The Abortionist's Daughter Read Free

ready for this.”
    By the time he got back in town, it was after seven, and the snowplows were barely keeping up with traffic. He picked up some Chinese takeout, stopped at a 7-Eleven for orange juice and throat lozenges, then headed home.
    Huck lived in a remodeled outbuilding that sat tucked behind a small neighborhood fire station. Originally used by the firemen to store worn hoses and whatnot, it had been Sheetrocked and painted but still occasionally smelled of mildew, which explained why Huck was able to rent it from the city at a reasonable price. (After living in the house for several years, he’d noticed something odd about the smell: it grew noticeably worse whenever a fire raged in the hills nearby. This he didn’t like to ponder too much.) It also had a faulty heater that on these cold nights refused to kick off. Several times he’d mentioned it to the building manager, assuming that, since the city was paying for the utilities, they’d be financially motivated to fix it. Yet they didn’t, and on nights like these he simply opened up the windows and let the heat blast out, an act of environmental lawlessness that could get a man banished in this town.
    At nine o’clock he stepped outside for some air, and it was then that he experienced what would be the first in a series of odd coincidences that evening. The wind was blowing everything sideways in great angry gusts, and he was in the process of gauging how much snow had fallen, when he caught sight of a yellow VW Bug idling out in the parking lot of the fire station. The driver’s window was down, and the driver seemed to be rummaging around inside. Without bothering with a jacket, he waded through the snow to see if whoever it was needed help. It was his nature; he was a cop.
    As he approached the car, he was struck by a moment of recognition: the driver was the daughter of Frank Thompson over at the district attorney’s office. She wouldn’t have recognized him, because they’d never been formally introduced, but he’d been present at a swearing-in last year at which Frank had introduced the judge, and his wife and daughter were up there at the podium with him. Like mother, like daughter—the two of them looking so foreign, with their Arabian eyes and wild dark curly hair. Huck remembered how nervous everyone had been, worrying that Frank’s wife, Dr. Diana Duprey of the Center for Reproductive Choice, would take advantage of the opportunity to make a speech about the latest incident, in which their walkway had been coated with fresh tar. (Dr. Duprey, scheduled to perform a midterm abortion at eight-fifteen, had simply glopped through the sticky sludge as though it weren’t there; upon reaching the door, she calmly removed her heavy Swedish clogs, left them by the door, and stepped inside.) But up there at the podium that night, Dr. Duprey had remained quiet. Frank made his speech, the judge got sworn in, and everyone went home happy.
    Huck didn’t envy Frank, being married to a woman like Dr. Duprey.
    “Do you need any help?” he asked, bending down to the girl’s level. She shook her head and mumbled something. He noticed her windshield was icing over and offered to get her some de-icer, but she refused that too. She seemed awfully jumpy, in fact, and he contemplated telling her he was a cop to put her mind at rest—but then he realized he didn’t have any identification on him and why should she believe him, a man in a T-shirt who came wading out of nowhere through the snow on a cold dark night? He knew the kinds of things that could happen to a young woman alone with car trouble on a night like this.
    Nevertheless he pressed, worried that she might drive off with poor visibility. She ignored him, though. As soon as she got a small circle cleared, she drove off with a quick pop of the clutch.
    Fine, he thought. Not my problem.
    Returning to his house, he unloaded clothes from the compact washer in the hall closet and stuffed them into the