Never Burn A Witch: A Rowan Gant Investigation (46 page)

I pressed the stick into high four and
cranked the shift on the column into drive. I had come this far,
and I wasn’t about to lose him now, especially if he had someone in
the van with him.

This had to end, and stealth was suddenly no
longer an issue.

* * * * *

It didn’t take long for me to catch up to
him. For all I know he wanted me to, but it didn’t really matter.
All that was important to me at this point was that he was not
going to get away. I was charged by an absolute resolve to see to
it no one else was made to suffer.

Everything I had seen in the past weeks was
flashing before me in billowing Technicolor with an emotional
soundtrack comprised of self-imposed guilt. I hadn’t been able to
pick out the clues we needed and people had died. I had been so
off-center that a young woman had been tortured for an entire week,
and even though I knew it was happening, I couldn’t find a way to
make it stop. Now, it was entirely possible that this killer had
yet another victim in hand, and I knew I would never be able to
live with another Amanda Stark on my conscience.

We were now at the opposite end of the
Innerbelt and making the wide arc onto the eastbound leg of Highway
270. There were still no other vehicles to be seen on the road, and
I fell in immediately behind him as we made the left hand merge
into the empty fast lane.

My truck being lighter, I was now the one
with the advantage. The speedometer needle climbed rapidly past 80
and had its sights set on 90 and beyond as I leaned on the
accelerator and shot to the right to whip my vehicle up alongside
his. Looking to my left I saw the side of the large delivery truck
looming ever closer as it angled into me once again. I jerked the
steering wheel hard and shunted right while urging my truck to go
faster.

The density of the fog still obscured
everything save for the occasional cluster of lights to one side or
the other of the highway. Every now and then an illuminated highway
sign would appear overhead in a flash of green and white then
disappear behind us as if it had only been imagined.

The orange stylus of my speedometer was
hovering just below the 100 mile per hour hash mark and the
steering wheel was beginning to vibrate. I locked my arms to hold
the truck on course, and the reverberations climbed up my arms to
make my entire body shudder.

As we continued our weaving race, an
old cliché passed through my head—
There’s
never a cop around when you need one.

* * * * *

We had been trading positions for several
miles now as we weaved back and forth across the eastbound traffic
lanes in a high-speed game of tag. The corridor we traveled had
narrowed quickly as Highway 270 funneled down into two lanes in
each direction. What seemed like a solid half hour had in reality
been less than ten minutes. I was now positioned just off his right
rear side and gaining fast. As I inched the nose of my truck up
alongside, I caught a subtle leftward lean of the van and
anticipated his next move.

As he quickly jerked to the right, I let off
the gas and threw my own wheel to the left, crossing behind him,
then punching down on the accelerator as my front bumper narrowly
missed his rear. In a flash, not only had I gained but was now
ahead of him by a half car length. With a yank I tilted my wheel
back to the right and brought my truck directly in front of the
van.

As I took my foot off the gas, I stiffened my
arms to brace myself against the coming impact.

* * * * *

Even with my body stiff in preparation, my
head snapped back hard as my rear bumper took the blow. The truck
lurched forward, and I started pumping the brakes just before the
van slammed into me once again.

The speedometer needle was dropping, and I
watched in my rearview mirror as the large delivery truck tried to
veer around me. Even through the stabs of pain in my skull, I
anticipated his moves and canted my steering wheel with a frenzied
motion to keep in front of him. Right now the only thing on my mind
was stopping his vehicle. What I would do once I had accomplished
that I still didn’t know.

The van met me full force for a third time
and remained locked against my bumper. We had dropped below 80, and
I continued to pump the brakes as the indicator fell. We were
barreling down the center of the highway, straddling the white
line. Tortured banshee cries screamed from my tires each time the
brakes took hold. As our speed dropped below 70, I applied the
pedal longer each time while still fighting with the steering wheel
to keep him behind me.

