Burn

by John Lutz

  “You think he’s lying, Fred?” Morgan sounded surprised.

  “I didn’t at first, but now I’m not so sure.”

  “Hmm. That’s odd. I’ve developed a feel for these things over the years, and I’d bet the ranch and all the livestock he’s telling it straight. For some reason the Cloy broad is out to get him.”

  “What if she’s the one telling the truth?”

  “Then he kills her. That’s the way the law works, Fred. Can’t arrest a man for thinking about a crime—he’s got to commit it.”

  “Kind of tough on the potential victim,” Carver said.

  “I’m not saying it isn’t. I’m saying it’s impossible to arrest somebody who hasn’t done anything. And that’s the way it has to be. Listen, Fred, I’ve seen plenty of stalkers, and this Brant isn’t one of them. I’m convinced of it.”

  “You must be, or you wouldn’t have sent him to me.”

  “That’s something to remember,” Morgan said. He sounded miffed that Carver would doubt his cop’s instincts. “I might be retired, but some things don’t change. When I hear a man’s story, it counts for something if I feel in my gut he’s telling the truth.”

  “It counts for plenty,” Carver assured him. “Or I wouldn’t have taken on Brant as a client.”

  After breaking the connection, he laid the phone on the floor beside his chair and lit another cigar, watching the smoke he exhaled roll under and off to the side. The breeze had shifted and was blowing in off the ocean, cooling the hot sand and rattling palm fronds to make them sound as if they were tapping out a complex code. The surf whispered like a conspirator on the beach, but neither it nor the palms had the answers Carver needed.

  He sat there, smoking and thinking, until dark.

  When Beth arrived he was in bed asleep with the light on and the front page of the Gazette-Dispatch spread out over his chest. He awoke when he heard the crunch of her car’s tires on the sandy soil and gravel as she parked outside the cottage.

  He lay half in the world of sleep and listened to the door open and close, the thunking of her footsteps in the nighttime silence as she crossed the plank floor. Water ran in the kitchen, then in the bathroom. When her footfalls got closer, he opened his eyes halfway and watched her undress. She made graceful motions out of the simple act of peeling off her clothes, almost like choreographed dance. Did she know he was watching?

  Wearing only blue bikini panties, she approached him and gently removed the newspaper from his chest, then switched off the reading lamp. The room became dim in the moonlight that softened all objects. The window was open and the ocean breeze pushed in and played over Carver’s bare chest and arms, suddenly and comfortably cool now that the newspaper had been removed. He could hear the night surf, and somehow it seemed like the sound of the gentle breeze.

  The bed creaked and he felt the mattress shift as she lowered her long body down to lie beside him.

  “You asleep, Fred?”

  “No. I was watching you undress. You don’t look pregnant.”

  “I don’t feel it, either, right now. Makes it easier to be in denial.” She extended a hand and stared at it. “I just quit shaking. As I turned onto the road to the cottage, a van came roaring out of nowhere and almost forced me into the ditch.”

  “The driver probably thought you were the police and panicked. Teenagers have been parking there to make out, since it’s dark and secluded.”

  “ ‘Make out,’ huh? You’re dating yourself, Fred.”

  “Well, it’s the age of safe sex.”

  “Couldn’t prove it by me,” she said, and leaned over and kissed his forehead, then dropped back onto her pillow. “I’m as pregnant as if it were nineteen-forty.”

  “Hubba, hubba,” he said. “What kind of day did Marla Cloy have?”

  “Normal, I’d say. She worked until late afternoon, then ran some errands in that little car of hers. In the evening she ate supper alone at a steakhouse—no steak, though, just a baked potato with a godawful assortment of goodies heaped over it till it had more calories than steak. After that she went home, came out half an hour later with a basket of clothes, and drove to a coin laundry. It was about nine o’clock when she went home and stayed there. I could see her through the window, folding and putting away clothes. Then she watched TV for a while and went to bed. Lights went out about ten-thirty. I hung around another half hour to make sure she was down for the night, then I left. Stopped for some doughnuts and slaw and drove back here.”

