Burn (23 page)

“Here, too,” Carver said. “But Portia Brant wasn’t actually your client. I believe she came here and inquired about an adoption. If you’re still concerned about confidentiality, I can tell you she’s deceased.”

Ellen Atkinson worried a pencil that was lying on her green felt desk pad, rolling it back and forth with alternating motions of the forefinger and middle finger of her right hand, as if pretending the fingers were legs and her hand was a miniature lumberjack logrolling on a tiny hexagonal log. “I remember Portia Brant,” she said, “because of the accident.”

“Have you seen her husband Joel since they were here?”

“She was never here with her husband, Mr. Carver. She came here twice, alone.”

“Was she serious about adopting a child?”

The lumberjack stepped off the log. Ellen Atkinson forgot about playing with the pencil and sat back. “Who are you, Mr. Carver?”

Carver considered using the old insurance agent con. Or maybe dropping indirect hints that he was with the police. Neither seemed the right thing to do. With Ellen Atkinson, he decided on the truth.

“Interesting,” she said, when he was finished.

“Was Portia Brant serious about adopting?” he asked again.

“Oh, quite serious. In fact, she wanted a child—an infant— desperately. She was adopted herself, she told me, so she had insight. She said she knew what an adopted child needed.”

“Why did she come here alone? Didn’t she want her husband to know?”

“I never got that impression. She told me she was doing the preliminaries, and she’d bring him with her when they were actually ready to apply to adopt. It isn’t easy, you know. And we’re merely what you might call go-betweens in the process: we match prospective parents to child, provide legal advice, then counseling services after the adoption. It’s rewarding work, Mr. Carver.” Again her wide, infectious smile.

“I can imagine. When was the last time she was here?”

“Less than a week before she died. That’s why I remember her so clearly. I was horrified when I read about the accident in the paper. A drunk driver . . . such a shame. She was a beautiful and kind woman. Very active in charity work, you know.”

Carver agreed that it was a shame a woman like Portia Grant had to die because of a drunk driver, and he said he knew about the charity work.

“She’d told me she was bringing her husband next time,” Ellen Atkinson said, “and that they were planning to begin the actual process of adoption.” She shuddered as if she were chilled, burrowing her chin down into her voluminous silk bow tie until her mole was invisible. “They never kept the appointment, of course.”

“Did she talk as if her own childhood had been difficult?”

“Yes and no. Her adoptive parents were quite well off, and there was plenty of love in the family. But it was a surprise to her when they told her in her teen years that she was adopted. I think one of the reasons she wanted to adopt so much was that her childhood was a happy one. She was grateful, and she felt she had a debt that she could repay by giving another unwanted child a home. It’s not an uncommon reaction.”

“Good,” Carver said, smiling. “Did she say her husband was also enthusiastic about adopting?”

“Not directly that I can recall. But I assume he felt the same way, or she wouldn’t have come to us.” The many-lined phone on Ellen Atkinson’s desk trilled, and she excused herself and answered it. She said, “Yes, yes, of course, just a minute,” then covered the mouthpiece with her hand and started to say something to Carver.

He raised his hand in a goodbye, mouthed “Thank you,” and stood up.

She nodded to him, then said, “Yes, yes, of course,” into the phone again as he was leaving.

Martinelli grinned and waved a cheery good afternoon to him as he passed through the tumultuous outer office and stepped into the cool hall.

The stainless steel elevator dropped him smoothly to the warm lobby.

He’d left the Olds parked in the lot adjacent to the gleaming blue building. It seemed to have absorbed the reflected glare and grown unnaturally hot.

Carver cranked down the windows so the superheated air would swirl out as he drove, then switched the air conditioner on high. Within a few blocks, he should be able to raise the windows and stop sweating.

At the first red traffic light, he rolled up the windows while waiting for green. The light changed before he’d finished closing the passenger-side window.

As he straightened up and accelerated, he glanced in the rearview mirror to make sure he hadn’t delayed anyone.

His seemed to be the only car around.

But the man on the motorcycle was behind him again, half a block back and keeping pace. Though there was little to lend them scale, both man and motorcycle appeared huge. Carver was certain it was the same cycle and rider he’d seen earlier.

