Act of God Read online

  Also by Susan R. Sloan

  Guilt by Association

  An Isolated Incident

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2002 by Susan R. Sloan

  All rights reserved

  Warner Books, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  First eBook Edition: November 2009

  ISBN: 978-0-446-57101-2

  For Howard,

  My biggest fan

  And for Bear,

  My best friend

  Acknowledgments

  As always, I thank my agent, Esther Newberg, who keeps the checks coming, and my editor, Jamie Raab, who always seems to make magic out of mud.

  I am particularly grateful to Kasey Todd Ingram, Sue Klein, Nancy Mack, Sally Sondheim, Pamela Teige, Alan Weiss, and Lee and Alicia Wells for their support and assistance.

  And last but not least, I am indebted beyond calculation to Betta Ferrendelli, the little search engine that could, and to Susan Roth and The Author’s Edge, without whom this book would just plain not have made it.

  Contents

  Also by Susan R. Sloan

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  PART ONE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  PART TWO

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF SUSAN R. SLOAN AN ISOLATED INCIDENT

  PART ONE

  “We should do only those righteous actions

  which we cannot stop ourselves from doing.”

  —Simone Weil

  ONE

  He worked quickly but with extreme caution, knowing that one false move could prove fatal. Wearing several layers of latex gloves and a surgical mask, he powdered the correct measure of aspirin tablets with a mortar and pestle, added the appropriate amount of methyl alcohol, and then proceeded to whisk vigorously until the fine granules began to dissolve in the liquid.

  He had chosen his product carefully. It had taken him two weeks to find a reasonably anonymous, out-of-the-way filling station with a methyl pump, and to collect enough cheap, unbuffered aspirin, being sure to buy no more than one bottle at a time from any supermarket or drugstore or quick-stop shop within a twenty-mile radius of Seattle. He then drove well out of the city to acquire the quantity of fertilizer he needed. Lastly, he made the rounds of auto supply stores, traveling as far north as Bellingham and as far south as Olympia to purchase the batteries, one battery per shop.

  And all along the way, he was careful to pay for everything with cash, leaving no credit trail. After that, it was simply a waiting game—waiting for those blocks of time, like now, when he could steal into the garage and work undisturbed.

  As soon as the aspirin was sufficiently whisked, he began to filter out whatever undissolved powder remained in the alcohol, repeating the process again and again until the liquid was clear and he could pour it into a Pyrex dish and set it aside.

  Next, he turned to the battery, draining the sulfuric acid from it into a glass beaker. Granted, this was an extra step, when he could simply have bought the required amount of acid, but he decided it was far less conspicuous.

  He took an old electric frying pan, retrieved from a thrift store for just this purpose, and filled it with cooking oil, which he heated to exactly one hundred and fifty degrees. As soon as the alcohol in the Pyrex dish had evaporated, he added the acetylsalicylic acid crystals that had formed in the dish to the sulfuric acid, and placed the beaker in the warm cooking oil, letting it sit there until the crystals dissolved. Then he removed the beaker from the oil and very slowly began to add the sodium nitrate, being careful not to let the foam overflow.

  There was a real element of danger to what he was doing if he didn’t do it properly, but the procedure couldn’t have been simpler. All he had to do was follow the recipe that was available to anyone with access to the Internet, skipping over the disclaimers that popped up every second sentence about how illegal it was to do what the author of the recipe was describing be done in step-by-step detail.

  After cooling the mixture slightly, he dumped it into a measure of crushed ice and water and watched as brilliant yellow crystals began to develop. He processed the crystals according to the instructions, then pulverized them into face powder consistency. The final step was to mix the powder with the specified amounts of wax and Vaseline, and pack the plastique into a glass container.

  He checked his watch. The entire process had taken a little over three hours, just as it should have, just as it had taken to prepare each of the other containers that now lined the shelves of a locked cabinet in the far corner of the garage.

  He set about cleaning up after himself, placing the frying pan, the Pyrex dish, the beaker, the whisk, and the remaining materials in a plastic garbage bag for discreet disposal into the depths of Puget Sound. Then he washed down the garage as though it were a surgical suite.

  This was the last batch he had to make. Now it was time to put it all together, to remove the plastique from the glass receptacles, fill the duffel bags, attach the detonator he had fashioned from a light bulb, and affix the clever timing device he had found on the front seat of his car two days ago.

  There was an informal rule observed by the people with whom he had come in contact: admit to nothing and involve no one else in what you’re doing. Still, the timer had been provided to him—perhaps, he decided, as a form of silent affirmation.

