by John Lutz
“Keep right on coming, dickface,” McGregor said, obviously disappointed that Carver had stopped. “This is exactly the kind of thing I’d expect from a dumb gimp like you.” He moved his hand slightly so it was resting on the butt of his holstered gun.
Carver didn’t move. “Find out what you need to know, then get out,” he said tersely.
“Humph!” McGregor said, opening his notebook. “You’d think you gave the orders around here. Dr. Carver, pilfering drugs from the supplies between fucking the nurses. You should be so lucky.” He turned his attention to Beth. “What did you see when you entered the clinic?”
Beth thought for a moment. “A reception desk with nobody sitting behind it. A hall leading to some doors. A woman in the hall, well ahead of me. Then I saw … I don’t know, the explosion, pieces of wall and wreckage flying upward, outward, toward me. The force of the blast lifted me up, and I found myself sitting outside on the sidewalk. That’s all I can remember about it. The next thing I knew I was here, at the hospital.”
McGregor kept writing for several seconds after she’d finished talking, his tongue protruding from a corner of his thin-lipped mouth. Then he lifted the pencil and said, “Notice what was going on outside the clinic as you were walking in?”
“You mean the demonstrators?” Carver asked.
“I’m not questioning you, Carver,” McGregor said “I wanna do that when your lies won’t help you. That day’s coming.”
“Most of the demonstrators were across the street,” Beth said. “They were waving their signs around and yelling at me.”
“Yelling what?”
“Insults. A few of them called me a murderer. One said I was a nigger bitch and was going to hell.”
“Some of those people must know you,” McGregor said.
Carver stirred.
McGregor grinned.
“Notice a blond man carrying a sign come out from around the building at about the time you entered?”
“I don’t think so,” Beth said.
“Think before you answer,” McGregor told her.
She closed her eyes, then opened them. “I can’t remember much in the way of details from that time, but I don’t think I saw anyone run out from behind the building.”
“Run?” McGregor thrust out his long scoop of a chin. “I didn’t say anybody was running. You probably saw this man running and forgot till now.” He began scribbling in his note pad.
“I saw people running,” Beth said. “I remember that now. They were down the street, though. I think they were, anyway.”
“What about a blond man? Dark pants, white shirt, carrying a sign?”
“No,” Beth said, “I don’t remember anyone in particular.”
“Then you might have seen him.”
“Well, yeah, I suppose he could have been there.”
“Good. You might have to testify to that.”
“The news said it was definitely a bomb,” Carver said. “And that you’ve got a line on the bomber.”
“Of course it was a bomb, Mister Fucking Curious. And we’ve not only got a line on a suspect, we got the suspect himself in custody. Brought him in about an hour ago. Mechanic named Adam Norton, got himself an arrest record for assault, and he’s a member of Operation Alive. That’s the bunch of religious nutcakes that were picketing the clinic yesterday morning. Beth’s not the only one who saw Norton run out from behind the clinic just before the explosion.”
“What’s Norton say?”
“Nothing, to you.”
Carver leaned on his cane and stared at McGregor.
“Okay,” McGregor said. “You read the papers anyway, and I want it made clear there’s no reason for you to go sniffing around this case, maybe fuck up some evidence we need. Norton claims he’s innocent and only went behind the clinic so he could wave his sign where it would be seen through an operating room window.”
“Not much of an alibi,” Carver said.
“Hardly one at all. Why would he wave a sign in a back window, so some pregnant bitch would look over and read his message while the doctor was taking a half-baked roll outa her oven? It’d be too late by that time.”
“If Norton -”
But Carver stopped talking as he heard Beth sob. McGregor had become too much for her. Carver understood.
“Time for you to leave,” he said to McGregor.
“Oh, we on a schedule here?” Then he too noticed Beth had her head lowered and was sobbing. Tears were tracking down her cheeks, spotting her gray hospital gown. He smiled and shook his head. “Well, it appears our patient’s having a relapse.”
