Act of God (7 page)

A big smile spread across Carl’s face. His headache seemed to vanish, gone in a rush of sensations that he could swear he
felt the whole length of his body.

The injuries to Joyce O’Mara were extensive. For days, the doctors at Swedish Hospital were unsure whether she would survive.
They removed one kidney and a lung, reconstructed her rib cage, repaired her aorta, made every effort to locate and control
all the internal bleeding, and then monitored her around the clock for any signs of infection, liver damage, or failure of
her other kidney.

“Barring any unexpected complications, I think she’s going to make it,” the lead doctor finally felt confident to report.
“But I don’t mind telling you, she is one very lucky lady.”

Donald O’Mara, Joyce’s husband of eight years, felt the sting of tears in his eyes. “I can’t thank you enough,” he said. “The
whole staff. I know how hard you’ve all worked.”

“It’s going to be a long recovery,” the doctor cautioned. “She’ll have to adjust to a body that isn’t going to work quite
the same as the old one did. There will probably be some things she
won’t be able to do again, and others she’ll have to learn to do differently.”

“Don’t worry,” Joyce’s mother said. “She’s coming home to North Bend with me. Everyone is coming home with me. I’ll take care
of her. I’ll take care of everything.”

“We’re going to move her out of Intensive Care in a couple of hours,” the doctor told them. “One of the nurses will let you
know what room she’s going to.”

The moment the doctor was gone, Donald slumped into a chair, deserted by every ounce of the energy that had kept him going
until this moment. As harrowing as the two weeks prior to the bombing had been, this last week had been ten times worse. “I
don’t know what we’d do without you,” he said to his mother-in-law.

“It’s a perfect solution,” she replied. “I have plenty of room and the children will be the better for the distraction. What
better place for all of you to be than on the farm?”

Donald sighed. “For the sake of the family, we make an agonizing decision not to have this child, based on overwhelming medical
advice, exhaustive religious debate, and endless hours of prayer, and look what happens.”

“God works in mysterious ways,” she suggested.

Her son-in-law looked horrified. “You think all this devastation was the work of God?” he asked.

At two o’clock in the afternoon on the third Tuesday in February, two weeks almost to the minute after the bombing of Hill
House, Jeffrey Korba died. His injuries were just too massive for him to survive.

“He’s at peace,” the doctor told his sobbing wife. “I realize how hard it is for you to understand this now, but it was for
the best. Had he lived, he would not have been the man you knew. It’s better to remember him the way he was.”

Marilyn nodded, thankful, at least, that she was by his side,
holding his hand, when he took his last breath. She had been able to tell him how sorry she was about the damned washing machine.

“Do you think he knew I was there?” she asked.

“We know so little of what the mind processes in a state of unconsciousness,” the doctor replied. “But we constantly hear
about people who come out of comas and relate whole conversations that were carried on around them. So yes, I believe he knew.”

Marilyn looked down at her husband. “I guess I have to go on somehow, don’t I?” she murmured.

“Do you have someone to help you?” the doctor inquired solicitously.

“Oh yes,” she said. “My mother—she’s taking care of the children. And of course, my sister is here with me. There are lots
of people…” Her voice trailed off, and she looked up at the doctor with an almost childlike need for reassurance. “But Jeffrey
was my whole life, you see. I don’t know what I’m going to do without him.”

J
oshua Clune took the medicine the doctor had prescribed for him and got over being sick. But he didn’t get over the bombing
of Hill House. It was all he could think of, every day, every night. And it didn’t help that for almost a month now it was
all anyone seemed to want to talk about.

“We’re not as safe as we used to be,” Big Dug told him, as the two sat huddled on a bench near the ferry terminal in a cold
damp rain. “They didn’t just feed us, they looked after us, too.”

“I know,” Joshua mumbled, wishing his friend would go away and let him be. “I’m sorry.”

“Of course you’re sorry. We’re all sorry. Life here won’t ever be the same.”

“I couldn’t help it,” Joshua said, his stomach in knots.

“Of course you couldn’t, none of us could,” Big Dug assured him. “It isn’t like any of us wanted this to happen.”

“I didn’t, really, I didn’t,” Joshua told him, finding it suddenly difficult to breathe.

“It’s just that nobody knows what to do. The churches will feed us, but what about everything else? Like your medicine
when you got sick. Who’s going to give that to us now? I have to tell you, everyone’s pretty worried.”

At that, Joshua couldn’t stand it anymore. Tears filled his hazel eyes and rolled down his cheeks, into his reddish stubble.
“I’m sorry,” he choked. “I didn’t mean to do it.”

“Mean to do what?” Big Dug asked.

“I did it,” Joshua gasped, no longer able to hold it in. “I caused the fire.”

The big man blinked. “What are you talking about?”

“The fire,” Joshua repeated. “I caused the fire, and I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to do it.”

“It was a bomb,” Big Dug told him. “A bomb caused the fire.”

“No, it was me,” Joshua said forlornly. “You told me. You told me not to sleep there, but the doctor said for me to come back
first thing in the morning, and I was afraid I’d forget. I forget things, sometimes, and if I forgot the doctor, then he would
get mad and tell me to go away, and I wouldn’t get my medicine, and I wouldn’t get well.”

“You slept at Hill House that night? The night before the bomb went off?”