  He loaded the finished product into his vehicle, covered it with a blanket, and went into the house, to sit down in front of the television set as though he had been in his chair all evening. Then, as he habitually did on a night before work, he watched the news and went to bed.

  But he didn’t sleep. He waited until almost midnight, when the breathing beside him was deep and regular, and then he got up, slipped silently into his clothes, and left the house.

  The night was cold and damp, quite typical of February. He climbed into his car, shifted the gear into neutral, and let the vehicle roll down the driveway and out into the street before starting up the engine. During the
past weeks, he had made several dry runs, testing different routes to and from his destination, timing himself, and checking traffic until he was satisfied. Now he turned confidently onto the route he had chosen, circling around the back of Queen Anne to Denny Way, forking right onto Boren Avenue, and driving up First Hill. Reaching Spring Street, he made a little jog across Minor, then turned down Madison, and parked.

  At this time of night, the street was deserted, the shops and restaurants closed. The area, appropriately nicknamed “Pill Hill” some years ago, was dominated by Seattle’s major hospitals, and the swing shift had given way to the graveyard shift over an hour ago. He had planned for that, of course.

  A splendid Victorian mansion, set off by carefully manicured lawns, occupied the northeast corner of Madison and Boren. He was relieved to see that the building was dark and silent. The security guards who protected the grounds during business hours were gone, and no night watchman was on duty. It meant there were no late evening activities in progress, a glitch that would have significantly altered his schedule.

  Neither of the two gates in the high iron fence that surrounded the house was locked at this hour, a foolhardy practice he had determined in advance. Not that a locked entry would have stopped him, of course, it would just have slowed him down, and perhaps made him a bit more vulnerable.

  He climbed out of his car, looking in all directions to make sure there was no one in sight. Then he hefted his plastique-filled duffel bags and carried them through the Madison Street gate. Just inside the fence, a high hedge of laurel bordered the property, making him all but invisible from the street. Nonetheless, he wasted no time. He went quickly along the path at the side of the building to the basement access he had spotted during one of his exploratory visits, pulled open the trapdoor, descended the concrete steps, and set about positioning the duffel bags in exactly the right place for maximum effectiveness. Then he checked one more time that the detonator was properly connected.

  The very last thing he did before leaving the scene was to check the timer, just to reassure himself that it was set for two o’clock, and that the little green indicator beside the AM designation was lit. Then he got back into his car and drove away.

  TWO

  Dana McAuliffe looked far more like a high school cheerleader than an accomplished litigator approaching forty. She had thick, honey-colored hair, neither curly nor straight, that was gradually feathered in front and then fell softly around her shoulders. Her warm brown eyes required just a hint of mascara for accent, her cheeks were naturally rosy, and her unpowdered nose was highlighted by a generous splash of freckles. Were it not for the tailored gray suit and leather pumps she wore, one might almost have expected her to break into a high leg kick and a hearty “rah-team-rah.”

  Instead, she leaned back in her chair and smiled calmly at the nervous gynecologist seated across the desk from her.

  “Don’t worry,” she told him. “As I said over the telephone, this kind of case rarely goes to trial. And now that I’ve looked over the papers, I can assure you that even if it does, we’d be in a very strong position.”

  It was the first Tuesday in February, and although the office building’s heating system rarely pushed the temperature above sixty-eight degrees, Dr. Joseph Heradia was perspiring freely.

  “You see, I’ve never been sued before,” he said in distress. “Twenty years of practice, and I’ve never been sued. Some people would probably say I’ve just been lucky all these years, and never got caught. But I’ve looked into my heart, and I know I did the best I could for those poor people.”

  “I know that,” Dana assured him. “And I can understand their reaction. But I’m sure, once they’ve had time to calm down, they’ll realize you weren’t to blame.”

  “In vitro fertilization doesn’t come with any guarantees, I told them,” he persisted. “I tell everyone that going in. Sometimes you can fool Mother Nature, sometimes you can’t.”

  Dana sighed. “I think the Jensens probably wanted a baby more than anything, and you were their last hope,” she said. “Hope can be a hard thing to let go of.”

  The gynecologist nodded. “I told them they should think about adopting.”

  What a world, Dana mused. People wanting babies who couldn’t have them, and people having babies who didn’t want them. She had told Heradia the truth, as she did with all her clients. It was a bogus case—it had no legs.

  “Maybe they’ll think about that now,” she suggested.

  The short, pudgy son of Guatemalan immigrants slumped in his seat. “It’s just that I feel so bad for them,” he said.

  He was a good man, Dana reflected, not for the first time. “Let me talk to their attorney,” she said, without bothering to mention that she knew him to be the type who would take on any case for an adequate retainer. “If I can get them to understand that there is no blame here—not on you for not being able to work a miracle, and not on them for not being able to conceive a child—I think we can make this all go away.”