Glowing lights slowly bloomed in the veil of
grey mist before me, and I was soon able to discern the dim outline
of an exit. Apparently, so could the killer.

As we came upon the ramp, there was a sudden
roar from behind as the engine in the panel van wound up against a
lowered gear ratio. The screaming transmission protested the abuse
it was receiving as it was downshifted mercilessly. Before I could
react, the killer veered off onto the exit, clipping the right
corner of my rear bumper hard and sending me into a shallow
skid.

I reflexively twisted the steering wheel in
the direction of the skid and pumped the brakes slowly. Each time
they would catch the wet pavement, the truck would slide farther
toward the center of the highway. As the bed of the truck whipped
around, I was now facing the opposite direction, and I straightened
the wheel as I jammed on the brakes hard.

The tortured squeal of rubber against asphalt
married with the sound of scraping metal as the passenger side
impacted the concrete barrier dividing the highway, and I jerked to
a sudden halt.

I had finally stopped at a point twenty yards
beyond the exit ramp on the Riverview Drive overpass. I was
pointing west in the eastbound lanes, and I was butted up against
the concrete median, so I couldn’t see for sure where the van had
gone. Without a second thought I let off the brake and jumped once
again on the accelerator, shooting diagonally across the traffic
lanes and making a hard left down the ramp.

At the bottom of the hill I locked up the
brakes once again and slid to a halt with the battered nose of my
truck sticking out into the intersection. I flipped a mental coin
and turned left, ignoring the stop signs as I went. I was less than
a mile down the road when my head began to clear, and the throbbing
pain that had once occupied it drained away.

I immediately slammed on the brakes and
turned around.

The category five migraine returned as soon
as I cleared the underpass heading south, and I knew I couldn’t be
far behind him. My misaligned driver’s side headlamp canted
awkwardly at the pavement, illuminating it in a harsh swath of
blue-white. If it hadn’t been for the bizarre angle at which it now
shone, I probably would have missed the shining skid marks.

* * * * *

In June of 1929 the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge
opened. The fifth bridge to cross the Mississippi, linking Missouri
to Illinois, it was one of the longest continuous truss bridges in
the country at slightly over one mile in length. By 1968 a newer,
wider bridge had been opened up river, and the “Old Lady” had been
closed. After over thirty years of sitting silent, the structure
had finally been renovated for use as a pedestrian-only bridge
linking hiking and biking trails on either side of the river.

It was here to which the skid marks led.

Yet again I applied my overtaxed brakes and
slid the truck to a slightly canted halt. At this stage the bridge
was only open on weekends between early spring and late autumn. A
tall, chain link fence surrounded the entrance to what was
originally a park-like area leading up to the old toll bridge. The
wide gate that would normally be locked shut was now splayed open
in a deformed mass, barely hanging from its hinges.

This close to the river the fog was nearing
terminal density, and visibility was threatening to disappear. I
twisted the steering wheel and followed the marks through the
ruined gate, advancing with caution as I pushed through the
opening.

With my engine revving barely above idle, I
made my way around the left perimeter of the gravel parking area,
fully expecting a large black panel van to loom dully in my
headlights at any moment. It never did, and as I came upon the
entrance proper to the old bridge, my fear was confirmed.

Two evenly spaced metal posts had been set at
the mouth of the bridge to bar vehicular traffic from entering. The
leftmost of the barrier posts was now slanted at an outward angle
from a recent impact. If I strained to follow the beam of my one
still-aligned headlamp, I could just barely make out the Iron Gate
slightly beyond the posts that was used to close off the entrance.
Just like its chain link predecessor, this one had been violently
flung open.

I slowly idled the truck up the ramp and
between the metal barriers. The rampant itching on my forearm had
intensified and joined with a painful soreness that I knew to be a
precursor to yet another weeping stigmata. Urgent emotion was
declaring that I needed to race across the bridge to catch up with
my quarry before the gory symbol was brought into being. Bitter
logic was arguing that I was crossing a bridge that hadn’t been
used by vehicles in over thirty years and that visibility was near
zero.

