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.”