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gun.
    Carver didn’t move. “Find out what you need to know, then get out,” he said tersely.
    “Humph!” McGregor said, opening his notebook. “You’d think you gave the orders around here. Dr. Carver, pilfering drugs from the supplies between fucking the nurses. You should be so lucky.” He turned his attention to Beth. “What did you see when you entered the clinic?”
    Beth thought for a moment. “ A reception desk with nobody sitting behind it. A hall leading to some doors. A woman in the hall, well ahead of me. Then I saw . . . I don’t know, the explosion, pieces of wall and wreckage flying upward, outward, toward me. The force of the blast lifted me up, and I found myself sitting outside on the sidewalk. That’s all I can remember about it. The next thing I knew I was here, at the hospital.”
    McGregor kept writing for several seconds after she’d finished talking, his tongue protruding from a corner of his thin-lipped mouth. Then he lifted the pencil and said, “Notice what was going on outside the clinic as you were walking in?”
    “You mean the demonstrators?” Carver asked.
    “I’m not questioning you, Carver,” McGregor said “I wanna do that when your lies won’t help you. That day’s coming.”
    “Most of the demonstrators were across the street,” Beth said. “They were waving their signs around and yelling at me.”
    “Yelling what?”
    “Insults. A few of them called me a murderer. One said I was a nigger bitch and was going to hell.”
    “Some of those people must know you,” McGregor said.
    Carver stirred.
    McGregor grinned.
    “Notice a blond man carrying a sign come out from around the building at about the time you entered?”
    “I don’t think so,” Beth said.
    “Think before you answer,” McGregor told her.
    She closed her eyes, then opened them. “I can’t remember much in the way of details from that time, but I don’t think I saw anyone run out from behind the building.”
    “Run?” McGregor thrust out his long scoop of a chin. “I didn’t say anybody was running. You probably saw this man running and forgot till now.” He began scribbling in his note pad.
    “I saw people running,” Beth said. “I remember that now. They were down the street, though. I think they were, anyway.”
    “What about a blond man? Dark pants, white shirt, carrying a sign?”
    “No,” Beth said, “I don’t remember anyone in particular.”
    “Then you might have seen him.”
    “Well, yeah, I suppose he could have been there.”
    “Good. You might have to testify to that.”
    “The news said it was definitely a bomb,” Carver said. “And that you’ve got a line on the bomber.”
    “Of course it was a bomb, Mister Fucking Curious. And we’ve not only got a line on a suspect, we got the suspect himself in custody. Brought him in about an hour ago. Mechanic named Adam Norton, got himself an arrest record for assault, and he’s a member of Operation Alive. That’s the bunch of religious nutcakes that were picketing the clinic yesterday morning. Beth’s not the only one who saw Norton run out from behind the clinic just before the explosion.”
    “What’s Norton say?”
    “Nothing, to you.”
    Carver leaned on his cane and stared at McGregor.
    “Okay,” McGregor said. “You read the papers anyway, and I want it made clear there’s no reason for you to go sniffing around this case, maybe fuck up some evidence we need. Norton claims he’s innocent and only went behind the clinic so he could wave his sign where it would be seen through an operating room window.”
    “Not much of an alibi,” Carver said.
    “Hardly one at all. Why would he wave a sign in a back window, so some pregnant bitch would look over and read his message while the doctor was taking a half-baked roll outa her oven? It’d be too late by that time.”
    “If Norton —”
    But Carver stopped talking as he heard Beth sob. McGregor had become too much for her. Carver understood.
    “Time for