Lightning fc-10

by John Lutz

  “But you’ve got superior officers watching you, and subordinates who hate your guts and’ll toss you to the wolves if they see the chance.”

  “Well, that’s a fact …” McGregor rubbed his long chin with a long forefinger, then brushed back the lock of straight blond hair that was hanging over his forehead. “You know I’ve got a manpower shortage.”

  “Always. That’s why you want me out there like another cop working for you. You need people who know which rocks to turn over, what to look for when they flip, and how to deal with whatever crawls out.”

  “Stop trying to bullshit me. It can’t be done unless you’re more corrupt and devious than I am, and you’re not. You’re too naive and weighted down with scruples that are gonna take you to the bottom and drown you someday. Dumb fucking gimp.”

  Carver knew McGregor was weakening. “I told you the deal, that’s all. There’s no bullshit involved.”

  “You’re lucky,” McGregor said. “Timing and luck, that’s what’s kept you alive and outside the walls. It so happens I got a policewoman’s not worth spit. I can assign her to the hospital to watch over Beth. One useless cunt to guard another so your time’s freed up, that’s not a bad trade.”

  “And politically correct of you,” Carver said.

  “Well, we have to watch that stuff these days,” McGregor said earnestly, apparently missing Carver’s irony.

  Carver would see to it that he missed more than that.

  13

  Carver went for his usual therapeutic swim in the sea the next morning, stroking far out from shore. He rolled over and floated on his back, feeling the heat of the morning sun soak into him as he rode the swells, still gentle this far from shore before they met the resistance of land and began their rise. He liked to gaze in at his cottage perched on the crescent of beach that lent it some privacy, at his life. It gave him the perspective of distance, providing a core of peace if not understanding. It was the need to understand that kept him alive in a business where knowing too much could prove fatal.

  On the public beach to the left of where his cottage sat, beyond the curve of sandy shore, a few sunbathers and swimmers were already appearing, spreading out towels or venturing down into the cool surf. A woman carrying a child on her hip was walking gingerly parallel to the surf, now and then allowing the white foam to reach and engulf her bare feet and ankles, while behind her a man was carefully setting up some sort of portable lounger. A young man and woman walked past the man with the lounger, their steps kicking up rooster tails of sand at their heels, each of them gripping a handle of a large white plastic cooler with a blue lid. A woman’s happy shouts and high laughter drifted out to Carver from shore. He turned his head in the water and saw a young woman with long blond hair running and splashing in the surf, while a man with his pants legs rolled to the knees stood with his arms crossed and observed her as if he were going to grade her.

  Carver watched them for a moment, then rolled over onto his stomach and began to swim for shore, feeling the coolness of his wet back warming quickly in the sun. He glanced toward the beach where his white towel lay folded and his cane jutted like a beacon from the sand, then changed the angle of his direction slightly and lengthened his strokes. He cut through the water swiftly, swiveling his head to breathe regularly and deeply as he kicked gracefully from the hip. By now he was so at home in the ocean that he almost felt he was experiencing evolution in reverse. He told himself that, rather than suppose his occasional thoughts of succumbing to the pull of distance and swimming straight out toward the misty horizon line of sea and sky were suicidal musings.

  After returning to the cottage, showering, and getting dressed, he prepared a breakfast of Cheerios, toast, and coffee. He ate seated at the breakfast bar while he watched CNN on the TV that was angled so that it could be seen from the kitchen area.

  It wasn’t long before the Women’s Light Clinic bombing was covered. Bobbi Batista, an anchorwoman with luminous blue eyes, was seated between a woman in a severe pinstriped business suit who was an abortion rights activist, and a man wearing army camouflage fatigues who was referred to as Major. Both guests were talking at once, gesticulating animatedly and arguing about the difference between murder and political terrorism. None of this was comprehensible. Carver used the remote to mute the TV as Bobbi went to a string of commercials about hidden germs in the mouth, a phone company’s offer of long-distance discounts for far-flung family members, and the ergonomics of a Japanese car. Carver took a last bite of toast and washed it down with coffee.

