Chapter 31

There wasn't anything to do but go back to the office. I could make myself useful organizing my notes, but mainly I needed to wait for Kim to call – or till my patience ran out and I couldn't go another minute without calling her. I wasn't going to give her my cell phone number – Sara has it, and a few others, but Kim wasn't in the close circle of friends and family I give it to. As I drove I mentally counted just how many people do have that number – I came up with the enormous total of seven. I value my privacy pretty highly, and I loathe the modern custom of walking around apparently talking to one's self, except you're actually on the phone talking about either nothing in particular, or the most intimate matters.

That led me to another thought. The Supreme Court, in saying that abortion is legal, said that a woman's right to privacy means that she has a right to an abortion. Never mind that my right to privacy doesn't give me the right to kill someone who's an inconvenience to me. What came to my mind was the thought that if the right to privacy is so all-fired paramount, why don't more people exercise it more, and burden me less with their inane or embarrassing cell phone conversations?

I keep my cell phone in my pocket, keep the number of people who know the number to the bare minimum, and hardly ever call anyone on it. It was in my pocket as I drove – a very thin satellite phone, actually, that I'd gotten, along with one for Cecelia, back in July in preparation for our yearly trip to the Mojave Desert in August. I'd decided that the GPS feature, and being able to make contact even when the nearest cell tower was miles away on the other side of a couple of mountain ranges, were worth the cost. I don't mind spending good money if I get good value for my money. It's spending lots of money and getting not much of anything for it that makes me irritable.

In the office, I wasn't spending money – no more than the usual rent, phone bill, light bill, that stuff – but after I'd organized my notes I didn't have anything in particular to do. There wasn't anything in the notes that helped me out – no one had seen anything that remotely resembled a helpful bit of information. Of course someone could be lying – everyone I'd talked to could be lying – but I've been interviewing people for 20 years or so and I didn't think so. Even the two people I'd come across who told me they were strongly anti-abortion didn't strike me as withholding information, or involved in the threats. Most anti-abortionists aren't, after all, a bunch of drooling fanatics with firebombs in one hand and rifles in the other. Such people aren't intelligent enough to come to rational conclusions on the subject, and spreading death among those who perform abortions would contradict the convictions that lead people to oppose abortion.

Oh, there's the occasional nutcase who grabs a gun and shoots an abortion "doctor" dead, but such people are about as typical as are bus drivers who beat up on their riders. It's the wild ones, of course, who make the news – for the media to focus on the majority would violate their convictions, which is that the weird is what's news. And of course death and injury are big draws for the media, as the old media cliché makes clear: If it bleeds, it leads.

So I sat in my office, slowly revolving various thoughts in my head, and drinking a vanilla Coke. I'd need to go down to the gas station on Central before long and replenish my stock. I might could stop in and see our friend Letty Ramirez while I was down there, since she lived close by. I'd do that another day, though. Right now I was waiting for the phone to ring.

And finally it did. I pulled my boots off the corner of the desk, sat up, and checked the caller ID. It was Kim. "Yeah," I said when I answered.

"It's Kim, Mr. Carpenter. I wanted to report to you on what I found. I will of course prepare a written report, but I'm sure you'll appreciate this."

"Yeah. Shoot." I thought after I said it that I'd perhaps used the wrong word – Kim was a shooter, far more ready to use a gun than I am, though I had to admit that once her quickness on the trigger had probably saved me from getting hurt.

"I covered all the businesses to the point your specified. I only found one person who had any useful information. This person saw, yesterday, a pickup truck with a camper shell on it going through the parking lot in a hurry, right in front of her business. She was standing by the window – there weren't any customers in the place just then – and got a clear view."

Kim paused, and then continued. "It was a white Ford truck, the witness couldn't tell what model but it was an 'F-something or other, ' with a white camper shell. It was moderately dirty, as though it had been a while since anyone washed it. The driver appeared to be male, with a shock of bushy, unkempt dark hair." I was standing now – this sounded promising. "She got a partial license plate." Kim read off the plate number, and I realized all I lacked was two numbers – all the rest was there.