Pulse

by Edna Buchanan

  He had called in his order from the car. A uniformed cop directed traffic in the parking lot. Frank sighed. He had never intended to spend a single precious moment of his new life waiting in line for stone crabs. He felt that he should be somewhere else, doing something important, but had no idea what it was.

  Finally awarded his brown shopping bag, he escaped, delighted to go home. Traffic thinned once he cleared the South Beach congestion and driving again became a pleasure. He listened to Verdi on the CD player, part of Kathleen’s endless campaign to upgrade his cultural sensibilities. The music a soothing backdrop, he rehearsed ways to break the bad news to Rory in the morning.

  He turned onto the causeway with its old-world street-lamps, crossed the Belle Isle bridge, then made a right onto Rivo Alto. So did a car behind him. He rounded the curve, beneath the sheltering branches of a giant royal poinciana, and slowed, the garden lanterns above his gateposts a welcome glow. He reached up to the visor for the remote.

  A man suddenly sprang from the shadows, flinging himself in front of the wrought-iron gate. Frank cried out in surprise and hit the brake, his entrance blocked. The man had come out of nowhere, tall, eyes wide, mouth agape in a distorted grimace of fear, gesturing frantically. He waved Frank away with both arms, his entire body caught up in the frenzied motions like some deranged traffic cop.

  Bewildered, blinded by the bright headlights close behind him, Frank strained to see. With a shock, he recognized the man rushing toward him, the same pale, lean intruder who had invaded his bedroom while he slept!

  Frank wrenched the wheel and hit the gas. The car responded, screeching away from the house. The driver behind him followed. Frank speeded past the stop sign at the causeway, cutting off a westbound motorist who blasted his horn as the Mercedes hurtled across his right of way.

  On the south side of the island, Frank stood on the brakes, trembling fingers grasping his cell phone. The car following him had paused at the stop sign. He saw it in his rearview mirror, dark blue, a Gran Prix. Who were they? He stared out the back window, straining to see the two men in the front seat as they veered off, headed west. He did not know them, and noticed what appeared to be red primer paint on their left rear fender, and a tag outlined in neon.

  Was Kathleen all right? He punched the speed dial. “Oh my God, oh my God.” He gasped, trying to catch his breath, as the number rang, rang, then rang again.

  “Hello?”

  “Kath! Are you okay?”

  “Frank, where are you?” she complained. “I’m hungry.”

  “At the far end of the island, the south side. Make sure the doors are locked. Don’t open them. There’s a man outside! I’m calling the police.”

  “What?” There was a long pause. “Frank, I’m watching the monitor now, there’s no one out there.”

  “Do as I say! I’ll be right there.”

  Poised to dial 911, he slowly circled the southern tip of the island, then crossed to the north side, eyes probing the shadows. His heart had begun to pound, a delayed reaction to his initial shock. He took a deep breath and removed thegun from the glove compartment. Felt its comforting weight in his right hand, as he steered with his left.

  He stopped on the Bishops’ swale, headlights trained on his own gate, then slipped the cell phone into his jacket pocket. He opened the car door, gun in hand, and cautiously stepped out. Everything seemed quiet. Only a neighborhood cat, skulking across the roadway, the green glint of its luminous eyes flashing in the moonlight. A seagull chortled overhead.

  He scrutinized the pavement carefully, searching the grass and the bed of multicolor impatiens where he’d seen the intruder. No trampled flowers, no broken stems, no trace. He returned to the car, fumbled for the remote, then opened the gate, still trembling. He rolled slowly up the drive, watchful and alert.

  Kathleen swung the front door open and gasped, hand to her throat, at the sight of him, the gun in his hand.

  “I told you not to open it!” He swept by her into the house. “Lock it,” he demanded.

  “What on earth?”

  He caught sight of himself, sweaty and disheveled, in the gilt-edged mirror in the foyer. He wiped his eyes with his gun hand. “Where are the girls?”

  “Please, Frank. What’s wrong?” She looked near tears.

