Lightning fc-10

by John Lutz

  “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.”

  11

  Dusk had closed in while Carver was in the hospital. He walked across the lot to where the Olds was parked, all by itself now near the stone wall and the line of palm trees swaying in the breeze as if they were doing a lazy hula.

  As he neared the car, he reached into his pocket for his car keys. The keys jingled softly as he pulled them out and reached for the door handle. The wind kicked up harder, making the hula more hectic, and rattled the palm fronds above his head.

  “Fred Carver, isn’t it?”

  A man’s voice, neutral.

  Carver turned around expecting to see a tall, crew cut WASP wearing a business suit and dark-rimmed glasses. Instead he was looking at a dumpy little man wearing a rumpled gray suit with a tie that was too long for him and whose pointed end dangled almost at crotch level. If he wore glasses they were contacts. He had the kind of curly brown hair that would always look mussed, and for that matter a face whose features would always look mussed. He smiled, looking even more rumpled, but friendly. Everybody’s best friend who always dies in the movies so the audience hates the villain.

  “I’m Special Agent Sam Wicker, FBI,” he said. He flashed ID that appeared genuine enough to Carver even in the dim light.

  “You don’t look FBI,” Carver said.

  “I know. People tell me that all the time. They expect a guy who looks and dresses like a Sears suit model with a law degree. Pretty often that’s what they get.”

  Carver understood then that the man who’d looked in on Beth probably had been a federal agent.

  Wicker had been standing near the stone wall. Now he shambled around the back of the car to stand near Carver. He was taller than he’d first appeared, maybe five feet ten. It occurred to Carver that Wicker dressed a lot like McGregor, only he was cleaner. The breeze blew again, cool and fresh, rattling the palm fronds harder. “It’s nice down here,” Wicker said. “I spend too much time up north.” He spoke as if he’d come to Florida for a vacation rather than a social hot button murder investigation.

  “You in charge of the Women’s Light bombing investigation?” Carver asked. He still couldn’t quite believe it.

  “Sure am. I’ve got my agents looking at all the leads, investigating the hell out of everything. Seems I’ve got you investigating, too.”

  “I’ve got a personal interest.”

  “Uh-huh, I understand. Something you need to understand is that you best stay out of the bureau’s way. As much as you can, that is. And when and if you find out anything pertinent, you get the information to us pronto. To me personally if at all possible.” He handed Carver a card. It was embossed in gold. Very official and meant to be impressive, very like the bureau Carver knew.

  “What about doing this in both directions?” Carver asked. “Will you share information with me?”

  “Hell, you’re a private citizen. I can’t confide in you about bureau business.” Wicker’s face broke down into its creased smile again. “Except maybe in a very general way, if conditions warrant it, if the planets are in proper alignment.”

  “Just your occasional opinion, maybe?” Carver said.

  Wicker peered up at the darkening sky, possibly at the planets, then back down. “Maybe. Now and again.”

  “Do you think Norton did the bombing on his own?”

  “That I honest to God don’t know. In that respect, you and I are sniffing along the same trail. That’s why you need to tread careful and make sure everything’s above board. I wouldn’t want to see you get in trouble. Even more so, I wouldn’t want to see you cause trouble.”

  “When are you going to question Beth Jackson?”

  “Oh, real soon. It’s not for you or her to worry about though. She’s a victim, not a suspect.”

  “She can’t tell you much,” Carver said. “She walked inside and got blown back outside.”

  “We’ll let her tell it, make it official.” Wicker grinned and turned slightly to face in the direction of the sea, as if to luxuriate in the cool ocean breeze that came with the evening. When he looked at Carver, it was with a slight sideways tilt of his head. “We know about you, how you were an Orlando cop, got the bad luck and the bad leg and a pension. Went private, stayed honest. Making out okay most of the time.”

  “That’s me on a postcard,” Carver said.

  “You witnessed the clinic explosion.”

  “From some distance. I was sitting in my parked car half a block away.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Not much. Beth walked in, right behind another woman, then the bomb went off.”

  “Were the demonstrators a proper distance away from the clinic?”

  “Yeah. Maybe because they knew the bomb was going to blow.”

  “Did you see anyone run out from behind the building?”

  “I think I glimpsed someone, carrying a sign. But there was so much confusion and running around after the bomb went off, I can’t be sure, much less if whoever I might have seen was Norton. I was concentrating on Beth, trying to put together in my mind what had just happened, figure it out.”

  “Maybe there is no way to figure it out,” Wicker said. “At least figure it all the way so everything makes sense. Crazy bastards might not really know themselves why they do things like that.”

  “I don’t think anyone really knows why they do anything. They only think they know, if they think about it at all.”

  Wicker ran his tongue around the inside of his cheek for a few seconds, considering that somewhat nihilistic philosophy. “That’s a fact. But it’s up to people like us to tell them why, when what they do is a crime. What’s your take on the locals?”

  Carver knew he meant the police, not the average Del Moray citizen. “They’re mostly okay. Some rotten wood here and there.”

  “Like Lieutenant McGregor?”

  “Just like.”

