Scorcher (3 page)

Carver was standing before he realized it, leaning on his cane, his free hand on her quaking shoulder. She was about to sob. He didn’t want that; he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to calm her. And he feared his own reaction; something he didn’t understand was drawing him to her. “That’s irrational, Laura. There’s no guilt involved except for whoever killed Chipper and the poor guy in the restaurant.”

“Dammit, I know that! It doesn’t help. Your obsession for revenge is irrational, too.”

There was a knock on the door, then the knob rattled. Whoever was out there was impatient. Laura sniffled, got up, and trudged to the door and opened it. Carver sat back down.

Sam Devine stepped in, his beefy face contorted with concern. He was a big man, all lawyer. Acres of pinstripe material topped off by mobile, sincere features and a head of thick white hair any politician would have given back graft money to own.

Laura threw herself at him, hugged him, and he encircled her with his thick arms and patted her on the back. She was sobbing now; she’d been waiting for Devine before trusting a release of her pain. She couldn’t get close enough to his protective bulk. Her entire body was convulsing, thrusting mindlessly against him in an obscene, unintentional parody of sex.

Who needed to watch this? Carver nodded to Devine and got up out of the chair.

“I’m sorry as hell, Fred,” Devine said, holding Laura tighter.

Carver said, “Thanks, Sam. I’d better get going.”

“You don’t have to, Fred.”

“I do,” Carver said.

Laura stopped sobbing as Carver stepped near her and Devine on his way to the door. Incredibly, her face became composed and soft. It struck Carver that she might rather be in his arms than Devine’s. For an instant he felt like snatching her away from Devine and clutching her desperately, merging their suffering. She drew a deep breath that caught halfway like something fuzzy in her throat, dropping her voice an octave and making it someone else’s. “Fred, think about what you said. Don’t commit yourself to anything too soon. Please!”

Devine held her away from him and put on a curious expression. She’d left tearstains on his blue pinstripe suit. Then he understood and stared at Carver. “Christ, Fred, don’t do anything crazy. I mean, I’m a lawyer and I’ve seen the results of what you must be considering. Hey, it’s natural to think in terms of revenge, but please don’t do anything but think it. If you feel like you gotta turn it over in your mind, that’s okay; that’s legal. Could be it’s even some sort of release.”

“Listen to him, Fred,” Laura said. “Remember what he’s telling you.”

Devine said, “Some things you should leave alone, Fred. That’s just the way it is.”

Carver set his cane and stepped around Devine and Laura. “Call me if you need anything,” he said.

“You call
us
,” Devine said magnanimously, as Carver limped out.

Carver drove north on 100, stopping once, at a grocery store, for a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label. Then he put up the canvas top on his rusty Oldsmobile convertible and continued north toward his cottage, driving too fast.

The cottage was isolated on a curve of bright sand. A low finger of land jutted out to the north, and the public beach to the south was seldom occupied by swimmers and sunbathers, never crowded. Carver had bought the place with his disability settlement last year after being shot.

He entered the one-room cottage, sniffed the stale air, and left the door hanging open. The sparse furniture had a dusty, unused look about it, and the viny potted plants that dangled on chains from the frame of the wide front window were dark and dead. Outside, the ocean whispered like a vicious gossip. Damn, the place was depressing!

After prying open a couple of screened side windows, Carver sat at the Formica breakfast counter with the bottle of Scotch in front of him. He didn’t feel like uncapping the bottle, wasn’t sure why he’d brought it. A fat and glistening blue-black fly touched down exploringly on the counter, and he watched it crawl, wobbling out of sight over the far edge. Story of life.

“Carver.”

Edwina was standing in the doorway. He stared glumly at her.

“Great welcome,” she said, “but not unexpected.”

“I don’t feel like Mr. Effervescence,” Carver said. “Don’t feel like companionship. That’s why I came here.”

She walked inside and stood near him. He used his cane to shove one of the stools out from the counter for her. Its legs made a loud scraping sound on the plank floor.

Edwina sat down and said, “You came here to grieve and brood about how you’re going to avenge your son’s death.”

“Incisive bitch.”

She smiled. “That’s me.” She stood up, got a glass from the cabinet above the sink, and rinsed it out. Then she poured two fingers of scotch from the bottle and handed the glass to Carver. She sat back down, got a small brown plastic bottle from her purse, and set an incredibly tiny white pill in front of him on the counter.

