Scorcher (28 page)

Carver realized Dewitt and Emmett were charging the scuba tank with propellant and homemade napalm to commit another murder. To burn someone the way they’d killed his son.

He thought about the searing pain that must seem to last forever, and then the endlessness of death. He
felt
the pain!

Comprehension, and a rage he never dreamed would be so overwhelming, wrested control of him. It was as if something silently exploded within him, wiping out reason. Obliterating almost everything except his desire to strike back at the people who’d scorched the flesh he’d created. Images of death and horror tumbled through his mind. But even through his consuming emotion he was recalling the layout of the house, acting the good cop, the one Desoto and McGregor had described.

Beside him, Paul felt the heat of his building fury. Carver pulled the automatic from his belt, aware of the front sight snagging for a moment on the leather. Paul’s hand was on his shoulder, clutching desperately. The boy was afraid now, like any twenty-year-old staring at the front end of violence and death, unable to comprehend something terrible and imminent that had taken on its own will and couldn’t be stopped. “Mr. Carver, for God’s sake, don’t—”

Carver shoved Paul away so violently that the boy stumbled back and went sprawling into the hedge on the other side of the driveway. He saw Paul struggle to get up, catch the look Carver gave him, then settle back down on his elbows. Paul’s dark eyes were huge pools of helpless resignation and horror.

Too much noise might have been made already; Carver turned and limped fast toward the rickety back porch.

When his cane thumped on the porch boards he gave up any thought of silence and opted for suddenness and surprise. He used the crook of the cane to smash in a back-door window, reached through and yanked a bolt lock free, then flung the door open and charged through the kitchen toward the basement stairs.

He knew Emmett and Dewitt would hear his cane clattering on the linoleum above them and be ready.

He didn’t care.

T
HE DOOR TO THE
basement stairs was hanging open. Carver hurled himself through it and half fell down the steep wooden steps. His knuckles hit the banister and his cane bounced and racketed down the stairs ahead of him.

Dewitt had a revolver and was firing at him, blue eyes not startled but wide and cold and calm; for some reason Carver couldn’t hear the shots. Then something snapped past the side of his head. He saw the banister miraculously splinter beside him. His own arm and hand, holding the Colt automatic, were extended, acting of their own volition. He was returning fire, feeling the solid kick of the gun and watching his arm jerk upward and settle back with each squeeze of the trigger.

Something exploded behind Carver’s right ear. He thought he’d been shot, but he fell to the side and saw a grim-faced McGregor crouched on the steps above him, gun drawn and blasting away at Emmett and Dewitt—McGregor, who must have been keeping tabs on Carver personally in the absence of Gibbons. Like the goddamned O.K. Corral, Carver thought inanely. He glimpsed more dark, tumultuous figures behind McGregor. On the stairs. Above them, in the kitchen outside the basement door. Everything seemed to be moving unnaturally fast but with vivid clarity. Someone was screaming; a man’s voice. Not in pain, but to fill the lungs and heart with something other than fear.

The basement lights blinked out, but the firing continued. Glass shattered. Carver felt McGregor shove past him. He bumped the stairwell wall hard, feeling a shock tingle up from his elbow. The heavy report of a riot gun sounded from farther up the stairs. Pellets roared past startlingly close; Carver thought he felt one pluck at his sleeve, like someone trying to get his attention.

“Jesus!” McGregor screamed. “Cut that out!”

There was a
whump!
of flame at the far basement wall. Another burst—this time a large fireball. One of the bullets had sparked something flammable. The naphtha compound.

In the eerie orange glow, Carver saw Emmett scampering toward a corner, on fire, slapping at his clothes, moving with the agility of a teen-ager. Even his hair was burning. What was happening couldn’t be real; special effects like in a movie, right? Had to be! Dewitt was crawling toward the stairs, shouting something Carver couldn’t understand.
Real
—
it was real!

Finally McGregor’s voice pierced the semidarkness and the acrid stench of smoke. “Out! Everybody fuckin’ out!”

Carver let himself bounce down the stairs, beneath the lowering pall of dark smoke, and grabbed Dewitt’s arm. With his free hand he slammed a fist into Dewitt, who merely whined and coughed and went limp. No fight left. Nothing. There was a clamor of footfalls on the stairs. McGregor suddenly had Dewitt’s other arm. Without speaking, he and Carver dragged Dewitt toward the steps. The flames were crackling now and the smoke was soup thick. Emmett was no longer visible.

