Lightning by John Lutz Read Free Book Online Page B

men more effectively than McGregor. Sometimes that disloyalty was conscious and flagrant, sometimes unconscious and subtle. But it was there nonetheless, like an infection that waxed and waned.
    “Maybe it’s not all that complicated,” Carver suggested. “Maybe you’re not so sure about Norton’s guilt simply because McGregor is.”
    Geary didn’t argue. He nodded. “And because he’s McGregor.”
    Both men understood the odious lieutenant whose very thoughts were corrupt enough to draw flies, and who had the minds of his own officers muddled out of sheer hatred for him.
    Carver sat back and worked on his beer. The woman who might be a policewoman named Frances glanced at him and smiled. But he wasn’t thinking about her, he was thinking about McGregor.
    McGregor, who was completely cynical about humanity, and who was often in the way of justice because he didn’t believe it existed.
    Carver sometimes hated himself for weakening and thinking McGregor might be right.

8
    G EARY LEFT V INNY’S after finishing his beer, and Carver asked Tammy to bring him a hamburger and a morning Gazette-Dispatch, if there happened to be one lying about.
    Five minutes later Tammy returned with a delicious-looking hamburger heaped with tomato, lettuce, and onion on a sesame seed bun, and a badly wrinkled but readable newspaper that had been left by a previous customer. Most of the sports section was missing, but the front section was intact even if the pages had been shuffled. Someone had torn out a ten-minute oil change coupon, but there had been nothing printed on the back of it about the clinic bombing. Instead the interrupted news item had to do with a hostage situation in the Middle East. Trouble all over the map, Carver thought. He smoothed out the front page and read as he ate.
    The dead in the clinic bombing were Dr. Harold Grimm—ostensibly the target, if there was one besides the clinic itself—and a patient named Wanda Creighton, the woman who’d walked into the clinic ahead of Beth. She had come to the clinic, which concerned itself not only with abortion but with many phases of women’s health, to talk to Dr. Grimm about amniocentesis to determine the sex of the child she had decided to bear. The injured were Beth and volunteer nurse and receptionist Delores Bravo. Only slightly injured, and not requiring hospitalization, was a nurse named Janet Havens who had been preparing an operating room for an abortion scheduled for later that morning.
    The paper was an early edition and made no mention of Adam Norton. It did mention Operation Alive, describing it as an extremist anti-abortion organization based in Orlando and headed by a Reverend Martin Freel. The Reverend Mr. Freel was quoted as denying that Operation Alive had any connection to the bombing, and that any such allegation was absurd and part of a plot instigated by pro-choice fanatics to undermine the operation’s effectiveness. The Bible was quoted by Mr. Freel, the commandment about bearing false witness. Then he refused to say anything more about the bombing and referred any further questions to his attorney, Jefferson Brama.
    Carver set the paper aside and finished his hamburger, thinking the law and the Bible sure made life confusing.
    The news item had mentioned Dr. Grimm’s widow, Adelle. Carver paid Tammy, then went to the phone booth against the back wall and tried to look up the Grimms’ number and address in the directory.
    But there was no Dr. Grimm listed in Del Moray or environs. Obviously the Grimms had an unlisted phone number, which made sense, considering they were the target of people who were violent.
    Figuring Geary was either back at his desk by now or in the field where he could be reached by phone, Carver dropped his change in the slot and pecked out the number of police headquarters. Geary would probably tell him the Grimms’ address and phone number. When Geary had walked out of Vinny’s, he was in the mood to help Carver do