Free The Last Clinic by Gary Gusick Page B

the area and pick up a burger along the way.
    After placing the order, he asked the lady if he might use the rest room.
    “For employ only,” she said.
    “I, really…Please. I’ll just be a minute,” he said, doing his best to look like the matter was urgent.
    She rolled her eyes and pointed to the back of the store, and then in Chinese shouted his order to the cook. It always sounded to him like the chinks were yelling at each other. He wondered if that’s how it sounded to them.
    He had to walk past the kitchen to get to the bathroom. He did so without looking at the cook. Once inside the bathroom, he bolted the door and got right to it. He lifted the lid on the tank, turned it upside down, and sat it gently on the floor without making a sound. The plastic explosive that he’d placed in his windbreaker pocket was equipped with a timed device. It would fit nicely inside the lid. He taped it in place, making sure that the tape made a good seal on the enamel, just in case some water splashed up on it. Then he taped it again, taping the pack at a ninety-degree angle, just to be doubly sure. He set the timer for four hours, flushed the commode, and waited until it had refilled. He lifted the lid, right side up, and placed it back on the tank, just as he had found it. He took a paper towel, wiped the lid free of fingerprints and used the towel to open the handle to the bathroom door, both inside and out, just in case something went wrong and the device was discovered. This was an unnecessary precaution, he knew, but one could never be too careful.
    His order was bagged and ticketed when he returned to the front of the restaurant. He paid the lady, thanked her without making a big deal about it, took his change, leaving the customary tip in the jar next to the cash register, and left.
    He exited the parking lot at the far end, without crossing in front of the restaurant, and pulled onto the interstate. He drove until nearly midnight, about 200 miles, until he crossed the Oklahoma border. He found a motel with a lighted vacancy sign, checked in, took an Ambien, and after twenty minutes, fell asleep, confident that matters would go as he had planned.
    The next morning he made coffee in the room, and checked the TV. Two of the network affiliates ran stories about a massive explosion at a popular Chinese carryout restaurant in the North Texas town of Bellowville. Both stories mentioned in passing that the resulting fire also destroyed two adjacent businesses—a dry cleaning establishment and a locally operated women’s health care clinic, the only medical facility in the area that performed abortions. The fire started with an explosion in the restaurant and broke through into the dry cleaners. The chemicals in the dry cleaners created a second explosion that quickly consumed the women’s health clinic. No one was present at any of the establishments at the time of the explosion and there were no injuries. Police and insurance investigators were still trying to determine the exact cause of the explosion. Chances were good, most of the town people would blame the chinks, those greasy woks they cook in. Or they’d blame the dry cleaners, what with all the chemicals.
    Mission accomplished. No civilian causalities. Nice and clean. The client would be pleased. It was an easy payday.
     

9
 
Keys to the Kingdom.
 
 
         
    The Southern Church of the Holy Redeemer didn’t look like a church. Not to Darla. At least they didn’t look like any church she’d seen growing up in South Philly where churches, Catholic in most cases, were hundred-year-old structures built by old world craftsmen. You found them wedged between row houses or perched on double corner lots, guardians of the neighborhood. They had grammar schools attached to them, rectories, and each a blacktop-covered playground with a basketball hoop, surrounded by a chain link fence that was too tall to climb unless you were running from someone. Each one