Carver tightened his grip on his cane. McGregor took a step toward him, suitcoat held open to reveal his gun.
“Please give it a try,” McGregor said. “Go ahead and swing that cane.”
“Ring for the nurse,” Carver told Beth, without looking away from McGregor.
She pressed the button pinned to her sheet. Neither Carver nor McGregor moved.
Beth stopped sobbing.
When the nurse entered, she stopped and stood still also. She was the same serious nurse with the shockingly mirthful smile who’d been in the room yesterday. She looked at Beth, then at Carver and McGregor.
“We think it’s time for Lieutenant McGregor to leave,” Carver said.
There was no hint of the smile on the nurse’s face. “Time for both of you to go,” she said.
“No,” Beth said. She pointed at Carver. “Not him. Please.”
The nurse glared at McGregor. “That leaves you odd man out,” she said in a voice that would have made Dirty Harry proud.
McGregor grinned, snapped his note pad closed, and slid it and the pencil into his shirt pocket.
“I was leaving anyway, sweet cakes,” he said to the nurse. “I’ve had my health fix for the day.”
He strode over and pushed out through the swinging door, leaving behind only the lingering scent of his cheap deodorant.
“That is a man,” the nurse said, wrinkling her nose, “who is not very nice.”
“Like cancer isn’t a cold,” Carver said.
7
Carver didn’t like the feel of McGregor’s dead certainty that Norton was the bomber. This was a high-profile case, and a successful rush to judgment would be beneficial to McGregor’s career. It wouldn’t concern him at all if an innocent man was imprisoned for murder. Why should it? He figured there were no innocent men.
Not that Carver was feeling any particular sympathy himself right now for Adam Norton. Especially if he really was the bomber. Carver’s concern was in seeing that whoever was responsible for what happened to Beth and their unborn child would be caught and punished. He wanted revenge. Not so much justice as revenge. His pursuit of his unborn child’s killer wasn’t simply a job, like McGregor’s. It was a mission.
He parked the Olds outside Vinny’s on Egret Road. Vinny’s was a lounge where off-duty Del Moray police hung out. It had in a previous incarnation been a hardware supply warehouse and was a narrow but long building of cinderblock needlessly painted a dirty gray, about the color of cinderblock. Its garish red-and-green neon sign featured tilted champagne glasses with bubbles rising from them to spell VlNNY’s, but Carver was sure champagne was never served there. Vinny himself was Vincent Carbello, a retired Del Moray vice detective. He ran an impeccably clean and honest operation, or at least was experienced and clever enough in his corruption that he wasn’t suspected of misdeeds.
One of the regulars at Vinny’s was Paul Geary, a cop promoted to detective first grade after a recent shoot-out with drug traffickers in which he’d apprehended two suspects while bleeding from a bullet wound in his arm. A couple of years ago Carver had helped Geary’s daughter out of a problem concerning a manslaughter charge. Geary owed him, and Geary hated McGregor. When Carver phoned and asked for a meeting, Geary suggested Vinny’s. Carver liked that. It was very possible that if the two men met and talked at Vinny’s, someone would carry news of their meeting
to McGregor, Geary’s superior. Geary obviously didn’t give a damn.
Vinny’s was cool after the noon heat outside. It was filled with a soft buzz of voices against the background noise of a country-western song coming from the speakers mounted behind the long bar. Randy Travis was crooning in his deep voice about something profound that had happened in a pickup truck somewhere in Tennessee. Carver paused inside the door, waited a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the dimness and acrid tobacco smoke, then looked around for Geary.
Most of Vinny’s business was in the evening, but even now, a little before noon, most of the stools at the bar were occupied. There were booths on the wall opposite the bar, and farther back toward the rear of the place were more booths along the walls and tables set out in the middle. The walls were paneled in light knotty pine and were decorated with clusters of sports memorabilia and photographs. About half of the tables and booths were occupied. There were only a few uniforms in the place, but Carver recognized some of the other faces and knew many of the customers were cops. Some of them surely recognized him, but gave no indication. Discretion was the better part of complication.
