The Law Of Three: A Rowan Gant Investigation Read Online Free Page B

you?” he groaned. “Sheesh. Lucky
me.”
    “Hey, it’s not my idea.”
    “Are you willin’ to stay home and let me
handle this?” he queried flatly.
    “I thought we’d already established that as a
no,” I replied, somewhat confused by the question.
    “Then quit tryin’ to blame her. It IS your
fuckin’ idea,” he huffed. “Meet me in the lobby. I’ll be there in
fifteen.”
     
     
     
     

CHAPTER 2:
     
     
    “This is fucked…” Ben spat, shaking his head
in a display of disbelief and looking upward as he spoke. “This
S.O.B is just plain sick.”
    It was just after four a.m. by the time we
arrived, and we found ourselves standing in the middle of Locust
Street downtown. We had signed in on the scene log with Felicity
and me listed as consultants and allowed in only by Ben’s
graces.
    Stepping onto the active participant side of
the bright yellow strip of barrier tape that cordoned off the
street was akin to entering another world. I glanced around,
feeling both out of place and right at home in the same instant. In
the past two years, I’d visited more active homicide crime scenes
than many cops see in their entire careers, and I didn’t even have
a badge. Something seemed very wrong about that, but it was a fact
I simply could not change. I didn’t find it reassuring at all that
I was becoming so accustomed to it.
    Cold wind sliced in a linear gust down the
thoroughfare, flaring the band of plastic tape as if to highlight
the repeated imprint of block letters along its length. Bold
strokes formed words that had become all too familiar to me—CRIME
SCENE DO NOT CROSS. The temperature was settled for the moment at
an even thirty-six degrees, but the computed wind chill pushed the
overall feeling downward into the range of the mid-twenties.
    There were a half dozen crime scene
technicians milling about on the ground, while another handful
could occasionally be spotted working on the roof of the building
that was before us. The medical examiner’s hearse had already
arrived, and the area was illuminated by the visual insanity of
flickering light bars on idling emergency vehicles.
    When the street-level scene was taken as a
whole, my friend’s candid observation simply became a commentary
that mirrored my own feelings. Unfortunately, he was talking about
something far worse, for what was taking place on the tableau of
the cold asphalt was only a supporting backdrop for the spectacle
above.
    My gaze followed Ben’s, coming to rest
between the second and third floor windows of the four-story, brick
building. There, carefully directed spotlights illuminated the
centerpiece of this nightmare. Garish shadows molded themselves in
a shroud about the nude and blood streaked corpse of a man.
Suspended by a rope tied about his ankles, he was hanging upside
down. His head was obscured by an executioner’s hood, and his arms
were splayed out to the sides, perpendicular to the rest of his
body, as if to form an inverted cross. The appendages were held
stiffly in place by what looked like a two-by-four across his
shoulders. At this distance, I couldn’t be positive, but the piece
of wood appeared to be held fast by something encircling his wrists
and neck.
    This, in and of itself, was macabre enough to
make anyone believe that it could only be a Hollywood “slasher
flick” in the making. If only that were true, for it didn’t end
there. From the victim’s groin, downward to a point in his
mid-torso, his abdomen was split open. There, protruding from the
ragged tear like a grey-white serpent, his intestines cascaded
across his chest to hang in a pendulum-like loop several feet
beneath. Each time the wind would pick up, the sash of organ tissue
would move with the breeze, undulating like heavy drapes next to an
air vent. Blood still dripped at protracted intervals from the
exposed viscera to plop wetly onto the dark stain that now graced
the sidewalk below.
    Behind us, a loud and very wet sounding
splatter