John Lutz - Lightning

Hypothesis, Carver warned himself, speeding along A1A with the sharp ocean breeze cutting in through the car’s open windows. He’d gotten into trouble before by hypothesizing and then acting without ascertaining the facts. His theory about Freel and Adelle Grimm might be nothing but speculation. Yet it answered so many questions.

And he’d seen them together in the motel lounge, an obviously furtive and emotional meeting they’d both driven a long way to attend in an attempt at secrecy.

That wasn’t speculation. That was fact.

And it had to mean something.

The lights were on and Beth was awake when Carver entered the cottage. She was wearing a black top and yellow shorts and was barefoot, seated on the sofa with her computer in her lap. There was a dreamy expression on her face and she was busily pecking away at the keyboard, as if she were playing a musical instrument only she could hear.

“Al didn’t bark,” he said.

She didn’t look up. “He knows your step. The cane.”

Carver wasn’t sure Al was that smart. “What are you working on?” he asked, limping over and settling into a nearby chair.

“Piece on the clinic bombings. Jeff wants something for the next issue.” Jeff was Jeff Smith, Beth’s often demanding editor at Burrow.

Carver heard a crunching sound coming from behind the breakfast bar. He figured Al must be back there, scarfing down a late snack.

“He hasn’t had anything to eat since we stopped by a McDonald’s and got cheeseburgers and shakes,” Beth explained. She continued working away again at her computer, not looking at Carver.

“Here’s something not for Burrow,” Carver said, trying not to think about Al eating as well as he, Carver, usually did. He told Beth about Adelle Grimm and Reverend Freel meeting at the Blue Dolphin Motel. After the first few words, she ignored her computer.

“That’s quite a ways out of town,” Beth said. “They must have wanted to keep their meeting secret.”

“My impression is that it wasn’t the first time they’d met there.” He went on to tell her his theory about Freel using Adam Norton to get rid of Dr. Grimm so he could have Adelle to himself.

“Adelle the Jezebel,” Beth said absently.

“Something you and she have in common.” Carver made sure he was smiling when he said this.

“What about Freel’s wife?” Beth asked. “That nauseating blond with the big mouth and all the makeup. He’d have to get rid of her, too, if he wanted to save his reputation as a family values firebrand and keep TV contributions and local congregation money rolling in.”

“That might be the next step.”

Beth saved what she had on the computer, then switched it off and lowered its lid. “Could be,” she said. “But maybe you’re taking something simple and making too much of it.”

“Simple?”

“Possibly Adelle Grimm and Freel have been romantically involved with each other, but maybe it has nothing to do with the clinic bombing that killed Dr. Grimm.”

“Hell of a coincidence,” Carver said dubiously.

Beth smiled. “And you don’t believe in coincidence, do you, Fred?”

“I don’t like how it affects my work. It gets in the way of the truth.”

“And truth is your religion.”

“Maybe. If it is, I’m more loyal to it than Freel is to his religion.”

“And possibly more obsessed.” She smiled up at him. “But that’s okay, Fred. I like men who are a little mad.”

Carver was about to tell her why that might be so, when Al wandered out from behind the breakfast bar, gave him an uninterested glance, then sat leaning against Beth, with his muzzle flat on her bare thigh.

“Aren’t you going to ask me about Nate Posey?” Beth asked.

“I assumed he had another early night,” Carver said, “or you wouldn’t be here ensconced on the sofa with old dog Al.”

“He did, but that’s not why I’m here instead of watching him. Turns out somebody else is following Posey.”

Al arched an eyebrow and glanced up at Beth. Carver wondered if she meant Anderson. He had no idea what Al was wondering.

“That insurance investigator, Gil Duvalier, is tailing Posey. I saw him sitting in his car, thinking he was parked out of sight, so I confronted him. He’s known from the beginning I was following Posey.”

“He must be thinking along the same lines as you and trying to get evidence of insurance fraud,” Carver said. “If that’s his game, he won’t give up until his company decides to pay the claim on Wanda Creighton’s policy.”

“I don’t see the point in both of us watching Posey,” Beth said. “I can spend my time in better ways.”

Carver wasn’t so sure. He believed now more than ever that Posey had nothing to do with the clinic bombing, and Beth still wasn’t completely herself.

“Fred, I-” She stopped talking as they both heard the sound of tires crunching on the gravel drive outside the cottage.

Carver looked at his watch. Almost eleven o’clock. He stood up and went to the window as Beth laid her computer aside on the sofa.

A car was now parked outside. It was too dark to make out what kind, but there appeared to be two people inside it. The driver’s side door opened and the dome light came on for a moment, illuminating the car’s interior. A woman sat on the passenger side; Carver could see an untucked white blouse, a flowered skirt. In the few seconds before the car’s interior went dark again, he recognized the man climbing out of the driver’s seat as Special Agent Sam Wicker.

Carver opened the cottage door for Wicker as the FBI agent walked up onto the porch. He looked beyond Wicker at the shadowed form of the woman in the car, but she wasn’t moving and was obviously not coming in.

“Surprise,” Wicker said with his thin little bureau smile.

As he entered the cottage, he widened his smile and nodded to Beth, who was still on the sofa. Al, who was lying down now, spotted him, struggled to his feet in sections, and ambled over to lick his hand. Wicker patted the top of Al’s head. Al’s pupils jiggled but he didn’t seem to mind.

Carver closed the door, looking more closely at the rumpled FBI agent. There was something even more unbusinesslike than usual about Wicker tonight, not so much in his unkempt appearance-which was normal for him-but in his oddly awkward yet cheerful bearing.

“Ordinarily a visit from the FBI at this hour means somebody’s under arrest,” Beth said. Al moved back across the room to collapse in sprawling and complete comfort in his previous position at her feet.

“Not in this instance,” Wicker assured her. “I had something to tell you two, and we were out driving around, so I figured it wasn’t all that late and you might still be awake.”

“We?” Carver said.

Again Wicker’s thin smile invaded his features despite his obvious effort to remain straight-faced. “Delores and I,” he said. “She’s been released from the hospital except as an outpatient, and I’m, er . . .”

“Helping her in her recovery,” Beth finished for him.

Wicker brightened. “Something like that.”

“She should come in,” Carver said.

“No, no. She still needs a wheelchair. Soon she’ll be fitted for a prosthetic foot, then she’ll get around on crutches for a while as she learns to walk again. Believe me, she’s got the spirit to do it! The doctors say within a year she might even be playing tennis. She used to love tennis. Still loves tennis, I mean . . .”

Beth stood up from the sofa. “I need to get away from this gibberish. I’m going out and talk with Delores.” Al stood up, too.

Both men stood silently until woman and dog had gone out the door into the night.