  He told her, but she remained unconvinced.

  “There was no one out there,” she protested. “I went to look when you called. I didn’t see a soul.” She glanced up and listened. “Did you call the police?”

  He shook his head, then heard it too. Sirens. Their urgent wails streamed across the causeway toward them.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Frank placed the gun on the glass-topped coffee table, then stood to await the police. Kathleen recoiled at the heavy sound of metal on glass.

  “Please put that away,” she said nervously. “You always hated guns, because of your father. I don’t understand why you bought it. You know I don’t want it in the house.” “They’ll be here any minute now,” he said. “But you didn’t call them.” She wrung her hands. “So why would they be coming here?”

  “Don’t you see?” Frank said. “Somebody else, maybe the Bishops, saw him, too. They must have called the police.”

  Kathleen looked at him oddly. “Gardiner and Linda Bishop left town this morning, on a cruise.” Did he see fear in her eyes?

  “Kath …” He stepped toward her, then stopped to listen. The sirens seemed to pass the island and continue west. Some stopped, not far off. Others kept coming. He picked up the gun and opened the French doors. The draperies billowed in the breeze off the bay. Revolving red and blue lights bounced off the treetops over on DiLido, the next island. The sound of barking dogs carried across the water.

  “They’re going there,” he said, puzzled. “Why … ?”

  Kathleen remained silent, never taking her eyes off him.

  He went to the phone, dialed the Miami Beach Police Department and asked the nature of the emergency on DiLido. “We’re on the next island,” he explained. “And something odd just happened here, right before we heard the sirens.” Kathleen turned away in angry exasperation.

  The operator put him on hold, then came back to say that units were investigating a shooting, and that if he had any information that could be related, a detective would be by to see him later.

  He hung up the phone and turned to his wife. “There’s been a shooting on DiLido. I’m going over there.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “No,” he said quietly. “I’ve got to find out what’s going on.” He slipped the gun into his jacket pocket and left her standing in the doorway.

  East DiLido Drive was blocked by police cars and fire rescue units. He locked the gun in the glove compartment and walked toward the hub of the action, a house in the middle of the first block north of the bridge. Neighbors, their faces shocked, spoke in hushed tones, watching from their lawns and front doors.

  Someone lay sprawled on the grass near the brick driveway, next to a late-model Lincoln Town Car. Both front doors of the car hung open. The interior lights were on, the doorchime dinging insistently. Why don’t they close them? he wondered. How can anyone think? The medics had walked away, leaving the wrappers from sterile gauze pads and rubber gloves scattered on the ground around the victim. A uniformed officer unfurled a yellow plastic sheet and shook it out. Excitement and dread rose in Frank’s throat as he moved closer.

  The corpse was that of a woman. The cop ordered him back, but Frank stood his ground. A stubborn breeze thwarted the cop’s efforts, lifting and sweeping back the sheet to expose her face. She still wore her glasses, though they had been knocked askew. An ugly bruise had purpled the skin beneath her left eye and her arm was twisted at an odd angle. Her blood glistened black in the distorted light. He stared, remembering the darkest day of his childhood.

  “What are you doing, pal? You belong here?”

  He looked up at the officer, startled. “I … I live on the next island
. I called and they said a detective would come by to see me.”

  “You a witness?”

  “No, but something happened, just before we heard the sirens.” He felt confused.

  “Okay, stay right there.” The cop approached a detective and gestured in Frank’s direction. The detective turned to look; so did another officer who had been stringing yellow crime scene tape across the roadway. Frank recognized him, one of the cops who had come to the house to search for his bedroom prowler. The patrolman leaned forward and spoke to the detectives, his voice low. They all shot another look his way.

  Kathleen was right, Frank thought. He shouldn’t have come.

  A loud sob and a cry. “Oh, no. Oh, no!” For the firsttime Frank saw a short balding man, hunched on the front steps of the house, ringed by rescue workers, neighbors and cops. The Lincoln blocked the man’s view of the dead woman.

