Burn

by John Lutz

  “We should have coordinated our efforts,” she said. “I expect you were there for the same reason I was.”

  “Reference room?”

  “Right. To check the Gazette-Dispatch back issues on the Brant accident.”

  He nodded.

  “Duplication of effort,” she said.

  “We screwed up, all right,” Carver said, squinting out at the sun glancing off the calm sea. “One of us should have been on Marla or Brant. She claimed Brant threatened her again. This time at a McDonald’s near her house, at the same time I was looking at microfilm.”

  “Any witnesses?”

  “Of course not. It probably didn’t happen.”

  “You’re coming around to my way of thinking, Fred. Marla Cloy might not be a typical harassed female, though I confess I can’t quite figure out her game.”

  Carver didn’t remind her that that originally had been his approach to the case, the reason Joel Brant had hired him. Then he’d drifted away from that theory; maybe Brant was using him and in a clever double game really was a threat to Marla. It might be either way. And now ... he didn’t know.

  It was complicated and confusing, just as Beth predicted it would be. He didn’t remind her of that, either. It was best not to push a pregnant woman who’d driven miles for crackers.

  “The accident must have been terrible for Brant,” she said. “The decapitation, the fact that he was driving and had alcohol in his bloodstream. It might have been enough to unhinge him mentally. Make him unpredictable.”

  Carver stared at her. “Good Lord, are we switching positions on this again?”

  “I never had a firm position,” she said.

  “Oh? I thought yours was the feminist position.”

  “You don’t understand. You’re as much a feminist as I am, Fred.”

  That surprised him.

  “You’re a humanist,” she explained. “That’s somebody who believes in a life directed toward the well-being of other people. You might not know it, but that’s why you run around like a combination bloodhound and pit bull, searching out truths that will provide the gift of justice.”

  “I thought it was my fee,” he said.

  “One reason, anyway. A humanist is automatically a feminist. A feminist isn’t automatically a humanist, but should be.” She switched off her computer and closed its lid, then carefully set it down on the plank floor beside her chair. “There’s something else I don’t have a firm position on.”

  He knew what she was going to say, and dreaded hearing it. Time was nudging them into a corner, forcing a decision before it was too late. You delayed in some things and you belonged to fate.

  “I went into Del Moray for another reason,” she said. “I made an appointment for next week at an abortion clinic.”

  A coldness moved through him. “I thought you said you were undecided.”

  “I am. But you can’t just walk in and have the procedure the same day. The only other clinic in Del Moray closed last year after threats and demonstrations by pro-lifers. Somebody threw a Molotov cocktail through a window. It didn’t ignite, but it injured one of the patients. The doctors there called it quits, so there’s a long waiting list of patients.”

  “Jesus!” Carver said.

  “They say He has something to do with it. How do you feel about this, lover?”

  He was numb. “I’m not sure. I can’t deny you’re the one carrying the baby, so it’s your decision.”

  “I know that. But I don’t want to make it without you.”

  He looked over at her and smiled. “Should I force you to carry a child to term? Is that really an option for me?”

  “No,” she admitted. “I just want you to know I don’t take it lightly. The people demonstrating in front of the clinics ... I see their point, Fred. At least the ones who are nonviolent. Don’t agree with it, but I sure see it.”

  “You’re saying this is a close call.”

  “Yes. And I’m sure it is for most women. Remember my telling you about the breech birth the last time I was pregnant? About Roberto’s son strangling on the umbilical cord?”

  “I remember.”

  “I was secretly glad, Fred. I didn’t want to bring a child into that world of drugs and cheap money and violence. The illicit drug business itself seduces and destroys people like a narcotic. Money’s addictive. Money’s a drug. In the recovery room afterward, I told the doctor I was glad the child died.”

  “Did you tell Roberto?”

  “No. He wanted a son. Afterward, when he learned what I’d said, he wanted to kill me. Others intervened, and I went away for a long time. Eventually he swore he forgave me, but I don’t think he ever really did.”

