Beyond Eden

by Catherine Coulter

  She wanted to get up and pace. Finally, unable to stand it, she threw back the single sheet and thin blanket and swung her legs over the side of the hospital bed.

  Even that slight exertion made her dizzy, and she paused, head down, breathing deeply. And that made her ribs hurt. She cursed. She was nearly twenty-seven and she felt old and feeble.

  It would be over soon now. Very soon. All she had to do was be patient. Lord, she already was a patient. But it was impossible. She lowered her feet to the floor.

  She heard the door open quietly and she said as she turned, “Is that you, Taylor? I’m so glad you’re back. What did you find?”

  A doctor stood in the doorway, wearing his white coat, a stethoscope around his neck. He held a chart in his hand. He was smiling toward her. He simply nodded, then closed the door.

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m Dr. Grey. Dr. Shantel asked me to see you. He asked me to give you a shot.”

  “Oh, not another shot! What is it this time?”

  “Just an antibiotic.” He withdrew a syringe from one of his pockets. He pulled off the safety cap as he walked toward her. “In the arm will be just fine. Could you get back into bed, please?”

  She froze. Dr. Shantel wasn’t a he. Dr. Shantel was a woman.

  The man was advancing on her, a professional smile firmly in place. She’d never seen him before, never in her life. No, no, she was being stupid. He was a doctor, he was—She studied him, but she was certain. She’d never seen him. He shouldn’t be here.

  He was here to kill her.

  There was no place to run. Lindsay did the only thing she could think of. She opened her mouth and screamed as loud as she could. And again and again.

  He was on her in an instant, leaping on her and knocking her flat on her back onto the bed, her legs dangling over the side. He was trying to hold her down with his left arm pressed against her chest. In his right hand he was fiddling with the syringe.

  Lindsay screamed again.

  “Shut up, damn you!” He raised his hand to hit her but she scooted back, bringing her legs up. She was strong in that moment, and when her knees hit him squarely in the chest, he yelled and fell sideways.

  Lindsay felt raw panic; then she smiled. She smiled as she jerked open the night table beside the bed. She smiled as she picked up the .38 and aimed it at the man. He was shaking his head, and he was pale with rage. He was up in an instant, the syringe high in his hand so she couldn’t kick it away from him.

  “Now,” he said, and then he saw the gun.

  “That damned bastard gave you a gun!” And he rushed at her.

  Lindsay pulled the trigger. The syringe went flying. He grabbed his right wrist. Blood quickly seeped through between his fingers.

  He stared at her. “No, damn you!” he screamed at her. “You damned bitch!” Lindsay fired again. This time nothing happened. “Oh, shit,” she said and threw the gun at him. She missed but it didn’t matter. She was out of bed and on him in an instant, frenzied, hitting him, a wild keening coming from her throat. He twisted out of her grasp, cursed, tried to hit her, but the pain in his wrist held him up. Lindsay smashed her fist in his throat. He gagged, jerked away, and ran out of the room, holding his wounded wrist. Lindsay stood there panting, staring at the door.

  When Taylor and Barry came crashing through the door, it was to see Lindsay standing there, still panting, holding Taylor’s gun in her hand. She looked up and said, “Damn, Taylor, you can’t trust technology. The thing fired once but didn’t do anything the second time.” Taylor’s heart was careening about in his chest. Dempsey hadn’t been at his post and Taylor had been beyond fear. He stared at Lindsay, at the gun that hadn’t fired the second time.

  “Jesus,” he said.

  They found Officer Dempsey unconscious in one of the men’s-room stalls some five minutes later. Half the staff was in on the search.

  They hadn’t seen the man who’d tried to kill Lindsay, but it didn’t matter. Taylor knew who he was.

  Taylor and Barry and two other NYPD cops arrived at the brokerage house of Ashcroft, Hume, Drinkwater, and Henderson on Water Street two and one-half hours later. They’d already converged on the brownstone but found only some bloody towels and an open first-aid box. And an appointment book.

  “Bastard,” Barry said now as he got out of the car.

  “I know where his office is,” Taylor said.

  “Let’s get to it, then.”

  “My pleasure.”