  “My God,” Frank murmured. Sherman Howe. He knew the man. The woman must be Margery, Sherman’s wife. He had not recognized her on the bloody ground next to her driveway. He knew them both. She was a soprano, had studied in Rome when she was young. She had traded dreams of La Scala and the Met to marry and raise a family, but still sang in Christmas concerts and Miami Opera Guild productions. When the girls were small, he and Kathleen had taken them to see a production of Hansel and Gretel. Margery sang the role of the mother. The couple owned a hardware business. When they last talked, Sherman had said that with the children grown and gone, the house had become too big for them. They planned to sell, to move to a condo on the ocean, away from the traffic and excitement of South Beach.

  Too late.

  What happened? Frank wished Kathleen were with him. He turned to leave, to go home to her.

  “Hold it, Mister Douglas. I’m Detective DeVito. You wanted to see me?”

  The detective had a chubby, impatient face and a receding hairline, and held a small notebook.

  “I thought … Something happened over at our place, on Rivo Alto … A short time later we heard the sirens …” Frank broke off, distracted. “Don’t you think you should close those car doors? The lights and the door chimes will run the battery down.”

  The detective’s eyes were curious. “We think it best to leave things as they are for now.”

  “I know them,” Frank blurted. “I know the Howes.”

  “Is that so?”

  “She was an opera singer, a soprano. I live over there.” He gestured lamely toward home.

  “You said. What was it that happened?”

  “A prowler,” Frank said weakly, running his hand through his hair, “the same prowler I’ve seen before.”

  “A white man? Tall, slim, apparently strolls in and out of your locked house at will? That him?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, I don’t think your prowler has anything to do with our investigation here. But thank you for bringing it to our attention.” The detective turned away, exposing his bald spot and broad back.

  “And there was this car, right behind me.”

  The detective hesitated.

  “A Gran Prix with primer paint on the rear fender …”

  The detective turned back to Frank. “Where did you see this car?”

  “Behind me. Right on my bumper as I came home, onto the island.”

  “Occupied by?”

  “Two guys in the front seat.”

  “You get a look at ‘em?”

  “They had the windows down, I saw the driver as they turned west … The prowler …”

  “Toward DiLido?”

  “That’s right.” He now had the detective’s full attention.

  “By any chance, did you get a look at the tag number?”

  “It was hard to read. Had a blue neon border around it. Turquoise blue.”

  “Mister Douglas, we need to talk.”

  A small red sports car interrupted as it wheeled around the corner. Cops shouted as it braked hard just short of the yellow tape. The door flew open and a young woman in acrop top and a short skirt darted out, leaving the lights on, the engine running. She eluded officers and with a piercing scream, ran to the covered figure on the ground. A patrolman grasped her by both arms. Breaking away, she ran sobbing to the man on the steps. He stood up, feebly, and embraced her.

  “Mommy, Mommy,” the girl cried out. “What happened! My God, what happened?”

  “She’s gone,” the father moaned, and she began to scream again.

  “The daughter,” the detective muttered. “She musta inherited her mother’s lungs.”

  They talked in the brightly lit kitchen of a small, neat house on the dry side of the street, joined by a detective named Jarrett. He was thin and sharp-nosed with piercing eyes and a surprisingly gentle manner of speaking. “So this car was behind you as you were coming home,” he said. “Where exactly were you coming from?”

  “South Beach. From Joe’s.”

  The detectives exchanged elated glances.

  “Right, right, from Joe’s.” DeVito kept breaking away to spout indecipherable police jargon and numbers into his radio.

  “What happened tonight?” Frank asked, bewildered. “What happened to Sherman and Margery Howe?”

  “Okay.” DeVito placed his two-way radio on the table and leaned forward. “We been having a rash of driveway robberies lately. People with luxury cars trailed home from upscale South Beach restaurants and night spots, then attacked and robbed at gunpoint in their driveways. The perps have been getting more violent. A coupla victims got pistol-whipped or shot at. Tonight your neighbors over here, the Howes, go see a six-o’clock movie at the Byron Carlyle, thenstop for ice cream. They’re driving home, from the north end of town. Them getting hit didn’t fit the usual MO.

