Free Lightning by John Lutz Page A

breasts. Carver knew it wasn’t the time to be thinking what he was thinking. She smiled at him, as if maybe she knew what he was thinking, and he went over and kissed her.
    “How are you?” he asked when he straightened up, leaning on his cane. He saw now that her eyes looked weary and her features were strained.
    “Better. Mad.”
    “Better, all right.”
    She straightened her gown, then touched his hand where it gripped the crook of his cane. “Just set it on the table where I can reach it.”
    “What? Oh.” He’d forgotten he was holding the notebook computer in its black carrying case. He moved a plastic water pitcher and placed the case on the table.
    “The battery charger in there?”
    “Everything,” he said.
    She folded the newspaper, which she’d laid aside, and tossed it onto a nearby chair. “They’ve indicted Adam Norton.”
    “No surprise,” Carver said. “He’s probably guilty. Question is, was he put up to it?”
    “I think he was. By Operation Alive.”
    “He might have been simply a fanatic acting on his own. There are plenty of them these days. We tend to look for reason and conspiracy sometimes when they don’t exist. It’s not always a rational universe.”
    “Hardly ever. Did McGregor find you?”
    “No. Lucky me.”
    He thought she was reaching for her computer, but instead she picked up the plastic water pitcher. She poured water with a few chunks of ice into the plastic cup that served as the pitcher’s lid, then leaned back into her pillow and sipped. When her thirst was assuaged, she held the cup in her lap with both hands and said, “Tell me about the outside world, Fred.”
    He filled her in on his visits with Dr. Grimm’s widow and with Mildred Otten.
    “There’s a lot of rage out there,” she said.
    “There is around abortion clinics.”
    “The paper said the police found blasting caps in Norton’s car, and traces of dynamite in his garage workshop. Not to mention several books on how to make bombs.”
    “He’ll need a good lawyer,” Carver said,
    “He’s got one. Name of Jefferson Brama. Burrow did a piece on him last year, when he was defending a pro-life demonstrator in a property damage case. He won, despite a ton of evidence against his client. He’s aggressive and smooth and a winner.”
    “He’s also the attorney for Operation Alive,” Carver said, remembering reading about the Reverend Martin Freel referring media questions about the bombing to his attorney and naming Brama. “You’d think Operation Alive would be trying to distance itself from Norton,”
    “Oh, no. He’s one of theirs. You know how those kinds of organizations play it. They goad their members into doing something drastic, then step back and deny culpability. But while they emphatically don’t condone what was done, they don’t actually condemn it. So they’re acting as if Norton is merely a sheep strayed from the flock, instead of a calculating killer on a mission. That’s how Operation Alive is playing it. Tongue clucking, but with a ‘well, that’s what you can expect when you murder babies’ tone.”
    “How do you know all this?” Carver asked, glad to see her angry, taking an interest as a victim. Righteous rage was preferable to depression.
    “I’ve been reading the papers, watching TV. That Reverend Freel is like all the rest of the smug bastards who’re causing the trouble, putting themselves above the law, frightening pregnant teenage girls and calling them murderers on the way into clinics.”
    “And you think he’s behind the Women’s Light bombing? That he hired or instructed Norton?”
    Her jaw set. “I think he motivated him. The Freels of this world, they yammer about saving lives, but they killed my—” She stopped talking suddenly and looked as if she might break into sobs.
    “I know,” Carver said softly to her, thinking she was more delicate right now than she appeared. Balanced on a fine edge. “I know what you mean and I feel the same