded with a quick flourish, eyes
glistening and her hair whipping about in fiery tangles. “Aye, but
damn you, Rowan Linden Gant, you come back to me!”

I felt like I was stuck in the middle of the
year’s biggest box-office thriller. The script was moving forward
at a frenzied pace, and we had now arrived at the ultimate stage of
climactic melodrama. The point where, just before he rides off to
save the world, the hero bares his soul to the gorgeous actress who
is playing the part of the love interest.

Had I not been in the middle of it, I think I
would have been forced to laugh at just how contrived it all
seemed. Instead, I threw my arms around her and squeezed, burying
my face against her neck beneath a cloud of spiraling auburn. I
didn’t know for sure what was ahead of me, but I knew that
something still felt very wrong. I didn’t really want to make a
promise that I might very well be about to break.

I suddenly found myself hating the Lord and
Lady for putting me in this position, despising them for what had
been heaped upon me so unceremoniously in the past two plus years.
I knew that I was rushing headlong toward a choice that no one
should ever be forced to make. Moreover, with knowing that an
innocent life was inexorably linked to my actions, there was no
escape for me.

I had no idea what I had done to bring about
this amount of horror as a payback, but I was rapidly approaching a
crisis of faith.

I choked back a lump in my throat and spoke
directly into my wife’s ear, mimicking her penchant for using my
full name whenever she wanted to drive her point home. “Remember
that I love you more than anything, Felicity Caitlin O’Brien.”

“Come on, Rowan!” Ben was screaming at me.
“We gotta go now!”

I barely managed to kiss her as my friend
manhandled me away, pushing me toward the waiting helicopter. “I’ll
bring him back, Felicity!” he screamed to her as we started to jog.
“Promise!”

The frigid gale slapped us about, plastering
any bit of loose clothing directly to skin and forcing its way
through. We broke into a half run as we hunched over, our bodies
almost involuntarily seeking escape from the driving force that
beat down upon us as we entered the circular envelope of the
spinning blades.

“What about your hand?!” I screamed at Ben as
we ran.

“WHAT?!” came his response.

“YOUR HAND!” I shouted again, gesturing to my
own then pointing to his. “WHAT ABOUT YOUR HAND?!”

He shook his head impatiently. “FUCK
THAT!”

I canted to the left to avoid a chunk of
vehicular debris then made a slight misstep on the slushy pavement
and slipped to the side. The muscles in my thigh strained as I
fought to stay upright, sending a sharp lance of pain through my
groin and down my leg. Ben quickly clamped a large hand onto my
upper arm and yanked me into balance, driving me back onto course
toward the aircraft. I glanced up to get my bearings as I limped
and saw the logo of a local television station emblazoned across
the side of the helicopter.

“THIS IS A NEWS HELICOPTER!” I shouted.

“I KNOW!” Ben yelled. “THEY WERE ALREADY IN
THE AIR! THEY’RE DOIN’ US A FAVOR FOR A CHANGE!”

We both slid to a halt against the metal and
Plexiglas skin of the vehicle. My friend immediately levered the
front door open and gave me a push as I started to climb aboard.
Once I was seated, he slammed the door and wrenched the rear
entryway open.

The pilot was pointing and gesturing, and I
realized that he was instructing me with hand signals to fasten my
seat belt. I twisted wildly about and found the webbed nylon strap
on either side of the seat then fumbled to marry the two ends
together.

I felt the rear door, as much as heard it,
when it slammed shut behind me. I shot a quick glance over my
shoulder and saw Ben planting himself into a seat and frantically
trying to secure his own harness one-handed. Another figure slipped
into view and began helping him.

I felt someone poking me in the shoulder and
looked over to see the pilot foisting a set of headphones upon me.
I took them and pulled the semicircle over my head, only to have
the earmuff-like shells slip down onto my jaw line. I reached up,
slid the springy, crescent-shaped headband downward to tighten them
and then readjusted the padded cups over my ears. An armature
ending in a microphone jutted out from one side to hang in front of
my face.