Carver somehow found his cane in the flickering glare. He clutched Dewitt’s shirt in his right hand, and with his left he extended the cane and hooked it over the back edge of a wooden step and pulled while he propelled himself upward with his good leg. McGregor had a hand under Dewitt’s armpit and was working frantically to get out of the basement. Carver was remotely aware of sirens screaming outside, some of them deafening, some growling to silence nearby so that other shrill, singsong cries could cut through the night.

He was ahead of Dewitt now, pulling desperately, ripping Dewitt’s shirt, tearing his own fingernails. McGregor was snarling up at him like a mindless rabid animal, pushing both Dewitt and Carver forward. Carver felt Dewitt’s body mash his good leg against a step, bruising bone just below the knee. Then the leg was free, digging for leverage. Right now the sharp pain was a reminder of life, a spur to action.

The black smoke rolled thicker and started up the stairs behind them, as if suddenly it had taken on malevolence and purpose and sensed a dark victory.

Then they were on the smooth, hard linoleum. Carver was surprised to find that the kitchen floor was warm.

Legs and feet surrounded them. Scuffed shoes, shiny shoes. Someone grabbed Carver beneath the arms and lifted, shoved and bullied him toward the gaping back door. Carver resisted, though he didn’t understand why. There were multicolored lights outside, flashing, revolving, casting dancing, strangely hued shadows from another dimension, another life where nothing had depth or weight or solid meaning. But it was the real world out there—not here in the burning house.

Carver sucked in smoke, retched and spat. The whole house must be blazing to create so much smoke. There was a thick, sweet stench in the haze that he recognized. Nausea almost doubled him over. He started to retch again, then controlled it and refused to breathe, holding what little air he’d retained in his straining lungs. He didn’t want to pull in any more smoke, any more of Uncle Emmett burning. His chest heaved and his heart smashed in on itself, slower but more powerfully with each beat. He absolutely refused to breathe; he was finished breathing, forever! A voice, far away, called, “Dad, Dad, Dad, Daddy, Daddy!” He was aware of his mouth involuntarily gaping wider and wider, like the house’s back door to the night outside. He heard a high, rasping shriek, a harsh intake of air—Carver fighting for oxygen and life.

And suddenly he was in the clear night, slumped against the rough bark of a thick tree and breathing. Eating the air as if it were spun sugar at a carnival. Sweet, sweet breathing.

Stronger now than he’d ever been, he shoved away from the tree.

He was standing in a whirling, dizzying world that had gained substance and reality. Standing straight and tall again without his cane.

No, he was falling . . .

Oh God, how far?

T
HE TUGGING
C
ARVER
had felt at his sleeve turned out to be three pellets from a twelve-gauge riot gun fired by a Kissimmee police officer behind him on Emmett’s basement steps. The pellets had entered at an angle, two of them lodging just below the skin’s surface, the other penetrating about an inch. The two near the surface the doctor had removed. The other one he was going to leave in Carver in the hope that infection wouldn’t occur and the pellet would eventually work its way closer to the surface, where it could be removed easily and without complication. A nurse joked with Carver about his not being able to use a compass until the steel pellet was removed. Carver didn’t think magnet jokes were funny.

After treatment at the hospital emergency room, he’d spent the night in Orlando in Desoto’s spare bedroom. He lay now in the harsh morning light, listening to the hum and hustle of traffic outside, grateful for the prognosis that his arm would soon return to its full range of strength and mobility. The idea of a second useless limb had frightened him badly, colored his dreams, and made him think about being at the mercy of small boys who delighted in slowly pulling the legs from insects.

The syncopated beat of Latin music drifted into the room from another part of the condo unit. Desoto had left for work, Carver knew. Must have forgotten to turn off the radio. Or maybe he left the damned thing playing all the time. That would be like him.

Carver lay quietly until the hypnotic beat threatened to lull him back to sleep. But it was ten o’clock, and he’d slept enough. Though he had no compelling reason to rise, he struggled up to sit on the edge of the mattress. A dull ache beat through his arm, in time with the music and his heart. It was a pain he’d endure rather than take the Percodan pills the doctor had prescribed. Carver preferred to be in slight pain, but awake and with his full mental facilities.

