The Abortionist's Daughter (2 page)

“And put your sunglasses on,” Ernie would growl. “You’re gonna kill people with those eyes.”

—————

Tonight Carolyn was on her way to Minneapolis, because earlier that day, as the snowstorm raged, she’d received a phone call from her father, telling her that her mother had had a small stroke. Although her father assured her it was not that serious, nevertheless Carolyn felt bound to go back and help. And so late in the afternoon, as the snow continued to pile up, Huck drove her to the airport.

“I’m not ready for this, Huck,” she said in the car.

Huck tried to be reassuring, but his words sounded generic and cowardly. This troubled him, because he prided himself on his ability as a cop to comfort people in frightening situations. Why not here? Why not now?

“You’ll take care of the cats?” Carolyn was asking.

“I’ll take care of the cats.”

“And the mail?”

Huck reached over and took her hand. “Your mother is going to be fine,” he promised.

“I’m sure I’ll be back in a few days,” she said, adding, “because I’m really not ready for this.”

By the time he got back in town, it was after seven, and the snowplows were barely keeping up with traffic. He picked up some Chinese takeout, stopped at a 7-Eleven for orange juice and throat lozenges, then headed home.

Huck lived in a remodeled outbuilding that sat tucked behind a small neighborhood fire station. Originally used by the firemen to store worn hoses and whatnot, it had been Sheetrocked and painted but still occasionally smelled of mildew, which explained why Huck was able to rent it from the city at a reasonable price. (After living in the house for several years, he’d noticed something odd about the smell: it grew noticeably worse whenever a fire raged in the hills nearby. This he didn’t like to ponder too much.) It also had a faulty heater that on these cold nights refused to kick off. Several times he’d mentioned it to the building manager, assuming that, since the city was paying for the utilities, they’d be financially motivated to fix it. Yet they didn’t, and on nights like these he simply opened up the windows and let the heat blast out, an act of environmental lawlessness that could get a man banished in this town.

At nine o’clock he stepped outside for some air, and it was then that he experienced what would be the first in a series of odd coincidences that evening. The wind was blowing everything sideways in great angry gusts, and he was in the process of gauging how much snow had fallen, when he caught sight of a yellow VW Bug idling out in the parking lot of the fire station. The driver’s window was down, and the driver seemed to be rummaging around inside. Without bothering with a jacket, he waded through the snow to see if whoever it was needed help. It was his nature; he was a cop.

As he approached the car, he was struck by a moment of recognition: the driver was the daughter of Frank Thompson over at the district attorney’s office. She wouldn’t have recognized him, because they’d never been formally introduced, but he’d been present at a swearing-in last year at which Frank had introduced the judge, and his wife and daughter were up there at the podium with him. Like mother, like daughter—the two of them looking so foreign, with their Arabian eyes and wild dark curly hair. Huck remembered how nervous everyone had been, worrying that Frank’s wife, Dr. Diana Duprey of the Center for Reproductive Choice, would take advantage of the opportunity to make a speech about the latest incident, in which their walkway had been coated with fresh tar. (Dr. Duprey, scheduled to perform a midterm abortion at eight-fifteen, had simply glopped through the sticky sludge as though it weren’t there; upon reaching the door, she calmly removed her heavy Swedish clogs, left them by the door, and stepped inside.) But up there at the podium that night, Dr. Duprey had remained quiet. Frank made his speech, the judge got sworn in, and everyone went home happy.

Huck didn’t envy Frank, being married to a woman like Dr. Duprey.

“Do you need any help?” he asked, bending down to the girl’s level. She shook her head and mumbled something. He noticed her windshield was icing over and offered to get her some de-icer, but she refused that too. She seemed awfully jumpy, in fact, and he contemplated telling her he was a cop to put her mind at rest—but then he realized he didn’t have any identification on him and why should she believe him, a man in a T-shirt who came wading out of nowhere through the snow on a cold dark night? He knew the kinds of things that could happen to a young woman alone with car trouble on a night like this.

Nevertheless he pressed, worried that she might drive off with poor visibility. She ignored him, though. As soon as she got a small circle cleared, she drove off with a quick pop of the clutch.