The sound of the engine was muffled but still
present as a thick hiss of background static filled my ears. I
looked forward through the Plexiglas bubble and saw Felicity in the
distance, standing exactly where I had left her. She had her arms
wrapped about herself, hugging her coat tightly to her body. Her
hair continued to whip about on the man-made wind, slapping across
her face and back over her shoulder, but her gaze never wavered as
she stared directly at me.

“Welcome aboard SkyCam Two, Mister Gant,” the
pilot’s voice crackled in my ears.

“Yeah,” I answered him absently, still gazing
out at my wife. “Thanks.”

“Are we okay back there?” his voice popped
through again.

A new voice answered; feminine and familiar.
“All good, let’s go.”

Even through the barrier of the headset, I
heard the high whistle of the spinning rotor as the pilot adjusted
the collective to increase the pitch of the blades. My stomach
jumped as the aircraft lifted easily from the ground and floated a
few inches above the pavement with a slight rocking motion. The
scream of the rotors shot through several octaves as we continued
to rise on the cushion of air. I watched Felicity as she turned her
face slowly upward, following the progress of the aircraft.

The red emergency lights of a life support
vehicle bathed the area below us as paramedics arrived on the
scene. With a smooth tilt, the helicopter spun in a quick
semi-circle, pivoting on its axis as it nosed forward and shot into
the night sky.

“We have about two minutes before we arrive
on the scene Mister Gant.” The female voice filtered into my ears
over the background static.

It was the next sentence out of her mouth
that told me why she sounded so familiar. “Do you think you could
answer a few questions for our viewers?”

Brandee Street waited patiently for me to
respond. At least, I assumed she was being patient. I couldn’t
actually see her face, and the only thing I could hear was an even
hiss of the background static. Getting my story had long ago become
a personal mission to her. It had started right from the first time
I had ever helped the police with a murder investigation, in
fact.

Ever since, and including our first
encounter, I’d given her nothing more than a handful of “no
comments.”

“I really don’t think that this is the right
time for an interview, Miz Street,” I replied.

I turned my head and looked out through the
window at the night, trying to ignore her. Below, the building
lights tossed harsh luminance into the blue-black shadows of the
snowy landscape. A soft halo of light seemed to rise above the
concrete and steel structures, forming a fuzzy dome of cyan and
white, streaked here and there with pale yellow. From this height,
it made Saint Louis appear almost as a garish pockmark on the
land.

We were cruising in what felt like a straight
line, floating over the inner crescent of midtown, thirty seconds
away from downtown proper. Up here we were autonomous, shrouded by
a sea of darkness. There was still a heavy cloud blanket even
though the snow had tapered off to nothing more than flurries hours
ago. Above us, there were no stars and no moon, only the dark grey
underbelly of the low stratum, illuminated by the reflected light
of the city beneath.

The gauges on the instrument panels were
rimmed yellow-orange, bringing a tepid illumination to the inside
of the helicopter. Out the window to my right, I could see the
lights of the vehicular traffic on Interstates Forty-Four and
Fifty-Five—red taillights snaking along toward the east and south,
yellow-white headlamps streaking north and west.

“Just a couple of questions, Mister Gant.”
She tried again.

“Really, Miz Street…” I began.

“Look, Mister Gant, my day started at three
a.m. filling in as co-anchor. I haven’t even been home yet.”

“Join the club.”

“What I’m trying to say is that I wouldn’t be
right here, right now, if I didn’t think this story was important.
Can’t you just answer a few questions?”

“Lay off, Brandee.” I heard Ben’s voice in
the headset.

“I wasn’t talking to you, Storm.” Her voice
switched from an appeal to a seething rebuff.

“Maybe not, but I’m telling ya’ to back off,”
he snarled. “Just friggin’ do something good for a change without
expectin’ a payback!”

