Lightning fc-10

by John Lutz

  After a few seconds more of the camera fixed on the flames shooting into the night, Bart and Christine reappeared. They looked serious for a moment, then smiled broadly. “Old man weather is acting up, which means rain might be closing in on us,” they said. “Hey, not that we can’t use it! After these messages, Gail Tropical will tell us what to expect-”

  Beth aimed the remote and switched off the TV. They were in darkness again, and Carver could hear the surf working away at the beach.

  After awhile he said, “Another attempt by the Christian soldiers to divert suspicion away from Adam Norton?”

  “I never was certain that Norton’s the clinic bomber,” Beth said. “I told you after we learned about Wanda Creighton’s insurance policy, I kind of like Nate Posey for the deed. People are just as fanatical about money as they are about Christianity.”

  “They’re both religions,” Carver said, lying motionless in the dark and still seeing the flames of the burning abortion clinic.

  Remembering what Reverend Freel had said about burned sacrifices in his TV interview.

  28

  Beth sat on the beach, as she sometimes did, to watch Carver during his morning swim. She occasionally swam in the ocean, but never with him in the morning. She knew his solitary daily swims had become as much a time for meditation as for physical therapy.

  He didn’t go far from shore, wanting to keep her in sight where she lounged on a beach towel with Al sitting on his haunches beside her. Al held his nose high as he sniffed the ocean breeze. Carver had risen before Beth and was already in the water when she appeared on shore, and they hadn’t talked more about the abortion clinic bombing on last night’s news.

  The morning wasn’t yet hot, but the direct sun bearing down and then glinting off the water was searing Carver’s shoulders, the back of his neck, and his head. He rode the swells, treading water for a few more minutes, then leveled out into a fast crawl stroke and made for shore.

  As he was swimming toward the beach, he glanced landward and saw Beth’s tall form striding toward the cabin, her beach towel slung over one shoulder, Al loping along at her heel. Al looked thinner in silhouette, trailing Beth’s lean outline. A couple of gaunt wolves.

  While Carver showered, she prepared breakfast. He’d ground coffee beans and switched on the Braun brewer before leaving for his swim, and when he was dressed, he and Beth had a breakfast of coffee, eggs, and toast as they sat diagonally across from each other at the narrow counter. She was still wearing the shorts and faded Florida State University T-shirt she’d put on to walk down to the beach, and her bare feet had trailed sand on the kitchen floor.

  “I’ve slept on it,” she said, “and I still think Nate Posey might be the clinic bomber.”

  “Could be,” Carver said, spreading butter liberally on his toast. The hell with calories and cholesterol.

  She sipped coffee and lowered her cup. “You don’t seem to endorse my view, Fred.”

  She was right. He didn’t agree with her. “Maybe last night’s bombing was exactly what Dr. Benedict was talking about yesterday at the hospital: an attempt by Operation Alive to mislead police and the public into thinking the real bomber’s still out there and Norton’s innocent.”

  “And I think it’s possible Posey bombed the clinic last night so people will assume that what Benedict says is true.”

  “Uh-huh. Wheels within wheels.”

  “That’s what life is, Fred, a great big mechanism with lots of meshed, turning gears that have teeth missing.”

  That was a strange way to look at life, Carver thought, but it might be fairly accurate.

  He said, “I’d figure if Posey bombed Women’s Light as a cover to kill his fiancee and collect her insurance, he’d sit tight and let Norton take the blame and the fall.”

  “But you don’t figure like a man who’d blow up his fiancee for money-like Posey. He had the motive, and as far as we know, the opportunity,”

  “So find out from Wicker where Posey was at the time of the bombing.”

  “I already did that,” Beth said. “Talked to him yesterday. Posey was working at his job at Second Sailor, a place that refurbishes yachts, when the bomb blew at Women’s Light. His boss and fellow employees confirm that.”

  Carver finished chewing a bite of toast, then washed it down with coffee. “You think he planted the Women’s Light bomb earlier, with a timing device?”

  “Exactly. He doesn’t have an alibi for the night before the bombing, claims he was alone in his apartment. And Wicker said a few pieces of clockwork were found in the debris near the point of detonation.”

