by John Lutz
The answering machine in his office was aglow with the news that he had seven messages. He sat down at his desk and wondered at a world where callers could nail you with messages and obligations even if you didn’t happen to be home or in your office. Alexander Graham Bell might have decided not to invent the phone if he’d anticipated that. But then someone selling vacation time shares would surely have figured it out.
One of the messages was a sales pitch not for time shares but for municipal bonds to help repair damage from a recent hurricane on the Gulf Coast. One was a wrong number. Four were from McGregor, cursing at Carver and taunting him, and finally telling him to call him at police headquarters. Wicker must have talked to McGregor about easing up on Carver, and straightened him out as to who had jurisdiction in the Lapella murder. Carver decided not to return those calls. The last call was from Beth, telling Carver that Al was refusing to eat the Bow-Wow-WOW! and suggesting that on the way back to the cottage he stop and buy some cans of beef broth to pour over what the Bow-Wow-WOW! label called “delectable nuggets of pure deliciousness.”
Broth! Carver thought in disbelief. Did other dogs convince their owners to pour messy beef broth over dry dog food? He doubted it. What he should do is stop on his way back and buy a cat, see what Al made of that. He was finding it possible to work up a dislike of Al.
He was erasing his messages when he heard someone enter the anteroom. The office door was open, so he sat and waited for whoever it was to appear.
She peeked shyly around the doorjamb, gave a smile a try, then gave up on it.
As if fighting an invisible magnetic force, she made herself step completely into the doorway so she was framed in total view. Her obviously painful self-consciousness brought to mind the term frontal nudity even though she was fully dressed. Carver guessed her age as about thirty, but it was difficult to know for sure. She was a child-woman redhead who might have been twenty or forty, her gauntness emphasized by one of those silky, loose-fitting dresses that were given shape only by an elastic clip in back at the waist. The dress’s straps lay crookedly on her bony shoulders, and its low neckline revealed little other than countless freckles. She had prominent cheekbones that seemed about to protrude through her pale, freckled flesh. Her eyes were large and innocent and blue, and her mouth, sans lipstick, was stretched over even but protruding teeth. She was attractive but looked like she needed food, clothes, and consolation. Carver knew he was a sucker for such women and warned himself.
“Mr. Fred Carver?” she asked. Her accent was very southern. Kentucky, Carver guessed. It made him think of thoroughbred horses and split-rail fences and fried chicken and a woman he knew in Paducah.
He acknowledged that he was indeed himself sitting in his office and she seemed pleased.
“I don’t want to be here,” she said. Another nervous attempt at a smile.
He returned the smile quickly, before hers disappeared. “Neither do I, a lot of the time.”
“Oh!” she said abruptly, as if remembering a missing letter in a spelling bee. “I forgot to introduce myself. I’m Carrie Norton.”
Carver tried to recall the first name in police or news reports.
“Adam Norton’s wife,” she said, helping him out. “I guess you never expected I’d show up here.”
“No, but I’m not sorry you did. Why don’t you come in all the way? Sit down and we can talk about whatever it is you came for.”
She entered slowly, moving tentatively, and sat down in the chair facing his desk. She rested her hands in her lap and pressed her knees tightly together beneath the material of her dress. The dress had a muted flower design on it, distorted where her thighs creased it in a tight valley. On her left ring finger was a simple gold wedding band. That was her only jewelry.
“I heard about you going around asking people questions regarding the Women’s Light bombing,” she said. “Known for a couple of days you were investigating the crime.”
As he listened to her soft, lilting voice, he wondered if she were here to try to hire him, like Nate Posey.
“I don’t know if this’ll do much good,” she said, “but it gnawed away on me that I should try, because maybe you’d pay at least some attention and have an open mind. Not like the police and those FBI folks. Why I came here, Mr. Carver, is to convince you my husband is innocent.”
“I can’t promise you that will be easy,” he said honestly.