“Damn you, Storm, I…”

“HEY!” I snapped into the microphone. “Both
of you calm down.”

My headache was rallying once again and every
inch of my body ached. I had too much on my mind to cope with this
sudden outburst of bickering, and I felt like my head was about to
explode. Being a part of an investigation was one thing, but
everything hinging on me alone was unnerving.

I took in a deep breath and closed my eyes. I
could feel the aircraft roll slightly to the side, and I tensed in
the seat. When I reopened my eyes, I could see riverfront now
occupied the side window, and the bright, red anti-collision light
atop the Gateway Arch was winking in measured pulses, warning us to
keep our distance. We completed our veer through a shallow turn and
then continued on a straight course.

“Listen,” I continued speaking, now that they
had both shut up. “Miz Street, I need you to do me a favor. Just
get me to the scene, and I promise I’ll give you guys an exclusive
once this is all over.”

“Rowan!” Ben admonished.

“Let me talk, Ben,” I shot back and then
continued with a qualification. “Whatever I can legally discuss
with you, Miz Street, I will.”

“An exclusive.” She restated the words with
an air of suspicion. “You’ll talk to our station only?”

“I’ll go you one better,” I returned. “I’ll
talk to you and you alone. It will be your story. No strings
attached. Deal?”

I could hear the combination of excitement
and mild disbelief in her voice when she replied, “Are you serious,
Gant?”

“You ever see the TV show
Bewitched
?” I asked.

“Sure, but what’s that got to do with
anything?” she asked.

I twisted in my seat and turned my face to
her. When I was certain she could see me, I splayed out my left
hand and placed the index and middle fingers on either side of my
nose, pointing in toward my eyes, then said, “Witches honor.”

“Here we are,” the pilot’s voice came over
the headset.

I turned my eyes back forward and then
immediately gripped the edges of my seat as the aircraft rolled up
on its side without warning. We hooked around in a steep,
semicircular turn before the pilot brought us back upright. With a
smooth hover, we began settling earthward with the nose tilted
slightly up.

While I struggled to force my stomach back
into its proper place, I shot a glance over at the pilot and
noticed for the first time that as years went he was wearing better
than a decade more than I was.

“Vietnam?” I uttered the single word query as
I felt the skids bump against pavement once again.

“One ninety-second AHC” was all he said.

* * * * *

The aircraft had come briefly to rest on a
small, private parking lot for one of the riverboat casinos that
occupied dock space in front of Laclede’s Landing. The lot itself
was an asphalt plateau situated between Second and Third Streets,
ringed by a tall, chain link fence, and under normal circumstances,
manned by a security guard at a glassed-in booth. Because of its
location along the tiered rise, it actually looked down into the
front of the building where Porter was holed up.

The large, paved section of the short city
block was almost completely devoid of any vehicles, having been
cleared earlier by the authorities. In fact, the only cars up here
were a few police cruisers parked at strategic points and a single,
official-looking sedan.

Behind us on the next block was an enormous
electrical sub-station that serviced a large portion of the city.
Flanking the building on the left was another portion of the
substation, and on the right was an open lot that butted against
Biddle Street. A second vacant warehouse sat behind the one before
us with aging railroad tracks in between.

Upon initial inspection, there didn’t really
seem to be any place for Porter to go where he wouldn’t be spotted
immediately—even if he was able to get past the local perimeter. I
found a small amount of solace in that fact considering that I had
left Felicity essentially alone.

I was just pulling the headset off and
handing it back to the pilot when my door swung open. The roar of
the helicopter’s engine, which had leapt in volume the moment my
ears were uncovered, now vaulted up the scale even farther. I
turned quickly, somewhat startled.

“MISTER GANT?!” A voice managed to make its
way to me from the parka-wearing young woman who was holding the
door wide.

I nodded at her, fiddled about with the
release in my lap until the belt came free, then pulled myself out
of the seat and through the opening. Ben was already climbing out
of the back and levering the door shut when I set foot on the
pavement.