  Gears with missing teeth, Carver thought. “They might have found what’s left of a timing device that allowed Norton half a minute to get clear. It might have nothing to do with Posey.”

  Beth spread strawberry jelly on a slice of toast she’d already coated with butter, not looking at him, apparently not worrying about calories or cholesterol, either. Culinary daredevils.

  “World’s full of mights, Fred. I think Posey’s worth watching. Folks at Second Sailor say he’s using vacation time and he’ll be off work for another week. If I drive into Del Moray, I should be able to find him and tail him.” She put down her knife and bit into the toast. “Don’t worry, I won’t approach him,” she said as she chewed. Eating fast. She was revved up about this, eager to rejoin the world after declaring herself healed. He remembered what Dr. Galt had said and hoped she really was healed.

  “What do you expect to learn by following him?” Carver asked.

  “I’m not sure. It’s possible he has more than money as a motive. In fact, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there’s another woman in his life.”

  “This kid acted like he was grieving and still in love with his dead fiancee. I can’t imagine another woman in his life.”

  “We’ve run across a lot of convincing actors, haven’t we?”

  Carver couldn’t deny it.

  “I thought you were the great cynic, Fred. Here you are believing everything ‘this kid’ told you.”

  He knew he wouldn’t be able to talk Beth out of this. And maybe he shouldn’t try. If she was thinking about Nate Posey, she wouldn’t be thinking about what she’d lost. Also, while she was watching Posey, Anderson would be watching her.

  “Why don’t you take Al with you,” he suggested.

  She laughed. “Al’s trained in protection and attack, not in surveillance.”

  ‘Al’s trained in ingratiating himself and in mooching.”

  Al, who’d been sprawled as if dead in a corner, rotated his one erect ear as he gazed from the corner of his eye at Carver without moving his head.

  “If you won’t take the dog,” Carver said, “take the gun.”

  “I won’t need a gun.”

  “Take it anyway,” he urged. “Join everyone else in Florida. It’s a social thing. There’s jelly on your chin.”

  She used a napkin to wipe her chin clean, then finally agreed to take the gun and not the dog. She got dressed and fed Al a large bowl of Bow-Wow-WOW! nuggets that had been marinated in beef broth, then she drove away in her LeBaron.

  Carver was worried about her, but it made him feel good to watch her enthusiasm. She had the car’s top down, taking advantage of the healing sun while the morning was still bearable, if not cool.

  Al continued to eat, glaring up at Carver as if suspecting an imminent raid on his bowl.

  Carver poured himself a second cup of coffee and decided to drink it on the porch, then drive into Del Moray and talk to Benedict either at the hospital or the doctor’s home. It might be interesting to get Benedict’s slant on last night’s bombing, and to see if he was taking his recent spate of death threats more seriously.

  The phone rang as he was moving toward the porch. He turned around, hobbled quickly to it, and answered it on the third ring.

  It was Wicker.

  “Beth’s gone into Del Moray to tail Nate Posey,” Carver told him. “She thinks he’s goo
d for the clinic bombings.”

  “Plural, huh?” Wicker said. “Then you already heard about the Coast Medical Services bombing last night.”

  “Saw the tape on TV. What do you know about it?”

  “Not much yet. But it appears dynamite was the explosive. Same as in the Women’s Light bombing.”

  “Could have been the same bomber.”

  “We haven’t ruled anything out,” Wicker said.

  Carver told him about his conversation with Dr. Benedict yesterday, and Benedict’s belief that Operation Alive was mailing and phoning threats to him to make Norton seem innocent.

  “We already talked to Benedict about that. He might be right, but there are a lot of crackpots out there who’d get a charge out of shaking him up so soon after the Women’s Light bombing. I don’t see Posey as much of a danger, though, so if Beth has to follow anyone, he’s a good choice.”

  “That’s the way I look at it,” Carver said. “But I’m still glad Anderson’s watching over her.”

  “That’s the main reason I called you,” Wicker said after a pause. “Because of the bombing last night, I had to pull Anderson and use him in the field investigation. Beth’s on her own.”

