by Chris Bauer
She overlooked his poor manners. “Sister’s meditation, it took her in a controversial direction.” She blinked a few times in rapid succession. A few tears squeezed out. “I think she’s capable of great things, but also of great damage.”
J.D. went on alert, his ears raised. He padded a few feet toward the entrance to the room. He arrived at the end of his leash, sat again and faced the hallway. Maeby followed and sat next to him. A nun poked one eye around a corner of the arched entrance to the room, silent as a cat. Maeby and J.D. both snorted at her. Startled, the curious nun disappeared.
Mary Veronica checked her watch. “Goodness, I lost track of the time. The sisters are back from vespers. You’d better leave now.”
“One last thing, miss,” Judge said, “She texted you. You still have her number?”
She scrolled the number list on her phone, found and read it while Judge keyed it into his own. She escorted them to the front door.
“We’ll pray for her safekeeping, Mister Drury. Hers, and the others she’ll try to take with her.”
FOURTEEN
Larinda, aggravated, sat in her Durango in a Wendy Restaurant’s parking lot in Blacksburg, across a four-lane street from Planned Parenthood. At six-fifty-four p.m., she was too late.
Her grip on the steering wheel was prohibitively tight, her crucifixion wound breaking open from the strain. She seethed, some from the physical pain again jabbing at her healing hand, some from craving an oxy mellow, but mostly it was from the inconvenience caused by the severe weather.
“Please, God, give me the strength…”
The clinic closed at six-thirty. At this location the baby killers worked Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, and tomorrow was none of those days. She didn’t want to and couldn’t wait three days for the next opportunity.
She slipped into a thin Old Navy hoodie and tucked her hair into a baseball cap. The hood went up. She grabbed a pair of sunglasses and exited the SUV.
Sliding casement windows lined the front of the two-story rectangular building, the windows inset in its birch-colored, steeply slanted shingle roof. The building occupied the corner of a city block. She stepped onto the sidewalk and walked the perimeter. Around the first corner a set of stairs led to the second floor, a red door at the top. Video cameras jutted from the roofline at both corners. In the back of the building, no rear exit, and all windows were flush to the wall under three more video cameras and three floodlights. She reached the third corner and another set of stairs, with more cameras. No building lobby, front, back or on either side. Which meant no public elevator, and no interior access to upstairs. Larinda climbed the exterior stairs and tried a fire door at top. Locked.
She returned to the SUV, climbed in, had a decision to make.
The drive had been long, tense, her eyes aching, prickly, jabbing pains shooting into their sockets. The tornado-like weather had followed her into Virginia and strained all her senses, each on high alert through every curve and straightaway of every mile for the last three hours. She’d get some relief with the oxy, but she desperately needed sleep. She dry-swallowed another of the mint-green pills. The relief came to her closed eyes in waves, and what felt before like a plucking at her eyelids by spindly, probing bird claws gave way to a gentle high, and an angelic-fingered eye massage.
She unwrapped the red-tinged gauze that encircled her hand. Crimson droplets dotted the absorbent pad under it, and under the pad, blood trickled through a split in the wound. She centered a new sterile sponge in her palm and rewrapped her hand with more gauze. That would do for now. Back to deciding about the abortion clinic, and how to do what she wanted to do.
There were more clinics in Virginia on her list. One in Roanoke, less than an hour away. The next closest was three-plus hours, in Richmond, but out of the way.
She was already here.
So be it.
The building’s first floor housed a martial arts school, a tanning salon and a dry cleaners. The clinic’s second floor space spanned four casement windows, above the studio and the tanning salon. Next to the clinic was one additional casement window, for a small law office.
She checked her face in the mirror. Smooth white skin, hazel eyes, and a dose of Irish freckles. “All-American sexy,” her long-ago college boyfriend had called her. Her auburn hair, its natural color, blonde now, plus the orangebrown freckles on her nose and cheeks made him want to have sex with her mouth more than any other part of her body. Freckles also dotted her lithe, toned arms. She became sexier, all of her, he’d said, after she spent time in the sun. After him, she’d given up men, had given up sex, but she did agree her fair skin always needed more color, with her preferring the tanned, Oklahoman ranch hand look that her time in the pastures gave her while growing up.
