“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, she 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.