  When the news came back on, a correspondent was interviewing a man standing in front of a colorful stained glass window. The man was about fifty, stockily built beneath a tailored gray suit that had a lot of silk in the material. He had wavy gray hair parted as neatly as if he’d used a ruler and combed sharply to the side, and strong features frozen into a perpetual smile that was more a chance arrangement of muscle and bone structure than an expression of good humor. He would be smiling even as he slept. The caption at the bottom of the screen identified him as the Reverend Martin Freel of Operation Alive.

  “… might indeed be God’s way,” he was saying as Carver used the remote to bring the sound back up, “but he certainly wasn’t acting at the direction of Operation Alive.”

  “And was Adam Norton?” asked the correspondent, a somber-looking black man in a white shirt and wild tie, but without a coat.

  “Of course not. We don’t even know if Mr. Norton is guilty.”

  “But he was a member of your congregation here in Orlando, and of Operation Alive.”

  Freel widened his frozen smile. “Many people are, but they don’t resort to violence, and neither did Mr. Norton on behalf of Operation Alive.” The smile turned wise and tolerant. “I certainly don’t think the media should convict him even before he’s tried. And I might add that if any one person or thing influenced whoever committed this sad, sick act, it could easily have been the media with its lurid coverage and inflammatory rhetoric concerning other such acts.”

  “Wasn’t it Operation Alive and not the media who instigated the violence at the abortion clinic in Houston last year, Reverend Freel?”

  “That was certainly the media’s spin on what happened. Our view and the view of true Christians everywhere is that those who instigated the violence were the people inside the clinic who were slaughtering unborn innocents.”

  “But one of your own demonstrators was badly injured when a car drove over her legs.”

  “The young woman was and still is a soldier in the army of the Lord and told me personally she doesn’t regret what happened. And of course we know her accident was the result of overzealous and overreactive police.”

  “Thanks for taking the time to talk to us, Reverend Freel,” the correspondent said. Then, in another tone of voice, he said, “Bobbi,” and stared into the camera until Bobbi Batista appeared on the screen again.

  “We’ll be right back,” Bobbi said only to Carver. The same commercial about ergonomics came on again, a sleek black sedan cruising along a wickedly curving road while its unconcerned driver, a blissfully smiling woman, switched on the windshield wipers and adjusted the stereo’s volume as she chatted on a car phone while driving through a virtual hurricane. Carver used the remote to switch off the TV.

  Maybe it had been the car phone. He pulled the phone on the breakfast bar over to him, then got out Special Agent Sam Wicker’s card and pecked out his number.

  He was surprised when Wicker himself answered. That kind of directness and efficiency didn’t suit the bureau’s hierarchical image.

  “Ah, you have information for me,” Wicker said when Carver identified himself.

  “Actually I want information from you,” Carver said.

  “You’re turning out to be a disappointment.”

  “Give me time. Do you have an agent who’s tall, broad shouldered, sharply dressed, maybe in a blue suit, has a crew cut, and looks like a typical WASP, wears black horn-r
immed glasses?”

  “Other than the glasses, that could be me,”

  “Let’s include the glasses.”

  “None of my people fits that description. Why do you ask?”

  “A man like that wandered into Beth’s room at the hospital yesterday. There was a nurse with her, and when he saw she wasn’t alone, he smiled and ducked right back out.”

  “Maybe he was there to visit somebody and entered the wrong room.”

  “Probably something like that,” Carver said. “But he spooked Beth, and normally that’s not easy to do, so I thought I’d ask you about him.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Carver waited. Apparently Wicker was thinking on the other end of the line, deciding how much importance to place on an injured woman’s concern.

  “Well, I’m sure he’s not ours,” Wicker finally said. “My guess is he was one of McGregor’s men.”

  “McGregor says no.”

  “Okay, I’ll pass the description around and we’ll see if anything comes of it.”

  So Wicker wasn’t brushing Beth off as an alarmist amateur. Carver was impressed. “McGregor’s going to assign somebody to keep an eye on Beth.”