Fine, he thought. Not my problem.

Returning to his house, he unloaded clothes from the compact washer in the hall closet and stuffed them into the dryer above. He opened a beer and put on some music and settled down onto the sofa. It had been a long day, and he was looking forward to a day off tomorrow. He could get the oil changed. Do a little Christmas shopping, find something for Carolyn.

He was flipping through the channels when the telephone rang. Now: Huck Berlin wasn’t the spookable type. He didn’t believe in ghosts and he didn’t believe in ESP, and except for that strange thing with the mildew smell, he really didn’t believe in crystals or seances or any of that New Age stuff this town was so full of.

Tonight, though, when he picked up the phone and heard Ernie informing him that Diana Duprey was dead—just minutes after her daughter had been stalled in his driveway with a fogged-up windshield—Huck felt an unmistakable chill run down his spine. He turned off the television.

“The abortion doctor?”

“That’s right, my friend.”

“How?”

“She drowned in her pool.”

“They have a
pool
?”

“One of those little indoor jobbers. You swim against a current.”

It sounded like Ernie was eating something. Huck opened the door to let more cold air in. “When?”

“We don’t know exactly. Sometime after five this afternoon. Frank found her about eight-thirty.”

“How can you drown in a pool like that? What’d she do, bonk her head?”

“Something like that.”

“And they don’t know how she did it—”

“—and that’s why they called us,” Ernie finished. “You got it. Anyway, the coroner’s on her way over there now. What are you doing at the moment?”

“Laundry.”

“Where’s Carolyn?”

“Off to Minnesota.”

“Why?”

“Her mother had a stroke this morning.”

“Bad?”

“No. I just got back from the airport. Long day, bud.”

“Well, not as long as Diana Duprey’s. Pick you up in ten.”

Huck hung up the phone and rubbed his eyes. Truth be told, he really wasn’t a big fan of Frank Thompson’s. It was a personal thing that had to do with an old case. Three years ago one Sally Templeton had been found dead in a frat house on a Sunday morning with a blood alcohol level of .38 and multiple semen stains on her legs. Huck and Ernie had gotten matching DNA samples from five different boys, but Frank wouldn’t go forward because of one arguable screwup with chain-of-custody issues. Huck always felt that Frank’s decision had had more to do with one of the frat boys being the son of a prominent businessman than any chain-of-custody issues; this was a huge mistake, in Huck’s view, and it was compounded when the press started hinting that the police department couldn’t be trusted to collect so much as a fingerprint without screwing up.

So there was no love lost between the two of them. Still, it was wrong to hold a grudge. And in the end, whatever the professional gripes, right now they didn’t matter. Frank Thompson had lost his son a while back, a terrible thing, one of those kids with Down syndrome. And now to lose his wife, right before Christmas? Huck had seen stable, well-adjusted men at the height of their careers spiral into a ruin over things like this.

And the girl. What was she, a freshman in college?

He pulled a gray sweatshirt over his head and waited for Ernie.

—————

The Reverend Steven B. O’Connell got the news as he and his family were negotiating over the appropriate pose for the annual Christmas photo. Emotionally drained from his own day’s unfortunate events, Steven was in no mood for a picture, but his wife Trudy had booked the photographer months ago. For their part, three of the four children were disgusted with both parents for operating on the assumption that they’d be able to pose with smiles, for they all felt that the world at large would be better off if their respective siblings would go off and die in a plane crash. And Scott, the fourth, had his own set of problems—big problems, nasty problems—that made any notion of smiling into a camera seem ludicrous to all.

Steven took the phone call in his study. One of his friends was a reporter for the local newspaper, and he listened now as the reporter told him that Diana Duprey had drowned in her lap pool. Her husband had discovered the body. An autopsy had been requested. Did he have any comments?

“I don’t understand,” said Steven. “How did she drown in a lap pool?”

“Might have bonked her head. They don’t know. But hey, people drown in hot tubs,” the reporter said. “It’s nothing new.”

Steven sat down in a daze. “I just saw her this morning. She was fine.” Trudy poked her head in. Steven waved her away.

“What, like you had coffee or something?” said the reporter.

“Or something,” Steven said. “How do you know about this?”

