They took Carver’s car and were on Oliphant Road in less than fifteen minutes. Beth had been quiet during the drive, and Carver had said nothing to interrupt her thoughts. The Olds’s windows were down and the air rushing into the interior made the taut cloth top slap against its steel struts while the pressure of the wind whistled and drummed.
The flat, paved road narrowed and ran between acres of orange and grapefruit trees. The trees were all of uniform size and aligned in neat rows that seemed to run together just before they disappeared in the night, like an art class study in diminishing perspective. They must have been recently irrigated. The wind caroming about the inside of the car carried a fresh, fertile smell of damp leaves and rich earth.
A white wooden fence appeared on the right, running alongside the road. It was made of thick posts about ten feet apart, to which were nailed two rows of parallel horizontal boards, one about a foot above the ground, the other a foot lower than the tops of the posts. Except for the occasional orange and yellow dots of citrus fruit among the clumped, shadowy branches of the trees, the white fence was the only bright object on a bleak landscape.
Then Carver saw flashing red-and-blue lights ahead and tapped his foot on the brake pedal, leaning forward to peer through the windshield.
Several cars were parked on the gravel shoulder, along with what appeared to be an ambulance. Carver braked harder as he saw a Del Moray police cruiser parked sideways in the middle of the road. A uniform was standing by its front fender, prepared to stop and divert any traffic on the little-traveled alternate route between two state highways.
The uniform walked toward the Olds as soon as it stopped,
A young blond patrolman without a cap leaned down to peer into the driver’s side window. His gaze flicked to Beth, back to Carver. “You’ll have to turn around, sir, or proceed slowly and carefully on the left shoulder.”
“Anderson sent for me,” Carver said. “Name’s Fred Carver.”
The uniform didn’t move for a long moment, as if weighing what Carver had said. Finally he nodded, then walked toward a knot of people visible beyond the cars parked on the right shoulder. The ambulance’s rear doors were open and a white-uniformed paramedic and a man in civilian clothes were dragging a collapsible wheeled gurney out. Alternating blue and red light glinted off its steel frame, then its spoked wheels as they dropped down and locked into place. The uniform who’d stopped Carver walked back out into the road and waved his arm, signaling him to drive forward and park on the right shoulder.
“You’d better stay here,” Carver told Beth when he’d braked the Olds to a halt and turned off the engine.
“Think again, Fred,” She already had the door open and was climbing out of the car.
But she did lag behind as Carver limped along the shoulder toward the shadowy forms huddled around a section of the white fence, the tip of his cane occasionally flicking pieces of gravel. When they were about a hundred feet away, the tallest figure detached itself from the knot of people and came toward them.
McGregor.
“What the fuck are you two doing here?” he demanded.
“I called Carver,” Anderson said. He’d been a yard or two behind McGregor, blocked from Carver’s vision by the tall, loose-jointed man with his flapping suit coat.
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.