  “That doesn’t fit with what I know of him.”

  “Every ten, twenty years, he’s struck with understanding and a compulsion to do his job. It’ll quickly pass.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You say that a lot-‘uh-huh.’ ”

  “Seems to cover a lot. Remember to let me know about anything even remotely pertaining to the bombing.”

  “Of course. What have you-”

  But Wicker had hung up. Acting very FBI now.

  “Feeb,” Carver said into the phone, then replaced the receiver.

  After washing and putting away the breakfast dishes, Carver drove in to the hospital to look in on Beth before going about the business of the day. The first item of that business would be to talk to Dr. Louis Benedict, Women’s Light’s surviving abortion doctor.

  When Carver knocked lightly and pushed open the door to Beth’s room, he found himself facing a short, dark-haired woman with a heart-shaped face and intense brown eyes. She was wearing a police uniform and the flap was unsnapped on the belt holster of her .38 Police Special. Behind her, Beth was sleeping on her side in the bed.

  “Help you?” asked McGregor’s policewoman who wasn’t worth spit.

  “I’m Fred Carver. I, uh, sort of requested you.”

  “Oh, you a friend of Lieutenant McGregor?”

  “Christ, no!”

  The policewoman smiled with very small, very even teeth. “Let’s step outside into the hall, Mr. Carver.”

  She didn’t move, letting him lead the way.

  In the hall, she stood watching as he softly closed Beth’s door. Without being asked, he pulled out some identification and showed it to her. She looked at it, then her eyes took a walk up and down him.

  Carver flashed her his most winning smile. “How many men with bad legs and canes are likely to come calling on Beth?” he asked.

  She handed back the ID. “You don’t have to have a bad leg to walk with a cane. And you hardly hear that expression anymore, ‘come calling.’ ”

  She had a point. Two points.

  “I’m Officer Linda Lapella,” she said. “Beth told me about you, but I needed to be sure. She had a bad night. The doctor gave her something, and she’s been asleep for about an hour.”

  “What did McGregor tell you about this duty?”

  “Nothing other than to come here and guard the-the woman in this room until I’m relieved.”

  “He tell you to watch out for anyone in particular?”

  “No. He doesn’t tell me much going into things. Usually I get a certain kind of make-work assignment, then I’m left alone so I’m out of the way. He tells me later where I fouled up.”

  “This isn’t that kind of assignment,” Carver said in a voice harder than he’d intended. His tone made Officer Lapella stare at him.

  “Okay,” she said.

  Carver described the crew-cut WASP type who had entered Beth’s room.

  “Beth mentioned him before she fell asleep,” she said. “She didn’t know anything about him. Can you tell me anything?”

  “Only that he’s not FBI, and the nurses didn’t know him as an employee or visitor. So maybe he’s something else.”

  “Big hospital,” Lapella said skeptically.

  “Big world of possibilities.”

  She smiled with her tiny, perfect teeth. There was a lipstick stain on one of the front ones. “Yeah, you’re right. Sorry, Mr. Carver.”

  “Fred.”

  “Then it’s Linda. And don’t worry about Beth. I’m not the screw-up Lieutenant McGregor might have described.”

  “I didn’t think so. He’s not lavish with his praise. Now that we’ve met, though, I feel better.”

  “Me too,” Linda said. “McGregor wasn’t very complimentary when he told me about you.”

  Carver told Linda to let Beth know when she woke up that he’d been by while she was sleeping, then he rode the elevator down and used a pay phone in the lobby to call Women’s Light.

  A recording informed him that the clinic on de Leon Boulevard was temporarily closed and gave him another number to call. When the phone was answered by a woman, Carver asked to speak to Dr. Benedict, then realized he was speaking to another recording. This one told him that Women’s Light patients were being referred to A. A. Aal Memorial Hospital. As Carver was standing in the lobby of said hospital, he phoned the information desk and asked for Dr. Benedict. He was transferred to surgery and told by a nurse that Dr. Benedict wasn’t on duty today. He asked for the doctor’s home number but was politely refused. After hanging up, he looked up Dr. Benedict’s home number and address in the phone directory and was surprised to find them listed.