  “Local law resents the bureau moving in on them, usually. They got a nickname for us they use behind our backs: feebs, they call us. You know that?”

  “I’ve heard,” Carver said.

  “Abortion clinic bombing’s a federal offense, though, so they got to learn to get along with us. Even your Lieutenant McGregor.”

  “Not my lieutenant. If he were mine I’d have a vet put him down.”

  “He didn’t have many kind words for you, either,” Wicker said. “Doesn’t matter. We got a line on both of you real fast. It’s true McGregor’s no good.”

  “Worse than no good.”

  “Still, nothing can be pinned on him. He’s a real artist at covering his ass. And this is your town and he’s the local law, so you’ve gotta stay legal with him, play along and follow the script. Just like we do.”

  “He knows that, takes advantage of it.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he does. And he sort of sees himself in competition with us to solve this case, either prove it was Norton or prove it wasn’t and catch whoever did it.”

  “Or whoever hired Norton or gave him orders.”

  “Exactly,” Wicker said. “Anyway, in a sense McGregor’s right about competition. It’s not a bad thing through and through. It tends to keep people concentrating on the job, gets it all done faster and closes the book on a case.”

  “Competition’s a good thing
,” Carver agreed. “I’m thinking of baseball, football, basketball players, how it makes them and the team better.”

  “Not thinking of FBI agents and local police lieutenants?”

  “Yeah, as long as the competition doesn’t get in the way of cooperation.”

  “Uh-huh. Like you cooperate with Lieutenant McGregor?”

  Carver had gleaned Wicker’s angle. “Don’t you want me to keep cooperating with him, Special Agent Wicker?”

  “Oh, I sure do. The question is, how fast? I mean, you got this piece of maybe important information, say. You’re gonna give it to both of us, but how soon and in what order? You understand?”

  “I think so. You want to win this competition.”

  “I want the bureau to know all about whatever and whoever was behind this bombing, and I want the bureau to make the arrests.”

  “If there are going to be more arrests,” Carver said.

  “I think there will be. I’ve heard tapes of Norton’s interrogation. He’s not what you’d describe as the mastermind type. He’s hung up on God, pickup truck, family, flag, in whatever order. That kind of guy.”

  “God way out in front, I imagine,” Carver said.

  “His idea of God, anyway. Angry old man with a white beard, hurling lightning bolts down at folks who don’t share Norton’s views.”

  “Has he got a lot of views?”

  “Uh-huh. And about a lot of things. Government conspiracies, the United Nations, bar codes, secret world governments, gun control, the Trilateral Commission, bankers of a certain ethnicity plotting to control the world’s economy, the Internal Revenue Service’s secret agenda, covert NATO operations meant to destabilize Europe so arms manufacturers can make a fortune, the murders of Marilyn Monroe, Vincent Foster, Elvis … the usual list. He’s a fool for talk radio.”

  “Think he might be right about just a few of those things?” Carver asked.

  Wicker stuffed his hands in his pockets and shrugged. “Elvis, maybe.”

  Carver slid Wicker’s card into his shirt pocket. “Okay, you feebs are first on my list. Mostly because I hate McGregor.”

  “Fine,” Wicker said. “I like the folks I’m involved with to know exactly where they stand. That was the real purpose of this conversation-so you’d know.”

  “I’ve known from the beginning where I stand,” Carver said. “I’m in the middle.”

  12

  There wasMcGregor. His feet, anyway.

  As Carver got out of the Olds and limped toward the cottage, he saw what had to be the soles of McGregor’s huge wingtip shoes propped up on the porch rail. They weren’t simply long shoes, they were wide. Size fourteen double-E, McGregor had once bragged to Carver. Good for kicking ass, he’d pointed out.

  When he got closer, Carver saw McGregor’s long form in the shadow of the porch roof. He was leaning back in one of the webbed aluminum lawn chairs with his legs propped at an extreme upward angle.

  Carver stopped at the base of the three wooden steps that led up to the porch. He stood for a while looking at McGregor, listening to the surf whisper and slap on the beach, feeling the pressure of the ocean breeze against his back.

  “You should have let yourself in,” Carver said, “helped yourself to a mint julep before you got all comfortable on my porch.”

  McGregor held up a can. “Did go in and help myself to a beer.”

  Carver was sure he had locked the door. “Through an unlocked window?”

  McGregor grinned, yellow as mustard in the moonlight. “Nope. You didn’t answer my knock, door was unlocked, so I went inside to make sure you were okay. My professional duty, to serve and protect.” He took a long sip of beer, then lowered the drained can, squeezed it until it made a loud metallic pop as it buckled, then tossed it aside on the porch floor with a clatter.

  “Where’s your car parked?” Carver asked.

  “Outa sight, dickhead. I thought I’d just sit here in the dark and wait for you without you knowing anyone was around. No telling what I mighta seen, observing an odd mutt like you. Maybe you were gonna bring home a stray bitch to bed down with, what with your regular bang laid up in the hospital. You do fuck white women once in a while, don’t you?”

