Lightning

10

After leaving Mildred Otten, Carver drove to Poco’s Tacos on Magellan near the public marina, where he sat outside at one of the small, round metal tables and had two burritos and a Diet Coke for supper. He watched the white-hulled pleasure boats bobbing gently at their moorings. They appeared impossibly clean and pure in the slanted bright sun of early evening; emblematic of money and position. Florida was different if you possessed wealth. It could be a vast playground then, Disneyworld bounded by Georgia, Alabama, and the sea.

When he was finished eating, he disposed of his paper plates and cup in an orange-and-white trash receptacle around which bees buzzed, then walked over to a bench where he wouldn’t bother any of Poco’s other customers and fired up a Swisher Sweet cigar. He put on his tinted glasses so the sun’s reflection off the water and the white hulls wouldn’t hurt his eyes. Then he sat back and smoked and looked out at the sea and the pelicans, so awkward on land and so graceful in the air, passing low over the water.

Beth hated Poco’s and had refused to eat there with Carver. She’d warned him that the food tasted tainted beneath the hot spices and he was going to contract some sort of illness from it. It had all started, he was sure, when she became sick here during the early days of her pregnancy, though she didn’t see it that way. He decided not to tell her he’d been here when he saw her that evening. Why upset her? He’d mention having eaten supper in the hospital cafeteria. A lie to facilitate healing.

More pelicans arrived. They put on a show, skimming low, sometimes splashing down to dive for a fish, always coming up empty. Beyond them at sea, boats with brightly colored sails tacked and canted to the wind. And beyond the boats, white clouds lay low and immense on the horizon. It was such a beautiful world, Carver thought; why did people have to plant bombs in it? But he knew the sick and the pained and possessed were out there, the ones who were sure they were striking back at something. They always had been, but now there seemed to be more of them, and coming from both ends of the spectrum. He’d always tried to practice and endorse the politics of reasonableness. He hadn’t moved much in his basic beliefs. But the rest of the world had moved. People he had admired and with whom he had agreed had made a journey from dedication to zealotry to fanaticism. He couldn’t go with them. He tried now to be apolitical, but people were dying.

The light had dimmed and he no longer needed the sunglasses, and there were no more pelicans. He tossed the dead stump of his cigar into a trash container next to the bench. Then he stood up and limped to his car to drive to the cottage for the Toshiba to take to Beth at the hospital.

It was official visiting hours, so the hospital parking lot was almost full. He had to park the Olds in a slot at the far end, near a low stone wall and a row of palm trees that marked the property line. It was a long walk to the entrance. The day’s heat lingered and with each step the tip of his cane sank slightly into the warm, graveled blacktop.

A nurse he hadn’t seen before was leaving Beth’s room as he entered. Beth was sitting up in bed, leaning back on her pillow and reading a Gazette-Dispatch. Her hair was pulled back and tied with a red ribbon, and the front of her gown sagged to reveal the cleavage of her large breasts. Carver knew it wasn’t the time to be thinking what he was thinking. She smiled at him, as if maybe she knew what he was thinking, and he went over and kissed her.

“How are you?” he asked when he straightened up, leaning on his cane. He saw now that her eyes looked weary and her features were strained.

“Better. Mad.”

“Better, all right.”

She straightened her gown, then touched his hand where it gripped the crook of his cane. “Just set it on the table where I can reach it.”

“What? Oh.” He’d forgotten he was holding the notebook computer in its black carrying case. He moved a plastic water pitcher and placed the case on the table.

“The battery charger in there?”

“Everything,” he said.

She folded the newspaper, which she’d laid aside, and tossed it onto a nearby chair. “They’ve indicted Adam Norton.”

“No surprise,” Carver said. “He’s probably guilty. Question is, was he put up to it?”

“I think he was. By Operation Alive.”

“He might have been simply a fanatic acting on his own. There are plenty of them these days. We tend to look for reason and conspiracy sometimes when they don’t exist. It’s not always a rational universe.”

“Hardly ever. Did McGregor find you?”

“No. Lucky me.”

He thought she was reaching for her computer, but instead she picked up the plastic water pitcher. She poured water with a few chunks of ice into the plastic cup that served as the pitcher’s lid, then leaned back into her pillow and sipped. When her thirst was assuaged, she held the cup in her lap with both hands and said, “Tell me about the outside world, Fred.”

He filled her in on his visits with Dr. Grimm’s widow and with Mildred Otten.

“There’s a lot of rage out there,” she said.

“There is around abortion clinics.”

