Carver had gotten the message: he, Carver, understood but Leona hadn’t; every problem in the Benedict marriage stemmed from that and was her responsibility.
“If you’re ill,” Carver said, “you could cancel. Your patient could come back another day.”
“Unfortunately, there are no ‘other’ days! Too many of us have been run out of business by the radicals who are picketing my house at this moment. And I have Dr. Grimm’s patients now, the appointments he’ll never be able to keep.” He stood up from the sofa, swaying slightly, then steadied himself. Wiping his fingertips lightly across his eyes as if to correct some minor vision problem, he said, “God, what a business, what a world this is!”
“I’ve thought that, too,” Carver said, “in my business, in my world. Nobody has much choice but to keep pushing on.”
“That I can do,” Benedict said. He stood straighter and buttoned his suit coat. “That I can damned well do!”
He made a good show of walking away toward the elevators, pace steady, shoulders squared. To look at him from behind, you wouldn’t guess he had a care or a want.
But Carver knew Benedict had a want.
He was sure that right now the doctor wanted to scream.
At nine that evening, Beth returned from following Nate Posey.
Carver, sitting on the sofa and watching the light over the ocean dim beyond the cottage’s wide window, turned his head when she came in and thought immediately that she looked tired. He wouldn’t say anything to her about that, or about his having to clean up the mess in the cottage because Al had had no way of going outside to relieve himself.
“Why are you staring at me?” she asked as she set her computer case on the counter, She carried the little notebook computer almost everywhere these days.
He decided not to tell her how he thought she might still be too weak to be out shadowing players in a murder investigation. He knew she’d simply brush away his words, or possibly get angry and argue. Like him, she resented being vulnerable and having it pointed out.
“You’re a magnet to my eyes,” he said.
“Very romantic, Fred.” Her tone of voice suggested she didn’t believe him.
Looking again at the ocean and darkening sky, he waited silently while she went into the kitchen. The refrigerator door opened, altering the pattern of light and shadow on that side of the cottage, then closed.
“Too dim in here to see much of anything,” Beth said a few minutes later, sitting down in a chair opposite him. But she made no move to switch on a lamp or suggest that Carver do so. She had a glass of milk in one hand, a chocolate chip cookie in the other. After kicking off her leather sandals, she wriggled lower into the chair, scooting her rump forward, then stretched her long legs out in front of her and crossed them at the ankles.
“I was watching the ocean and sky,” Carver said. “The stars will be out soon.” When she didn’t reply, he said, “There’s been another casualty from the clinic bombing.”
“Oh?”
“The Benedicts’ marriage. Leona Benedict left the doctor this morning,” He related to her what had happened at the Benedict house.
Beth listened silently, chewing bites of cookie and occasionally taking a swig of milk.
When Carver was finished, she wiped away a milk mustache and set her glass on the floor beside the chair. “Maybe Leona can’t be blamed,” she said. “Pro-life extremist groups like Operation Alive are relentless in badgering and torturing doctors who perform abortions, and the rest of the family’s made miserable in the process. Under the kind of pressure an abortion doctor’s spouse has to endure, Leona probably wore down to her raw nerve ends, and her ability to resist left her.” She brushed crumbs from her fingers almost angrily, probably thinking about Operation Alive. “How’d Benedict take it when you told him she’d left?”
“He seemed shattered. Surprised. He couldn’t believe the pressure in their lives had resulted in her leaving. He asked me what her real reason was. I told him again why she left, but he didn’t like hearing it or believing it, even though he knew he had no choice. Then he sucked up his pain and walked away to tend to a patient who was coming in. I had to admire that.”
“Sure you did, being you. Is he considering quitting?”
“I doubt it. My guess is he’s more determined than ever to stay on the job, despite Martin Freel and Operation Alive.”
Though moonlight was filtering in from outside, the cottage’s interior was becoming too dark to see anything clearly. Carver reached over and switched on a lamp by the sofa. Beth winced at the sudden onslaught of light, looking worse than when she’d walked in.
“What about your day?” he asked. “Learn anything from following Nate Posey?”
Al, who had been awakened from a nap behind the sofa, ambled around and stretched out near Beth’s chair. He puffed himself up then let out a long sigh. She leaned down and scratched him behind the ears before answering Carver.
“Posey stayed in his apartment most of the day,” Beth said. “Left only to run a few errands. And even though he’s on vacation time, he stopped by Second Sailor and talked for a while with some employees who were working on a dry-docked yacht. After picking up supper to go at a McDonald’s, he drove home and ate it, then a little while later came out dressed in fresh clothes, looking like a dandy.”
Carver’s interest stirred. Maybe following Nate Posey might lead somewhere at that, “On his way to meet the other woman you suspect is in his life?”
“No,” she said, “I followed him to church. That big one on Shell Avenue with the huge steeple.”
Carver knew the church she meant. Despite the fact that it was constructed only a few years ago, it looked like a converted warehouse on which someone had stuck a new roof with a steeple and cross, probably because of the scarcity of windows in its plain brick walls.
“I waited outside,” Beth continued, “watching other people go into the church for what a sign said was a prayer meeting to aid world refugees. About an hour later, Posey came out, walking with a slim woman with black hair and a long neck. They went to a pizza place and Posey picked at a small salad and drank beer while she ate a pizza about the size of a saucer.”
Carver remembered now the young woman who’d been consoling Posey in the hospital cafeteria the day of the bombing. “Love interfering with appetite?”
“I’d like to think so,” Beth said, “but they didn’t act that close to each other during dinner. They talked and didn’t touch. And there was none of the body language, the unconscious imitation of gestures, you see when people are in love or lust. After dinner, Posey drove her back to the church, where she’d left her car. They didn’t embrace or kiss when they said good-bye, and she got out of his car and into hers.”
“The night was still young,” Carver pointed out.
“Not for Posey. He drove home, and I saw him outside a little later watering his geraniums, wearing shorts and a red net muscle shirt.” She leaned over and scratched Al behind the ears again. “That’s when I gave it up and came here.”
“What about tomorrow?” Carver asked, remembering that Anderson was no longer on the job.
“I’ll keep following him. If anyone other than Norton actually did the bombing, I think it’s Nate Posey. He’s the only one we’ve got with a motive we know about.”
“What about Martin Freel and Operation Alive?”
“They’ve got a motive to blow up anything and everything they want,” Beth said. “All they have to do is find the appropriate verse in the Bible, But they usually confine their activities to picketing and harassing. Slashed tires and midnight phone threats are more their speed. I don’t rule them out, but Posey is my favorite.”
“Maybe you should take Al with you tomorrow,” Carver suggested, wishing Anderson hadn’t been reassigned.
“I don’t need him.”
“He needs you. And if I’m gone all day too, there’s nobody to let him in and-more importantly-out.”