  As they rode to the fourteenth floor, Taylor said, “I called to confirm what we read in his appointment book. The executive secretary told me that Brandon Waymer Ashcroft was due in a board meeting in twenty minutes. Just about now, in fact.”

  “Uncle Bandy,” Barry said aloud, shaking his head. “What a nickname.”

  “You want the truth now or later, Barry?”

  “Now, and make it snappy.”

  Taylor was surprised at how calm he sounded. “Uncle Bandy had been sexually abusing his niece, Ellie, starting when she was about ten years old or so. I came along quite by accident one afternoon to see her mother running out of a very nice brownstone, screaming that her little girl was bleeding to death. She was bleeding. The bastard had just raped her and she was hemorrhaging. I wanted him strung up, and finally I got the mother to testify against him. I got Ellie on tape. Enough to break your heart, Barry. She was such a sweet little kid. So broken—”

  Barry made a noise in his throat and kept looking straight ahead at the elevator panel.

  “Anyway, it turned out Uncle Bandy was rich and powerful and headed up this brokerage house. He was paying the sister’s way and evidently that included having her pimp for him, namely, the little girl. You’ll recognize this all too well: we arrested him, he was out within an hour, and he got the sister to recant her testimony. He got off scot-free. I played Ellie’s tape recording for Judge Riker. I had to do something, but of course it wasn’t enough. The judge said chances were good that Uncle Bandy had paid off his sister not to testify against him and that she and Ellie would be long gone. He firmly believed that she would be safe now.

  “It didn’t work out that way. Two weeks later the girl jumped out of the girls’ restroom from the third floor of her private school.”

  “That’s when you quit the force, Taylor?”

  “Yeah. But I had to do something to avenge Ellie. I beat the shit out of Uncle Bandy. I got him outside his three-million-dollar brownstone and I beat him to a pulp. I wanted to kill him, but I didn’t. Maybe something you taught me in the academy stopped me, maybe something that was inside me all the time. Who the hell knows? It was later he told me he would get me. I laughed, Barry, I laughed. I didn’t look at his eyes. If I had, I would have believed him.”

  “We’re here.” The elevator opened onto a huge carpeted entrance area filled with eighteenth-century French antiques, fine prints, and soft recessed lighting.

  A woman rose when she saw the two men. She was frowning and Taylor knew well enough that she knew they weren’t board members. They didn’t look right.

  Joanna Bianco, efficient, astute, quickly stepped foward, saying in her smooth calm voice, “ Gentlemen, I’m sorry, but Mr. Ashcroft is in a board meeting at present. Perhaps if I could have your names I could—”

  Barry flipped out his badge. “Sergeant Kinsley, ma’am. And this is S. C. Taylor. We’ll see Mr. Ashcroft right this minute.”

  “Let me get him, then—”

  “Oh, no,” Taylor said. “I want him right where he is. At the head of his big mahogany table, feeding a line of B.S. to a whole lot of gentlemen over the age of sixty, right? I want, in short, to humiliate him. He’s slime.”

  Joanna Bianco looked him up and down, her expression unreadable. Then she said, “I gather he’s done something rather serious to be slime?”

  “Dead serious,” Taylor said.

  She stepped back and waved toward the doors. “Have at it,” she said, and there was a smile on her f
ace.

  Barry told the other two officers who had just arrived on another elevator to remain there. “Keep your eyes open, lads. You’ve seen his photo. If the guy comes bounding out, have a ball, but don’t kill him.”

  Taylor very quietly opened the thick mahogany double doors. They parted soundlessly inward. The room was at least thirty feet long, carpeted in pale cream Berber, wainscoted with dark stained wood. Built-in bookshelves lined the far short wall. The long wall was all windows, covered at the moment with thick pale baize draperies. A long table stood in the center of the room. Silver water carafes sat on silver trays at intervals down the table. A crystal glass stood in front of each person. There was Uncle Bandy, Mr. Brandon Waymer Ashcroft, standing at the head of the table, holding a pointer in one hand, speaking about a chart that was on a stand behind him.

  There were ten people seated in the plush chairs that surrounded the table. Only six of them were old men. There were three women, all over fifty, richly dressed, and one younger black man. All the men looked affluent, conservative, serious about what they were doing.

