Lightning

41

“Everybody’s talking all at once and about each other,” Wicker said to Carver and Beth the next morning on the cottage porch, “and here’s how it was.” The sea was shooting silver sparks of sunlight in the background and gulls were crying above the rushing whisper of the surf. Wicker leaned with his buttocks against the porch rail, the ocean at his back. Only the palms and backs of his hands were bandaged now, and he was regaining mobility in his fingers. “Dr. Benedict and Adelle Grimm had been having an affair for more than a year. Adelle discovered after her husband’s death that she was pregnant.”

“With Benedict’s child?” Beth asked.

“She had no way of knowing for sure. Benedict was pressuring her to have an abortion. At the same time, she was beginning to suspect to her horror-that’s the way she put it-that Benedict might have had some connection with the clinic bombing. Wracked with grief and guilt, in emotional turmoil over Benedict and whether to carry the child to term, she went to Martin Freel to hear from his own lips his denial that Operation Alive was responsible for the bombing. She wanted to try to get a glimpse of the truth, and perhaps to try to find her way to a decision through religion.”

“That’s when I saw them meet at the Blue Dolphin Motel,” Carver said, remembering the intensity of their conversation and how he’d mistaken it for romantic attachment.

“That’s right,” Wicker said, “and she didn’t find the understanding and solace she was seeking. Now we get to Benedict: Adelle had refused to leave her husband for him, and he decided the only way to possess her was to kill Dr. Grimm. Additional incentive was the decreasing profitability of the Women’s Light Clinic due to Operation Alive’s demonstrations and terror tactics. And Benedict was convinced that soon abortions would be effected through pills, in private, and the clinic would become obsolete. The explosion and ensuing insurance settlement seemed the only way out of the downward financial spiral and would also clear the way for Benedict to be with Adelle. It was Benedict who sent some of the threatening letters to Grimm and to himself, who fired the late-night shot into the clinic, who used Norton as the fall guy. And Benedict hired Ezekiel Masterson to plant the blasting caps in Norton’s car and try to scare you off the case so even more blame and suspicion would be focused on Operation Alive. It was Benedict who planted the bomb in Coast Medical Services, in the storage shed so it wouldn’t harm anyone, to make it appear that Operation Alive was trying to avert suspicion from Norton.”

“So he wasn’t the idealist his wife imagined,” Carver said, remembering how Benedict had harbored no suspicion that his wife drank. The secrets people kept from each other.

“He was an idealist in love and afraid of how his world was changing,” Wicker said. “He’s expressed a lot of grief over the death of the patient and the maiming of Delores Bravo at Women’s Light, said he only wanted to kill Dr. Grimm but he wasn’t knowledgeable enough about explosives and the bomb was more powerful than he intended.”

Carver watched a gull soaring in narrowing, ascending circles above the surf. “Then Adelle wasn’t involved in the bombing and knew nothing about it.”

“That’s right,” Wicker said. “Dr. Benedict alone planted the bomb in the clinic. He’s been charged with the murders of Dr. Grimm and Wanda Creighton. Masterson’s been charged with Lapella’s murder.”

“Is Norton free?”

“Released from custody this morning.” Wicker stared down at his bandaged hands and seemed to shiver slightly in the sun. “I talked to his wife. She said Norton was going to plant a bomb in the clinic during the demonstration. That’s why he went around behind the building. Then Benedict’s bomb exploded, and for a moment Norton thought his own bomb had gone off prematurely and he was going to die. He ran away in a daze, and he and his wife managed to hide the bomb he’d intended to plant.”

“Why would she tell you that?” Carver asked.

“It was off the record and without witnesses, so she can always deny the conversation. It’s the way these people think. She was boasting.”

“He’ll try it again,” Beth said.

Wicker smiled sadly. “That’s what his wife told me. He’ll try it again someplace else. I believe her. She seemed proud of him.”

Wicker jammed his hands deep into his pockets, tugging his pants low enough for his belt to slide beneath his protruding stomach.

“Now come the lawyers,” he said.

“They’ll keep coming and take over the world,” Carver said.

Wicker smiled and shrugged. “We already have. I meant it was the prosecutors’ turn now.”

Lawyers and accountants with guns.

Carver and Beth watched Wicker trudge through the fierce sunlight back to his car, his heels dragging on his pants cuffs. Carver was amazed, as he often was, at how the truth had finally spun out. Though it had become a cause celebre, the clinic bombing and the issue of legal abortion actually had nothing to do with each other.

“It won’t be that simple,” Beth said.

He looked over at her. “What won’t be?”

“The whole abortion rights issue. It’s far too complicated to be settled by demonstrations or a bomb, or even a pill that ensures privacy.”

Carver figured she was right, thinking of Norton, of what his wife had told Wicker: He’ll try it again someplace else.

Proud of him.