Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. And the International Hunt for His A

24 LIKE A MAN ON A CROSS

THE BULLET STRUCK the right side of King's face at a velocity of 2,670 feet per second. The soft-nosed projectile shattered his mandible and, following the downward angle of its path, exited from the underside of his jaw only to reenter, burrowing into the flesh of his neck. As it did so, it sliced through his shirt collar and coat lapel and cleanly sheared away the taut cinch of his brown necktie just back from the knot.

The bullet worked its violence precisely as it was designed to do: soft-pointed rounds, forbidden by the Geneva Conventions, hotly expand upon striking their target. Considered a humane agent of dispatch for hunted animals, the bullets are designed to rupture tissue and wreak maximum trauma, so a victim has little chance of survival even when no major organ or artery has been hit.

The bullet's impact knocked King backward, spraying a fantail of blood on the balcony floor and the ceiling above him. Shards of jawbone skittered across the cement floor. Instinctively, he grasped at his throat with his right hand and fumbled for the railing with his left. Within a second, King was splayed on his back, his legs crimped at awkward angles, his wing-tip shoes caught in the bottom rungs of the metal railing. His right pants leg was hitched up to mid-calf, exposing his ribbed black socks. His eyes rolled. His head moved slightly, from left to right.

The wound gushed with his pulse, the blood forming an expanding pool around his head and shoulders. A Salem menthol was crushed in one hand. His arms spread out wide on the cold concrete; he had come to rest in a posture that some at the Lorraine would later compare to crucifixion. One witness said, 'His arms went out³⁶² to the sides like he was a man on a cross.'

Abernathy, applying Aramis aftershave on his face inside 306, heard what sounded like a firecracker or a backfiring car outside, but he thought little of it. The astringent lotion tingled on his hands and cheeks. Firecracker? he thought again, and glanced out the door, which was slightly ajar. He saw King's wing-tip shoes on the floor of the balcony, tucked under the railing. His first thought, alarmed but optimistic, was that King had taken cover in reaction to the popping noise outside. Then, when Abernathy got to the door, he saw the blood and knew.

'Oh my God, Martin's been shot!'³⁶³ he screamed. He headed for the balcony, but feared the sniper might still be out there somewhere. He glanced down into the Lorraine courtyard and saw the others stooped behind vehicles, hugging tires, taking cover. Abernathy could hear screams and shouts from down below: My God, my God, my God! Duck! Get down! Hit the ground! ... Don't get up--he's still out there!

A few seconds passed before Abernathy emerged onto the balcony, and he stayed in a crouch. King lay diagonally on the cement floor, to the left of the door. Carefully stepping over him, Abernathy saw that his friend looked afraid and tried to comfort him by patting his left cheek. The wound on his right jaw was worse than Abernathy had feared. Ragged and torn, it was, he thought, as large as a fist. A slash of bone shone through. The blood 'glistened,' Abernathy later said, and it steadily pooled around King's head, soaking his shirt and suit coat.

King breathed with a raspy difficulty. His quivering lips appeared to be forming the word 'Oh,' but produced no sound. He seemed to be trying to say something. His eyes wobbled in their sockets, then steadied and sharpened. His gaze fell on his friend. Abernathy thought King was trying to communicate something through his eyes.

'Martin,' Abernathy said softly. 'It's all right.³⁶⁴ Don't worry. This is Ralph. This is Ralph.'

WITHIN FORTY-FIVE seconds of firing the shot, Eric Galt had scrambled down the rooming house stairs-- twenty-five steps in all--and thrown open the door. It was 6:02 p.m. when he emerged into the twilight on South Main. The night was cold and damp, the street strangely deserted. Most of the businesses had closed for the night, and the brick and glass storefronts simmered in a thin soup of neon. With the Gamemaster still bundled under his arm, Galt turned left and dashed south along the cracked sidewalk. His fake-alligator loafers clopped on the cement as he aimed for his Mustang, parked sixty feet away.