  “He didn’t kill you,” Carver said. “That’s as much forgiveness as you could expect from Roberto Gomez.”

  “I don’t often talk about those years. There’s no point to it. But I remember my guilt and fear. I don’t want to decide alone.”

  “I don’t know if I can help you,” Carver said.

  “Maybe you can’t. But I wanted you to know ahead of time I might abort. At least I’ve told you that. We’re in it together.”

  Carver watched a sailboat far out in the sunny haze. “I don’t know what to do,” he said helplessly.

  “Now you know how I feel, though,” she said. “I wanted you to understand.”

  He reached over and held her hand, watching sunlight glimmer and move like inexorable time over the ocean. The waves foamed higher and higher on the beach as the tide slowly rose, reminding of things gestating, always. Life was as persistent as death.

  The cordless phone chirped alongside her chair and her hand jumped beneath his. She answered the phone, then gave it to Carver.

  Desoto.

  “A few pieces of news, amigo.” “Good or bad?”

  “It’s not that simple. What do you think this is, Disney World? The big man who beat up on you is a giant will-o’-the wisp, which in itself is odd. But he might be Achilles Jones, out of Georgia. Not much is known about him even by the Georgia law, other than that he rides a big Harley motorcycle and is rumored to have killed people. They say he has some sort of mental deficiency, the IQ of a child. People hire him for things like beating up other people, and he no doubt gets his money in other ways, but he has no police record. No one seems to know where he came from. One day he was just there. Georgia State Patrol heard about him, even pursued him once after he beat a truck driver almost to death in a motel restaurant. That’s one of the places they got his name and description, and an idea he wasn’t quite right in the head. He’s right in the body, though. The driver he beat up used to be an NFL lineman. So Jones is genuinely tough even in his weight class. Nature compensates, I guess.”

  “Was he registered at the motel?” Carver asked.

  “Yes. As Achilles Jones of Atlanta. They never heard of him there, though. Handwriting like a child’s, and he spelled it ‘Atlantis.’ The address he put down doesn’t exist. He’s probably a thug-for-hire without roots. There are freelancers like that, though usually not so conspicuous. We’re checking to see if anyone like him was sprung from a mental institution.”

  “I doubt if they rode Harleys in Atlantis. If there really was an Atlantis. If there really is an Achilles Jones.”

  “Slow progress, I admit.”

  “Hardly progress at all. We know nothing about the giant in my office except who he might be pretending to be.”

  “It’s more than we knew before.”

  “Hardly qualifies as news, though,” Carver said. “What’s your other scoop?”

  “A body was found a few hours ago in a rental car in a parking lot downtown. Little guy dressed like a Wall Street banker down on his luck. At first the lot attendant thought he was sleeping, then he saw that his head was turned the wrong way so he was staring backward. His neck was broken.”

  Carver felt his breath turn icy in his chest. “Charley Spotto,” he said.

  “That’s right. Did yo
u know him?”

  Carver told him he did know Spotto, and told him how.

  “You’re a strong swimmer, amigo,” Desoto said, “but you’re in shark-infested waters.”

  “Achilles Jones is the shark that killed Spotto,” Carver said.

  “Maybe. He’s number one on our list right now. I’m afraid it’s not a very long list. We need to keep each other informed on this matter.”

  “Don’t worry about that from this end,” Carver said. “I’m the one with the most to lose.”

  After hanging up, he told Beth what Desoto had said, saving news of Spotto’s death until last.

  She looked at him with a kind of deep sadness in her dark eyes. He wondered if she was weighing his world as she had Roberto Gomez’s.

  Then she stood up. “I’m going inside and get a beer, Fred. You want one?”

  He told her yes. She hardly ever drank beer.

  The screen door slammed behind her and he stared out at the ocean. Life and death.

  26

  IN BETH’S CAR AGAIN, Carver parked on Jacaranda Lane.

