The Sixth Commandment

by Lawrence Sanders

  “What difference does it make?” I said. I stamped my feet. “Listen, can we walk? Just walk up and down? If we stand here without moving for fifteen minutes, we’ll never dance the gavotte again.”

  She didn’t say anything, but dug her chin down into her collar, hunched her shoulders, tramped beside me up the graveled road and back. Behind the fence was the Crittenden cemetery. On the other side were the winter-shredded trees. Not another car, a sound, a color. We could have been alone on earth, the last, the only. Smoke swirled about us, and I wanted a quart of brandy.

  “Why did you write it?” I asked her. “I thought you loved your father. Stepfather.”

  She tried to laugh scornfully.

  “She told you that,” she said. “I hate the man. Hate him! He killed my mother.”

  “Can you prove that?”

  “No,” she said, “but I know.”

  I wondered if she was out to lunch, if her fury had corroded her so deeply that she was lost. To me, herself, everyone.

  “Is that why you wrote: ‘Thorndecker kills’? Because you think he murdered your mother?”

  “And his father,” she said. “I know that, too. No, that’s not why. Because he’s killing, now, in that lab of his.”

  “Scoggins?” I suggested. “Thorndecker killed him?”

  “Who?”

  “Scoggins. Ernie Scoggins. He used to work at Crittenden. A maintenance man.”

  “Maybe,” she said dully. “The man who disappeared? I don’t know anything about him. But there were others.”

  “Petersen?” I asked. “Chester K. Petersen? They buried him a few days ago. Pelvic cancer.”

  “No,” she said, “he was a heart patient. That’s why he came to Crittenden Hall. I saw his file. Angina. No close relatives. A sweet old man. Just a sweet old man. Then, about three months ago, he began to develop tumors. Sarcomas, carcinomas, melanomas. All over his body. On his scalp, his face, hands, arms, legs. I saw him. I visited him. He rotted away. He smelled.”

  “Jesus,” I said, looking away, remembering the dying chimp.

  “But he was only the latest,” she said. “There were others. Many, many others.”

  “How long?” I demanded. “How long has this been going on?”

  She thought a moment.

  “Eighteen months,” she said. “But mostly in the past year. Patients with no medical record of cancer. Cardiacs, mentals, alcoholics, addicts. Then they developed horrible cancers. They decayed. He’s doing it to them. Thorndecker is. I know it!”

  “And Draper?” I said softly. “Dr. Kenneth Draper?”

  A hand came swiftly out of her coat pocket. She gnawed on a chalky knuckle.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I ask him. I plead with him. But he won’t tell me. He cries. He worships Thorndecker. He’ll do anything Thorndecker says.”

  “Draper is in on it,” I told her flatly. “He’s the physician in attendance. He signs the death certificates. But why are they doing it? For the bequests? For the money the dead patients leave to the lab?”

  The question troubled her.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “That’s what I thought at first, but that can’t be right. Some of them didn’t leave the lab anything. Most of them didn’t. I don’t know. Oh my God …”

  She began weeping. I put an uncomfortable arm about her shoulders. We leaned together. Still stamping back and forth, wading through that twisting fog.

  “All right,” I said, “let’s go over it … A patient checks in. A cardiac case, or a mental, drugs, alcoholic, whatever. Young or old?”

  “Mostly old.”

  “Then after awhile they develop cancer and die of that?”

  “Yes.”

  “The same way Petersen died? Or internal cancer, too? Lung cancer? Stomach? Spleen? Liver?”

  “All ways,” she said in a low voice.

  “In how long a time? How long does it take them to die of the cancer?”

  “At first, when I became aware of what was going on, it was very quick. A few weeks. Lately it’s been longer. Petersen was the most recent. He lasted almost three months.”

  “And they’re all buried here on the grounds?”

  “Or shipped home in a sealed coffin.”

  “But all of them tumorous?”

  “Yes. Decayed.”

  “And no complaints from relatives? No questions asked?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Probably not. People are like that. People are secretly relieved when a sick relative dies. A problem relative. They wouldn’t ask questions.”