  “But now we hear that at the same time, you’re tooling home from Joe’s, as were two of our prior victims, and maybe the bad guys are following you. But just as they’re about to nail you in your driveway, you get spooked and haul ass. They back off and, whaddaya know, an easier target comes rolling into sight. Howe pulls into his driveway and gets outta the car to pick up the empty recycling bins out by the curb. While he’s doing that, looks like the bad guys pull into the driveway next door and run close to the ground around the hedge to where the wife is getting outta her side of the car. She probably doesn’t see ‘em until they’re on top of her.

  “They get her purse, but apparently she puts up a struggle trying to remove her Rolex. A fatal mistake. She gets smacked in the face with a gun, then shot. We won’t know until the medical examiner tells us, but it looks like the bullet mighta severed the main artery to her heart, because as she’s still trying to fight them off, she goes into shock, evidently due to massive internal bleeding. It happens so fast the husband doesn’t know what’s going on ‘til he hears the shot. He sees two figures run but doesn’t get a good look at ‘em. He goes to his wife as they cut through the hedge to their car. He thinks it was a Gran Prix, with blue neon around the plate.”

  “So the robbers, the killers, were in that car behind me?”

  “You’ve got it.”

  “If not for the prowler waving me away,” he whispered, “I could have been the one shot.”

  “No way of knowing.”

  None of this made any sense. “But why would robbers put neon on their car? Doesn’t it make them stand out?”

  “Never ceases to amaze me.” DeVito glanced at his partner, who shook his head. “These turds decide to dress theircar up to look sporty and contemporary. Next thing you know they’re having a crack attack and doing something stupid.

  “Now,” he said, getting down to business, “think you would recognize the car if you saw it?”

  “I might.”

  “Good, because a City of Miami unit has got a vehicle fitting the description stopped at Two and Nineteen. Wanna come with us to have a look?”

  “What about the occupants?” Jarrett said softly. “Could you recognize them?”

  Frank thought for a moment, rem
embering the lights, the profile. “Maybe,” he said slowly. “It was just a quick look under the lights on the bridge. All I saw of the passenger was his profile, he had a funky plaited hairstyle. But the driver … I thought I saw a glint, something shiny in his mouth.”

  The cops looked pleased and got to their feet. Then Frank’s watch began to chirp.

  “What’s that?” DeVito asked. “A beeper?”

  “No, my watch. Think I could get a glass of milk? I have to take my medication now.”

  “Jesus, Mary and Joseph.” DeVito rolled his eyes at his partner.

  Jarrett sighed unhappily. “What are you taking?”

  Frank unzipped his black bag. The detectives stared at the impressive array of vials inside.

  “For my heart.” He displayed his bracelet. “I’m a transplant patient.”

  “Oh. That’s a relief,” DeVito said, “as long as it’s not something from a shrink.”

  The usually quiet street was still cluttered with official vehicles, alive with the business of sudden death, as theystepped out the front door. Kathleen was coming up the stairs.

  “They said you were in here with the detectives.” She looked frightened. The night was chilly and she wore a sweater over her shoulders.

  “Robbers followed me, Kath. They killed Margery Howe.”

  She turned to the detectives. “He’s had major surgery,” she told them. “He has to take his medication.”

  “I’ve taken it,” he said impatiently.

  “Let’s go home now.” She reached for his arm.

  “He’s coming with us,” DeVito said.

  “Oh, no!” Her hand flew to her mouth.

  “Nothing to be alarmed about,” the detective said. “He’s helping us out.”

  “We’ll take good care of him,” Jarrett promised.

  “That’s the car, the same car that was behind me,” Frank said without hesitation as the detectives inched their unmarked past a dark blue Gran Prix outside a small grocery store.