The tanning salon was still open. Opaque storefront windows diffused its interior lighting making it impossible to see inside, giving it a massage parlor look. Above the salon, the clinic.
She decided. She located a tightly packed backpack under the tarp, opened it so she could switch out one full Gatorade bottle for another. She jogged across the street with the bag and entered the tanning salon.
A female attendant sat at the counter, early twenties, her colored red hair in a bun. The attendant quickly finished a text on her phone and greeted Larinda warmly. “Hi. Can I help you?”
“Maybe. Is there an inside entrance to the second floor?”
“Sorry, miss, but no. For security reasons.” The attendant leaned in, whispered, “See, upstairs there’s an abor…”
The attendant caught herself. She straightened her shoulders, acquiring a judgmental face. Larinda didn’t miss her furtive glance at Larinda’s stomach. “Planned Parenthood is upstairs,” she said. “Some people aren’t happy about it and cause trouble.”
“I’m more interested in the law office.” Larinda slipped off her hood but left her sunglasses in place.
“Oh.” The attendant relaxed. “The upstairs doors reopen at eight tomorrow. I think the lawyers don’t get in until nineish.” She gave Larinda’s freckled white face the once over. “Can I interest you in a specially priced tanning session tonight? Assuming you’re not already a member?”
“I’m not a member, and yes, sure, a session sounds great.”
“Awesome. Welcome to SafeTan Tanning. I’m Patricia.”
“Barbara Hopkins.”
“After your session, Miss Hopkins, if you’d like to become a member…”
“I’ll take a brochure when I leave.”
“Great. Sorry. I always have to ask.”
Patricia had a few more questions for her. No, this was not her first time in a tanning salon. No, she didn’t live locally. Yes, she was aware SafeTan had salons throughout the south and the Midwest.
“Where do I go to change?”
“Dressing stalls are in the tanning area. You can put your backpack in one of the lockers,” Patricia pointed, “over there.”
“Thanks, but I’ll keep it with me.”
Larinda stripped to bra and panties. With tanning goggles in place she entered the empty tanning room, carried her backpack with her to the bed that the pleasant Patricia had set up for her. Patricia suggested eight minutes maximum. Five would be enough, Larinda told her, else she’d burn.
With the session over, Larinda was still the salon’s only customer. She dressed again, jeans, tee shirt, hoodie, and sunglasses. Back at the front counter she thanked young Patricia for her kind service. “Not very busy tonight, I see.”
“Yes. I might close early.”
“Tell me,” Larinda added, “are you a religious person, Patricia?”
Patricia’s eyebrows tented. “Why yes, Miss Hopkins. Yes I am. A practicing Presbyterian my whole life. A Peace Corps volunteer when I graduated college. Here, look at this.” Her young, tanned face became gosh-golly bubbly. She lifted a silver necklace out from under her blouse and showed off a hanging medallion.
Larinda leaned in, read the inscription alou
d, the medallion shaped like a military dog tag. “‘I heart the Peace Corps.’ Very nice, Patricia.”
“Thanks. I still do missionary work,” Patricia said. “In Honduras, Haiti, and South America. Whenever our church elders decide someone needs help, I go.”
“That’s good. That’s very good, Patricia.” She laid her hand on Patricia’s, squeezed it tightly like an elderly aunt might do to her dearest niece. “So glad to hear that. God bless you.”
The young woman’s face lit up in response, her head tilting. “God bless you too, Miss Hopkins. Thank you. And please don’t forget a brochure.”
Larinda headed to the glass door exit with the SafeTan literature in hand, raised her hood and clambered outside. She teared up, but she felt a little better about what was going to happen. Patricia, young, wholesome, and Christian, had been genuinely buoyed by her blessing. At least there was that.
Patricia the attendant powered off the computer equipment on the front counter and the SafeTan window neon. The door to the tanning beds room was closed. She needed to open it for the cleaning people. She pushed the door ajar.
“My goodness,” she said, her eyes lighting up. Her customer had forgotten her backpack. She turned to catch her.
