Joseph Heradia, returning from the meeting with his attorney just seconds after the explosion, managed to pull the security guard away from any further harm.
“Oh my God,” the gynecologist exclaimed, as he surveyed the scene around him. “What’s happening?”
Inside the hedge of laurel, more than two hundred men, women, and children lay wounded or dying or already dead. It would later be determined that a dozen had miraculously escaped injury. One of them was three-year-old Chelsea Callahan.
Firefighters and paramedics reached the scene within minutes; police close behind. They were greeted by doctors, nurses, and staff members from nearby hospitals, already in the throes of a massive rescue effort. The wounded were removed as quickly as they could be extricated from the burning building and whisked off to various facilities for treatment, determined by the severity of their injuries. Authorities later verified that the immediacy of medical attention was in all likelihood responsible for most of the lives that were saved.
Carl Gentry was among the first to be lifted onto a gurney and taken off to a hospital. And fuzzy though his mind was, as he was being wheeled away, something that had not occurred to him earlier now struck him clearly. This first Tuesday in February was also the first day in the eight years since he had come to work at Hill House that the sidewalk people had not appeared.
FIVE
The bombing of Hill House shook Seattle to its very core. Not just literally, within the half-mile radius of the mansion itself, but figuratively as well.
There were few in the city who had not had some sort of association with the center at one time in their lives, if not as an employee or a patient, then perhaps as a friend or family to an employee or patient, or to a child who had been so carefully nurtured on the third floor. Or possibly, the link had come through the facility’s extensive outreach efforts: its neonatal and well-child clinics, its indigent care and clean needle programs, its youth and drug crisis hotlines. Whatever the connection, it was now being sharply felt.
As word of the disaster spread, people found themselves stopping in their tracks, stunned and incredulous, unable to comprehend.
“What could have happened?” they asked one another.
“Why?”
Reporters from Seattle’s two daily newspapers raced to the scene. Cameramen from the local television stations had their Minicams rolling when they were still blocks away. What greeted them was total devastation. Lenses, zooming in past the ring of fire trucks that had answered the call, registered the gruesome sight of body parts, mingled with fragments of furniture and equipment, smoking and smoldering in the blaze. Microphones caught the awful sounds of dying, the frightened whimpers of infants, the agonized screams of adults. The smell of burning flesh, fortunately unrecordable, was sickening. The historic mansion was gone.
“In a matter of minutes,” the fire chief confirmed with a catch in his voice. “There was nothing we could do. This has been mainly a search and recovery operation.”
“How many?” reporters asked.
The chief sighed as he surveyed the destruction. “We don’t know yet,” he said. “All these… parts… will have to go to the morgue to be sorted out. It could be days, even weeks, before there’s positive identification, or even an accurate count.”
It was a photographer from the Seattle Times who caught what would become the quintessential shot of the event. Thirty-eight-year-old Janet Holman, still wearing her hospital scrubs, stood in the middle of the grisly wreckage, holding a small, dismembered arm in a blue-striped sleeve. On her face was an expression of disbelief, dismay, and dawning horror.
“We have a breaking story to report,” newscaster Joyce Taylor was telling her television viewers within minutes of the incident. “A massive explosion of as yet undetermined origin has just occurred at Hill House. We don’t have many details at this point, as authorities are just now reaching the scene, but we’re told that the explosion has completely destroyed the mansion and killed or injured a great many people.”
For Dana McAuliffe, the association with Hill House was personal. Not only had she been going to the clinic for gynecological services for over a decade, she had been there not more than a month ago for her annual checkup.
“I can’t believe it,” she exclaimed, when she returned to the office after lunch. “I thought it was a train wreck.”
“I heard it on the radio,” Angeline Wilder assured her. “It’s really spooky, you know, what with that doctor having just been here.”
“Good lord, you’re right,” the attorney gasped. “And he was on his way back there.”
Angeline shook her head. “They shouldn’t have done that story the other night. I bet that’s what did it. I bet someone set a bomb.”
“I want answers, and I want them now,” Washington’s governor bellowed from his office in Olympia, some sixty miles away.
“Nobody knows anything yet,” his chief of staff replied.
“Don’t tell me nobody knows,” he retorted. “Somebody has to know something—they’re just not talking. Well, I’m the god-dam governor of this state, and I want answers. So, go get me some. And keep the media out of my face until you do.”
“You’re going to have to make a statement about this fairly soon,” his aide said.
“Of course I am,” the governor replied. “That’s why you’re already on your way out of here, right? I’m running for reelection this year, and I don’t intend to make an insensitive fool of myself by saying the wrong thing.”
It didn’t take investigators long to determine the cause of the disaster. Once firefighters had the blaze under control, members of the King County bomb squad were on the scene, bolstered by several teams from the FBI. Entering the area, which had already been cordoned off by the police and sealed from public access, they went to work, systematically combing the rubble of Hill House for whatever they could find. And what they found were fabric remnants, traces of fertilizer and other chemicals, and the remains of a small timing device.