My throbbing temples told me that he wasn’t
far away, so logic won out for a change.

Now at the opposite end of the scale from the
earlier chase, I cautiously urged the truck along at just over ten
miles per hour. The Old Chain of Rocks Bridge was only a two-lane
structure, and I steered up the center, casting my intent gaze
forward as I made my way along the slow incline.

The clinging mist combined with my headlights
to create an eerie forced perspective. The rust-marred
superstructure rose around me to blend with the shadows. The lower
beams bore a recent coat of dull green paint, and a four-foot fence
painted a bright blue lined each side. The sight line of the
structure faded quickly into the veiled atmosphere to join with an
imaginary vanishing point.

The old patched pavement before me was marred
by graffiti imprinted upon it throughout the years of non-use. Some
of it benign declarations of so-and-so-loves-so-and-so, some of it
disgusting epithets, all of it enhanced by the shiny wetness
overlaying the asphalt.

I had traveled maybe a third of the distance
across the bridge when I finally saw the red taillights of the
panel van peering back at me like a pair of demonic eyes in the
grey ether. I forced myself to maintain my wary pace and much to my
surprise continued to gain on them. In less than a minute a perfect
outline of the vehicle was visible, and the swath of my headlamp
fell across the back to reveal the rear doors hanging open.

In an automatic motion I halted the truck and
pushed the gearshift into park. A demolition crew was now working
with a jackhammer directly behind my eyes, and the rabid itch on my
forearm had mutated into a fiery burn. Somewhere within all of the
pain, it crossed my mind that I was suddenly in way over my
head.

I sent my hand in search of my cell phone and
fumbled the device out of the dash-mounted holder. When I glanced
down to punch in Ben’s number, I realized why I hadn’t heard from
him yet. I had forgotten to switch it on. I quickly pressed my
thumb against the power button, and the moment the unit completed
its flashing and self-diagnostic chirping, an urgent peal emitted
from it. I stabbed the button to answer and placed it against my
ear.

“Ben?”

“GODFUCKINGDAMMIT, ROWAN!” my friend’s voice
distorted through the earpiece, “WHAT THE HELL DO YA’ THINK YOU’RE
DOIN’?”

“He’s here, Ben,” I stated urgently. “I’m
right behind him, and I think he might have someone else out
here!”

“WHERE? WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?”

I had quickly switched the phone to my left
ear and was reaching to the dash to turn down the volume on the CD
player when the battered driver’s side door of the truck swung
violently open with a loud groan. Before I could utter anything
more than a surprised yelp, a massive hand slapped against the back
of my neck, its bony fingers wrapping around to almost completely
encircle my throat.

The cell phone flew from my hand and
clattered across the pavement as I was wrenched forcefully from the
seat and tossed like a piece of discarded trash against the
bridge’s safety rail.

In the confusion my fingers had spun the
volume knob on the stereo in the opposite of the intended
direction, and music now blared raucously into the night.

A
cute slivers of pain were
rapidly followed by an overwhelming dull ache across my back as I
roughly impacted the metal railing and tumbled to the wet asphalt.
I let out a tortured scream as I suddenly felt the flesh ripping on
my forearm to form what I knew could only be a bloody rendition of
a religious symbol. Realization punctured the storm of agony inside
my skull, and I knew instantly that the victim I was assuming he
had in his clutches was in fact, me.

“Wherefore, since you, Rowan Linden Gant, are
fallen into the damned heresies of Witches, practicing them
publicly, and have been by legitimate witnesses and your own
confession, been convicted of the sin of heresy,” an ominously dark
and distinct voice began in the shadows, blending deeply with the
music to lend a surreal edge to the recitation.

The tone was intimately familiar from my
visions, and hearing it now, steeped in the trappings of the
physical plane, paralyzing fear arced through my very being.