“Miss Hopkins!” Patricia called, but she was too late. She hustled over to the bag, grabbed for it, would need to run it outside to her. The unfastened top flap lifted open, spilling out a strip of gauze stained with blood. She set the bag down, picked up the gauze between thumb and forefinger and examined it. “Yuck.” She dropped it into a trashcan.
Beneath the gauze was a Gatorade bottle, its contents the color of urine. She wrinkled her nose from the smell, gasoline, but the orange and black wiring, six white Tovex “Blastrite” gel sausages and four attached AA batteries were what made her step back, away from the bag. Her head shook out a no, no no no, this couldn’t be happening. Her thin, tan hands balled up. She pivoted and ran.
Blasting through the tanning area doorway, her arms pumping, she slipped as she rounded a corner. She bounced back up and passed the counter, nearing the door to the exit.
Larinda reached her SUV across the street and removed a detonator from her pocket. Electrical tape masked everything except the display screen and a few buttons. Seven-twenty-three p.m., the display said. She eyed the front entrance of the building she’d just exited. All was quiet.
“Godspeed, Patricia. Heaven awaits all Christian martyrs.” Larinda pressed a button.
Patricia saw passing traffic through the front door, another ten feet, less than ten feet and she’d be ou…
The IED ignited and blew out the front windows and their frames, the pressure of the blast ripping through the ceiling, the second floor and the roof, shooting its orange flames into the ink-blue nighttime sky. The sky rained wood and shingle and other building shrapnel onto the street and cars and sidewalks, then a gas line erupted. A second explosion shook the entire city block, then a third, with Larinda jolted by the metallic clang of a tanning bed landing in front of her SUV. Another tanning bed dropped onto the roof of the Wendy’s restaurant behind her. Street traffic was light but was now chaotic, with terrified drivers speeding to flee the debris shower or braking hard to avoid entering it, the building still sparking and spitting fire.
Bits of ash and other flaming debris floated onto Larinda’s SUV. She turned on the ignition, eyed the burning building again. She jumped when a tiny metal medallion splatted her windshield and stuck there, forcing her to focus on it and the silver chain attached. Larinda made the sign of the cross.
The salon attendant’s necklace slid off the window when Larinda engaged the wipers, smearing the glass red. Wiper fluid and a few frenetic wiper swipes rinsed away the smear. She reached for the floor gearshift and backed the SUV out.
At the rear of the restaurant parking lot, an exit put her onto another street. Back on the road, the blacktop still wet from the earlier storm, she remembered a strip of no-tell motels she’d passed in Christiansburg just off Interstate 81. She hated to backtrack, but she needed some rest, and she needed it now.
Sirens wailed in the distance, strengthening as they converged, one emergency vehicle dopplering past her on the other side of the road as she put distance between her SUV and the fire. First responders would administer to the destruction, would gather up Patricia’s body parts for a good Christian burial, and would clean up the heinous discharge from the festering abscess called Planned Parenthood that The Church Hammer had just lanced from their community.
She found no joy in this. It scratched the itch caused by her deplorable sin, and she again would await the answer to the question she’d posed in prayer earlier: how many abortions would she need to prevent to complete the penance for the one abortion she’d had?
The answer, as before, was always “more.”
It was Naomi’s first evening as a D.C. resident, and she was spending it at the five-star 1789 Restaurant on 36th St. NW in Georgetown, there at the invitation of Texas’ U.S. Senator Mildred Folsom.
The politics weren’t lost on Naomi. Senator Folsom was the Religious Right’s legislative pit bull, had been for decades. Proud of her Texas heritage, even prouder of her Christian conservatism. At one time, the media called her “Senator Super-Christian.”
“Now, to get with the times, it’s Senator Uber-Christian,” the senator said to Naomi, smiling through her Texas drawl. “Liberal media types love the new acronym. ‘S-U-C.’ Twitter-compatible and more disparaging. And I love ’em right back on Twitter when I have the time.” She winked. “You can never eat just one.”
Her age and a cigarette habit had coalesced to promote a charcoal-filtered gravelly voice that was still very effective after seventy-two years. She’d had work done, on her face, neck and teeth, and her hair had gone from a sexy platinum blonde to a fluffy, august silver-white. A waiter delivered their after-dinner cocktails.