“Oh, I don’t need that promise. Not much has been easy in my life nor in Adam’s. We got married five years ago where I grew up in Faircrest, Kentucky, because that’s where Adam finally found himself a job after drifting around the country. We met in church.”
Carver could have guessed.
“I knew Adam was a good man when first I laid eyes on him. Five years of marriage and a criminal charge hasn’t changed that. Oh, I know you and the police and FBI have got your evidence and clues and statements. But I got something none of you has, and that’s long-true knowledge of what’s in my husband’s heart.”
Carver spoke softly, in the manner of a man trying not to frighten a small animal and make it bolt. “Did Jefferson Brama advise you to come here, Mrs. Norton?”
She met his eyes directly; he saw bluegrass and blue skies. “No, he did not. Mr. Brama is my husband’s lawyer only and doesn’t advise nor control me in my personal actions.”
Carver sighed and stared out the window at the patch of ocean visible between two buildings on the other side of Magellan. The sun was shooting silver sparks off the shimmering water, making the sight beautiful but so brilliant as to be an assault on the eyes. “Let’s look at this objectively, Mrs. Norton.”
“That’s all I ask. It’s surely not what’s been happening.”
“Adam was seen running from behind the clinic, where he was in violation of the law, moments before the bomb exploded. Bomb-making literature and material was found in a search of your home. There are witnesses who will testify that he was experimenting with bombs, and blasting caps were found beneath the seat of his car. In a journal he kept, he described himself as someone chosen to be the lightning, arm, and sword of the Lord. Or words to that effect.”
Carrie Norton’s jaw tightened as she listened to Carver. Then she said, “He did not confess to the crime. There are no words to that effect.”
Carver raised his hands, then let them drop back onto the desk. “But what about all the evidence, Mrs. Norton?”
“Circumstantial, every bit of it.”
“There will be testimony by eyewitnesses,” he reminded her.
“They only saw him where he wasn’t supposed to be. They did not actually see Adam throw nor plant the bomb.”
True enough, Carver had to concede.
“And those blasting caps, they’re like the ones in our garage, maybe even come from there, but Adam never carried them in the car, so they had to have been planted there to help convict him. As for the so-called bombs the police say my husband exploded, those weren’t bombs at all, merely blasting caps. He was just experimenting, so he could be sure the timing mechanisms he was making would work like he planned and set off a real bomb.”
“Then he did intend to explode a bomb at the clinic.”
“Well, of course, eventually. But not necessarily that clinic. And yes, he did write in his journal that he was the terrible swift sword of the Lord. You gotta understand, Mr. Carver, my husband thinks it’s his duty to strike the heretics dead even if it means sacrificing himself. But the fact is, he never had time to act. He never harmed nobody at all, any time or any place, much less that Women’s Light Clinic.”
“You’re saying he really did simply go behind the building to wave his sign at the windows.”
“Of course that was all he did.”
Carver looked into her guileless, unblinking blue eyes. “Let’s suppose what you say is true. If your husband were to be acquitted of the Women’s Light bombing, he’d soon commit a similar crime somewhere else.”
“Sooner or
later, I suppose he would.”
“How do you feel about that? Didn’t you try to talk him out of experimenting with timers and blasting caps and planning something that might kill innocent people?”
She sat forward in her chair, clasping her hands in her lap. “Be clear on this. I believe in whatever it is my husband wants to do, Mr. Carver. If he says it’s his duty to slay the heretics who are themselves slaying thousands every day, I won’t stand in his way nor interfere in any fashion. I believe as he does and support him in his plan to learn how to build and use bombs to destroy abortion clinics and stop the killing of the unborn. But the point is, he hasn’t done anything yet. He’s pure innocent.”
“If he were freed and continued with his plan, you’d soon lose him again.”
“When the Lord, and not the government, says it’s time!”
“Might the Lord be working through the government?”
She sat back stiffly in her chair, seemingly offended by his suggestion, “That,” she said, “is highly unlikely. But if the Lord might, so might the devil.”
She had him. Carver should have known better than to argue religion with her.