  “You’re probably right,” I said sadly. “Especially if they’re inheriting. And Draper hasn’t told you a thing about what’s going on?”

  “He just claims Thorndecker is a genius on the verge of a great discovery. That’s all he’ll say.”

  “He loves you.”

  “He says,” she said bitterly, “but he won’t tell me anything.”

  We paced back and forth in silence. It was the pits, absolutely the pits.

  “What will you do to find out?” I asked her finally.

  “What? I don’t understand.”

  “How far will you go to discover what’s going on? How important is it to you to stop Thorndecker?”

  Suddenly she came apart. Just splintered. She stopped, jerked away from my shielding arm, turned to face me.

  “That cocksucker!” she howled. Her spittle stung. I took a step back, shocked, bewildered. “That murderer!” she screamed. “Turdy toad! Wife killer! You think I don’t—And he—with that slimy wife of his rubbing up against everything in sight. He has no right. No right! He must suffer. Oh yes! Skin flayed away. Flesh from his bones. Rot in the deepest, hottest hell. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord! Naked! The way she dresses! Licking up to every male she meets. Edward! Oh my God, poor, young, innocent Edward. Yes, even him. What does she do to them? And he, he, lets her go her way, his life destroyed by that wanton with her filthy ways. Ruining him. Her body there. For everyone! Oh yes, I know. Everyone knows. The whore! The smirking whore! Den of iniquity. That house of wickedness. Oh God, strike down the evil. Lord Jesus, I beg you! Smite this filth. Root out—”

  She went on and on, using words I could hardly believe she knew. The schoolteacher gone berserk. The spinster wrung by an orgasm. Obscenity, jealousy, sexual frustration, religious frenzy: it was all in her inchoate shouts, words tumbling, white stuff gathering in the corners of her mouth, something leaking from her eyes.

  And love there. Oh yes; love. Julie hadn’t been so wrong. This woman had to love Thorndecker to damn him so viciously, to want him so utterly destroyed. Every woman deserves one shot at the man she loves, and this was Mary’s, this wailed revilement, this hysterical abuse that frightened me with its intensity. The vapor of her screams came at me in spouts of steam smelling of acid and ash.

  I wondered if I might shake her, slap her, or take her in my arms and say, “There, there,” and commiserate over her wounded soul, lost hopes, wasted life. Finally, I did nothing but let her rant, rave, wind down, lose energy, become eventually silent, just standing there, mouth open, trembling. And not from cold, I knew, but from pain and shame. Pain of her hurts, shame for having revealed it to another.

  I put a hand on her arm as gently as I could, and led her back to her car. She came willingly enough, and let me get her seated behind the wheel. I pulled up her collar, folded the coat carefully over her knees, did everything but tuck her in. I offered her a cigarette, but I don’t think she saw it. I lighted up, with shaking fingers, smoked like a maniac. I finally had to open the window on my side just a crack.

  When, after a few moments, I turned to look at her, I saw her eyes were closed, her lips were moving. She was praying, but to whom or for what, I did not know.

  “Mary?” I said softly. “Mary, can you hear me? Are you listening to me?”

  Lips stopped moving, eyes opened. Head turned, and she looked at me. The focus of her eyes gradually shortene
d until she saw me.

  “I can help you, Mary,” I whispered. “But you must help me do it.”

  “How?” she said, in a voice less than a whisper.

  I laid it out for her:

  I wanted to know the number of exterior and interior security guards on duty Sunday night. I wanted to know their schedules, when the shift changed, their routines, where they stayed when they weren’t patrolling.

  I wanted to know everything she could find out about alarms, electric and electronic, and where the on-off switch or fuse box was located. Also, the location of the main power switches for the nursing home and the research laboratory.

  I wanted to know the number of medical staff on duty Sunday night in Crittenden Hall and who, if anyone, might be working in the laboratories.

