John Lutz - Lightning

McGregor turned sideways and waited for Anderson to catch up. He started to say something, then clamped his lips together as if he’d changed his mind. Something about Anderson’s eyes had stopped him. Was still stopping him. McGregor slid his hands into his pockets and silently walked away.

Anderson looked from Carver to Beth but didn’t comment on her presence. “C’mon,” he said, and began walking back toward whatever was going on by the fence. The gurney was there now, sitting off to the side at a slight downhill angle.

Bodies parted as they approached, and Carver saw the object of everyone’s attention. His stomach lurched with fury and disbelief. “Christ!”

“I think that’s the idea,” Anderson said softly.

Wicker was on his knees with his back to a fence post, his lower legs extended to the other side of the fence beneath the bottom rail. His head lolled and his arms were spread wide to the top rail, his wrists bound to the thick white boards with bailing wire. And something else. Long, thick nails had been driven through his palms, pinning his hands to the fence board. Wicker’s face was bruised, bleeding from a cut above his right eye. There was blood in his tousled hair. His eyes were closed and oddly peaceful considering the expression of horror and pain on the rest of his face. His mouth was contorted, a string of saliva dangling from his lips. Carver could see Wicker breathing and hoped Wicker was unconscious.

“We got a call saying we’d find him here,” Anderson said.

The paramedics were bending over Wicker now, studying the situation, figuring out the best way to remove the nails. One of them was working to loosen the bailing wire, which had cut off the circulation so that Wicker’s impaled hands were pale as bone in the moonlight.

“The caller identify himself?” Carver asked.

“He didn’t have to.”

Wicker opened his eyes. They rolled around, found Carver, and fixed on him. “Masterson,” Wicker said in a dry, thin voice. “He did this to me, told me I might find redemption here.”

“We’ll find him ,” Anderson promised.

Beth moved forward as if to comfort Wicker, but one of the paramedics extended an arm and waved for her to back away. She stood next to Carver. He could hear her breathing, soft, airy whimpers of rage and horror.

“He mentioned your name,” Wicker said to Carver. “Told me you were a sinner just like me in the service of Beelzebub.”

While he was driving nails through a man’s palms, Carver thought.

Anderson pulled him aside and they walked a few feet away, letting the paramedics do their work. Beth followed, staying close to Carver.

“Ezekiel Masterson,” Anderson said. “We’ll find him.”

“Lieutenant Desoto in Orlando might be able to help,” Carver suggested. “He’s the one who ID’d Masterson for us from a photo I sent him. Reverend Freel might know something, too, but he probably won’t talk.”

“He will if we don’t ask him nice,” Anderson said.

“That might have been you nailed to that fence,” Beth said.

Anderson’s jaw muscles flexed. “Any one of us.”

Carver remembered Beth thinking there might have been someone in the bushes outside Adelle Grimm’s house earlier that evening when Al barked. He told Anderson about it, and about his conversation with Jefferson Brama at the Surfside Hotel.

Anderson listened closely, staring at the ground. The red-and-blue glow from the emergency vehicles bathed his face with a shifting, harsh illumination that took away highlight and shadow and made his features a flat, tragic mask. The pulsating glare lent the scene even more of a sense of urgency, setting it to a wild rhythm and making the landscape surreal. Somehow a nightmare had found its way into Wicker’s time awake.

“We’ll get more from Wicker when he’s patched up and has some medication for the pain,” Anderson said when Carver was finished talking.

But they both knew there was little more to get. Ezekiel Masterson had acted out his fanaticism again, then disappeared, and no one who knew anything would talk. Nothing much had changed except that Wicker had been brutally beaten, then crucified with sixteen-penny construction nails.

“You wanted us to see this to make an impression on us, didn’t you?” Beth said. “That’s why you called.”

“Partly,” Anderson admitted. “I feel an obligation to be sure you know what kind of people we’re dealing with. And I thought if I got you out here, you might be more likely to tell me anything pertinent.”

“Did we?” Carver asked.

“No way to know yet.”

Anderson told them good night and turned to walk back to where the paramedics were removing his supervisor and fellow agent from the fence. The strobelike effect of the flashing lights made his movements seem abrupt and intermittent.

He paused and turned. “Stay available, you two. And stay safe.”

“You’d better notify Delores Bravo about this,” Beth said, “but not yet.”

“Do it right,” Carver added.

“If only you could tell me how,” Anderson said, leaving them in the somber dance of the flashing lights.

Carver was quiet for a long time during the drive back to the cottage. Anderson’s strategy of calling them to the scene of Wicker’s agony had worked. Not that Carver and Beth had had any doubts about Masterson’s viciousness after what he’d done to Linda Lapella. But that was a simple, brutal beating that resulted in murder. What had been done to Wicker was different; it was torture in the name of God and as ancient as man, and behind its mask, it was worse than indifferent to the pain it inflicted.

As they were rocketing along the highway, the wind pounding again in the car’s interior, Beth said, “I still think Adelle is behind the bombing, and I think she might have hired Ezekiel Masterson. He might have been the man I saw driving away with her from her house earlier tonight.”

“Or the man lurking outside her house who might have done to you what was done to Wicker.”

She smiled. “You afraid, Fred?”

“Oh, I am most of the time on some level. For me and for you.”

“And you still believe Norton acted on Freel’s orders.”

“Or was set up to take the fall for the bombing. Freel had to know Norton was a nut case who was working away on assembling bombs in his home workshop. What better dupe could he find to take the high-minded blame for what really was a squalid murder for the two most frequent motives in the world-love and money?”

“It sounds good when you say it fast,” Beth admitted, “but Adelle’s still my choice.”

Carver watched the dark road. “Freel will be doubly on guard now that he knows his affair with Adelle is known.”

“Still, they’ll meet again.”

“Lovers always find a way,” Carver agreed, trying not to sound like a song title. “Someone else needs to be there when they do. It makes the most sense to put a watch on Adelle and wait for her to go to Freel.”

“We’ll alternate watching her.”

“No,” Carver said. “Are you forgetting what we just saw back there nailed to the fence?” He hadn’t forgotten and never would. The terrible vision of Wicker’s crucifixion, only minutes behind them, remained in his mind with clarity and horror. He knew it would be vivid in his dreams. “I’ll shadow Adelle,” he said. “You stay at the cottage with the gun and with Al.”

“I think not, Fred.”

Lord, this woman was stubborn!

“And I think we should buy another gun.”

Carver shook his head no. He had never liked guns, and he liked them even less after being shot in the leg. One gun floating around in his life was more than enough.