  Less than an hour later, Marla emerged from her house. She was wearing dark slacks and a lacy white blouse that crisscrossed in some way in front and was tied at the small of her back. Her oversize purse was slung securely across her body by its thick strap and she was carrying a plaid tote bag.

  She passed out of sight for a moment while she went to her car in the driveway. Carver could see the rear of the little Toyota. Its exhaust pipe vibrated and sent out a brief puff of oily black smoke as the engine was started.

  Feeling rather foolish, he slouched down out of sight as the Toyota began to move. Marla would be looking over her shoulder as she backed the car from her driveway, increasing the odds that she might see him. And though she would probably drive toward busy and accessible Shell Avenue, there was the possibility she’d point the Toyota in Carver’s direction and pass him where he sat parked by one of the frazzled-looking palm trees that lined the block like tired sentries.

  His bad leg didn’t want to fit beneath the dashboard, so he had to edge over at an awkward angle and bend his neck uncomfortably. Looking up at palm fronds silhouetted jaggedly against the cloudless sky, he listened to the sound of the Toyota’s clattering engine.

  When he was sure it was moving away from him, he sat up straight, started the LeBaron, and followed as he rubbed the back of his neck.

  Marla turned right on Shell and drove past the McDonald’s where she claimed she’d last been threatened by Joel Brant. A few blocks down Shell, she stopped at the Good Times Liquor Emporium, went inside after locking her car securely, and soon came out carrying what could only be a brown-bagged bottle.

  Carver had brought along his Minolta 35-millimeter camera with a 200-millimeter zoom lens. If Marla claimed to have been elsewhere at the time he was following her, he wanted a photographic record to prove she was lying. The photos, along with his statement and statements from the liquor store clerk and from wherever else she might stop, should accomplish that. He hurriedly focused the lens and got two quick shots of her with the liquor store in the background as she was walking toward her car. Then he did his unseemly scooting low in the seat again, his stiff leg angled beneath the dashboard and his neck and the left side of his head crammed against the door, as she backed out of her parking slot in front of the liquor store. He was getting too old for these kinds of contortions, and he found himself wondering briefly what he’d do when and if he no longer practiced his arcane trade.

  He didn’t think Marla would take the bottle home, and he was right. A few seconds later he was following her again through the brisk traffic on Shell, in the same direction she’d been driving.

  Within ten minutes, he knew where she was going.

  He watched the Toyota’s brake lights flare as she parked on Fourteenth Street across from Willa Krull’s apartment.

  He eased the LeBaron to the curb half a block away, where he had a clear view but wouldn’t be noticeable.

  Carrying the plaid tote, possibly now containing the brown bag, Marla crossed the street and walked beneath the rusty iron trellis of bedraggled roses. She was halfway around the dry pond and fountain with its defaced swordfish statuary when Willa Krull came out of the building to meet her. Willa had on white shorts, revealing spindly legs, and a pink T-shirt yanked tight at the waist and knotted elaborately on her thin right hip.

  The two women stood alongside the ruined pond talking for a few minutes, still-life figures in the genteel decay of the front courtyard. Then Marla reached into the plaid tote bag and handed Willa a large envelope like the one she’d given her in the hotel lounge the first time Carver had seen them together. Another article to be copyedited and word processed?

  Marla reached into the bag again and lifted out what appeared to be a wine bottle. She gave it to Willa, and both women laughed and chatted a while longer. Carver used the camera to get a shot of them, then backed up the lens to include more of the building to establish locale.

  He thought they’d part there by the dysfunctional fountain and that would be that, but a few minutes later Marla followed Willa into the building.

  He could see the windows of Willa’s apartment from where he was parked, but the lowering evening sun reflected off them in a golden glare that made it impossible to see inside.

  More waiting. It was what his line of work was mostly about.