  “Doughnuts and slaw?”

  “Sounded good. Was good.”

  “Marla still reading her Rendell novel?” he asked.

  “Nope. She was absorbed in a different novel in the Laundromat. Something by Robert Parker.” The mattress shifted again and she lay on her side in the shadows, facing him, propped on her elbow, her chin cupped in her hand. “The whole thing was too damned normal. Fred, I got a sort of sense about the woman.”

  “A sense?”

  “There’s something not genuine there.”

  “Maybe not. But I’m getting a different sense of Joel Brant, too. I thought Marla might be setting him up so she could kill him and plead self-defense. Now I’m not so sure. What if he’s using me to help him set up an alibi for himself? Maybe he is the one doing the persecuting, just as Marla claims, and he’s building a record of her having harassed him, so he can murder her and successfully plead self-defense.”

  Beth was quiet for a moment, then she said, “Damn it, Fred, you almost sold me on the notion that Brant might be an innocent victim. After watching Marla Cloy, I think you were right—he could be the one being harassed. Now that I’ve moved to the position Marla might be playing a double game, you’ve moved to thinking Brant might be lying to you, using you to help set up his alibi.”

  “It’s a possibility,” Carver said, “and I don’t like being used. One way or the other, I’m going to lay this thing bare and find out the truth.”

  Beth laughed, still grimly amused by their switched positions on Marla and Brant. “You’ve got too simplified and moralistic a view of the world, Fred. The real truth’s sometimes too ambiguous for human understanding, and maybe that’s the way it is here. If these two people don’t want to level with each other or anyone else, it could be we’ll simply never know the truth, despite your compulsion to dig and dig until everything’s revealed. Who’s doing what to whom, why they’re doing it. . . there’s more than one reason for most things. Brant and Marla might have lost sight of the truth themselves.”

  He didn’t see how, but then there might be a lot he didn’t know.

  “Sometimes,” Carver said, “the truth is gigantic and simple and so obvious we don’t recognize it at first. Or there can be some of that denial you mentioned, if the truth’s too terrible to bear. We all prefer to think we’re on the side of the angels.”

  “Hmm. You been reading the Old Testament, Fred?”

  “I talked to Vic Morgan on the phone today. He thinks Brant’s on the level, but it’s possible Morgan’s judgment is skewed against Marla because she’s a woman.”

  “Oh, you’ve been reading Naomi Wolf.”

  “Maybe Marla’s toying with us,” Carver said. “Poking her nose in a detective novel while you were tailing her.”

  “The irony wasn’t lost on me. That’s one reason I think she might be taking everybody for a ride on her delusion. Or maybe she’s got a solid, old-fashioned motive for setting up Brant. Revenge, money, publicity. There could be a lucrative book contract in this for her if she claims she had to kill him in self-defense because the system failed her.”

  Carver hadn’t considered that one. Another layer of possible meaning.

  “She might not care if Brant’s hired you,” Beth said. “It could be presented as another example of male harassment. If Brant were dead, it would be your word against hers as to why you were hired. She might be using you, Fred, if Brant isn’t.”

  Carver lay for a while with his hands behind his head,
staring up at the dark ceiling, listening to the gentle rush of the surf.

  “I don’t like being used,” he said again.

  Beth moved close to him. He could feel the heat of her body as she leaned in and kissed his cheek. Her breath was warm. Her fingers brushed his chest, then trailed lower.

  “That right?” she said.

  “Wait a minute, I’ll get a condom.”

  “Fred.”

  16

  CARVER WAS ON Jacaranda Lane at ten the next morning.

  This time he parked the Olds directly in front of Marla Cloy’s house. The maroon Toyota was parked in a patch of sunlight in the driveway, though there was no sign of life around the house. The drapes were closed and the green awnings drooped over blank windows. The lineup of dead plants on the small concrete porch hadn’t been moved. The cracks in the faded yellow stucco oddly gave the house the look of permanence, as if it had obtained a patina of long-ago minor damage and wear as it settled in for centuries. Age-checked oil paintings had that look about them, as did ancient mausoleums.