  Taylor quickly saw that Ashcroft’s right hand was at his side. Lindsay had shot him in the right wrist.

  “May I?” Taylor asked Barry.

  “He’s all yours, lad.”

  Taylor cleared his throat. One by one, all the board members turned to face him. Their faces held only mild interest. Ashcroft, on the other hand, stepped back and turned pale.

  “I’m terribly sorry to interrupt your meeting, gentlemen, ladies. This is Sergeant Barry Kinsley. I’m S. C. Taylor. We’re here to arrest Mr. Ashcroft for attempted murder.”

  There were gasps.

  “. . . what the devil is this?”

  “Brandon, what’s going on here?”

  “Who the hell are these men, Ash?”

  Taylor waited for their disbelief to dissipate. Ashcroft remained quiet; he remained pale as death. Taylor said, “I suppose most of you know about the attempted murder of the model Eden in an explosion in Washington Square? Well, Uncle Bandy here—Brandon or Ash—paid a man named Oswald to kill her. When Oswald failed twice, he came to the hospital not three hours ago to do the job himself. Unfortunately his victim is smarter than he is, and braver, and she shot him in his right wrist. Would you like to raise your right arm, Uncle Bandy?”

  All the board members were now facing the man at the head of the table, staring at him as if at a stranger, some sort of alien being they’d suddenly realized they didn’t understand or even want to.

  Brandon Waymer Ashcroft raised his chin. “This is all a ludicrous mistake, gentlemen. As for a wounded hand, that’s even more absurd. Now, if you would like to go into my office, I can spare a few minutes to straighten out this ridiculous mistake.”

  Taylor merely shook his head and addressed the members. “Would you like to know why he was trying to have her killed? Well, let me tell you. A few years ago I was a cop and I came across a fourteen-year-old girl who was bleeding badly after being raped. Her Uncle Bandy had raped her; he’d been sexually abusing her since she was ten, maybe even younger. To make it short and sweet, Uncle Bandy here got off, his little niece killed herself, and I beat him up. His only punishment. He promised he’d get even with me. He tried to kill my fiancée, but he’s failed. It’s all over now and this time justice will come through.”

  “You’re crazy! Get the fuck out of my office!”

  “Another thing,” Taylor continued easily, “ Lindsay Foxe, or Eden, which is her professional name, has a photographic memory for faces. She described you right down to the ear hairs that stick out in a group of three from low in your right ear.”

  There were more gasps, more astounded speculation, huffs of indignation, murmurs of doubt.

  “I suspect, sir,” Barry said, stepping forward now, “that we’ll find a nice bullet wound in your right wrist. Also, we even have the sketch the police artist drew from Lindsay Foxe’s description.” Barry pulled a rolled piece of paper from his breast pocket. He unfurled it and handed it to the elderly gentleman who was sitting nearest him.

  The old gentleman stared at the drawing. He said nothing. He handed it to the woman next to him.

  “It’s you, Ash,” she said in the most emotionless voice Taylor had ever heard, and passed it on.

  Taylor and Barry waited until each person at the table had looked at the sketch.

  The black man was the last to look at the sketch. He stared down at it for a long time. He raised his head and said, “He’s right about the hairs sticking out of your right ear. I’ve always thought you should have them clipped.”

  There was a nervous laugh.

  “Now, how about a vote,” Taylor said. “All of you who recognized Mr. Ashcroft from the drawing, please raise your hands.”

  The room was utterly silent. There wasn’t a sound. One old gentleman made a disgusted kind of sound and his hand shot up. It was followed by another and then another. All ten board members finally had their arms up.

  “Are you ready, Uncle Bandy?” Taylor said.

  “This is stupid, crazy. I’m not going anywhere with you fools!”

  “Sorry, sir, but you are. Indeed you are.” Barry walked around the table toward Brandon Ashcroft. He pulled a pair of handcuffs out of his pocket.

  “Do you want to do it the easy way or shall I rough you up just a little bit so you’ll know I’m serious?”