“I’m still very particular about my beliefs, Madam Justice, regardless of whatever tongue-in-cheek superlative someone assigns to me because of them. As I know you are particular about your beliefs as well.”
Naomi picked up her cocktail tumbler, sipped from it. “My personal opinions,” Naomi said, “need to remain as personal opinions only, and most of the time unexpressed. You know this, Senator, and I’m sure you can respect this.”
“Of course. Please, call me Mildred.”
“Let’s stay with ‘Senator,’ Senator.”
The senator smiled at Naomi’s response, took the first sip of her after-dinner drink. She closed her eyes, savoring it. Balcones Brimstone Texas Scrub Oak Smoked Whiskey. Naomi knew this libation. It had been her husband Reed’s favorite. Uniquely Texas. The senator suggested it as a dessert replacement. Naomi had accepted, more so for Reed’s benefit, wishing to share some of her new life in D.C. with her memory of him. In its aroma Naomi smelled a Texas campfire at sunset, and maybe even a hint of Reed’s cologne.
“To all things birthed in Texas, Madam Justice,” the senator intoned, raising her glass.
“To Texas,” Naomi said, joining the toast.
Accepting her dinner invitation had been the least Naomi could do. Mildred Folsom had been a political firebrand for over thirty years, thriving in one of the most male-dominated, good-ol’-boy jurisdictions in existence in any of the fifty states. Texas’ longest tenured senator of either sex. A true woman warrior. This was to be her last Congress and had been widely publicized as such. She would retire next year. Respect for her was too tame a word. Admiration was better, awe was best. There was all of this, but for Naomi there was also something else. Curiosity. She had one lingering question she wanted the senator to answer. It was about Naomi’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing.
“It must have been hard for you, Senator.”
“What’s that, Your Honor?”
“To not mount a take-no-prisoners assault against my nomination because of my feminist leanings early in my career. I’m grateful you were so reasonable in your line
of questioning.”
The senator’s eyes narrowed but recovered quickly. Still, Naomi saw it. A tell that the senator was uncomfortable with the insinuation. By ‘reasonable,’ Naomi meant ‘soft touch.’ Had the senator been too patronizing during the hearing? Parochial? Could the conservatives have accused her of extending an olive branch to the evil liberal dark side?
“Oh, I don’t know, Your Honor. I thought I was rather my old ornery, transparent self. But perhaps I have mellowed some with age, getting more in touch with my feminine side. Perhaps I do rely more on what a person’s beliefs are now, not on what they once were. I do expect you to protect the Constitution to the extreme, and to rule on every argument absent any preconceived biases. You comported yourself well during the hearing, were charming, and you defended your judicial record admirably. You did Texas proud.” She raised her glass and took her whiskey on another spin, her eyes following it as it swirled around the bottom. “Tell me, Madam Justice, are you up to speed on the arguments on the docket for this term?”
“Of course, Senator. The term starts Monday. I’m ready to hear them. Where are you going with this?”
“The one case from Texas…”
“Won by the state, appealed to The Nine. Texas women who want to terminate pregnancies now need to view an ultrasound.”
“Yes. I characterize it as helping women to make a more informed decision. I wish it had been in place thirty years ago.”
The senator’s backstory was well documented: her daughter, an only child, pregnant at age eighteen, a pregnancy she’d kept from her mother; her legal abortion at a Texas clinic; complications during the procedure; the daughter’s tragic death from septic shock soon after. Naomi knew it couldn’t get much more personal than this. For anybody.
“Are you aware, Madam Justice, who is on the stump for upholding the Texas court decision?”
“Senator,” Naomi wearied of the discussion, “yes, I’m aware. Much of the state of Texas is on the stump, which is each Texan’s right. But let’s be more precise. You’re referring to Norma McCorvey.” Her emphasis on the name, the inflection, showed Naomi’s impatience. “Misses McCorvey is now pro-life, and like this case, she might better be characterized as being on the stump to overturn Roe. An even better characterization, in my opinion, is she may now have no more relevant a political voice than the average citizen. She’s good for some media sound bites and stories about overcoming personal demons, but other than that, Misses McCorvey has no standing here.”