“What the hell is that?” he asked, staring at the pill.

“It’ll help you sleep. It’s prescription stuff I’ve had around the house for about a year. It’s still plenty potent, though. I took one last month. It’ll have you blotto in no time.”

“I don’t want to be blotto, God damn it! Don’t want to sleep. How’d you know I was here?”

“Desoto told me.”

“Figures.”

“He’s your friend; he knows what’s best for you.”

“He’s a plague.”

“You know better.”

Carver did. He picked up the pill, popped it into his mouth, and washed it down with a generous pull of Scotch. It was so minute he had to probe around the inside of his mouth with his tongue to be sure he’d swallowed it.

“C’mon, baby,” Edwina said, and helped him to stand up, though he didn’t need help. She acted as if he should be groggy from the pill he’d taken only seconds before. He used the cane for balance for both of them and let her think she was supporting him. Easier than arguing with her.

They made it to the bed and Carver lay down and she removed his shoes, dropping each of them to the floor with a loud thunk. Then she took off her own shoes and stretched out next to him. The bedsprings squeaked, then were quiet.

“I’m going to find whoever did this,” he said. “Don’t try to talk me out of it.”

“I wouldn’t,” she told him. “I hope you find the slime bag and kill him.”

“Really?”

“Of course. Now rest, why don’t you?” She reached over and stroked his forehead. Her fingers were cool and weightless.

Whatever was in the pill worked fast. Carver remembered resting his head between Edwina’s breasts, barely aware of his own sobbing.

He fell asleep that way and didn’t dream.

Blotto.

When he awoke early the next morning he was calm, but no less determined. He and Edwina drove to a restaurant down the coast highway and had a big breakfast of wheatcakes, bacon, and coffee, then he called Desoto and said he was driving into Orlando to talk about what he was sure the Fort Lauderdale police wouldn’t tell him.

Carver and Edwina had brought their own cars. On the restaurant’s sun-tortured gravel parking lot, Edwina kissed him good-bye and then drove her Mercedes back toward Del Moray.

He knew, at least for the present, that she’d be there waiting for him. Something about them. They each needed an obsession.

I
T WAS ABOUT
an hour’s drive to Orlando. Carver took 95 south, and the Bee Line Expressway into the city. Then he threaded his way through downtown traffic to the tan brick and pale stone Municipal Justice Building on Hughey. He parked the Olds in a rear lot, near several dusty, beige police cars with roofbar cherry lights. As he entered the building and made his way to Desoto’s office, the heat from outside seemed to cling to him with perverse, cloying affection.

Desoto was sitting behind his gray metal desk. His suitcoat was off and draped on a hanger suspended from a doorknob, but his tie was knotted tightly and the sleeves of his silky white shirt were fastened at the wrists with gold cuff links. A window air-conditioner behind him was humming and gurgling softly, two yellow ribbons tied to its grille fluttering like pennants in the cool flow of air. On the sill of the window next to the air-conditioner sat a portable radio with oversized twin speakers. Carver was glad to find that the radio wasn’t emitting its usual background stream of Latin music that Desoto seemed to need to help propel him through his days.

“Ah,
amigo
!” Desoto said, when he glanced up and saw Carver. “You feeling better today?”

“In some ways,” Carver said. He lowered himself onto an oak chair near the desk and hooked his cane over its spindled back. “In other ways I feel just the same.”

“Life goes on.”

“Not my son’s.”

“Yeah, that’s a point I concede with regret.”

“You sent Edwina to me.”

“I thought she should be with you.”

“Thanks.” Carver’s voice was flat.

Desoto shot his dashing devil smile, pleased with himself. “After a reasonable period of mourning, Carver, you’ll feel differently about things. Naturally it’s hard for you to see matters clearly now. Grief clouds our vision but doesn’t last forever.”

“Spare me the sugar.”

“Sure.”

“What have the Lauderdale police got on the burnings?”

“Show yourself some mercy,
amigo
.”

“You show me some.”

Desoto made a helpless throwaway gesture with his right hand, gold ring glinting. “Witnesses at the Pompano Beach murder say only that there was nothing unusual about the man they glimpsed running from the shop. No agreement on hair coloring or clothing. Two different witnesses; could have been two different guys they saw. The word
average
comes up often in the report.”