“What do you want me to do, Mrs. Norton?”
“I can’t afford to pay for your hire,” she said. “But you aren’t one of the government people and might be impartial and fair to Adam. That means much to me. All I ask of you is to keep an open mind, and if you find evidence that Adam is innocent or that someone else is the bomber, promise me that you’ll be an honorable man and see that the truth comes to light. I would sleep better knowing that was the case.”
Carver thought about it. Wasn’t that what he wanted, too, seeing that the truth came to light?
“I can promise you that.”
As soon as he’d let fly the words, he remembered that promises hastily made had been the cause of most of his problems in life.
26
JUST BEFORE NOON, so he could beat the lunch crowd, Carver drove to Poco’s Tacos for lunch. It was a cloudless and balmy day, and many of the pleasure boats usually docked at the marina were out to sea. Carver sat at a table in the shade of its umbrella, took a crunchy bite of taco, and watched sailboats, cabin cruisers, outboard runabouts, and a guy on a Sea-Jeep frolicking in the ocean. The peril-fraught sea of Columbus and Magellan had become a playground.
As he was sipping soda through a straw, he happened to glance toward the street and notice a big black Buick parked at the curb near the marina entrance. The man behind the wheel was watching him through the windshield, which reflected the sun so that Carver couldn’t quite make out his features. Then either the man shifted position or a cloud passed over the sun, blocking or changing the angle of reflection, and for a second it looked as if the driver was a large man wearing black horn-rimmed glasses.
Carver gripped his cane and stood up, ducking his head to avoid bumping it on the umbrella. Carrying his cup of soda in his free hand, he walked toward the Buick.
The car’s door opened and the driver got out and stood tall. He was a broad-shouldered man wearing a dark blue suit, white shirt, and red tie. He had a blond crew cut and was indeed wearing black horn-rimmed glasses. They made him look studious but didn’t keep him from looking dangerous. The WASP. He crossed his arms, leaned back against the car, and put on a waiting smile.
Carver limped toward him faster, feeling fear mixed with elation, weighing the odds. This was a well-traveled street in broad daylight. It was unlikely that the WASP would display a gun or knife. Whatever physical was going to happen would be fast. Fast was fine with Carver. Fast was what he was about, even if he lacked lower-body mobility. He had quickness and reaction time. And he had his cane for a weapon.
When he was a hundred feet from the WASP, he tossed aside his soda cup, litterbug ready for action. More than ready. Carver’s blood was up. The WASP liked to break fingers, let him see if he could break Carver’s.
When Carver was fifty feet away, the WASP unhurriedly climbed back into the Buick.
The engine was idling, but the car didn’t move. He knows I can’t get there in time with the cane, Carver thought. The bastard’s toying with me, reminding me I’m a cripple.
He let Carver limp to within ten feet of the car before driving away. He didn’t wave, didn’t even bother to glance at Carver. It was a nondisplay and it plainly showed disdain, demonstrating who had control.
Carver hadn’t even been able to make out a license plate number. The plate was in a chrome holder with a plastic cover that was conveniently discolored from the sun.
Carver walked back to where he’d flung aside his soda cup and whacked it with his cane, scattering cracked ice. Then he retrieved the mangled cup and dropped it and his half-eaten lunch into a trash receptacle. He was still in fight-or-flight mode, and he’d chosen fight; his blood was racing and his heart continued hammering with anticipation, pumping adrenaline. His mind knew the crisis had passed but his body, processing older and essential signals that urged survival instead of death, hadn’t caught up. It was an effort for him to calm down.
As he looked out again at the day sailers and pleasure yachts and the man on the Sea-Jeep, the ocean didn’t look so blue and innocent. Florida off and on shore wasn’t the playground pictured in glossy chamber of commerce brochures and travel agency ads. Mickey Mouse and Goofy were here. So were sharks and alligators.
Thinking about the direction the black Buick had taken, he decided to drive to the cottage to be with Beth.