It was all too easy. South Main was ghostly quiet, and there was no indication of the carnage he'd just created a block away. No one even noticed him--let alone tried to stop him. But as he approached his Mustang, he saw the three Memphis police cars of TAC Unit 10 parked just ahead. They were angled toward the Lorraine, at the Butler Avenue fire station. Just around the corner, several policemen stood outside the fire station brandishing weapons.

If Galt continued down South Main, one of these officers would see the suspicious-looking package under his arm. The odds of his reaching the Mustang undetected were slim. He made an impulsive decision he would later rue: he would have to ditch the rifle.

He was passing by Canipe's Amusement Company, the cluttered shop at 424 South Main that leased and serviced jukeboxes and pinball machines. The storefront had a recessed entry; its plate-glass windows angled in from the sidewalk, creating a triangular vestibule, so the doorway was slightly hidden from the cops' line of sight. This fortuitous cavern might buy him a minute. It's not clear whether Galt noticed, but the owner, Guy Canipe, was seated at his desk. Farther back in the shop, two black patrons were rummaging through the store's collection of secondhand 45 records, which Canipe sold for a quarter apiece. From somewhere in the store, music droned from a jukebox.

Instinct told Galt what to do. Within seconds, he jettisoned the whole incriminating bundle in the entryway. The rifle box, wrapped in its dingy bedspread, made a solid thunk³⁶⁵ as it crashed against the Canipe's door.

'MARTIN, CAN YOU hear me?' Abernathy asked. 'Are you in pain?'

The life was leaching from King's face. Within minutes, his skin turned an ashen hue. He was slipping into shock. His blood pressure was plummeting, his lips turning blue, his skin clammy and cool. He seemed to stare into space, his pupils dilated. 'The understanding,'³⁶⁶ Abernathy said, 'drained from his eyes.'

The corona of warm blood oozed outward over the concrete slab. Earl Caldwell, the New York Times reporter staying at the Lorraine, thought that the blood was strangely thick and viscous--that instead of flowing, it layered upon itself, like 'crimson molasses.'³⁶⁷ Marrel McCullough, an undercover policeman who had been spying on the Invaders, cradled King's head in a white motel towel and wrapped one end around the wounds to stanch the bleeding. King's eyes were open but tracked independently of each other.

Now he was surrounded by people--Andy Young was there, and Jesse Jackson, and McCullough. Young knelt at King's side and felt his right wrist for a pulse. He thought he detected a beat--faint and thready, but still there. Studying King's eyes, Young wondered whether he was aware of what had happened, whether he'd heard the report of the rifle, whether he felt anything at all. 'Ralph,' he said softly. 'It's all over.'

'Don't say that,' Abernathy replied with a grimace. 'Don't say that.'

Inside room 306, Billy Kyles was leaning against the wall, screaming and crying. He held the telephone receiver in one hand and pounded the wall with the other. He had been trying to call an ambulance but couldn't get through. He pounded and pounded the wall, screaming, 'Answer the phone! Answer the phone! Answer the phone!' But the Lorraine operator, who had left her desk and hurried outside to investigate the commotion, wouldn't pick up.

'Let's not lose our heads,' Abernathy told Kyles, adding that surely someone else had called an ambulance by now. Kyles pulled himself together and went onto the balcony with a hotel bedspread and a pillow for King's head. Kneeling down to cover King in the orange bedspread, he spotted the Salem cigarette crumpled in his hand. Thinking that King wouldn't want people to see cigarettes, Kyles discreetly slipped it out of his grip.³⁶⁸

A few doors down, in room 309, Joseph Louw trembled with a manic rage.³⁶⁹ He wanted to grab a gun and kill the first white person he saw, but the only thing he had to shoot with was his still 35 mm camera, hidden in his dresser. He yanked open the drawer and scooped up the camera. Then he emerged onto the