“Maybe the French abortion pill will solve the problem,” Beth said, “make abortion a private matter known only by the woman and her doctor.”
“Well, God speed the pill!” Dr. Benedict said,
Carver wondered if he really meant it. The expression on his face when he’d pledged to continue his good fight was similar to the one Carver had seen on Freel’s face in Orlando. Sometimes the struggle could take on more importance than the cause.
Carver knew. He’d been called obsessive often enough to wonder from time to time if it might be true.
That night in the cottage, he and Beth made love for the first time since the explosion. He was as gentle as possible, and so was she. Which was unlike her. He remembered her once losing herself so in her passion that she’d lashed out with a long leg and knocked over a motel lamp, not realizing it until later.
Now she lay beside him on her back, her right leg slung over his left. They were both nude and on top of the sheets. Carver felt the breeze pushing through the open window play coolly over his perspiring body.
“The room smells like sex and the sea,” Beth said. “I like that.”
He smiled.
She unhooked her leg, then sat up and swiveled to a sitting position on the mattress. “Thirsty, Fred?”
“Some.”
She stood up and walked across the sleeping area, switching on the TV near the foot of the bed as she passed it. He raised his head so he could watch the elegant magic of her walk. She moved like a flame in the flickering light from the TV screen.
He heard her cluttering around in the kitchen, and a few minutes later she returned carrying a can of Budweiser.
“Here,” she said, handing him the can. “I’m finished with it.” She settled back down on the bed beside him, then reached for the remote and turned up the TV’s volume. Carver could no longer hear the whisper of the surf from down on the beach. He took a long sip of cold beer and rested the icy can on his bare chest, peering over it at the TV screen.
Beth ran through the channels until she came to the local news. An anchorman named Bart something, flawlessly coiffed and tailored but ruggedly handsome enough to be in a Land’s End catalog, was finishing sentences for a blond anchorwoman named Christine seated beside him. Carver liked Christine. She seemed to be playing the news anchor game with barely disguised disdain. She might even be a journalist.
Bart and Christine said that a four-year-old boy had drowned in a swimming pool in East Del Moray. Carver knew the address, a wealthy area not far from the beach. There was a shot of an expensive home and an interview with a distraught neighbor. The newsman holding the microphone saw the dead boy’s mother near the gate to the house’s driveway and immediately cornered her, expressing sorrow and asking if she knew how the boy had drowned. The mother couldn’t unlock the gate and get inside fast enough. She melted down and began to sob. The camera zoomed in close so as not to miss a falling tear.
“Vampires,” Beth said.
“You’re a member of the fourth estate yourself,” Carver reminded her.
“Not like that.”
The image of the grieving mother faded and gave way to a tape of fire trucks and other emergency vehicles parked around a small burning building.
“On Vernon Road, just outside Del Moray,” Bart and Christine said, “a bomb exploded earlier this evening at Coast Medical Services, a women’s health facility that performs abortions. Reports are that the bomb went off in a storage building behind the actual clinic, which sustained only minor damage. Thankfully, no one was injured and the fire is now under control. Police won’t speculate on whether this bombing is connected to the Women’s Light Clinic bombing a week ago here in Del Moray.”
Staring at the TV screen, Carver knew that anyone nearby would have been killed or injured when the bomb exploded. He hoped the firefighters wouldn’t run across a charred body in the debris.
After a few seconds more of the camera fixed on the flames shooting into the night, Bart and Christine reappeared. They looked serious for a moment, then smiled broadly. “Old man weather is acting up, which means rain might be closing in on us,” they said. “Hey, not that we can’t use it! After these messages, Gail Tropical will tell us what to expect-”
Beth aimed the remote and switched off the TV. They were in darkness again, and Carver could hear the surf working away at the beach.
After awhile he said, “Another attempt by the Christian soldiers to divert suspicion away from Adam Norton?”
“I never was certain that Norton’s the clinic bomber,” Beth said. “I told you after we learned about Wanda Creighton’s insurance policy, I kind of like Nate Posey for the deed. People are just as fanatical about money as they are about Christianity.”
“They’re both religions,” Carver said, lying motionless in the dark and still seeing the flames of the burning abortion clinic.
Remembering what Reverend Freel had said about burned sacrifices in his TV interview.
28
Beth sat on the beach, as she sometimes did, to watch Carver during his morning swim. She occasionally swam in the ocean, but never with him in the morning. She knew his solitary daily swims had become as much a time for meditation as for physical therapy.
He didn’t go far from shore, wanting to keep her in sight where she lounged on a beach towel with Al sitting on his haunches beside her. Al held his nose high as he sniffed the ocean breeze. Carver had risen before Beth and was already in the water when she appeared on shore, and they hadn’t talked more about the abortion clinic bombing on last night’s news.
The morning wasn’t yet hot, but the direct sun bearing down and then glinting off the water was searing Carver’s shoulders, the back of his neck, and his head. He rode the swells, treading water for a few more minutes, then leveled out into a fast crawl stroke and made for shore.
As he was swimming toward the beach, he glanced landward and saw Beth’s tall form striding toward the cabin, her beach towel slung over one shoulder, Al loping along at her heel. Al looked thinner in silhouette, trailing Beth’s lean outline. A couple of gaunt wolves.
While Carver showered, she prepared breakfast. He’d ground coffee beans and switched on the Braun brewer before leaving for his swim, and when he was dressed, he and Beth had a breakfast of coffee, eggs, and toast as they sat diagonally across from each other at the narrow counter. She was still wearing the shorts and faded Florida State University T-shirt she’d put on to walk down to the beach, and her bare feet had trailed sand on the kitchen floor.
“I’ve slept on it,” she said, “and I still think Nate Posey might be the clinic bomber.”
“Could be,” Carver said, spreading butter liberally on his toast. The hell with calories and cholesterol.
She sipped coffee and lowered her cup. “You don’t seem to endorse my view, Fred.”
She was right. He didn’t agree with her. “Maybe last night’s bombing was exactly what Dr. Benedict was talking about yesterday at the hospitaclass="underline" an attempt by Operation Alive to mislead police and the public into thinking the real bomber’s still out there and Norton’s innocent.”
“And I think it’s possible Posey bombed the clinic last night so people will assume that what Benedict says is true.”
“Uh-huh. Wheels within wheels.”
“That’s what life is, Fred, a great big mechanism with lots of meshed, turning gears that have teeth missing.”
That was a strange way to look at life, Carver thought, but it might be fairly accurate.
He said, “I’d figure if Posey bombed Women’s Light as a cover to kill his fiancee and collect her insurance, he’d sit tight and let Norton take the blame and the fall.”