His hands became slippery with sweat on the steering wheel. His eyes darting back and forth between the street ahead and the rearview mirror, he held the Olds’s speed at thirty.

The motorcycle didn’t turn onto a side street this time. Its front wheel broke from the pavement as it reared high with power.

It bloomed like a dark flower in the mirror as it came at Carver.

A
S THE MOTORCYCLE
pulled alongside the Olds with a roar like continuous thunder, Carver saw that it was a Harley-Davidson and had been crudely painted a lusterless gray. He had no time to take anything else in. The Harley shot even with the left front fender, then veered toward it.

It all happened so fast that Carver instinctively jerked the steering wheel to the right. The Olds’s front tire jumped the curb, then wobbled back into the gutter, throwing the car out of control. The steering wheel came alive and writhed from his slippery grip, one of its cross-braces striking his thumb painfully. Tires squealed as the car swerved and rocked violently from side to side. His foot came off the accelerator, his body jerking with the force of the wild motion.

Finally he managed to regain his hold on the wheel. He wrestled it so that the car’s course straightened and its rocking was less extreme.

When the Olds’s speed had dropped somewhat, he jammed his foot down hard on the brake pedal. It responded sluggishly and he knew the engine had died and knocked out the power steering and brakes. The steering wheel’s stiffness confirmed this. Carver braced his back against the seat and shoved his foot down on the pedal with all his strength, and gradually the car slowed to a halt.

The Harley had stopped about a hundred feet down the street. Before Carver could reach forward and try to restart the engine, the huge cyclist had dismounted, removed his helmet with its tinted plexiglass face guard, and was lumbering toward the car.

As Carver was desperately twisting the key and the starter was futilely grinding, Achilles Jones, outfitted as before in dirt-encrusted jeans and filthy, wool-lined leather vest, casually swung the helmet at the driver’s-side window and smashed the glass. Carver’s hand slipped from the ignition key as he jerked his body to the side to avoid the giant’s grasp. A massive hand closed on his shirt, as his own hand gripped his cane, which had been leaning against the seat. He turned and saw the same mindless smile he’d seen in his office, the same pale blue eyes with the frightening void behind them.

He jabbed the tip of the cane into one of the eyes. The big man, whose actions were cramped by the window frame and what was left of the glass, couldn’t fend off the cane. Or a second, more accurate jab. He released Carver’s shirt and backed away a step.

As he stood there rubbing his eyes, Carver drove the tip of the cane hard into his throat. The giant gagged and leaped back out of his reach.

It gave Carver time to get the Olds started.

When Jones heard the sound of the engine turning over, he came at the car again immediately. But blindly this time. He bounced hard off the door as Carver jammed the accelerator down and the tires screamed and propelled the Olds forward with all the primitive power of its V-8 engine.

Carver glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Jones mounting his motorcycle, shaking his head from side to side to try to clear his mind and vision.

The Olds might have been able to outrun the Harley, but a large yellow Hertz rental truck entered the intersection directly in its path. Carver stomped hard on the brakes. The Olds’s hood dipped and it screeched sideways in the street.

As Achilles Jones was larger than Carver, so the Olds was larger than the Harley. The dusk-colored bike slammed into the side of the car just behind the door, rocking it sideways. Carver heard something scrape across the canvas top, and he turned to see Achilles Jones land hard on his back in the street after the impact had flung him over the car. He hit so hard that dust flew.

The Hertz truck had stopped and two husky men climbed down from the cab. They began walking toward Jones and the wrecked Harley. Attracted by the
eeek!
of tires and the sound of the collision, people began to appear on the sidewalk.

Jones struggled up to his full height, and the men who’d been approaching to help him suddenly stopped and stood still, staring. Sirens began wailing frantic loops of sound, drawing nearer.

Limping heavily, Achilles Jones ran from the street and between two buildings.

Carver watched him, admiring his combination of size and speed despite his apparently injured leg. With time to think, it occurred to him that Jones might hold the key to understanding what really was going on between Brant and Marla Cloy. If Carver could discover who’d hired him to stymie the investigation, everything else might come clear. And Jones was hurt, maybe badly, from the accident. He could be controlled at least until the police reached the scene.