  “Get away from me, you fucking moron! Damn you. You’ll see, Taylor, you’ll see. I’ll be out of custody in less time than it took me last time! You hear me? And then I’ll get that bitch, you’ll see!”

  “Yes, I hear you,” Taylor said. He watched Barry grasp Ashcroft’s arms behind him. The man grunted in pain. Barry clapped on the handcuffs, then, smiling gently, leaned close to Ashcroft’s ear and whispered, “Now, boyo, you ready to have those nice manicured fingers of yours all blackened with fingerprint ink? Are you ready for a nice big burly guard to strip you down, have you bend over, and make sure you don’t have any coke stashed anywhere? I know this one guard who loves his job. Only problem, he’s old, not a young girl who’s helpless.”

  Ashcroft broke. He tried to pull loose of Barry. He was frantic, crazy, cursing. “Damn you, Taylor! It’s your fault, all your fault! You pig, murderer—you butchered my little Ellie, you made her so unhappy that she couldn’t bear things anymore, you made her jump, you’re responsible for her death! God, I wanted to get you, and then you beat me up—me! I swore then I’d get you, I’d make you pay by hurting someone you loved, but you were so slow about finding yourself a woman you really cared about. Then you got that bimbo model.”

  It all came spewing out, filling the heavy silence of the huge boardroom, chilling the air, making the listeners ill and disgusted.

  Taylor merely stared at Uncle Bandy, watching as Barry pulled him thrashing and panting through the doors. Ashcroft shouted over his shoulder, “I’ll be out soon enough, Taylor! And I’ll get you, you damned bastard! Next time I’ll get you, and after you’re dead, I’ll get that damned broad!”

  Taylor smiled at the ten board members. “She’s not a broad. She’s my wife.”

  Epilogue

  “It’s all over now, Lindsay. The jury brought in the guilty verdict and Uncle Bandy will be out of the way for so long we’ll be able to die and reincarnate at least twice and still be free of him.”

  “Thank God. It’s taken so long, Taylor, so long.”

  She was right about that. Nearly nine months before he’d gone on trial and two more weeks before the case had gone to the jury. Lindsay had held up well on the witness stand, and he had as well. Taylor scratched his belly and felt relief flood through him. He was naked and still damp from his shower. He felt great. He looked at his wife, at her beautiful face and thick wavy hair. She wasn’t quite so thin now, but she was still modeling and it seemed to suit her.

  He picked up the TV remote and switched it off. He said, “The media will have a ball for another couple of weeks, sweethea
rt, and then you and I, Lindsay Taylor, will become nothing more than one of the madding crowd.”

  She snuggled next to him.

  “I was thinking,” he said as he stroked his hand down her bare back to cup around her bottom. “How ’bout you and I flying to Hawaii for a week or two? We can hide out on the beach, let the press forget all about us, and make love until we can’t walk.”

  “That sounds okay.” She sighed, moving closer. Her hand was flat on his belly. He wished her fingers would go lower and knew that they would. She always liked to take her time, and it drove him mad and then blissfully happy.

  “What do you want if not Maui? It’s a long trip, but if you like, we could stop off for a few days in L.A.”

  She rose on her elbow and looked down at him. “No, it’s not that.”

  “What is it?”

  “I want you to show me France.”

  He stared at her. He couldn’t believe it. “France?”

  “Yeah, I don’t think I gave it a chance to impress me.”

  “France,” he said again. It had been over a year since his last trip there. He felt his blood stir. They’d ride his motorcycle through every inch of the Loire Valley. He’d take her to see the dolmans in Brittany, the Merchants’ Table at Locmariaquer, he’d show her the Knights’ Hall in the Abbey of Mont St. Michel, ah, so very very much to show her—

  “How about next Tuesday?”

  “France,” he said again, then, “Tuesday?”

  “Yes, but first things first.” Her fingers wrapped around him and he sighed, pleasure flowing through him.

  “I don’t have much packing to do. We want to travel real light, and—”

  She squeezed just a bit, making him groan before he grinned up at her. “You’re a hard woman. Let’s do it.”

  Lindsay felt soft and fluid as water. It was Taylor who was hard as a stone. She knew him well now, and if a fire chanced to start in the apartment, they’d both be in dire straits.