“Not very revealing,” Carver said. But he knew eyewitnesses seldom gave accurate descriptions, even when a crime was committed three feet in front of them. Or even against them. He looked out the window where the radio sat; the sky was pale blue and cloudless, as if bleached by the fierceness of the sun.

“It means we’re not looking for someone obese, much over six feet tall, or instantly recognizable,” Desoto said. “Or with orange, spiked hair. Mr. Average. Not a former presidential candidate. Narrows things down.”

“Any fingerprints?”

“Hundreds. The souvenir shop did a brisk business in shells, suntan lotion, and Florida T-shirts. You know the kind of place: Visa-card heaven for tourists.”

“How about at the restaurant where Chipper died?”

“Nothing to fix on there, either. Guy walks in with a small scuba diver’s air tank; not so unusual that near the ocean.
Whoosh!
and two people are dead. Nobody notices him going in or out from the street, or if they do they don’t pay particular attention to him. Except . . .”

Carver felt his heartbeat accelerate; he leaned forward, bracing himself with a hand on his extended stiff leg. He knew Desoto, knew he had something.

“Not a thing on the restaurant killings,” Desoto said, “but a couple of people at the murder in Pompano Beach say they saw a car leaving the area about that time, driving fast. A navy blue, late-model Ford with a white roof and a bashed-in right front fender, they think. They’re not sure. Nobody’s sure of anything yet. Maybe nobody should ever be sure of anything.”

Carver ignored Desoto’s musings. At times the lieutenant could be too philosophical for a cop. It grated.

“There might be no connection here, Carver. Coincidence. But then, coincidence is a policeman’s friend and enemy.”

“What style Ford?”

“Big. The regular sedan, judging by the scanty description. Nobody noticed its plate numbers.”

Carver sat still and thought about that. From outside the office came the faint staccato undercurrent of a dispatcher’s voice directing units to various reported crimes, reminding Carver of when he started on the force as a patrol-car officer. His future had seemed clearly charted then, before his life underwent a series of abrupt and tragic changes of direction. The divorce, the bullet, and now this. A bad stretch, all right.

“What about the lab report on whatever was used as flammable material?” he asked.

“As near as they can tell so far, it was a naphtha cleaning solvent, probably jetted by compressed air or propane. That’s a petroleum product,
amigo,
and this one was turned to a thick, sticky consistency with the addition of chemicals.”

“What kind of chemicals?”

Desoto rooted through some papers on his cluttered desk, singled out one, and said, “Aluminum soaps, is what it says here. Added to a liquid hydrocarbon—that’s the naphtha.”

“Aluminum soaps. That’s what they add to gasoline to make napalm.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Nobody sells something like that in a diver’s oxygen tank,” Carver said. “Or in a propane tank.”

“No, but it would be possible to fill part of a reusable tank with the naphtha mixture, then take it somewhere and have the propane pumped in without anyone suspecting. Or somebody with rudimentary knowledge—say, a scuba diver—could transfer the propane or oxygen from another tank to supply the propellant. We figure an ordinary welder’s igniter was used to create the spark. The guy could twist the valve, snap the igniter for fire, all in about two seconds. Presto! Flamethrower.”

“Christ!” Carver said.

“Scary, eh?” Desoto said. “And sick. We’re running checks to find area people with histories of mental illness that might conceivably result in that sort of action.”

“How long will that take?”

“Not long. The computer can be a marvelous tool as well as a pain in the ass.”

“You’ll keep me tuned in on this?”

“I don’t want to, Carver, because you’re my friend. But I will, because you’re my friend. Life is complicated; something for you to remember.”

“Sometimes life can be simple,” Carver said. “Sometimes knowing what you need to do is easy.”

“Or seems that way.”

“I need the names of the witnesses in the Pompano Beach souvenir shop,” Carver said.

Reluctantly, Desoto jotted the information on a sheet of memo paper and handed it to Carver. “A man and his wife,” he said, “Jerry and Margaret Gepman. Vacationing here from Chattanooga. They were upset by what they saw and returned home the day after the murder. They won’t help you much, I’m afraid, even if you travel to talk to them.”