  It was warm but not yet brutally hot, and a slight breeze kicked up to pop the house’s green awnings like sails and ruffle the palm trees that lined the sad avenue. A good morning to sleep in late with the windows open. Maybe that’s what Marla Cloy was doing, escaping into sleep from her daytime nightmare.

  Or maybe not escaping anything and not dreaming at all, sleeping the sleep of the not-so-innocent.

  Carver thought it would be fine if he woke her. Then she might not be thinking clearly enough to maintain whatever facade she could be hiding behind. The cobwebs of sleep might reveal more than they concealed.

  He’d decided it was time to confront Marla directly. If she really was persecuting Brant with false claims of harassment, knowing that he’d hired help might prevent her from continuing. At least make her think twice before doing anything bold.

  And if Brant really was harassing her, and was using Carver in whatever scheme he was working, Carver might be able to find out why.

  He limped up onto the porch and pressed the doorbell button with his cane. The button had been painted over, and he had doubts as to whether it still worked, but he heard faintly from inside the house what sounded like the old triple-note NBC signal chimes. It brought to mind hours spent listening to the twilight of radio drama when he was a boy, the tiny arched dial glowing feebly in the dark.

  The drapes in the window to the left of the porch moved a few inches to one side, then back.

  Then the door opened. Carver had passed inspection. Meaning he wasn’t Brant.

  Marla was wearing cutoff Levi’s with a tucked-in white T-shirt with BEYOND BITCH lettered on it. She was barefoot, and Carver was fascinated by the perfection of her squarish feet with their pedicured bright red nails. For the first time in his life he wondered if he might be a latent foot fetishist. Her dark hair was slightly mussed and her eyes—so deep a blue they were almost purple—looked lazy and sleepy, and bruised because of their odd color, which seemed to reflect on the flesh around them. Beneath the bleached and stringy unhemmed cutoffs, her legs were shapely and tan, so free of blemish that sheathing them in nylon would be redundant. She smelled un-perfumed but clean, a fresh, soapy scent. Carver noticed that her hair behind her ears and around the back of her neck was wet. She might have just gotten out of the bathtub or shower. Maybe she bathed as often as she washed her clothes.

  He told her who he was and that he was working for Joel Brant.

  She didn’t blink, but her eyes looked a little less drowsy. Close up, she was a lot more impressive. He thought he saw some of her mother’s strength in her features, a beauty that hinted at character.

  “He’s not allowed to come near me, so he sent someone?” she asked, but she didn’t seem afraid.

  “No, Joel doesn’t know I’m here. I decided on my own to talk to you and see if this thing can be settled.”

  A smile was slow to form but quick to disappear on her fresh-scrubbed features. “He wants money, right?”

  “Not any more than the rest of us. His story is that he never heard of you until you began filing complaints about him with the police. He’s puzzled, and he hired me to find out why you’re harassing him,”

  A wasp was buzzing around the dead potted plants. The morning was beginning to heat up and get uncomfortable.

  “May I come in?” Carver asked. He knew the sun wasn’t doing his bald pate any good.

  She stared appraisingly at him, at his stiff leg and his cane.

  “I’m allergic to wasp stings,” he lied.

  She came to her decision about him and nodded, then stepped back to make extra room for him to pass, since he walked with a cane.

  There didn’t seem to be any air-conditioning running, but the house was still cool from last night. The living room was dim and full of overstuffed blue furniture clustered around an oval, woven rug that contained every known color and so went with any decor. On one wall was a crude bookcase fashioned from cinder blocks and unfinished pine boards. It held a small stereo and a lot of tattered paperback books. A wooden table stood near the window. On it were an old portable Smith-Corona electric typewriter, a stack of vegetarian magazines, a thick paperback combination dictionary and thesaurus, a bottle of liquid white-out, and two plastic in-out trays that contained typing paper and long sheets of yellow paper from a legal pad. The top sheet had writing in pencil on it. There was a lamp with a black shade on a back corner of the table, plugged into a long, frayed extension cord that ran across the floor beneath the window and disappeared behind the bookcase. A fire hazard.