Joshua looked miserable. “You told me not to, you told me if I did, it could start a fire,” he sobbed. “Now I don’t know what
to do. I burned down Hill House and nobody will ever want to be my friend again.”

Big Dug might have looked like a lumberjack, but he had once been a schoolteacher. “Listen to me, very carefully,” he said,
his voice as gentle as he could make it. “You didn’t burn down Hill House. What I said about sleeping there, I didn’t mean
for you to think that just sleeping there was going to cause a fire. It takes a lot more than that.” He stopped and peered
down at his younger friend. “You did just sleep there, didn’t you?”

Joshua nodded. “In the back. There’s a little shed next to
some bushes. It’s real dry and cozy in between there. I just wanted to make sure I didn’t forget to go to the doctor. Do I
have to tell?”

“Well, I guess that depends,” Big Dug replied. While there was little open hostility, there was not much love lost between
the police and the homeless in the city of Seattle, and not much sympathy, on either side. “Did you see anything, or hear
anything, you know, that looked suspicious?”

“I don’t think I did,” Joshua said, shaking his head. “It was pretty dark, and I was sleeping.”

“Then, if there wasn’t anything, I don’t see any reason for you to have to tell.”

Joshua heaved a huge sigh of relief. “And no one has to know I was there, except you and me?”

“I guess not,” Big Dug said. “We can just keep it between ourselves, if you like.”

A broad smile spread across Joshua’s face. “That’s what I’d like,” he said. “If we could just keep it between ourselves. Do
you promise you won’t go and tell any of the others what I did?”

“I promise,” Big Dug assured him with a smile, getting up from the bench and lumbering toward the water fountain.

Joshua rose to follow him. “Besides,” he said with renewed cheer, “if there was anything to see, the delivery man will tell.”

Big Dug stopped in his tracks. “Delivery man?” he asked. “What delivery man was that?”

“The one that brought the packages.”

“Someone brought packages to Hill House? The night you slept there?”

Joshua nodded. “He took them down to the basement.”

When the bombing of Hill House was six weeks old, the mayor of Seattle sat down with his chief of police.

“Are we any further along than we were, say, a week ago?” he asked, a clear note of desperation in his voice.

“I think so,” came the reply.

The two men had known each other since boyhood, and the mayor generally knew better than to push the methodical police commander.
But now
he
was being pushed, and pushed hard, and he didn’t like it. “Can you give me something, anything?” he begged.

“I know the media blackout has been tough on you,” the chief said. “But it’s made all the difference to us. At this point,
I can confirm that this was not an act of international terrorism.”

“Well, that’s something, anyway,” the mayor said. “It’ll relieve some of the pressure.”

“I can also tell you that we now have a person of interest.”

“You mean someone you think you can charge?” the mayor exclaimed, almost popping out of his seat.

“I believe so. But we’re not ready to go public with that yet. We want to be sure we’ve got everything in order first.”

“When?”

“A couple more days, maybe.”

The mayor sighed. “Why does that sound like another eternity?”

“It won’t be much longer,” his friend promised.

“All right then, can I say that the investigation is still ongoing, and has been quite productive, and that your office will
likely have a statement to make, say, by the end of the week?”

The police chief thought for a moment. The mayor was not alone. He, too, was under the gun, and feeling the pressure. His
department was being ridiculed by the media, and after almost thirty years on the job, his competence was being questioned
by the city council.

He was almost certain of his culprit, but he had been dragging his heels on an arrest because his case was wholly circumstantial.
The thing he needed to lock it up tight was just one piece of direct evidence, and he knew, if it came to that, he’d
give his pension for it. However, he also knew he couldn’t wait forever. He sighed. “I think that would be all right,” he
said.

The news came late Saturday, with a simple statement from the chief of police that began: “We now have a person of interest
in custody,” and ended: “We thank all of you for your patience and understanding.”

According to officials, the arrest was the culmination of the largest investigative effort in city history. Seattle authorities,
in cooperation with several federal agencies, had sifted through the wreckage of Hill House with the proverbial fine-tooth
comb. They had collected anything that might conceivably be related to the crime, examined and then reexamined each piece
of potential evidence, interviewed literally dozens of people, and run down every possible lead.

What was extraordinary was that it had all been done with amazing calm and efficiency, despite incredible public pressure
and the white-hot glare of a national media blitz.

O
nce a year, Dana McAuliffe fixed pancakes for breakfast. The singular occasion was the Sunday closest to March 19, and she
made the effort because her husband, Sam, was a sucker for the buttermilk kind with fresh blueberries in them. March 19, which
this year just happened to fall on a Sunday, was Sam’s birthday.

For the first two years of their marriage, Dana had lovingly and laboriously prepared the batter from scratch, squinting over
the tiny print in her antiquated version of the
Joy of Cooking
, measuring cups and spoons firmly in hand, hoping to achieve the right blend of flour, buttermilk, eggs, and seasonings.
Then one day she happened to come upon a packaged mix at Costco, and never looked back. If he noticed the difference, Sam
never let on.

Molly certainly never noticed. The nine-year-old freckle-face with brown pigtails loved pancakes every bit as much as her
stepfather did, and the preparation process was still a happy mystery to her. It was a most fortunate circumstance for Dana,
whose least favorite activity in life was cooking.