“The paper said the police found blasting caps in Norton’s car, and traces of dynamite in his garage workshop. Not to mention several books on how to make bombs.”

“He’ll need a good lawyer,” Carver said,

“He’s got one. Name of Jefferson Brama. Burrow did a piece on him last year, when he was defending a pro-life demonstrator in a property damage case. He won, despite a ton of evidence against his client. He’s aggressive and smooth and a winner.”

“He’s also the attorney for Operation Alive,” Carver said, remembering reading about the Reverend Martin Freel referring media questions about the bombing to his attorney and naming Brama. “You’d think Operation Alive would be trying to distance itself from Norton,”

“Oh, no. He’s one of theirs. You know how those kinds of organizations play it. They goad their members into doing something drastic, then step back and deny culpability. But while they emphatically don’t condone what was done, they don’t actually condemn it. So they’re acting as if Norton is merely a sheep strayed from the flock, instead of a calculating killer on a mission. That’s how Operation Alive is playing it. Tongue clucking, but with a ‘well, that’s what you can expect when you murder babies’ tone.”

“How do you know all this?” Carver asked, glad to see her angry, taking an interest as a victim. Righteous rage was preferable to depression.

“I’ve been reading the papers, watching TV. That Reverend Freel is like all the rest of the smug bastards who’re causing the trouble, putting themselves above the law, frightening pregnant teenage girls and calling them murderers on the way into clinics.”

“And you think he’s behind the Women’s Light bombing? That he hired or instructed Norton?”

Her jaw set. “I think he motivated him. The Freels of this world, they yammer about saving lives, but they killed my-” She stopped talking suddenly and looked as if she might break into sobs.

“I know,” Carver said softly to her, thinking she was more delicate right now than she appeared. Balanced on a fine edge. “I know what you mean and I feel the same way.” He sat down on the bed and held her, waiting for her to cry, but she didn’t.

She sucked in a deep breath and lay back. He noticed that she cocked her head slightly to the right on the pillow so she could hear him better with her left ear. Her face was dark stone. “Keep me informed on what’s going on, Fred. When I get out of here, I want to help you pin this on whoever’s responsible.”

“Maybe Norton really did act on his own.”

“I don’t think so.”

Neither did Carver, but he didn’t say it. He angled his cane and stood up from the bed.

“Do you know a tall, broad-shouldered man with black horn-rimmed glasses and a blond crew cut?” Beth asked.

“No.”

“He was wearing a dark blue suit, white shirt, and red tie. I thought he might be police.”

“Maybe he was. Or FBI. Where’d you see him?”

“He stepped into the room earlier today, while a nurse was in here. Then he only smiled, nodded, and turned around and left. I thought he might be one of McGregor’s men, looking for you.”

“Could be he was. Or just some guy who wandered into the wrong room.”

“He was kind of creepy. That’s why I thought he might be connected to McGregor.”

“Logical,” Carver agreed. “Creepy how?”

“I’m not sure. I guess because he was so perfectly groomed and conservatively and neatly dressed that it almost had to be a front. He was like an automaton who’d been to Brooks Brothers.”

“Ask a nurse who he is,” Carver suggested.

“I did. The nurses don’t know him. And he was such a straight-arrow, all-American WASP, I’m sure they’d know who I was describing if he worked here at the hospital.”

“A visitor, then. Here to see one of the patients.”

“Maybe.”

“You’re worried about him.”

“Yes. I’m not sure why, but I am. He seemed surprised to find a nurse with me. Or more like disappointed. I got the feeling that he had the right room and he’d come in for a reason, then changed his mind.”

Carver didn’t see much basis for her fear, but he’d come to trust her instincts. “I’ll find McGregor,” he said, “and see if there can be some protection assigned here for you.”

“I don’t think there’s much chance of that,” Beth said.

Carver didn’t either, actually. “I can spend the night here.”

She shook her head and smiled, then winced at some sudden pain in her damaged body. “That’s not necessary, Fred. I’m probably just more suspicious than usual.”

“No one could blame you.” He leaned forward and kissed her cheek. “You’re a woman who was blown up.”

“Fred, if you learn anything pertinent you think might upset me, I want you to tell me anyway. I need to know the truth about this.”

“So do I. That’s why I’ve been looking into it.”

“And you think it might be as simple as a deranged man planting a bomb all on his own during a pro-life demonstration?”

“Might be.”

“You wouldn’t lie to me, Fred?”

“Of course not.”

She grinned and glanced at her wristwatch propped on the table so she could see the dial. “You had supper yet?”

“Sure. Down in the cafeteria.”