He noticed Geary seated in a booth toward the back, his bulky body hunched over a mug of beer. Geary had seen him enter and was watching patiently without expression as Carver made his way toward him. He was a medium-height but very broad man with a face that was ugly in an amiable way, like that of a veteran boxer who’d started his career handsome and whose features had been coarsened by years of battle. He always looked as if he needed a shave, perhaps all over his body. Hair sprouted thick and dark on his forearms and the backs of his hands. The hair on his head was worn in a dark buzz cut, short and bristly. Carver had never seen him with any other hair style and could easily imagine him having been born with such a haircut, as well as the rest of his body hair, the offspring of half-human, half-bear creatures.
When Carver approached, he didn’t stand up, but he extended his hand and smiled. He had long, yellow bicuspids that made him look even more like a bear when he smiled, but a sly bear.
Carver shook hands and slid into the seat opposite Geary in the booth. On the wall over the table were two crossed bats, and a Marlins baseball cap hung on a peg between their barrels. A tall, thin barmaid with long brown-gray hair, whose name Carver remembered was Tammy, came over and Carver ordered a Budweiser and a replacement for Geary’s half-empty beer mug.
“How’s Beth?” Geary asked.
“She’s going to be okay,” Carver said. He didn’t mention the baby. Geary didn’t know about that and didn’t have to.
Neither man spoke as Tammy returned to the booth and placed their drinks on the table. When she’d gone back behind the bar, Carver said, “How are you getting along with McGregor?”
Geary showed his yellow canine teeth again. “Nobody gets along with McGregor, he can only be endured.”
Carver slowly poured some of his beer from its bottle into a frosted mug, creating a small head of foam, “He got a statement from Beth this morning at the hospital.”
Geary grunted. “He should have sent somebody else.”
“He came himself because he enjoys the fact that she’s hurt, and that-it’s because she and I are together. You know, the racial thing.”
“McGregor!” Geary said with disgust, making a face as if he might spit. His wife was Cuban, as was their beautiful daughter Rachel, whom Carver had helped two years ago. “Was he rough on Beth?”
Carver poked at the head of his beer with his finger, as if that might deflate it and he could sip sooner without acquiring a foam mustache. “He would have been rougher if I hadn’t shown up. He tells me there’s a suspect in custody in the clinic bombing.”
“Yeah, a guy named Norton. It’ll be on tonight’s TV news, along with McGregor bragging and hogging time in front of the cameras.”
“You think Norton’s good for it?”
“Might be.”
“McGregor seems positive about him.”
Geary took a sip of beer. “Norton was in the wrong place at the wrong time-from McGregor’s point of view, anyway. He’s an auto mechanic lives over in Orlando, got a wife and kid. Religious fanatic. We got a warrant, searched his house and garage, and found detonators and books on bomb making. That’s when McGregor decided the charge would stick.”
“Heavy evidence,” Carver said.
“Sure is. And witnesses place him at the scene, inside the legal limit for demonstrators and running out from behind the building a short time before the blast.”
“He sounds good for it,” Carver said.
“He will be, if McGregor has his way.”
Carver watched Tammy serve a scotch to a compact black woman in a white dress, seated in the next booth. He thought she might be a police officer, Frances something … but he might have been thinking of someone else. “You don’t sound as sure as McGregor about Norton,” he said to Geary.
Geary rotated his beer mug on its cork coaster, leaving a dark, damp ring. “You gotta wonder if Norton acted alone or somebody put him up to it. McGregor doesn’t wonder. He figures if he wraps up this case all neat and tidy, he’s a cinch for a promotion. The slimy bastard wants to be chief someday.”
“But you don’t want him to be.”
