Act of God (36 page)

“And making mincemeat out of it,” the board member observed.

“Granted we want an acquittal,” Prudence said. “But this is all about the election, and we need an acquittal for the right
reasons. Isn’t there something we can do?”

“We’re already on it,” the board member told her.

A
t exactly six o’clock on Saturday evening, a sleek silver limousine pulled up in front of Rose Gregory’s modest Queen Anne
cottage, and a man in gray livery stepped out and walked smartly up the path to ring the doorbell.

“Oh, my goodness,” Rose exclaimed. “I get to ride in a limousine?”

The only other time Rose had ridden in such luxury was twenty-two years ago, to her husband’s funeral, and the two occasions
could not be compared.

“You have yourself a wonderful time tonight,” her granddaughter said, hugging the tiny woman in lilac lace.

“I’m going to do my best to remember every detail, so I can tell you all about it when I get home.” Rose whispered as she
swept out the door on the arm of the chauffeur.

The inside of the limousine was every bit as elegant as the outside, with plush gray upholstery, polished wood paneling, a
full bar with cut crystal decanters, and even a television set.

“If you want to turn on the TV, just push the button on the
left,” the chauffeur told her, as he guided the big automobile away from the curb, and slipped expertly into traffic.

Giggling just a bit, Rose leaned forward and pushed the button. Immediately, the set lit up, and the Reverend Jonathan Heal
came onscreen by way of a prerecorded tape, dressed in his familiar white tuxedo, ruffled shirt, and bow tie.

“Hello, Rose,” he said in his liquid golden voice. “I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to know that you’ll be joining
us tonight. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you, in person, for a long time now. It will be the highlight of my evening.”

“Oh my,” Rose said to the television image. “I’m so happy you invited me.” She lowered her voice. “You know, I could never
have afforded to come on my own.”

“Leroy is bringing you directly to us,” Heal continued over her confession, “so you just sit back and relax, and enjoy the
ride.”

The trip to the Seattle Convention Center didn’t last nearly long enough for Rose. She had to go all the way back to her courtship
days to recall being treated like such royalty.

As the limousine came to a halt, the door flew open and a young man with a broad smile and an enormous bouquet of red roses
offered her his hand.

“On behalf of the Reverend Heal, welcome, Rose,” he said, helping her out of the car, and escorting her right through the
crowd and into the building.

“Oh my,” Rose murmured.

“You are one of our very special guests tonight,” the young man told her, “and I’m instructed to take you right to the Reverend.”

It was a small room, set apart from the area where the banquet was to be held, and the first thing Rose noticed was that it
was filled with white flowers.

“To be honest, it reminded me of a funeral,” she told her granddaughter later.

“Just make yourself at home, Rose,” the young man said, taking her coat and disappearing. “Help yourself to anything you like.”

A large table set up in the middle of the room sagged with platter after platter of elegant hors d’oeuvres. Rose wondered
who was going to eat it all.

“That food would have fed us for a whole month,” she told her granddaughter afterward.

Five minutes later, Jonathan Heal swept in, his aide in tow, looking exactly as he had on the television set in the limousine.

“My dear Rose,” he said, grasping her hand, and she watched as it disappeared into his. “You don’t mind that I call you Rose,
do you?”

“Certainly not,” Rose replied breathlessly, thinking it was a little late for her to object now.

“I am so happy you could be with us tonight,” he went on. “One of the best parts of taking my ministry across the country
like this is that I get to meet so many of the wonderful people who fill my life with light, and make the journey worthwhile.
People like you, Rose. Your support and your generosity over the years have kept me going, like a beacon, through good times
and bad. Knowing you were there has made all the difference.”

“My goodness, Reverend,” Rose said, overwhelmed. “I do what I can, but I’m sure I’m just one of the little people.”

“There are no little people, Rose,” he told her. “Not in the Kingdom of God.”

“He made me feel like I was the most important person in the whole world,” Rose reported to her granddaughter.

“Would you like some champagne?” Heal invited.

“Well, maybe just a little would be all right,” Rose said shyly.

An aide immediately popped the cork on a bottle of Dom Perignon that was cooling in an ice bucket judiciously placed off to
the side. “Let’s toast to our finally meeting, and to the wonderful
future I know is ahead of us when it includes someone as devoted to the cause as you.”

Rose was not much of a drinker, and the champagne tickled her nose on the way down. “Oh my,” she said with a little giggle.
“This is such fun.”

Heal gestured to his aide and a platter of caviar was suddenly at Rose’s elbow. She carefully spread some on a small cracker,
and swallowed it in one bite.

“Now I do feel special,” she said.

“You have no idea how special you are, dear lady,” Heal told her, signaling his aide to refill her glass. “You alone have
the opportunity to do something great for humankind.”

“I do?” she responded.

“Oh yes,” he assured her. “You alone are in a position to give voice to the millions of voiceless ones who perish every year.
You alone can champion the sanctity of life.”

“My word, how can I do that?” she cried. After his effusive compliments, and two glasses of champagne, she was floating.

“By telling the world that everyone has the right to be born,” he replied. “By using your good heart to persuade others that
a plea for the preborn is a plea to be cheered, not jeered. And that an act for the preborn is an act to be commended, not
condemned.”