Before turning from the coast highway onto the road leading to the cottage, he parked the Olds and walked to the spot from which he could usually see Anderson’s parked car. This time Carver couldn’t find the usual patches of blue metal visible through the thick foliage. Either Anderson wasn’t on duty or he’d decided to observe the cottage from another position.
Lowering himself into the Olds, Carver put the car in drive, eased back onto the highway, and drove toward the turnoff and home.
Beth’s car was parked in its usual spot in the shade. At least she hadn’t decided to go somewhere on her own, making Anderson work harder for his bureau salary. Or maybe it would have been better if she had left the cottage, with or without Anderson following.
Carver parked the Olds next to her car and got out.
He’d taken a few steps toward the cottage when a loud bark made him stop and stand still.
Al shoved open the screen door and ran toward him, fangs bared, ears so flat against his head they were invisible. Another deafening bark. Carver stood dumbfounded. Was this really Al?
Al didn’t slow down. His rear paws kicked up puffs of dust as they dug at the sun-baked ground for traction. The barking became a low, menacing growl. Carver felt a chill of fear and raised his cane.
“Halt, Al!”
Beth’s voice.
Al skidded to a stop, staring at Carver. Then one of his ears shot erect and he cocked his head, seeming to recognize his master, the guy who’d saved him from the pound.
“It’s all right, Al,” Beth said. She was standing on the porch, holding the screen door open behind her, looking tall and coolly beautiful in a long white dress flowing in the sea breeze.
Suddenly she seemed to realize she was letting in mosquitoes. She released the wooden door and it slammed shut with a reverberating noise like an echoing gunshot.
Al trotted over to Carver, who resisted the temptation to crown him with the cane and instead leaned down and ruffled the fur between his ears. Wasn’t this why he’d adopted Al, to guard against intruders and protect Beth?
Sure, but . . .
“C’mon in, boys,” Beth said, opening the door and hip-switching back inside.
Carver and the other boy followed.
Beth had settled down on the sofa. The TV was on and she was watching CNN. An attractive and serious female news anchor Carver hadn’t seen before was talking about where interest rates would be heading and what that would mean for the housing market. Trying to guess where mortgage rat
es were going was like trying to forecast the weather, she said. So much ambiguity in the world, Carver thought. The weather, interest rates, murder . . .
He sat in the chair at a right angle to the sofa and leaned his cane against its upholstered arm. He decided that Beth didn’t have to know he’d seen the WASP near Poco’s Tacos and been taunted by him. She’d worry. Besides, she’d always warned him that Poco’s was a dangerous place to dine.
“Everything all right here?” he asked.
She looked at him curiously. “Of course. I’ve got Al.”
Al was enthusiastically devouring what looked like bits of meat and gravy stuck to the bottom of his bowl. He raised an eyebrow and glanced with concern from the corner of his eye, as if any second Carver might throw himself to the floor and try to usurp his place at the bowl. His canine expression suggested that Carver had done such a thing before and wasn’t above suspicion. Al was enjoying Bow-Wow-WOW! nuggets, no doubt, covered with rich broth from a can Beth must have found in the back of a cabinet. Carver thought the animal might be putting on weight.
“Dr. Galt called,” Beth said. “I have an appointment this afternoon to go into the hospital and have my remaining stitches removed. He’ll examine me then, tell me I’m up to par.”
“Do you feel up to par?”
“Feel like an eagle on every hole, Fred.”
Al choked, recovered, continued eating.
The news anchor on CNN was talking about the abortion clinic bombing in Del Moray. Carver and Beth watched as a tape of the boarded-up clinic was shown. Mug shots, front and profile, of Adam Norton came on the screen. Norton didn’t look contrite and was in fact smiling with an infuriating smugness. The scene cut to a local newsman interviewing Reverend Freel in front of the Clear Connection. “. . . of course Operation Alive doesn’t endorse violence,” Freel was saying into the microphone thrust toward him. “It’s the violence happening inside those clinics that we object to and cannot—will not—accept. Violence is precisely what we abhor and are demonstrating against.”