  Carver didn’t say anything. He felt flushed with worry and fear, and a sense of betrayal he knew wasn’t justified. He’d known all along that Anderson wouldn’t be around the entire time until the WASP was apprehended.

  “She’ll be fine,” Wicker said, interpreting Carver’s silence correctly. “We’ve checked Posey’s background and he’s pure. And he has no connection with Norton or Operation Alive. There’s no reason to be following Posey, so no one will even know that’s where Beth is and what she’s doing.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Carver said.

  “What about that dog you got her, the one looks like he’s got eyebrows … what’s his name?”

  “Al.” At the mention of his name, Al stopped licking the bottom of his bowl long enough to curl a lip and glare at Carver. “She wouldn’t take him with her. He’s here with me.”

  “Well, no matter. She’s in a backwater of the investigation and will be safe.” Wicker laughed. “Anderson sure likes that dog. He told me to let you know if you ever want to get rid of Al, he’d be glad to take him off your hands.”

  “Don’t let anything happen to Anderson,” Carver said, and hung up.

  He hadn’t told Wicker about the gun in Beth’s purse.

  29

  The hospital had informed Carver that Dr. Benedict wasn’t seeing his first patient that day until two o’clock. Carver didn’t phone Benedict to see if he was home. Better to surprise the doctor than to reveal the day’s prognosis.

  As he turned the corner and drove down Macon Avenue toward the Benedict house, he saw about a dozen pickets in front of the driveway, another half dozen or so across the street. He pulled over to the curb half a block away and studied them. They were ordinary enough looking people, many of them women. They were dressed for casual comfort in the heat, wearing short-sleeved shirts or pullovers, shorts, and athletic shoes or sandals. A few of them wore plastic water bottles slung around their necks, the kind with thin plastic tubes protruding from their caps, like athletes use when they want to tilt back their heads and squirt water into their mouths as if it were wine from a goat bladder. One of the women, blond, heavyset, in her twenties, carried an infant in a sling so that the child sat facing her ample chest. Carver saw that several other women carried infants as well, and there were two girls of about twelve among the pickets. One of the preteen girls carried a sign showing the universal circle-and-slash “No” signal superimposed over what looked like an enlarged photo of a bloody fetus. Some of the other demonstrators carried the familiar white wooden crosses, resting them on their shoulders military fashion at a forty-five-degree angle, as if they were the rifles of troops on the march. Christian soldiers.

  Carver gripped his cane and climbed out of the Olds, locking it behind him. As he approached the demonstrators, they stared at him. He squinted against the sun and stared back, trying to place faces, but he couldn’t remember if any of these people had been at the Women’s Light Clinic the morning of the bombing,

  The sign the young girl was carrying did indeed depict a dead fetus. There was no lettering on the sign. Other signs read KILLER LIVES HERE, DOCTOR MURDER, and BABY KILLER.

  A tall, skinny man on the other side of the street lifted a bullhorn to his mouth, danced around in a tight circle to gather energy and attention, and screamed, “Stop slaughtering the unborn!” He screamed it again, louder. Then over and over at a pitch of high emotion.

  The demonstrators repeated the appeal after him, and the pace of those who were walking back and forth with signs and wooden crosses picked up. They repeated the “stop slaughtering” chant three or four times, apparently prompted by Carver’s arrival. For all they knew, he was from the press. The rest of the block was as bustling as a sunny ghost town. Who could blame anyone for staying inside? The demonstrators were intimidating the Benedicts’ neighbors.

  Finally the skinny man stopped gyrating and shouting, lowered the bullhorn and placed it on the ground, and the knot of demonstrators fell silent.

  Up close they looked sweaty, miserable, and determined.

  “Are you with Operation Alive?” Carver asked no one in particular as he approached the mouth of the driveway.

  A shirtless, middle-aged man wearing khaki shorts and an NRA baseball cap with an oversize bill glared at him and yelled, “Stop the slaughter!” again and again. The woman behind him joined in the mantra, now that the guy across the street with the bullhorn had run out of breath. She was wearing a faded T-shirt lettered THE QUICKEST WAY TO A MAN’S HEART IS THROUGH HIS CHEST. The young girl with the bloody fetus sign was sporting a Grateful Dead shirt. Back at the cottage, Carver had a Jerry Garcia designer tie in his closet. Things sure were getting mixed up.

