The hospital was carver’s second stop the next morning. In Beth’s vocabulary, Wicker’s “one more day” of hospitalization had meant one more night.
“See that she doesn’t exert herself,” Dr. Galt told him outside Beth’s room. “Her cuts are superficial and the stitches can be removed soon, and there’s no lingering complication from the D and C. But her right hip’s still badly bruised and will need a cold compress if it begins to swell. I’ll prescribe pain pills, and something to help her sleep if she needs it.” Galt smiled and touched a hand gingerly to the hair plastered sideways across his gleaming scalp, like a man testing wet paint. “She tends to think she’s stronger than she is.”
Carver could have told him a few things, but simply nodded. “Is she . . . psychologically okay?” he asked. “I mean, after losing the baby?”
“I wouldn’t imagine she’s over it yet,” Dr. Galt said. “But she is very strong in that respect. She’s a realist and will accept what’s happened and get on with life.” He touched his slicked-over hair again. “We all have to do that.”
“How’s Linda Lapella?” Carver asked.
Dr. Galt looked blank for a moment, then his eyes brightened. “Ah, the police officer who was attacked yesterday. I’m afraid she’s unconscious, though she’s in stable condition. Blunt-object cerebral trauma, I was told.”
Carver remembered Beth mentioning the WASP kicking Lapella while the dazed policewoman lay on the floor. “Does that mean she was kicked in the head?”
“The injury’s consistent with that.”
“When will she be able to have visitors?”
“I’m not sure. Not today, certainly. You’d have to ask the head nurse on her floor when visitors will be allowed.”
Carver shook hands with Dr. Galt and thanked him.
“The nurses should have Beth ready to leave in about fifteen minutes,” Dr. Galt said. “Be sure to phone me if there are any complications at all.”
Carver said that he would, then decided that while the nurse was preparing Beth to leave the hospital, he’d go to Delores Bravo’s room and tell her Beth was leaving. The woman with her foot and part of her leg missing would be interested, and would doubtless need some cheering up.
He was surprised to find Wicker sitting in the chair beside Delores’s bed. The rumpled little man stood up when Carver entered. He didn’t seem glad to see Carver.
“Is coming here part of your investigation?” Carver asked.
“She’s an eyewitness to the bombing,” Wicker said. He sounded oddly defensive, as if trying to justify his presence in the room. “She can place Norton at the scene.”
“So she told me,” Carver said.
Wicker sat back down.
“Anyway, I just wanted to let Delores know that Beth was leaving the hospital this morning,” Carver added.
Delores smiled at Carver from the hospital bed. Her long dark hair was neatly combed today, and the shadowed circles beneath her eyes were gone. “I appreciate you coming by,” she said.
“Feeling better?” Carver asked.
“Coming along. Our talk yesterday helped.”
“I didn’t know you were a counselor,” Wicker said. Then he remembered and glanced down at Carver’s cane. “Then again, maybe you know something Miss Bravo can use.”
“I hope so.”
“Miss Bravo doesn’t recognize the description of the man who beat up Lapella.”
“I know. I asked her about him yesterday after Beth saw him enter and leave her room. Same day I asked you about him,” Carver added.
Wicker stood again and jammed his hands deep in his pockets, making his belt slip below his stomach paunch and the legs of his pants bag around his shoes. Carver thought he might have insulted Wicker by suggesting that the bureau should have known the WASP was dangerous, but Wicker didn’t seem annoyed.
“I think you’re doing the right thing,” he said, “getting Beth out of here and in different, more familiar surroundings. McGregor can’t be counted on to furnish adequate protection here at the hospital. Maybe he couldn’t even if he tried. Better to have her away from here and on your own turf.”
“How is she?” Delores asked.
“Getting feisty,” Carver said.
Delores smiled. “I can imagine that, just from what Agent Wicker has told me.”
Wicker shifted his weight from one chunky leg to the other, as if the floor were tilting like a ship’s deck and he had to maintain his balance. “I’ll have a talk with McGregor, Carver. Use some bureau influence and make sure he knows it would be politically stupid of him to keep leaning on you and antagonizing Beth.”
