John Lutz - Lightning

Carver felt his anger surge and took a step toward McGregor. He wanted to grab him by his wrinkled brown lapels and knock out some of his oversize yellow teeth.

He almost raised his cane to swing it at McGregor’s head. Then he stopped. McGregor was staring at him, still smiling. This was what he wanted. Anything he’d said that was out of line could be denied, and McGregor could lie like a corrupt choirboy. And a scuffle would bring people, leave evidence. The kind McGregor wanted in order to nail Carver with the law he sometimes wielded like a hammer.

“Keep right on coming, dickface,” McGregor said, obviously disappointed that Carver had stopped. “This is exactly the kind of thing I’d expect from a dumb gimp like you.” He moved his hand slightly so it was resting on the butt of his holstered gun.

Carver didn’t move. “Find out what you need to know, then get out,” he said tersely.

“Humph!” McGregor said, opening his notebook. “You’d think you gave the orders around here. Dr. Carver, pilfering drugs from the supplies between fucking the nurses. You should be so lucky.” He turned his attention to Beth. “What did you see when you entered the clinic?”

Beth thought for a moment. “ A reception desk with nobody sitting behind it. A hall leading to some doors. A woman in the hall, well ahead of me. Then I saw . . . I don’t know, the explosion, pieces of wall and wreckage flying upward, outward, toward me. The force of the blast lifted me up, and I found myself sitting outside on the sidewalk. That’s all I can remember about it. The next thing I knew I was here, at the hospital.”

McGregor kept writing for several seconds after she’d finished talking, his tongue protruding from a corner of his thin-lipped mouth. Then he lifted the pencil and said, “Notice what was going on outside the clinic as you were walking in?”

“You mean the demonstrators?” Carver asked.

“I’m not questioning you, Carver,” McGregor said “I wanna do that when your lies won’t help you. That day’s coming.”

“Most of the demonstrators were across the street,” Beth said. “They were waving their signs around and yelling at me.”

“Yelling what?”

“Insults. A few of them called me a murderer. One said I was a nigger bitch and was going to hell.”

“Some of those people must know you,” McGregor said.

Carver stirred.

McGregor grinned.

“Notice a blond man carrying a sign come out from around the building at about the time you entered?”

“I don’t think so,” Beth said.

“Think before you answer,” McGregor told her.

She closed her eyes, then opened them. “I can’t remember much in the way of details from that time, but I don’t think I saw anyone run out from behind the building.”

“Run?” McGregor thrust out his long scoop of a chin. “I didn’t say anybody was running. You probably saw this man running and forgot till now.” He began scribbling in his note pad.

“I saw people running,” Beth said. “I remember that now. They were down the street, though. I think they were, anyway.”

“What about a blond man? Dark pants, white shirt, carrying a sign?”

“No,” Beth said, “I don’t remember anyone in particular.”

“Then you might have seen him.”

“Well, yeah, I suppose he could have been there.”

“Good. You might have to testify to that.”

“The news said it was definitely a bomb,” Carver said. “And that you’ve got a line on the bomber.”

“Of course it was a bomb, Mister Fucking Curious. And we’ve not only got a line on a suspect, we got the suspect himself in custody. Brought him in about an hour ago. Mechanic named Adam Norton, got himself an arrest record for assault, and he’s a member of Operation Alive. That’s the bunch of religious nutcakes that were picketing the clinic yesterday morning. Beth’s not the only one who saw Norton run out from behind the clinic just before the explosion.”

“What’s Norton say?”

“Nothing, to you.”

Carver leaned on his cane and stared at McGregor.

“Okay,” McGregor said. “You read the papers anyway, and I want it made clear there’s no reason for you to go sniffing around this case, maybe fuck up some evidence we need. Norton claims he’s innocent and only went behind the clinic so he could wave his sign where it would be seen through an operating room window.”

“Not much of an alibi,” Carver said.

“Hardly one at all. Why would he wave a sign in a back window, so some pregnant bitch would look over and read his message while the doctor was taking a half-baked roll outa her oven? It’d be too late by that time.”

“If Norton -”

But Carver stopped talking as he heard Beth sob. McGregor had become too much for her. Carver understood.

“Time for you to leave,” he said to McGregor.

“Oh, we on a schedule here?” Then he too noticed Beth had her head lowered and was sobbing. Tears were tracking down her cheeks, spotting her gray hospital gown. He smiled and shook his head. “Well, it appears our patient’s having a relapse.”

Carver tightened his grip on his cane. McGregor took a step toward him, suitcoat held open to reveal his gun.

“Please give it a try,” McGregor said. “Go ahead and swing that cane.”

“Ring for the nurse,” Carver told Beth, without looking away from McGregor.

She pressed the button pinned to her sheet. Neither Carver nor McGregor moved.

Beth stopped sobbing.

When the nurse entered, she stopped and stood still also. She was the same serious nurse with the shockingly mirthful smile who’d been in the room yesterday. She looked at Beth, then at Carver and McGregor.

“We think it’s time for Lieutenant McGregor to leave,” Carver said.

There was no hint of the smile on the nurse’s face. “Time for both of you to go,” she said.

“No,” Beth said. She pointed at Carver. “Not him. Please.”

The nurse glared at McGregor. “That leaves you odd man out,” she said in a voice that would have made Dirty Harry proud.

McGregor grinned, snapped his note pad closed, and slid it and the pencil into his shirt pocket.

“I was leaving anyway, sweet cakes,” he said to the nurse. “I’ve had my health fix for the day.”

He strode over and pushed out through the swinging door, leaving behind only the lingering scent of his cheap deodorant.

“That is a man,” the nurse said, wrinkling her nose, “who is not very nice.”

“Like cancer isn’t a cold,” Carver said.

Carver didn’t like the feel of McGregor’s dead certainty that Norton was the bomber. This was a high-profile case, and a successful rush to judgment would be beneficial to McGregor’s career. It wouldn’t concern him at all if an innocent man was imprisoned for murder. Why should it? He figured there were no innocent men.

Not that Carver was feeling any particular sympathy himself right now for Adam Norton. Especially if he really was the bomber. Carver’s concern was in seeing that whoever was responsible for what happened to Beth and their unborn child would be caught and punished. He wanted revenge. Not so much justice as revenge. His pursuit of his unborn child’s killer wasn’t simply a job, like McGregor’s. It was a mission.

He parked the Olds outside Vinny’s on Egret Road. Vinny’s was a lounge where off-duty Del Moray police hung out. It had in a previous incarnation been a hardware supply warehouse and was a narrow but long building of cinderblock needlessly painted a dirty gray, about the color of cinderblock. Its garish red-and-green neon sign featured tilted champagne glasses with bubbles rising from them to spell VlNNY’s, but Carver was sure champagne was never served there. Vinny himself was Vincent Carbello, a retired Del Moray vice detective. He ran an impeccably clean and honest operation, or at least was experienced and clever enough in his corruption that he wasn’t suspected of misdeeds.