  Detective work.

  14

  Dr. Louis Benedict’s address belonged to a low, modern ranch house on Macon Avenue in what Carver thought of as an upper-middle-class neighborhood. The grassy area between curb and sidewalk was lined with palm trees, front yards were large, and the homes were set well back from the street and often secluded behind trees and shrubbery.

  The Benedict house, however, was plainly visible at the end of its long, straight driveway. The carpet of lush green lawn sloping uphill toward it was unbroken except for a circular flower bed vivid with the bright colors of geraniums and yellow and red roses. The house itself was mostly brick, vast planes of tinted glass, and angled exposed beams. There was a two-car garage attached to it by what looked like a breezeway that had been converted to an additional room. Money here, Carver thought, but nothing grand.

  He parked the Olds in the street so it wouldn’t drip oil on the pristine concrete driveway, then used a stepping-stone walk parallel to the driveway to go up to the long front porch. There was so little overhang on the roof that there was no shade on the porch, and the late morning sun bore down on Carver’s bald pate and the exposed back of his neck as he waited for an answer to his ring.

  There was a faint sound behind the door, then it was opened by an attractive woman in her late thirties with tousled blond hair, a square jaw, and inquisitive blue eyes. She possessed an elegant figure beneath a loose-fitting blue dress and had on white toeless shoes with built-up heels. The arch of her eyebrows was accentuated by eyebrow pencil darker than her hair, making her appear mildly surprised.

  Carver introduced himself and asked to see Dr. Benedict.

  “I’m Leona Benedict, the doctor’s wife,” the woman said in a voice that sounded more Boston than Del Moray. “Could you tell me what this is about?”

  “It’s about what happened at the clinic.”

  She looked wary as well as surprised. “The bombing, you mean?”

  “Yes. A woman who was injured in the explosion was carrying our child.”

  A fleeting expression of pity crossed Leona Benedict’s handsome face. A doctor’s good wife, sh
e wanted to deflect Carver so he wouldn’t disturb her husband’s time away from the operating room, but there was no denying that Carver had a claim on that time.

  She smiled, not totally erasing the pity, and invited him inside.

  He was in a cool living room that seemed dim after outside. The view through the wide window was of the vast stretch of lawn and the street, his rust-spotted Olds convertible squatting at the curb like a last weary warrior from Detroit in the land of BMWs, Lexuses, and Volvos. Leona Benedict left him alone and disappeared down a wide hall in search of her husband.

  Carver turned his attention from outside to inside, appreciating the white leather sofa, soft beige carpeting and drapes, original oil paintings, and glass-shelved bookcases that contained an extensive collection of small pewter figurines. Expensive and tasteful. This was probably one of the better-furnished homes on Macon Avenue.

  A medium-height, dark-complexioned man with a barrel chest and thinning black hair entered the room. He was wearing a gray-and-white striped short-sleeved shirt open at the collar and navy blue pleated pants. His feet were almost bare in skimpy leather sandals. He said he was Dr. Benedict as he shook Carver’s hand. His soft, commiserating tone suggested that his wife had already explained Carver’s connection with Beth. He had bushy black eyebrows above dark eyes whose pupils moved quickly and seemed to see a lot. He wasn’t a handsome man but there was a heartiness and energy about him that women might find attractive. The doctor appeared to be about ten years older than his wife. Carver wondered if the expensive furnishings were for Leona Benedict, who might well object to the long and unpredictable hours of her physician husband.

  “I’m sorry about Miss Jackson,” Benedict said. “How is she?”

  Not “your wife.” The doctor was up on things.

  Carver told him Beth was doing very well but was still depressed over the loss of their child.

  “It will take time for her to assimilate that,” Benedict said in his soft, soothing voice. “If you help her, she’ll heal from the loss.” He smiled in a way that made Carver like him. “Perhaps someday there’ll be another pregnancy.”