The room he was in was small and square, with a modern dresser and a high-riser that made into a comfortable bed. The draperies had come with the unit and were a dull gold color and not thick enough to block much sun. An unframed Delacroix print hung on the wall by the bed, a curiously flat French street scene. Somewhere Desoto had picked up an appreciation of art.

Carver found his cane, got up, and reached his pants where they were draped over the back of a chair. His wallet had dropped to the carpet behind the chair, and he used the cane to slide it over to where he could pick it up. He sat back down on the bed and struggled into the pants, then he stood up and limped from the room.

The rest of the place reflected the familiar Desoto. The carpet and drapes in the living room were deep red, the furniture black vinyl, stainless steel, and laminated wood that was lacquered to a high gloss. It was expensive furniture. Desoto spent most of his salary on clothes and on his environment. A Fisher stereo system took up most of a long shelf along one wall. There was a tiny red light glowing on it, and a series of needles on illuminated dials were twitching and bobbing in time with the rhythm that throbbed from the two big speakers at the ends of the shelf. It made Carver wish he could still dance. He crossed the thick carpet to the stereo and punched plastic buttons until he found the right one. The red light winked out.

The silence in the apartment seemed to pulsate after the tango music stopped, as if the beat had permeated the air and would die hard.

Carver made his way to the bedroom door to make sure Desoto was gone. He glanced into the room. Red carpet and drapes in there, too. Another print, a large one of a fleshy nude woman reclining among some flowers. There were two gigantic speakers that were probably wired to the stereo in the living room. The dresser and headboard were black and highly lacquered like some of the living-room furniture, in a simple art deco style. There was a round water bed large enough for the moon to affect with tides. It had some kind of white fuzzy spread over it. Carver looked up and was a little surprised to see no mirror on the ceiling. The closet ran along an entire wall and was no doubt full of Desoto’s elegant suits and accessories. There were mirrors everywhere except above the bed.

In a sort of awe, Carver turned away and went to the kitchen to put some coffee on to brew while he tried to take a shower and keep the dressing on his arm dry.

When he’d located the coffee and got the electric percolator going, he returned to the living room and found that Desoto had come home.

There he sat on his black and silver sofa, wearing a tailored cream-colored suit, pale blue shirt, and lavender tie with a gold clip. The condo was coolly air-conditioned, but Desoto looked as if he didn’t need it; he carried his cool with him.

He said, “Thought you’d be awake,
amigo
, and you’d want to be filled in on some facts. Didn’t want you calling and aggravating me at headquarters, busy as I am and pesky as you are, so I came by here.”

“Champion of you,” Carver said. “Want some coffee?”

“Ah, such a genial host. Nice to see you’ve made yourself at home.”

“Have to wait—it’s perking.”

“Yes, I can hear.”

Even the coffeepot seemed to percolate with a Latin beat; maybe it was in some way hooked up to the elaborate stereo system.

Because of the dress-shop killing and the proximity of Orlando to Kissimmee, Desoto would have access to all official, and some unofficial, information. Carver lowered himself into an uncomfortable chair that consisted of leather slung in the middle of a contorted stainless-steel creation and waited to hear what the lieutenant had to say.

“Dewitt is talking beautifully,” Desoto told him. “Can’t shut the man up, in fact. They tend to cooperate fully in a state that executes people more frequently than it sprays for mosquitoes.”

“Now why don’t
you
talk?” Carver said impatiently.

And Desoto did.

It pretty much confirmed what Carver had figured out.

“Emmett Kave served with Dewitt’s father in Korea,” Desoto said.

Carver had thought so. He told Desoto about the group photo on the wall in Emmett’s house, and how one of the grinning young marines in the snapshot strongly resembled Joel Dewitt.

“Dewitt’s father was killed by enemy fire not long after the photo was taken,” Desoto went on. “After returning home, Emmett became the lover of his slain buddy’s widow, Joel Dewitt’s mother. He married her, and shortly thereafter she abandoned him and her infant son. Emmett gave little Joel to an elderly, childless couple who agreed to pretend they were the child’s grandparents. Dewitt’s mother used her maiden name, Jones, on the motel register when she recently returned to Florida and met Emmett, probably lured by his promise of prospective wealth.” Desoto smiled handsomely. “You following,
amigo
?”