  Finally, most important, I wanted that big ring of keys that Nurse Stella Beecham carried. If she wasn’t on duty late Sunday night—say from midnight till eight Monday morning—she probably left the keys in her office. I wanted them. If Beecham was on duty, or if she handed over her keys to a night supervisor, then I needed at least two keys: to the Hall and to the research lab. If those were impossible to obtain, then Mary Thorndecker would have to let me in from the inside of the nursing home, and I’d have to get into the lab by myself, somehow.

  It took me a long time to detail all this, and I wondered if she was listening. She was. She said dully: “You’re going to break in?”

  “Yes. I’m going to find out about those cancer deaths.”

  “You’re going to get the evidence?”

  I felt like weeping. But I had no compunction, none whatsoever, about using this poor, disturbed woman.

  “Yes,” I said, “I’m going to get the evidence.”

  In my own ears, it sounded as gamy and cornball as if I had said, “I’m going to grab the boodle and take it on the lam.”

  “All right,” she said firmly, “I’ll help you.”

  We went over it again in more detail: what I wanted, what she could get, what we might have to improvise.

  “How will you get over the fence?” she asked.

  “Leave that to me.”

  “You won’t hurt anyone, will you?”

  “Of course not. I don’t carry a gun or a knife or any other weapon. I’m not a violent man, Mary.”

  “All you want is information?”

  “Exactly,” I said, nodding virtuously. “Just information. Part of my investigation of Thorndecker’s application for a grant.”

  That seemed to satisfy her. Made the whole scam sound more legal.

  We left it like this: she was to collect as much of what I wanted as she could, and on Sunday she was to call me at the Coburn Inn.

  “Don’t give your real name to the switchboard,” I warned her. “Just in case they ask who’s calling. Use a phony name.”

  “What name?”

  “Joan Powell,” I said instantly, without thinking. “Say your name is Joan Powell. If I’m at the Inn, don’t mention any of this over the phone. Just laugh and joke and make a date to meet me somewhere. Anywhere. Right here would be fine; it’s deserted enough. Then we’ll meet, and you can tell me what you’ve found out. And give me the keys if you’ve been able to get them.”

  “What if I call the Coburn Inn, and you’re not there?”

  “Call every hour on the hour. Sooner or later I’ll be there. Any time before midnight on Sunday. Okay?”

  We went over the whole thing once more. I wasn’t sure she was getting it. She was still white as paper, and every once in awhile her whole body would shudder in a hard fit of trembling. But I spoke as quietly and confidently as I could. And I kept touching her. Her hand, arm, shoulder. I think I made contact.

  Just before I got out of the car, I leaned forward to kiss her smooth, chill cheek.

  “Tell me everything’s going to be all right,” she said faintly.

  “Everything’s going to be all right,” I said.

  I knew it wasn’t.

  I drove back to Coburn as fast as Hanrahan’s rattletrap would take me. I kept watching for a public phone booth. I had a call to make, and didn’t want it to go through the hotel switchboard. My paranoia was growing like “The Blob.”

  I found a booth on Main Street, just before the business section started. I knew the offices of the Bingham Foundation were closed on Saturday, so I called Stacy Besant at his home, collect. He lived in a cavernous nine-room apartment on Central Park West with an unmarried sister older than he, three cats, a moth-eaten poodle, and a whacking great tank of tropical fish.

  Edith Besant, the sister, answered the phone and agreed to accept the call.

  “Samuel!” she caroled. “This is nice. Stacy and I were speaking of you just last night, and agreed you must come to us for dinner as soon as you return to New York. You and that lovely lady of yours.”

  “Well, ah, yes, Miss Edith,” I said. “I certainly would enjoy that. Especially if you promise to make that carrot soup again.”

  “Carrot vichyssoise, Samuel,” she said gently. “Not soup.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Carrot vichyssoise. I remember it well.”

  I did, too. Loathsome. But what the hell, she was proud of it.

  We chatted of this and that. It was impossible to hurry her, and I didn’t try. So we discussed her health, mine, her brother’s, the cats’, the poodle’s, the fishes’. Then we agreed the weather had been miserable.

  “Well, my goodness, Samuel,” she said gaily, “here we are gossiping away, and I imagine you really want a word with Stacy.”

  “Yes, ma’am, if I could. Is he there?”