  Carver felt his blood race hot, but he refused to let McGregor get him to show anger. He set the tip of his cane and thumped up the steps onto the porch. “What do you want?”

  McGregor shifted his long body and let his feet clunk down on the plank floor, making the porch vibrate with the impact. Then he stood up, towering over Carver’s average height. “The feebs have come to town.”

  “What’d you expect? You’ve got an abortion clinic bombing, a murder here that’s a federal case. That means FBI every time.”

  “Oh, I expected them.” McGregor threw open his wrinkled suit coat and scratched an armpit. Body odor wafted to Carver. McGregor let the coat flop down to hang naturally, but he didn’t button it. He wanted his holstered nine millimeter to show. “Agent in charge is a guy named Wicker, little jerk-off dresses so sloppy you wouldn’t believe.”

  What Carver couldn’t believe was what he’d just heard. He wanted to point out that Wicker was half as wrinkled and didn’t smell bad like McGregor, but that would mean he had to have met Wicker.

  “Wicker’s gonna talk to you,” McGregor said, “if he hasn’t already. He’s gonna want you to pass on information to him immediately-which means seconds after you obtain it. I want it within nanoseconds.”

  “And I know why. You don’t want the FBI exposing the clockwork behind the bombing before you do, don’t want them soaking up your limelight.”

  “Nothing wrong with ambition. Even a slug like you must have some spark of it, so try to understand. I expect to be front and center throughout this case, Carver. Someday you’ll be able to tell your fellow losers you know Del Moray’s chief of police personally. Maybe even its mayor. This is a great country and an enterprising fella with balls can go far.”

  “What if the FBI’s smarter than both of us and puzzles it all out first?”

  “Smarter than one of us, is what they are. I want the dumber of the two of us to let me know if Wicker talks to him.”

  “You mean starting right now, Mr. Mayor?”

  “You got it, fuckhead. Soon as I leave here. Or sooner, if your phone rings. Also, I want to know whatever information you tell him, which better not be anything you haven’t already told me.”

  “If you want me to let you in on anything new,” Carver said, “you should tell me what you already know.”

  “Can do. It’s all in the papers anyway. Eyewitnesses sharper than you saw Norton run out from behind the clinic just before it blew up. He says he went back there to wave his sign at a window, never was inside or threw anything inside. We got a search warrant and found bomb-making literature inside his house. Later we found wires and blasting caps in his car, pushed back under the seat in a locked metal box. He claimed he was making bombs and planned to blow up a clinic, but hadn’t yet. His wife backs him up. When we brought him in he was spouting a lot of religious dribble, calling himself the swift sword and arm of the Lord. Now he’s not saying anything ’cause his attorney’s in on the game. Which is okay by me, since he was just transferred today to federal custody.”

  “They going to leave him in Del Moray so the field agents can interrogate him from time to time?”

  “That’s what they tell me, but you never know when to believe those ass wipes. Half of them are lawyers, the other half are accountants keeping track of how much the lawyers steal from the taxpayers.”

  Carver had heard McGregor rant about suffering the disdain of federal agencies before and didn’t want to hear it again.

  “How does Norton strike you?” he asked before McGregor could go off on a riff about the incompetence and audacity of the FBI.

  “That wasn’t in the newspaper, Carver.”

  “Is one of your FBI antagonists a tall blond guy, well groomed, with a crew cut and black horn-rimmed glasse
s?”

  “I haven’t seen one fitting that description.”

  “Any of your men look like that?”

  “Not unless he’s working undercover at a CPA convention.”

  “You want my cooperation, you’ve got to give me something,” Carver said.

  “Okay, Norton’s an obvious nut case, one of those true-believer dingbats out to save the world from itself. His method is explosives. There, you have something.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  McGregor looked sly, He grinned and probed the space between his teeth with the tip of his tongue. “Oh? What is it you want from me in return for your cooperation, which you better give me anyway or I’ll see you under the jail and the key’ll be in the pocket of some pants I never wear and have forgot all about?”

  “I want you to provide some protection for Beth at the hospital.”

  “Huh? You know I couldn’t do that even if I wanted. Anyway, who’d want to hurt her now? Norton’s in jail. And she’s only a witness anyway, and not a damaging one. You think that clinic was blown up in an attempt on her life?”

  “No. But I think somebody might want to scare me off the case through her, which means there’s something to be scared away from. And if I spend my time protecting Beth instead of investigating, there might be facts you and I never learn.” Actually Carver wasn’t sure Beth was in any danger, but she suspected she was. Possibly her instincts were affected by her grief and injuries, yet they were usually accurate. Then there was the WASP with the horn-rimmed glasses; maybe there was nothing to him as a threat, but only maybe. Beth would feel better, and Carver would, if she had protection until she was well enough to be released from hospital care.

  “There you go, overestimating your own importance, dickhead,” McGregor snarled.

  “You know better. I’m private and can do what you can’t, maybe follow a hunch that leads to the right place. If you didn’t think that was true and you didn’t think I was good at my work, you wouldn’t be here talking to me.”

  “If you’re talking about breaking the law, using any means to gain an end, hell, I do that already.”