“Thanks,” Carver said. “He understands politics.”
“Because he’s a born asshole,” Wicker said, then shot a glance at Delores, as if embarrassed at having used profanity in her presence. Not the FBI way.
Carver thought it was time to share some information with Wicker. He invited him out into the hall. “Did Delores tell you about the shot fired into the clinic the week before the bombing?”
“Just a little while ago. Before you told me,” Wicker added in a level voice.
“I’ve only known about it one day,” Carver pointed out, “and I’ve had a lot to think about.”
“Actually,” Wicker said, “we’ve known about it all along. Dr. Benedict told us the day of the bombing.”
Carver knew the FBI had exercised a warrant and searched Norton’s house as well as his car. “Did Norton possess any firearms?” Silly question in Fort Florida.
“A snub-nosed thirty-eight revolver, a nine-millimeter semiautomatic with a banana clip, and a twelve-gauge Ithaca shotgun. None of Norton’s weapons fired the shot. The bullet dug from the clinic wall was a steel-jacketed thirty caliber, probably from a rifle.”
“So maybe Norton was careful enough to get rid of the rifle after the shooting.”
“Maybe,” Wicker said. “But he was careless enough to leave bomb-making manuals lying around his house, and there were blasting caps in his car. I doubt he’d be so cautious as to drown or bury a rifle.”
That sounded reasonable to Carver.
They drifted back into the room.
“I’d better get back to Beth,” Carver said, looking at his watch.
“Tell her we’ll get together after I’m back on my-when I get out of here,” Delores said. “We have things to talk about. We both lost something in that explosion.”
“I’ll tell her,” Carver promised.
As he left the room, he saw Wicker sit back down.
Beth was being backed from her room in a wheelchair as Carver approached. The elderly volunteer who was maneuvering the chair was also holding the flower-patterned valise that Carver had brought for Beth. The woman appeared to be well into her seventies, a large-framed woman with white hair that had probably once been blond to match her pale eyes and complexion. The breadth of her shoulders and hips suggested she had never been thin. There was a craggy symmetry to her features that lent her stateliness and probably, long ago, beauty of the unconventional sort that haunted.
Carver kissed Beth and took the valise from the woman, then started to take over pushing the wheelchair.
“Sorry,” the volunteer said with a smile, “I’ll have to take her down to the lobby and see her off. Insurance requires I look after her while she’s still on hospital property.”
“Insurance rules the day,” Carver said, and stepped back.
“I can walk,” Beth said.
“Not if you want to leave here,” the volunteer said, showing a streak of steel.
Carver grinned at Beth and stood aside to make room for the wheelchair as they started toward the elevator.
“Where were you,” Beth asked as they descended, “trying to see Lapella?”
“No, she’s still unconscious.”
“Dr. Galt told me. That bastard kicked her in the head.”
The volunteer studied the numerals on the digital floor indicator. The elevator stopped and the door glided open.
“I was visiting Delores Bravo,” Carver said.
The volunteer gripped the wheelchair handles tighter and leaned her weight forward so the chair’s wheels would hop over the ridge where the elevator didn’t quite line up with the lobby floor.
“How is she?” Beth asked, craning her neck to look behind her and up at him.
“She’ll need the wheelchair,” Carver said.
Just outside the hospital’s side entrance, they waited for him in a patch of sunlight while he went and got the car. As he pulled into the driveway, he saw Beth still sitting motionless in the wheelchair, the white-haired woman standing over her like an aged and wise guardian angel.
The sight scared and saddened him. For the first time he wondered if they were doing the right thing, letting Beth leave the hospital.
Then he remembered Lapella, in the same purgatory between sickness and health, protected by the same corps of angels. They hadn’t made much difference the day she was beaten.
He braked the Olds in front of the entrance, then climbed out and helped Beth into the car.
As they were driving away, he glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the angel leaning against the wall by the entrance and lighting a cigarette.