  “Of course he is. Just a minute.”

  He came on so quickly he must have been listening on the extension.

  “Yes, Samuel?” he said. “Trouble?”

  “Sir,” I said, “there are some questions I need answers to. Medical questions. I’d like to call Scientific Research Records and speak to one of the men who worked on the Thorndecker investigation.”

  “Now?” he asked. “This minute? Can’t it go over to Monday?”

  “No, sir,” I said. “I don’t think it can. Things are moving rather rapidly here.”

  There was a moment of silence.

  “I see,” he said finally. “Very well. Wait just a few minutes; I have the number somewhere about.”

  I waited in the closed phone booth. It was an iced coffin, and I should have been shivering. I wasn’t. I was sweating.

  He came back on the phone. He gave me the number of SRR, and the name of the man to talk to, Dr. Evan Blomberg. If SRR was closed on Saturday, as it probably was, I could call Dr. Blomberg at his home. The number there was—

  “Mr. Besant,” I interrupted, “I know this is an imposition, but I’m calling from a public phone booth for security reasons, and I just don’t have phone credit cards, although I have suggested several times that it would make your field investigators’ jobs a lot easier if you—”

  “All right, Samuel,” he said testily, “all right. You want me to locate Dr. Blomberg and ask him to call you at your phone booth. Is that it?”

  “If you would, sir. Please.”

  “It’s that important?”

  “Yes,” I said. “It is.”

  “Let me have the number.”

  I read it off the phone. He told me it would take five minutes. It took more than ten. I was still sweating. Finally the phone shrilled, and I grabbed it off the hook.

  “Hello?” I said. “Dr. Evan Blomberg?”

  “To whom am I speaking?” this deep, pontifical voice inquired. I loved that “To whom.” Much more elegant than, “Who the hell is this?”

  I identified myself to his satisfaction and apologized for calling him away from his Saturday relaxation.

  “Quite all right,” Dr. Blomberg said stiffly. “I understand you have some questions regarding our investigation of the application of Dr. Telford Gordon Thorndecker?”

  “Well, ah, in a peripheral way, do
ctor,” I said cautiously. “It’s just a general question. A general medical question.”

  “Oh?” he said, obviously puzzled. “Well, what is it?”

  I didn’t want to say it. It was like asking an astronomer, “Is the moon really made of green cheese?” But finally I nerved myself and said:

  “Is it possible to infect a human being with cancer? That is, could you, uh, take cancerous cells from one human being who is suffering from some form of the disease and inject them into a healthy human being, and would the person injected then develop cancer?”

  His silence sounded more shocked than any exclamation.

  “Good God!” he said finally. “Who would want to do a thing like that? For what reason?”

  “Sir,” I said desperately, “I’m just trying to get an answer to a what-if question. Is it possible?”

  Silence again. Then:

  “To my knowledge,” Dr. Evan Blomberg said in his orotund voice, “it has never been done. For obvious reasons. Unethical, illegal, criminal. And I can’t see any possible value to any facet of cancer research. I suppose it might be theoretically possible.”

  Try to get a Yes or No out of a scientist. Hah! They’re as bad as lawyers. Almost.

  “Then you could infect someone with cancer cells, and that person would develop cancer?”

  “I said theoretically,” he said sharply. “As you are undoubtedly aware, experimental animals are frequently injected with cancer cells. Some host animals reject the cells completely. Others accept them, the cells flourish, the host animal dies. In other words, some animals have an immunity to some forms of cancer. By extension, I suppose you could speculate that some humans might have or develop an immunity to some forms of cancer. It is not a chance I’d care to take.”

  “I can understand that, Dr. Blomberg, but—”

  “Different species of animals are used for different kinds of cancer research, depending on how similar they are to humans insofar as the way they react to specific types of cancer. Rats, for instance, are used in leukemia research.”

  “Yes, Dr. Blomberg,” I said frantically, “I can appreciate all that. Let’s just call this speculation. That’s all it is: speculation. What I’m asking is if healthy humans are infected with cancer cells from a diseased human, will the healthy host develop cancer?”