“This is nice,” Carver said, leaning on his cane and glancing around. “You have the homemaker’s touch.”
Adelle Grimm managed a smile. “I suppose that’s a compliment, even if it isn’t politically correct.”
Carver didn’t see why it was politically incorrect. “I mean, you make a home look comfortable and attractive.”
She motioned for him to sit on the sofa, then sat down in one of the gray-and-red chairs and crossed her legs, lacing her fingers over the top knee.
“I’m, uh, sorry about your husband, Mrs. Grimm.”
She nodded and looked around her, as if suddenly finding herself in strange surroundings. “Harold never really spent a lot of time here. He was so . . . dedicated.”
“He did useful work,” Carver said.
She stared at him with her red-rimmed eyes. “Do you really think so?”
“Yes. Did he spend a lot of time at the clinic?”
“Every other day. He alternated with Louis-Dr. Benedict. But on off days he was usually on call at Kennedy Hospital.” Again she glanced around, as if appraising her life from this new and terrible perspective and wondering if her husband’s effort and dedication had been worthwhile. So many missed dinners and parties, so many nights home alone. “Harold did sincerely believe in his work. It consumed his thoughts and his time and eventually it got him killed. Murdered.” For a second it appeared that she might begin to cry, but she took a deep breath again, even managed a smile that came and went in an instant. It was a smile that pierced Carver’s heart like a beak.
“It’s . . .”
“What, Mr. Carver?”
He didn’t want to put it into words. Why should he, when she had to know how he felt? “Life can be surprising and unfair at times,” he said inadequately.
“Yes,” was all she said.
“They caught the man, at least.”
“I hope they execute him,” she said dispassionately. “Harold wouldn’t approve, but I hope they convict Adam Norton and then kill him. He’s the kind of zealot who’s ruining this country.” She sniffed and bowed her head, placing the heel of her hand against her forehead. “Not that he isn’t entitled to his point of view, if all he wanted to do was argue it and demonstrate.”
Carver thought that was an odd thing to add to what she’d just said.
“Then you’re convinced of Norton’s guilt?” he said.
“Of course. Witnesses place him at the scene, and the police found explosives and instructions on how to make bombs when they searched his home. But if you ask me, he’s not the only guilty one.”
Another surprise for Carver. “He’s not?”
“I don’t mean anyone else is legally responsible,” Adelle Grimm said, “but that bastard Reverend Martin Freel should pay some kind of penalty for killing my husband. He’s one of the people who feed religious zealotry and murderous delusions to maniacs like Norton, feed it to them by the bucketful knowing the more they eat, the hungrier they get. Then when someone is injured or killed at a women’s clinic, people like Freel step back and cluck their tongues and profess to have no connection to the violence.” She gazed at Carver with her sad, swollen eyes, “When is this country going to have enough of this kind of thing?”
“I don’t know,” Carver said. It was a good question, all right. “In the months before his-before the bombing, did your husband receive any threats on his life?”
She laughed hopelessly. “Are you joking? He was a physician at an abortion clinic. He received threats almost every day. Vicious phone calls in the middle of the night, threatening letters, graffiti on the side of our house or on the sidewalk out front . . . it’s all been an intimate part of our lives. A few months ago someone even sent us an aborted fetus in the mail.” She swallowed and wiped at her eyes. “It was gift wrapped so it looked like a box of candy.”
Death is like a box of chocolates, thought Carver with revulsion. He could better understand why she thought Norton should be executed.
Adelle stood up and walked to a small cherry wood secretary and opened one of the desk’s wide drawers beneath the fold-down writing surface. She withdrew a bundle of envelopes bound with a large rubber band.
“Here,” she told him, handing him the bundle. “You can take them with you. The police have already seen them, and I’d just as soon have them out of the house.”
Carver accepted the envelopes, then planted the tip of his cane in the soft gray carpet and stood up. He handed Adelle Grimm one of his cards.
“If you think of anything that might help,” he said, “or if you need help, call me.”
She nodded, then preceded him to the door. Her step was heavy and deliberate, as if she were weighed down by her loss. He felt that he should say something more to console her, but he couldn’t find words that wouldn’t seem contrived and hollow.
“I wish you well with your grief, Mr. Carver,” she said from behind the closed screen door, as he limped from the porch and along the bright sidewalk toward his car.
So she had found the words for him. Women were so strong and savvy about such things. In the depths of her own grief, she’d been aware of his and known what to say to him. It was a demonstration of empathy and strength worth admiring.
He noticed now that the lawn, though it appeared well tended and neat from a distance, was beginning to fall victim to weeds.
9
In his office on Magellan, Carver examined the letters given to him by Adelle Grimm. For the most part they were the usual nutcase notes, written or typed with misspellings, deliberate or otherwise, and for some reason with very narrow margins. They conveyed the sense that while they were threatening and irrational, the writers were unlikely to pose an actual danger.
Two of the letters, however, interested Carver. They were signed, and they seemed to amount to more than the venting of paranoia and frustration.
One, from a man named Xaviar Demorose, with a Del Moray address, went into detail as to how he was going to abduct, torture, then murder Dr. Grimm. The other letter was more temperate but quoted scripture fluently and was signed by a Mildred Otten, who identified herself as a member of Operation Alive.
Carver folded both letters and slid them into his shirt pocket. Then he dragged the desk phone over to him and pecked out the number of A. A. Aal Memorial Hospital and Beth’s room extension.
Her voice sounded throaty and weary when she answered the phone by her bed. Maybe she’d been asleep, or she was groggy from her medication.
“You feeling better today?” he asked.
“Fred?”
“Yes.”
“Just a moment.” There was a pause. Then, “I had to switch the receiver to my left ear. I keep forgetting I still can’t hear well out of my right.”
“The doctor didn’t tell me you suffered a hearing loss.”
“Told me,” Beth said. “Whispered it in my left ear.”
Carver almost smiled. It was good to hear her usual acerbic tongue. “Has the hearing in your right improved any?”
“Yeah. They tell me it should return to eighty or ninety percent normal eventually.”
“We can settle for that,” Carver said. “If you’d walked into the clinic a few seconds sooner you might have been killed.”
“Timing and luck, maybe they’re the same thing.” There were faint sounds in the background, as if someone had entered the room, and Beth said something he couldn’t understand, muffled, as if she had her hand over the mouthpiece. “The nurse was here looking in on me,” she explained a few seconds later. “And McGregor was here about an hour ago, Fred. He was looking for you.”
Carver glanced again at his answering machine; the digital counter registered no messages. McGregor hadn’t called. “Did he say why?”
“No. He was only here a few minutes. He urged me to leave you and sleep with men of my own race, then he left.”