  “I sure would appreciate it,” he said, confident that he was putting his problem in the right hands. “And thanks for seeing me on such short notice. I guess we’ve kind of flipped the professional coin here, haven’t we?”

  Dana smiled. “That’s what coins are for.”

  Heradia rose to leave. “Look, I’d really like to buy you lunch or something,” he said, “but I have to get back to the clinic. Will you take a rain check?”

  “Sure.”

  Dana walked him down the hall and through the reception area to the front entrance, giving him one last reassuring nod as he departed.

  As soon as the solid oak door had closed behind him, Angeline Wilder leaned over the edge of her desk. “Isn’t he one of those abortion doctors from Hill House?” the receptionist for the law firm of Cotter Boland and Grace whispered.

  “Is he?” Dana replied with a blank expression. “I thought he was a gynecologist.”

  “Well, I suppose he could be both,” Angeline conceded. “But I’m sure he’s one of them.”

  “How do you know?” Dana inquired. “Do they wear some sort of a badge, or do you just know them all by sight?”

  “No, silly,” Angeline said. “There was a story on the news about them the other night, you know, about how many abortions they perform up there every year, and he was one of the ones they identified.”

  “I see.”

  “He isn’t a client, is he?”

  “He may be,” Dana told her. “So, given what you’ve heard about him, if he should come in again, be very polite. After all, you never know when he might whip out a curette.”

  “What’s that?” the twenty-one-year-old asked.

  “Nothing you’d need to know about, unless you happened to be pregnant,” Dana replied.

  The receptionist blushed to the roots of her already red hair. “Well, I most certainly am not. I’m not even married.”

  “In that case, don’t give it a second thought.”

  The attorney walked back to her office, shaking her head. Joseph Heradia had been her gynecologist for the past twelve years, and to her knowledge, a kinder, gentler, better man did not exist.

  She thought about the couple who wanted a baby. The Jensens were probably good people, too, she decided, just desperate. And desperate people sometimes got caught up in doing irrational things. She flipped through her Rolodex file for their attorne’s telephone number, and was reaching for the receiver when her intercom buzzed.

  “Yes, Angeline?”

  “Ms. Purcell’s here,” the receptionist announced. “She said to tell you it’s one-thirty, and she’s sorry she’s late.”

  Dana glanced at her wristwatch in surprise. Heradia had stayed much longer than she realized. Her chat with the Jensens’ attorney would have to wait until after lunch.

  “Tell her I’ll be right out.”

  Lunch with Judith Purcell had begun as a daily event when the two were assigned adjoining desks on the first day of seco
nd grade, and continued, if not quite as regularly, right up to this moment. Now that they were both working in Seattle, it had settled into a more or less weekly routine. They had been best friends for so long, and knew each other so well, that there were few surprises left between them.

  “You didn’t get the commission, did you?” Dana asked as soon as they had been escorted to their customary window table at Al Boccolino, their lunchtime restaurant of choice.

  “No,” Judith confirmed. “They loved my concept, but alas, not my bid. I think they would have gone with me if I’d been willing to drop my price, but I’d already cut it to the bone.”

  Judith was an accomplished, if not yet renowned, sculptor. The commission in question was for the lobby of the city’s newest waterfront office building, and Judith’ s proposal had been for a fanciful pod of gray whales done in glass, steel, and ceramic. As bid, the eighteen-month project would have enabled the artist to cover her costs, with barely any to spare.

  When she was married, Judith’s moneymaking ability had not been as important as indulging her creative spirit. But her first husband had died suddenly of a heart attack, she and her second husband had married and divorced in a very short period of time, and now she needed to support herself and her twelve-year-old son, Alex. A life in the arts was beginning to seem frivolous.

  “I’m sorry,” Dana said. “I really thought you had that one in the bag.”

  “Me, too,” Judith admitted with a resolute shrug. “But the truth is, I have only myself to blame. Instead of preparing for a real career, like you did, I thought I would be able to count on having a man around to support me.”

  Aside from their physical dissimilarities, Judith being small and dark to Dana’s above-average height and fair complexion, the attorney knew there was one basic difference between them. Judith had been raised to define herself by the man at her side, while Dana had been raised to define herself without anyone at her side.

  “I still like the idea of you having your own gallery,” Dana said. She had been trying for almost two years now to move her friend onto more stable financial ground. Small loans from Judith’s mother kept food on the table, and the half dozen Purcells that had made their way into Dana’s home paid the artist’s mortgage, but neither was going to be a long-term solution.