  He switched on the radio and listened to an all-talk station while he sat watching the apartment building. A listener called in and claimed that the evidence indicated the same person was behind the J.F.K. and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations, and that person was Charles Manson. It was something Carver had never considered.

  In the soft light of dusk, Willa Krull and Marla came out of the building together. Marla no longer had the wine bottle or plaid tote bag, or else they were stuffed down inside her big purse. She and Willa stood talking again almost where they had stood before, Willa raised a hand slowly, tentatively touching her mousy brown hair above her ear, as if reassuring herself of an elaborate and delicate bouffant that had the fragility of meringue.

  Marla said something to her that made her smile and duck her head. She turned and started to move away, but Marla reached out and touched her shoulder, stopping her and drawing her back without any discernible physical effort. Then she kissed her swiftly but firmly on the mouth.

  Willa pulled away again, twisting her body with unexpected grace and dexterity, but she was laughing. Marla said something else to her, then turned and walked beneath the rose trellis and toward the street and her car. She paused once, looked back, and waved to Willa.

  Willa stood motionless with her hands at her sides, watching Marla as she crossed Fourteenth Street, climbed into the little Toyota, then drove away.

  Carver stayed where he was. He couldn’t follow Marla without driving past Willa and risking being recognized by her.

  He waited a few minutes after Marla’s car had disappeared. Willa still hadn’t moved.

  Finally he started the LeBaron and backed it into a driveway, then emerged to aim the gleaming white hood in the opposite direction, away from the apartment building.

  As he drove away he caught a glimpse of Willa in the outside mirror, still standing motionless by the dry fountain in the amorphous shadows of dusk.

  27

  “I DON’T SEE what it changes,” Beth said beside him in bed that night. They were both lying on their backs, contemplating the day’s events as the warm breeze from the window played over them.

  “Marla’s apparently a lesbian,” Carver said.

  “Maybe they’re only good friends and were being affectionate.”

  “No, it wasn’t that kind of kiss.”

  “That bothers you?”

  “It surprises me.”

  Carver stared into the darkness. He’d never been able to bring himself to be judgmental about people’s sexual orientations. As long as everything was consensual
and no children or animals were involved, it was all right with him. If any of it was evil and harmful to society, as the fervently devout proclaimed, it was probably a lesser evil than a society that policed its bedrooms.

  “Why’s it surprise you, Fred?”

  “I’m not sure. I think because if Marla is being stalked by Brant, I’d assumed it evolved out of some form of sexual attraction. Something she must have done, some kind of behavior that maybe even she wasn’t aware of that turned him on to her. That seems less likely if she isn’t interested in men.”

  He heard Beth give a low chuckle. “You mean if he’s after her to kill her, it’s partly her fault?”

  “No, I wasn’t talking about blame. It’s just that sexual attraction is a two-way current.” He knew what Beth was thinking, knew he was only getting more and more entangled in his inadequate male rhetoric. But damn it, he didn’t mean to blame the victim, didn’t want to sound like the male chauvinist pig Beth had recently told him he wasn’t. It was just that if a woman was attractive to men, it was sometimes because she was attracted to men. It was a subtle but powerful electricity that arced between people. He was only talking about odds, but it was impossible sometimes not to be misunderstood.

  Beth said, “Oink.”

  “Meant for me, I suppose,” Carver said glumly.

  She touched his bare arm, leaving her hand there. “OK, I’m being too rough on you, Fred. I told you before, you’re actually a feminist, and I meant it. Though you do have lapses. But even if Marla’s sexual orientation might somehow change Brant’s motive—or Marla’s, considering she might have been trying to lure him into a trap because of some sort of black-widow complex—it still doesn’t get us any closer to knowing who’s the genuine stalker. For that matter, Marla might be bisexual. And have you thought about Gloria Bream?”

  “Thought what about her? You mean her sexual orientation?”

  “No. I guess I’m not really sure what I mean.”

  The effects of pregnancy, Carver figured. “The other woman, Willa Krull, told me she was a rape survivor.”