“What are you saying, Reverend?”

“I’m saying it’s up to you, Rose. There’s no one else. You must speak for all those who have no voice.”

“But I’ve always supported the fight against abortion. You know I have.”

“So you have. But now, our Lord has given you a unique moment, the chance for a perfect union with Him. When that moment comes,
Rose, grab it. Face your peers with righteousness as your sword. You are one of His precious children, and He waits on you.
He has spoken to me, and through me, He speaks to you. Here, Rose, take my hand. Feel Him, feel His
love, His courage, His strength, His commitment to holy life, as He says to you that you must not convict Corey Latham for
acting in His name.”

Sunday, Allison Ackerman slept in, not awakening until a shaft of autumn sunlight slanted across her pillow.

It was a long weekend, due to Columbus Day, and it was such a relief to have three days away from the courtroom to clear the
dreadful proceeding from her consciousness. Like a series of doors shutting behind her down the long hallway of her mind,
she moved further and further away from the agony of what she was being forced to witness. That distance, she knew, was the
only thing that would enable her to return to the courthouse on Tuesday morning.

But today was still Sunday, and Allison stretched lazily. Two of the dogs were curled up at the foot of her bed, snoring softly,
encouraging her to linger on a lazy morning. She glanced at the clock on the nightstand. Ten minutes past ten, practically
the middle of the day. She rolled over to look out the window. The horses seemed content to nibble at the ground, and would
probably not mind waiting a bit longer for their morning ration of hay and oats and attention.

She fell back against the pillows, and almost immediately an unbidden image of an eighteen-month-old corpse blinded her. The
little girl had been squashed like a bug by a falling beam. According to the medical examiner’s testimony, there wasn’t an
intact bone left in her body. Of all the images of the past week, that one had stayed with Allison.

It was ironic, really, for a woman who earned her living writing about the goriest details of murder her imagination could
conjure, that she would be having so much difficulty dealing with the real thing. True, the Hill House bombing was infinitely
more horrendous than any scenario she had so far invented. But more than that, there was a significant difference
between the portrayal of murder for the purposes of entertainment and enjoyment, and the actual murder of an eighteen-month-old
infant for the furtherance of some twisted ideological belief.

For the first time, Allison found herself wondering whether her portrayals of frivolous murder were an insult to victims of
the real thing. To a woman with a signed contract for two more books in place, it was not a welcome thought.

In the middle of a deep sigh, the doorbell rang. By the time Allison had scrambled into a robe and hurried down the stairs,
a tan sedan was disappearing up the drive. She opened the front door for a better look, and a large manila envelope that had
apparently been propped against the door fell into the hallway.

Allison picked it up. Her name was written on it, but nothing else. She closed the door, took the envelope with her into the
kitchen, and dropped it on the table. Only after she had started the coffeemaker, poured a glass of orange juice, and popped
an English muffin into the toaster did she turn to it, slitting the top open with a bread knife.

Inside was a sheaf of some three dozen flagrantly inflammatory photographs, eight-by-ten glossy prints of butchered fetuses
that Allison was apparently supposed to assume had been sucked and scraped out of uteruses during abortion procedures.

A note accompanying the photographs begged the author to consider the alternative. “Are one hundred and seventy-six lives,
albeit innocent, really too high a price to pay for the chance to save the million and a half lives each year that without
a second thought are cut short of taking that first breath?”

The images were truly horrible to look at, and the note had a point. But they meant little if anything to Allison. Her personal
definition of life began and ended with the viability of a fetus’s survival outside the mother’s womb. Even carrying her own
daughter for nine months, feeling her kicking and turning and growing inside her, had not changed that.

The doorbell at Stuart Dunn’s Renton home rang shortly after noon.

“I’ll get it,” his eleven-year-old son shouted, bounding down the stairs. A moment later, the youngster skidded into the kitchen,
carrying a thick manila envelope.

“Who was it?” Stuart asked, his eyes teary from chopping onions as he helped his wife prepare lunch.

“Nobody,” the boy replied. “Just this.”

He handed the envelope to his father, and dashed out.

“What’s that?” Stuart’s wife asked.

“Haven’t a clue,” the teacher said, wiping away the tears.

The envelope had his name scrawled across the front, no address, no return. He ripped it open, and pulled a stack of photographs
from inside. They were identical to the ones Allison Ackerman had received. Affixed to the stack was a note that read: “What
you saw in court was indeed hideous, but was it more hideous than what happened to these poor souls, and the millions like
them? Please, remember the voiceless. They have only you to speak for them now.”

“Oh my God,” Stuart murmured.

“What?” his wife asked, alarmed because his face had suddenly gone white.

Stuart shook his head slowly, and pushed the photos across the counter for her to see.

“But why would anyone send these to us?” she said, perplexed and angry by the intrusion of such wretchedness into her kitchen.
“We don’t endorse abortion. We’ve never endorsed abortion.”

“What I want to know is how they found out.”

“Who? What?”

“No one was supposed to know who was on the jury,” Stuart told her. “It was supposed to be kept confidential. But someone
knows. Whoever sent me these knows.”