“It was a bomb all right,” the head of the squad declared. “And whoever set it knew exactly what he was doing. The stuff was positioned for maximum results.”
“Will that help you catch whoever did this?” someone asked.
“It’s a starting point.”
At a quickly arranged press conference, a spokesman from the Seattle mayor’s office did what he could to assure an apprehensive population that everything possible was being done to protect the community and to resolve the crisis expeditiously and professionally.
“Let there be no mistake,” he said firmly but calmly. “This was not just an attack on one isolated building. It was an attack on the entire city of Seattle. We do not take it lightly, and we intend to do whatever is necessary to track down the person or persons responsible.”
“Tell us what you know so far,” entreated a reporter from the Post-Intelligencer.
“I want to,” came the response, “but unfortunately I can’t. In this case, we must balance the people’s right to know with the need for an unhampered investigation. I’m sorry, but that means there can be no briefings, no information, no leaks from the police or any other investigating authority to anyone until we have something of material substance to report. And we ask you all to understand and respect that.”
“You mean, don’t call us, we’ll call you?” the reporter suggested sardonically.
The spokesman shrugged. “For now, let’s think about the victims and their families, and the grieving that has to take place,” he said, deftly diverting the crowd. “Let’s all be there to offer our condolences and our prayers to these people, and give us a few days’ breathing space.”
“In a most heinous act of terrorism,” NBC’s Tom Brokaw reported on the evening news, “more than two hundred people, including an estimated seventy children under the age of five, were either killed or seriously injured today when a bomb destroyed an abortion clinic in Seattle, Washington.”
“Wha
tever your opinions on the subject,’ Kathi Goertzen, KOMO news co-anchor, felt compelled to suggest, “the Seattle Family Services Center was much more than just an abortion clinic. It was an integral part of our community. Over the years, it was a helping hand for millions, a refuge for thousands, and a last resort for hundreds. Hill House will be sorely missed.”
“The Coalition for Conservative Causes is a peaceful and law-abiding organization that does not advocate violence of any kind against anyone,” executive director Roger Roark read from a hastily prepared script. “We deeply regret the loss of life at the Seattle Family Services Center. While we accept no responsibility for those who have made a holy war out of an unborn child’s right to life, we cannot help but consider how many times, in such righteous wars, guiltless people have been sacrificed for the greater good.”
“We are horrified by the destruction of Hill House, and by the deaths of so many innocent people,” Priscilla Wales, president of FOCUS, the acronym for Freedom of Choice in the United States, declared in an impromptu telephone interview from her San Francisco headquarters. “However, if you consider the current political climate, and the resulting rhetoric of the CCC and other organizations like it, who want you to believe that two wrongs do indeed make a right, you can see why we’re not particularly surprised by this terrorist act. A disaster of this magnitude was totally predictable, really just a matter of time. The question is—how much longer are we going to continue to put up with it? How many more lives are going to be lost before we elect officials who will step up to the responsibility for protecting the rights of women in this country?”
“This is what happens when our legislators turn a blind eye to the double standard of killing helpless babies and then protecting their killers,’ said the soft-spoken, Houston-based Prudence Chaffey, pro-life activist and co-founder of AIM, the acronym for Abortion Is Murder. “And the worst of it is that such acts of frustration and desperation will likely continue until the people of this country are willing to rise up as one and repudiate all forms of murder.”
“A special hotline has been established in an effort to help authorities identify the victims of this catastrophe as quickly as possible,” veteran KING telecaster Jean Enersen announced. “Police are asking people who think they know someone who might have been at Hill House at the time of the bombing to please call this number.”
“My mother isn’t here,” eight-year-old Justine Pauley told the woman who answered the hotline. “I think maybe she was at Hill House today.”
“And why do you think that, honey?” the operator asked.
“Because she told me not to worry if she wasn’t here when I came home from school.”
“Can you describe her for me?” the woman inquired gently.
“She’s thin.”
“How old is she?”
“I’m not sure. Pretty old, I guess.”
“What does she look like? What color is her hair, her eyes?”
“Brown,” Justine replied.
“Honey, is your daddy home? Can I talk to him?”
“No, he’s not here,’ the child replied. “But I’m not worried about him, ’cause he doesn’t come home until real late sometimes.”
“Are you alone?”
“Oh no,” Justine assured her. “My brother is here with me.”
“That’s good,” the operator said, relieved. “How old is he?”
“He’s six.”
Joshua Clune would not come out of his box. No matter how hard Big Dug coaxed and cajoled, his friend would not budge.
“I’ve been looking for you,” the bearded behemoth declared. “Did you hear the news?”
“No,” Joshua mumbled.
“Somebody blew up Hill House this afternoon, and it burned right down to the ground.”
There was no response.
“I heard almost everybody’s dead “ There was still no response.
