Free Lightning by John Lutz

stared at her. She smiled broadly. He decided she’d had nothing to do with bomb making or conspiracies; they were beyond her. Whatever anger he’d felt toward her dissipated, leaving only pity. She was probably certifiably insane.
    “The police know that when the lightning struck, I was on the other side of the street picketing,” she said, “toiling in the service of the Lord. He is my salvation and my alibi.”
    Maybe not so insane, he decided, thanking her for her time and easing his way out the door.
    Maybe it was the heat.

10
    A FTER LEAVING M ILDRED O TTEN, Carver drove to Poco’s Tacos on Magellan near the public marina, where he sat outside at one of the small, round metal tables and had two burritos and a Diet Coke for supper. He watched the white-hulled pleasure boats bobbing gently at their moorings. They appeared impossibly clean and pure in the slanted bright sun of early evening; emblematic of money and position. Florida was different if you possessed wealth. It could be a vast playground then, Disneyworld bounded by Georgia, Alabama, and the sea.
    When he was finished eating, he disposed of his paper plates and cup in an orange-and-white trash receptacle around which bees buzzed, then walked over to a bench where he wouldn’t bother any of Poco’s other customers and fired up a Swisher Sweet cigar. He put on his tinted glasses so the sun’s reflection off the water and the white hulls wouldn’t hurt his eyes. Then he sat back and smoked and looked out at the sea and the pelicans, so awkward on land and so graceful in the air, passing low over the water.
    Beth hated Poco’s and had refused to eat there with Carver. She’d warned him that the food tasted tainted beneath the hot spices and he was going to contract some sort of illness from it. It had all started, he was sure, when she became sick here during the early days of her pregnancy, though she didn’t see it that way. He decided not to tell her he’d been here when he saw her that evening. Why upset her? He’d mention having eaten supper in the hospital cafeteria. A lie to facilitate healing.
    More pelicans arrived. They put on a show, skimming low, sometimes splashing down to dive for a fish, always coming up empty. Beyond them at sea, boats with brightly colored sails tacked and canted to the wind. And beyond the boats, white clouds lay low and immense on the horizon. It was such a beautiful world, Carver thought; why did people have to plant bombs in it? But he knew the sick and the pained and possessed were out there, the ones who were sure they were striking back at something. They always had been, but now there seemed to be more of them, and coming from both ends of the spectrum. He’d always tried to practice and endorse the politics of reasonableness. He hadn’t moved much in his basic beliefs. But the rest of the world had moved. People he had admired and with whom he had agreed had made a journey from dedication to zealotry to fanaticism. He couldn’t go with them. He tried now to be apolitical, but people were dying.
    The light had dimmed and he no longer needed the sunglasses, and there were no more pelicans. He tossed the dead stump of his cigar into a trash container next to the bench. Then he stood up and limped to his car to drive to the cottage for the Toshiba to take to Beth at the hospital.
    It was official visiting hours, so the hospital parking lot was almost full. He had to park the Olds in a slot at the far end, near a low stone wall and a row of palm trees that marked the property line. It was a long walk to the entrance. The day’s heat lingered and with each step the tip of his cane sank slightly into the warm, graveled blacktop.
    A nurse he hadn’t seen before was leaving Beth’s room as he entered. Beth was sitting up in bed, leaning back on her pillow and reading a Gazette-Dispatch. Her hair was pulled back and tied with a red ribbon, and the front of her gown sagged to reveal the cleavage of her large