“I’m outside the house as we speak,” said the reporter. “Freezing my butt off, I might add. But they just carried out a body, and it wasn’t Frank.”

Trudy poked her head in again. This time Steven pivoted in his chair. On the wall behind his desk was a framed photo of himself standing alongside the Reverend Jerry Falwell, both wearing grins as wide as collection plates.

“So I was wondering if you had any comment,” said the reporter. “On the record, as spokesman for the Coalition.”

He was referring to the Lifeblood Coalition, an anti-abortion group Steven had founded six years ago. In the past two years the Coalition had stepped up its protests at Front Range abortion clinics; some suspected it was behind the bombing of a clinic down in Colo-rado Springs last summer, which had left a twenty-three-year-old student in a wheelchair. Steven O’Connell, of course, denied any involvement and continued to maintain that his organization did not condone violence of any kind.

Right now Steven felt too stunned to say much of anything, let alone something for the record. But as spokesman for the Coalition, he groped for the right words.

“This is terrible news,” he finally said. “Dr. Duprey and I had our obvious differences, but this is a terrible tragedy and I extend my heartfelt sympathies to the family. May the good Lord bless them with the strength and courage to get through the coming days and months.”

“Some people in the Coalition have made threats,” said the reporter. “Is this the work of an activist?”

If Steven had been less drained, he would have bolted up and vehemently denied the suggestion. As it was, he wearily reiterated his position that the Coalition did not operate in that manner.

“Some of your members do,” said the reporter, referring to a young man who had gone to jail for firing three shots through another doctor’s window a few years ago.

“We never condoned that,” said Steven. “We do not condone the taking of any life—that of a fetus
or
a doctor.”

“Some people think that if you kill the abortion doctor, it’s a net gain for mankind,” said the reporter.

“Well, that is not our group,” said Steven.

From down the hallway came the sound of a scuffle. “Flamer!” someone yelled.

“You’ll have to excuse me,” said Steven.

“One more thing,” said the reporter. “Did you have any kind of a personal relationship with Dr. Duprey?”

“Excuse me?”

“Were you having an affair?”

Steven was dumbfounded. Diana Duprey was certainly an attractive woman, with her bright smile, her jangly bracelets, and that wild mane of curly black hair. But to suggest—

“Don’t you have better things to do?” he said icily.

“I was just asking,” said the reporter.

“Well, you have my denial,” said Steven. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have family obligations.” He hung up the phone and swiveled around to find Trudy with her arms folded tightly across her large breasts. Behind her the photographer fussed with his camera.

“Send him home,” Steven said wearily. “This is no day for pictures.”

—————

The rest of the town wouldn’t find out about Diana Duprey until the next morning, when big black headlines announced her death all over the state. Jack Fries, a local divorce attorney whose daughter Rose lay recovering in the hospital, learned about it on public radio, while shaving. Bill Branson, Megan’s ex-boyfriend, got the official news when he walked past a newspaper machine; the size of the headline alone caught his eye. The chief of police, who’d been notified the night before but was unable to get over to the Duprey house because his son was spiking a fever of 104, immediately assigned their public relations person to the investigation full time. And Dixie LaFond, the receptionist at Diana’s clinic, learned about it only when she arrived at the clinic at seven-thirty the next morning and found the building cordoned off with yellow crime tape.

“My goodness! What happened?” she asked the security man.

He raised his eyebrows. “You didn’t hear? Why, somebody killed the abortion doctor.”

CHAPTER TWO

——————

DRIVING FROM THE DORM
to her house, all Megan could think about was the argument with her mother that morning. In hindsight it seemed unbearably foolish and petty. Did she really expect her parents to hand her everything on a silver platter? Just send her to Mexico at the drop of a hat? But no, she’d had to blow up and stomp out of the room, and those last words—
Have fun killing babies
—seeped like a poison through every vein in her body. Twice she had to pull over, she was shaking so badly. Outside the snow was blowing sideways; the plows hadn’t been around for a while, so the road ahead was blanketed in white, the tire tracks a mere shadow, like collapsed veins. According to the time and temperature sign at the Ford dealership, it was five degrees. And that didn’t account for any windchill.