“No cop working under him wants it. He only kisses ass and bullshits his superiors. Other people, he cuts their throats then steps over them on his way up, careful not to get blood on his shoes.” Geary raised one of his meaty hands, palm out. “But don’t get me wrong, Carver. If this Norton guy actually did the deed, I want him to go down for it. Every other cop on the force does, too.”
Carver wondered if by “every other cop” Geary meant one out of two.
“My brain tells me he’s guilty but my gut says he might be innocent,” Geary said. “Or that he was acting as part of somebody else’s plan.”
“What about Norton’s membership in Operation Alive?” Carver asked.
“They’re a religious group from Orlando, been demonstrating around the South against abortion. Some of them are extreme. There’s been violence at their demonstrations before. Nothing like what happened here, though.”
“Was Norton involved in any of the violence?”
“Not as a matter of record.” Geary took half a dozen swallows of beer, tilting his head way back. The tendons on each side of his thick neck stuck out like cords. When he set the half-empty mug back down, he said, “The thing about Norton is he says he’s innocent, but he also says he would have done it if he’d had the chance. He’s glad the clinic was bombed. He thinks abortion doctors are fair game.” Geary played with his beer mug and coaster again. “Guilty men don’t usually talk that way.”
“So there are reasons to doubt his guilt,” Carver said.
“Not many, but some. You have to look hard.”
Carver leaned back and gazed toward the front of the lounge, at the drinkers at the tables, some of them munching snacks or hamburgers. The drinkers slouched at the bar were more serious about their booze; no food visible there. That said something about them. Maybe. Psychology. It was easy to read so much into things, and so much of what you read could be wrong. The collar seemed to him to fit Norton almost perfectly.
Randy Travis was singing now about something profound that had happened in the backseat of a Buick convertible in Kentucky. Tammy started toward their table, but Geary waved her away.
“I don’t know,” Carver said. “Norton seems like the ideal suspect.”
“Ideal patsy, too. Guy’s a true believer.”
“You think the real bomber might have set him up?”
“Anything’s possible,” Geary said. “People like him are suggestible.”
“Does Norton claim somebody set him up?”
“No, just that he’s not guilty.”
Carver looked at Geary. The man was a war-weary cop, and an honest one. Not the smartest, maybe, but a plodder who never gave up. One who took great pride in his work. But no superior o
fficer could inspire disloyalty in his men more effectively than McGregor. Sometimes that disloyalty was conscious and flagrant, sometimes unconscious and subtle. But it was there nonetheless, like an infection that waxed and waned.
“Maybe it’s not all that complicated,” Carver suggested. “Maybe you’re not so sure about Norton’s guilt simply because McGregor is.”
Geary didn’t argue. He nodded. “And because he’s McGregor.”
Both men understood the odious lieutenant whose very thoughts were corrupt enough to draw flies, and who had the minds of his own officers muddled out of sheer hatred for him.
Carver sat back and worked on his beer. The woman who might be a policewoman named Frances glanced at him and smiled. But he wasn’t thinking about her, he was thinking about McGregor.
McGregor, who was completely cynical about humanity, and who was often in the way of justice because he didn’t believe it existed.
Carver sometimes hated himself for weakening and thinking McGregor might be right.
8
Geary left Vinny’s after finishing his beer, and Carver asked Tammy to bring him a hamburger and a morning Gazette-Dispatch, if there happened to be one lying about.
Five minutes later Tammy returned with a delicious-looking hamburger heaped with tomato, lettuce, and onion on a sesame seed bun, and a badly wrinkled but readable newspaper that had been left by a previous customer. Most of the sports section was missing, but the front section was intact even if the pages had been shuffled. Someone had torn out a ten-minute oil change coupon, but there had been nothing printed on the back of it about the clinic bombing. Instead the interrupted news item had to do with a hostage situation in the Middle East. Trouble all over the map, Carver thought. He smoothed out the front page and read as he ate.