“Are you sicker?” Big Dug asked. For the past week now, Joshua had been suffering from a chest cold. Yesterday, he had coughed up blood, and Big Dug had taken him to Hill House, where he was examined by a doctor and told to come back today for further treatment. “Did you go see the doctor again like you were supposed to? Did he give you some medicine?”
“Go away,” Joshua said.
“I’d get you some soup, but I don’t know who’s going to feed us tonight, and I don’t have any money.”
“I don’t want any soup.”
With some effort, Big Dug got down on his knees and peered inside the box. Joshua was curled up in his blanket like a baby.
“Hey, what’s the matter?” the man asked. “You’re shivering.”
“Go away,” Joshua repeated. “I don’t want to talk to you now. I have nothing to say. I want to go to sleep.”
“Okay,” Big Dug said with a sigh, hefting himself back up. “I’ll come by later and see how you’re doing.”
As soon as Joshua heard the heavy footsteps moving away, he let out a deep sigh of relief. It was all his fault, and he couldn’t tell Big Dug. He couldn’t tell anyone. They would all blame him, and Big Dug wouldn’t want to be his friend anymore.
He hadn’t meant to do it. It was just that he had the appointment, and the doctor had told him it was important, and he was afraid he would forget. But he knew he wasn’t supposed to sleep at Hill House.
“I’m certainly not saying that we should condone what took place in Seattle today,” the Reverend Jonathan Heal was quick to tell his televangelical flock on his nightly cable Prayer Hour. “I say only that it’s not hard to understand why it happened. I myself know the frustration, the outrage, of having to stand by helplessly while more than a million blessed babies are murdered in this country every year, each one of them given no more significance than an unwanted piece of garbage. So the grief that we as true Christians feel by the loss of so many innocent lives at Hill House must be taken in context with the fundamental wrong of taking any life—born or unborn.”
In homes all across the country, people murmured, “Amen.”
“I have no idea what tortured soul was driven to commit such a deed as this, but I will pray for him,” the Reverend continued, warming to his subject, and beginning to sweat through his customary white suit and ruffled shirt. “Because I believe, in his heart of hearts, he decided that he was not only justified in doing what he did, but that he had no choice. Surely, he must have felt that, at the highest level, he was committing nothing less than an act of God.”
Throughout the afternoon and into the evening, from local newscasts to Nightline, the bombing of Hill House—and the fact that every international terrorist group in the world was denying any responsibility for it—was the major topic of conversation. It eclipsed everything else of interest.
This was not, however, just any first Tuesday in February. As happened every four years, it was the day of the New Hampshire primary, and the voters from that state had gone to the polls to declare their preference for both Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. On any other evening, the event, which unofficially signaled the start of the election campaign, would have been on everyone’s tongue, even the late-night gagsters. This evening, however, the story was almost an afterthought on the news, and Leno and Letterman were not making jokes.
SIX
The authorities were as good as their word. While regular medical bulletins on the various victims were issued during the days that followed the bombing, there was no information forthcoming about the investigation itself.
The media, its ranks already swollen to national proportions, scrounged around for anything that would fill air or print space. The overwhelmed medical examiner’s office confirmed that there were so far one hundred and sixty-three dead, the majority having perished at the scene. Some forty of the most seriously injured were still in various hospitals around the city. Another thirty had been treated and then released. Perhaps half a dozen were still unaccounted for.
Reporters hovered outside the
boundaries of the clinic, watching rescue workers dig through the wreckage, waiting for word on the missing. They camped outside the homes of victims, begging for interviews. They stood shifts at the various hospitals, anticipating a rise in the death toll.
By Saturday, funerals had begun to take place, and memorial services were being conducted. Among the most poignant was one held by a group of homeless people who had depended on Hill House’s waterfront soup kitchen for one decent meal a day. Over five hundred strong, they lined Alaskan Way, down near the ferry terminal, armed with candles donated by a shop in Pioneer Square, and prayed throughout the night. Several local churches, hearing about the vigil, quickly organized their congregations to bring a hot dinner for the participants.
The governor and the mayor attended as many of the ceremonies as they could, with the media close behind. Politics had taken second place to Hill House. The results of the New Hampshire primary and speculation about the upcoming South Carolina primary had been sandwiched between round-the-clock bulletins from Seattle.
Sensing a national photo opportunity, the two front-running presidential candidates, seeking to go into South Carolina on a high note, both announced they would fly to Washington to meet with the survivors and the families of the victims. Upon hearing this, the mayor’s office promptly planned a huge public memorial service, and designated Memorial Stadium at Seattle Center as the site.
Condolences poured in from all across the state and many parts of the country. And money, tucked inside cards and letters, found its way to the families of the victims. Outside the iron fence along Boren and Madison, flowers and small remembrances began to appear, a trickle at first, that soon became a deluge.
Joseph Heradia was one of the lucky ones; he had not been killed or even injured in the explosion. More important, as far as the investigation was concerned, he was an eyewitness.
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