  “I see you’re a writer,” Carver said, lowering himself into the soft, sprung sofa.

  “I’m sure you already knew that,” Marla said. She walked over and opened the drapes so light flooded in over the worktable and made the room much brighter.

  “I’d heard,” he admitted. He pointed at the magazines with his cane, remembering her devouring a hamburger at McDonald’s. “Are you a vegetarian?” he asked, giving her a chance to lie.

  “No, I’m doing an article on it, though. Some people theorize that since humans are omnivorous by nature, being a vegetarian might hold hidden long-term health hazards.”

  “Oh? That’s interesting. What do you think?”

  She smiled. “I’m omnivorous.”

  She sat down in a bulging blue chair that matched the sofa and crossed her tan legs, pumped a perfect foot a few times. Deep inside him Carver felt a tugging sensation, as if something in him were attached to her toe by a string. He was undeniably attracted to this woman and wondered if in some complex way it had to do with Beth’s pregnancy. Or maybe it was because she might be extremely dangerous. Beth had once pointed out to him that he was drawn to dangerous women. Well, he wasn’t the only one with that failing; there were a lot of victims strewn along the landscape between Delilah and Lorena Bobbitt.

  “Why are you doing this to Joel Brant?” Carver asked.

  “I’m not. He’s doing it to me.”

  “Why would he? He says he doesn’t even know you.”

  “He knows me now. As to why he’d harass me, it’s well known how some men become fixated on a woman. She doesn’t have to be beautiful or behave in any particular manner. It all originates in the stalker, not in the object of his compulsion. She only has to strike some chord in his sick mind, and he chooses her for his victim.”

  “Most men aren’t like that,” Carver said. “Joel Brant doesn’t strike me as an exception.”

  Again the smile, confident, superior. “I’m not surprised you don’t believe me. You’re a man. Only women really understand this kind of all-too-common oppression and victimization.”

  “I didn’t say I disbelieved you.”

  “Yes, you did. Indirectly.”

  She might be right; he couldn’t recall. “I came here to listen to your story,” he said. “That means I must have harbored some tiny doubt about Joel’s.”

  “My story is that I turned
around one day and Brant was there, and I was in the crosshairs, where I’ve been ever since. He’s stalking me. It’s a familiar story, but too often the woman being stalked isn’t believed until she’s proved her point by dying.”

  “You’re an enigma,” Carver said.

  “Maybe I am. Men can’t stand an enigma. They have to try to figure it out, to master it so they can discard it and move on.”

  He was getting tired of her talking like a 1970s militant feminist, but he didn’t tell her so. “It sounds as if you’ve had some bad experiences.”

  “Some. They made me realistic, but they didn’t make me paranoid or delusionary. I’m not imagining Joel Brant is a threat to me. He showed me a knife and said he was going to kill me.”

  “He denies that.”

  “Can he say where he was at the time it happened?”

  “Yes. He was at the grocery store the same time you were, but that could be because you made it a point to be there at the same time he was.”

  “Uh-huh. As I said, I’m not surprised you don’t believe me.”

  Being a man, Carver thought. “It’s not a gender thing,” he said.

  “Sure it isn’t.”

  Trying not to show his irritation, he decided he could never convince her that he wasn’t a misogynist. “Are you writing about this?”

  “This what?”

  “You and Joel Brant.”

  She laughed bitterly, “Sure, I’m persecuting an innocent stranger so I can do an article.”

  “A book, maybe.”

  “I’m afraid not, Mr. Carver. But I’m not at all shocked that you’d think so. Did you ever consider that Joel Brant might be writing a book? You don’t have to be a pro to be published.”

  Carver smiled. “You’ve got me.” He tapped soundlessly on the woven rug with the tip of his cane. From the rear of the house he could hear a soft humming now, probably a window air conditioner. “Do you feel safer now that a restraining order’s been issued?”

  “Safer,” she said, “but not safe.”

  “If Brant were really stalking you, why would he hire me?”