“The Lord saith, ‘Expel the wicked from your company!’ ” Masterson pronounced, straddling Carver’s chest. His weight settled on Carver like a building. He must have recently eaten Chinese; his breath was hot and reeked of soy sauce. He raised the cane high, its pointed end directly above Carver’s exposed throat, then grinned wide, the eyes behind his thick glasses like black wells. “Judgment day!” he shouted, and brought the cane down.
Carver clutched Masterson’s wrist with both hands. He felt the point of the cane bite at his throat. Then he dug his heels hard into the thin carpet, pushing up with every fiber of strength in his arms and body, and managed to force the cane upward a few inches.
He knew he was only buying seconds. Masterson was as powerful as fate, and the downward pressure of the cane was tremendous. Carver couldn’t last long. Every breath was agony. He knew that soon the pointed end of the hard walnut cane would penetrate his throat. When his victim’s strength ebbed, Masterson would bring to bear all of his weight and power down on the cane. The sharp wooden point might make it all the way out the back of Carver’s neck.
It was probably his last struggle, and Carver knew it. He held nothing back. As he strained to keep the point of the cane away from his throat, his vision blurred. He was aware of Adelle standing near the apartment door, a white sheet draped gracefully over her body like a toga. Benedict was beside her, nude and staring at what was happening before him on the hall floor.
“Not this!” Benedict was repeating in a horrified voice. “Not this!”
One of Carver’s perspiring hands lost its grip on Masterson’s wrist, then closed on the cross and the heavy gold chain dangling from the big man’s thick neck. Carver gripped the cross and deftly wrapped the chain around his hand, twisting, twisting. He saw Masterson’s broad face redden as the chain tightened around his neck and dug into his throat, but the downward force on the broken cane remained constant.
That’s how they were, Carver trying to strangle Masterson with the gold chain, Masterson inches away from thrusting the pointed end of the broken cane into Carver’s throat, when Carver was aware of the naked figure of Benedict standing over them, holding a large orange object in his right hand.
Benedict was shouting again for them to stop struggling. An impersonal bombing was one thing, but the hands-on killing he was about to witness was too much for the idealistic physician to endure. Carver wrestled with Masterson while Benedict wrestled with his Hippocratic oath.
The neck chain broke and fell away to dangle from Carver’s hand. Masterson grunted and shifted his body forward, leaning over Carver. The sharp point of the cane was again at Carver’s throat. It had already penetrated flesh and he could feel warm blood trickling down the side of his neck.
He was going to die. It was impossible to comprehend, but it was true. He heard a high voice from his childhood, long-ago hide-and-seek . . . Ready or not! . . . Ready or not! . . .
There was a shower of ceramic pieces as Benedict brought the heavy orange lamp down on Masterson’s head.
The pressure on the cane lessened.
It disappeared altogether as Benedict raised what was left of the lamp base again and hit Masterson behind the ear. This time it was heavy brass that struck thick skull, making a sound like a melon being thumped.
The crushing weight on Carver’s chest shifted as Masterson slumped unconscious.
Smelling soy sauce, Carver shoved the huge body away, rolled onto his side, then managed to scoot to a wall and sit up, his back pressed hard against the rough plaster.
“I couldn’t let him kill you,” Benedict was saying, his eyes wide. “Useless, senseless death. There’s been enough of it.” He looked as if he might break and sob. Adelle, in a kind of trance, drifted over to him like a spirit in her flowing white sheet and stood next to him.
Carver’s injured side caught fire with each gasp for oxygen. He was aware of footsteps clattering up the stairs. One of the tenants must have heard the fight and called the police.
Two uniformed cops were suddenly in the hall, filling it with blue. One of them was wielding his nightstick, the other had his nine-millimeter handgun drawn and was holding it low and pressed to his thigh, pointed at the floor.
“What’ve we got here?” the taller of the two asked, trying to be firm and in control but sounding afraid.
Carver attempted to tell him but couldn’t get the words out. When he tried to speak, the pain in his side erupted, cutting his breath short. He was afraid the pain, with the exhaustion and lack of oxygen, would cause him to lose consciousness. He tilted back his head. Maybe it would be easier to breathe that way. The hall had become dim, as if curtains had been drawn over the single window at the far end of the corridor. He heard sirens outside now, very close, down in the street.
Then the other cop was standing nearby at an angle and had his walkie-talkie close to his mouth. He was saying something about an ambulance. Carver couldn’t understand him or the garbled words coming out of the walkie-talkie. It sounded as if the cop might be underwater. Carver wondered if that could be the problem.
It was possible.
Just as possible as that Red Sea thing in the Bible. Water and miracles seemed to have a lot to do with each other. Wine into water . . .
The hall ceiling tilted and rose up and up, and the pain floated Carver away.
41
“Everybody’s talking all at once and about each other,” Wicker said to Carver and Beth the next morning on the cottage porch, “and here’s how it was.” The sea was shooting silver sparks of sunlight in the background and gulls were crying above the rushing whisper of the surf. Wicker leaned with his buttocks against the porch rail, the ocean at his back. Only the palms and backs of his hands were bandaged now, and he was regaining mobility in his fingers. “Dr. Benedict and Adelle Grimm had been having an affair for more than a year. Adelle discovered after her husband’s death that she was pregnant.”
“With Benedict’s child?” Beth asked.
“She had no way of knowing for sure. Benedict was pressuring her to have an abortion. At the same time, she was beginning to suspect to her horror-that’s the way she put it-that Benedict might have had some connection with the clinic bombing. Wracked with grief and guilt, in emotional turmoil over Benedict and whether to carry the child to term, she went to Martin Freel to hear from his own lips his denial that Operation Alive was responsible for the bombing. She wanted to try to get a glimpse of the truth, and perhaps to try to find her way to a decision through religion.”
“That’s when I saw them meet at the Blue Dolphin Motel,” Carver said, remembering the intensity of their conversation and how he’d mistaken it for romantic attachment.
“That’s right,” Wicker said, “and she didn’t find the understanding and solace she was seeking. Now we get to Benedict: Adelle had refused to leave her husband for him, and he decided the only way to possess her was to kill Dr. Grimm. Additional incentive was the decreasing profitability of the Women’s Light Clinic due to Operation Alive’s demonstrations and terror tactics. And Benedict was convinced that soon abortions would be effected through pills, in private, and the clinic would become obsolete. The explosion and ensuing insurance settlement seemed the only way out of the downward financial spiral and would also clear the way for Benedict to be with Adelle. It was Benedict who sent some of the threatening letters to Grimm and to himself, who fired the late-night shot into the clinic, who used Norton as the fall guy. And Benedict hired Ezekiel Masterson to plant the blasting caps in Norton’s car and try to scare you off the case so even more blame and suspicion would be focused on Operation Alive. It was Benedict who planted the bomb in Coast Medical Services, in the storage shed so it wouldn’t harm anyone, to make it appear that Operation Alive was trying to avert suspicion from Norton.”