Crone's Moon: A Rowan Gant Investigation Read Online Free PDF Page B

actually’?” he
huffed.
    And with that, we officially had the
‘hook.’
    On the fly, I dredged up an old childhood
myth and applied my own twist to it. “What I mean is that you’re
dead before you ever hit the ground.”
    “Yeah, right.”
    “Seriously. The fear of falling is so intense
that your system overdoses itself on adrenalin. It pretty much
shorts out your nervous system and causes you to suffer a heart
attack as you fall, end of story. You’re a corpse before you ever
hit the ground.”
    I watched his rugged features as his right
eyebrow furrowed. I could literally see him rolling what I had said
over and over inside his head, trying to get a handle on it.
    “Bullshit,” he retorted.
    The one word comment wasn’t exactly what you
would call swallowing the ‘line,’ but I’d known he would be a hard
sell.
    “Oh yeah.” I nodded vigorously as I spoke and
offered up a bogus factoid to lend credence to my lie. “It’s a
known fact. Now, of course, the fall has to be greater than twenty
feet for the fear to reach that level and cause your system to dump
that much adrenalin.”
    He cocked his head to the side and gave me an
unsure look.
    I pressed on. “You know how when you fall you
get that bizarre feeling in your gut like you just lost your
stomach?”
    “Like when ya’ top a hill on a roller
coaster, you mean?”
    “Exactly. Well it’s like that, but since you
don’t fall far enough you don’t have the heart attack.”
    “No way. Hills on roller coasters are way
higher than twenty feet.” He shook his head as he argued.
    “Sure, but that’s different. Your
subconscious knows you are in a roller coaster.”
    “You’re just yankin’ my chain.”
    “Why would I do that?”
    “So what about skydivers?”
    “Parachute. Again, the subconscious
knows.”
    The look on Ben’s face told me that he was
struggling with this sudden contradiction of perceptions. He wasn’t
stupid by any stretch of the imagination, so I was actually
surprised I’d managed to take it this far.
    My friend slipped his hand up to smooth his
hair and then allowed it to slide down and began to massage the
back of his neck. He always performed this gesture when he was
thinking hard on a subject.
    “Really?” he eventually asked, giving his
head a slight nod as he squinted at me.
    Now, there was the ‘line.’ I thought about
going for the ‘sinker’ as well, but I wasn’t feeling particularly
ornery today, and I doubted my luck would hold out. Besides, it had
only been one cliché, not to mention that he was bigger than me and
he had a gun.
    I gave it a long moment before finally
answering him with a simple, “No.”
    He shook his head and screwed his face into a
frown. “Jeezus, Rowan, don’t fuck with me like that.”
    “Hey,” I splayed my hands out in a ‘don’t
blame me’ gesture. “You’re the cop here. Aren’t you supposed to be
able to tell when someone is lying? Besides, I’ve never known you
to be gullible. How was I supposed to know you’d fall for a line of
BS like that?”
    “Because it came outta your mouth,” he replied with a grunt
as he stabbed a finger in the air toward me. “I EXPECT everyone
else to be lying but not you. And, you got so damn much trivia
runnin’ around in your head, I just figured maybe you knew
somethin’ I didn’t.”
    “Well…” I shrugged. “Maybe I do on some
stuff. Sudden stops at the bottom, though, not really my area of
expertise.”
    “Yeah, mine either, but I’ve seen a couple of
meat sacks sprawled out on sidewalks. The friggin’ stop at the
bottom’s what did ‘em in. Trust me.”
    “I’ll take your word for it,” I replied,
consciously chasing away the visual his words had conjured, and
then I paused for a moment before changing the subject. “So, I may
be wrong, but I didn’t think we came here to discuss the physics of
falling from tall buildings. Or did we?”
    “Nope.” He shook his head. “But you were the
one starin’