Maybe.

Ignoring the strong smell of gasoline that warned of possible fire, Carver twisted the ignition key and got the Olds started again. One of the men from the Hertz truck was yelling at him, but he couldn’t understand what he was saying and didn’t care. He backed the Olds away from the wrecked Harley, frantically maneuvering until it was pointed in the direction he’d just come from, then accelerated down the street, trying to get around the block in time to intercept Jones. If he had the chance, he wouldn’t hesitate to knock the giant down with the car. He had no doubt that Jones had intended to kill him.

He jounced the Olds over the curb, rounding the corner and speeding to the next intersection so he could peer up the street.

Achilles Jones was nowhere in sight.

Carver hit the accelerator and the Olds roared up the street as he swiveled his head to glance from side to side, like a fighter pilot in enemy skies. He no longer smelled gasoline, so the fuel must have leaked from the motorcycle and not the Olds. Several pedestrians stared at him, but they were half the size of the man he was seeking.

The siren was much louder now and had been joined by another, but Carver knew that by the time he explained what had happened and talked the uniforms into searching for Jones, it would be too late.

In frustration, he made a right turn and drove down the next block. He was aware now of a rhythmic scuffing sound as the car gained speed, then the acrid scent of burning rubber; the big Harley must have bent the Olds’s fender in so that the tire was rubbing.

He circled the block twice, slowly enough so that he no longer heard the scraping sound, before conceding that Jones had somehow disappeared.

A part of him couldn’t help feeling relieved.

His heart was racing faster than the car’s backed-off engine, and his hands were trembling as he returned to the scene of the accident.

C
ARVER SAT IN
Desoto’s office and wished he had a cold beer. The run-in with Achilles Jones had been more than attempted assault and a fender-bender traffic accident: Jones was a suspected killer on the run.

Desoto surveyed the fan-fold computer paper on his desk, his chin propped in his hand, his dark eyes moving in short, rapid glides as he read. A guitar was playing softly on the radio behind him, deep, somber chords, and a woman was singing softly in Spanish; life was such a bittersweet, tragic affair.

He looked up at Carver and dropped the hand that had been cupping his chin down to the desk. His beige suit coat was draped on a wooden hanger slung over a brass hook on the wall. He moved his arm slightly and rested his French-cuffed white shirtsleeve on the papers he’d been reading. “Jones is such a common name,” he said, “that it poses difficulties.”

Carver agreed. He thought of Clive Jones at
Burrow.
The name was not as stupid an alias as it at first seemed.

“The Harley’s license plate was stolen in Jacksonville,” Desoto said. “The bike itself—a ninety-four Harley-Davidson Electra Glide Ultra—was traced by its identification number. They’re huge motorcycles that cost as much as some cars and weigh almost eight hundred pounds. That’s why after Jones’s went over on its side, even he didn’t try to right it. It was stolen three weeks ago from a man named Art Figenbaum in Rome, Georgia.”

Carver was disappointed but not surprised. The Achilles Joneses of the world were marauders who lived off the land. Stolen motorcycle, stolen plates. “You mean this monster’s faded away again as if he never existed? Like Big Foot?”

Desoto’s lips curved in a brief smile. “Not exactly,
amigo.
We believe Jones exists. And the fingerprints from the wrecked Harley match the print on the trunk of Spotto’s rental car. Your eyeball account connects Jones directly to the stolen bike, which connects him to the rental car and Spotto. Enough for a murder warrant, and once we fingerprint Jones and make the match for sure, he’s good for the fall. Big Foot doesn’t have the cops after him, right?”

“Right,” Carver said. “Does this mean you’re not going to dust my office?”

“No, we still want to lift a matching print there if we can. Best to lock this up tight.” Desoto raised his arm and adjusted the white cuff. Gold glinted. “Jones might not be bright in the conventional sense, but simply by remaining anonymous despite his remarkable appearance, he’s demonstrated a certain cunning. He’s probably heard of fingerprints.”