  No one touched Carver or tried to block his way as he turned into the driveway and walked toward the low brick house with the wide tinted windows. He thought he saw movement behind one of the windows but couldn’t be sure. Mostly what he saw in the windows were reflections. Behind him, the guy with the megaphone was at it again, maybe with another slogan, but from even this short distance, it was difficult to make out what he was saying or what the demonstrators were shouting in response.

  Carver stepped up onto the porch and used the tip of his cane to press the doorbell button.

  Almost immediately Leona Benedict opened the door.

  “I was watching you approach,” she said, “in case somebody out there did anything to you.”

  “They’re loud,” Carver said, “but they don’t seem to be building up to action. Maybe it’s too hot.”

  “I hope so. I hope it gets even hotter for them.”

  Leona stepped back and Carver entered the house for the second time.

  “Is your husband home?” he asked.

  “No. You just missed him. I don’t know where he went.” A whiff of gin fumes carried to him as she spoke. In Carver’s experience, the drug of choice for lonely women.

  He noticed a folded blue garment bag with red trim lying on the floor near the door.

  “I was packing,” Leona said, seeing his gaze fall on the bag. She was slurring her words slightly now. The control she’d exercised to answer the door and appear sober was slipping. He stood silently, and when she saw he wasn’t going to comment or leave, she said, “You gotta excuse me while I finish. A cab’s on the way to pick me up.”

  “Where are you going?” Carver asked, leaving the elegantly furnished living room and following her down the hall to a bedroom, as if she’d invited him to watch her finish packing.

  “Away from this place.” She resumed transferring lingerie from a dresser drawer to a hard-sided blue suitcase open on the bed.

  “To get away from the demonstrators?”

  “To get away from my husband,” she said, throwing a bra into the suitcase as if for em
phasis.

  Carver had no idea what to say about that.

  She continued with her packing, examining the contents of a small, felt-lined jewelry box she’d removed from the drawer, as if trying to decide which pieces to take with her. She closed the lid and placed the entire box in the suitcase. “Away from his long hours and macho determination to keep working while he plays the hero and expounds on the nobility of his calling. I’ve had enough of his ego and self-importance, and I’m afraid for my own life.” A pair of sweat socks followed the bra and jewelry box into the suitcase. “I’m finally leaving him.”

  “Finally? As in forever?”

  “As in forever,” she repeated. “As in for eternity.” She pointed toward the front of the house and the chanting demonstrators, barely audible in the bedroom. “I’ve tried to live with that kind of thing, but I can’t. Whatever I try, no matter how hard I attempt to ignore them, it works for a while, but only a while. And then it gets worse than ever before. The pressure, what they do to you, it builds up in you, and eventually they win. They know that. It’s why they’re out there. They know they can outlast people like me.”

  “But not your husband?”

  “Oh, no. They might think so, but they’re mistaken. They won’t outlast Saint Benedict!” She slammed down the lid on the suitcase, lifted it slightly for a second to poke a corner of material back inside, then latched it and tried to drag the suitcase off the side of the bed and onto the floor.

  It was too heavy for her, and she emitted a frustrated, boozy sigh. Carver walked to the bed and helped her stand the suitcase on the floor. He saw that it had plastic wheels. She unfolded a small handle from it and rolled it into the living room to leave it near the garment bag.

  Carver followed. “If you don’t mind my saying so,” he told her, “you seem too angry to be thinking clearly right now. Maybe you should calm down, then see if you still want to leave.”

  She stared at him, her lower lip trembling. “Men! You think this is sudden, that the geeks outside are the final straw and I broke. Mister, I’ve been contemplating this for months. Years!” She walked to a walnut desk and pulled open a large drawer. From the drawer she pulled out a sheaf of newspaper clippings and handed them to Carver. “Look at this-my collection. You’ll get some idea what our marriage has been like for the past year, and even before that. You’ll understand why I’ve had my fill and have to get out.”