Scorcher

by John Lutz

  “There were witnesses in the Pompano Beach killing, weren’t there?”

  “In a way. Two. But they saw very little. They heard more. They swear the killer was arguing over returning something he’d bought there, but they don’t know what.”

  “A hell of a motive for a killing,” Carver said.

  “That depends. The police psychiatrist thinks the murderer might be a schizophrenic with paranoid delusions.”

  “I’m not surprised. I don’t want to hear any psychobabble. It’s out of vogue for good reason.”

  “I’ll tell you, I had a cousin like that, Carver. Really thought people were out to get him personally, and saw great danger in it. I saw him fly into a rage and hurl coins into a clerk’s face because he got too many pennies in his change. If he’d had a flamethrower, he’d have used it.”

  “But who walks around carrying a flamethrower?”

  “Someone who gets mad, stays mad, and goes back to the source of that anger. He’d give the victim one last chance, according to the psychiatrist, and if the victim wouldn’t give him what he wanted, the killer would feel perfectly justified in taking almost any action.”

  “You’re telling me Chipper might have been killed because some mental case wanted revenge for being shortchanged and my son was in the way.”

  “Or something like that. You know the trivial motives for murder, Carver. We’ve both seen people killed for sport. Thing is, this killer might have feared Chipper as a witness.”

  It was possible, Carver knew. Maybe probable. Only someone unbalanced would kill in such a bizarre manner. So why shouldn’t the motive seem bizarre to everyone but the killer? But it could be a mistake early in a case to put too much stock in what a police psychiatrist theorized. Psychiatrists were mistaken much of the time when they had their subjects sitting in front of them and cooperating.

  “Shrinks are more interested in speculation than in justice,” Carver said. “They don’t seem concerned with right and wrong.”

  “Or else they know how hard it is sometimes to distinguish one from the other.”

  “You checking pyromaniac cases on file?” Carver asked.

  “We are, but I’m told this doesn’t necessarily relate to fascination with flame. More a vengeance thing, a desire to make the antagonist suffer. Maybe a metaphor for hell, eh?”

  “A religious crank?” Florida had a surfeit of those.

  “Could be,” Desoto said. “Legwork’s being done.” He reached across the table and patted Carver’s wrist. “I’m on this, amigo, even if it’s out of my precise jurisdiction.”

  “I know you are,” Carver said. He got his hard walnut cane from where it was leaning against the wall, set its rubber-encased tip firmly on the floor, and stood up. He managed this smoothly. Carver’s left knee had taken a holdup man’s bullet that had shattered bone and cartilage. That was what had knocked him off the Orlando police force and given him a knee frozen at a thirty-degree angle for life. He’d undergone physical therapy, and he still swam every day. That, and dragging his lower body around, had lent his upper body a strength that sometimes surprised him.

  “Where are you going?” Desoto asked.

  “To see Laura. Then I’m going to buy a bottle and take it home with me.”

  “To be with Edwina?”

  “I’m driving up to my cottage.”

  “You should go to Edwina,” Desoto said solemnly.

  “No. She’ll understand. I have to be alone for a while. That’s the way I feel.”

  “Like after you were shot, eh?”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “Oh? Like how, then?”

  “I’m going to find the bastard,” Carver said. “I’m going to kill him.”

  “That won’t work, amigo. Won’t help you. It can’t.”

  But Desoto didn’t know about the thing that lived beneath Carver’s calm surface, the beast that goaded as it grew stronger. It made everything else irrelevant. It was huge. It filled the hollowness of grief with purpose. There was no room in Carver for anything other than his hunger for revenge. “I can make it work.”

  “And afterward?”

  “Afterward shit,” Carver said.

  He limped from the restaurant, dragging his images and his horror and his quest out into the brutal heat.

  Desoto followed him to the door and called after him, “You oughta reconsider this, don’t you think?”

  But Carver hadn’t really considered it in the first place. He was just going to do it.

  Chapter 3

  LAURA WAS STAYING at the Carib Terrace, a small but well-kept motel on Pompano Beach just north of Fort Lauderdale. Carver found her in an upper room that was luxuriously furnished, with a kitchenette, and an angled glass wall that afforded a wide view of the beach and the glimmering ocean beyond. On the counter by the sink were a half-empty coffee cup and a glazed doughnut with one bite out of it—the remains of Laura’s abortive attempt at breakfast.

  She looked better now, Carver thought, as he settled into a soft chair near the glass doors that led to a balcony. More her old self, a pixie with boundless strength and energy. Though she was subdued, the fierce vitality he remembered in her was reawakening. She had more color in her cheeks and more light in her eyes, and she’d made a pass at arranging her short black hair. The hairdo was flattened in back; she’d been lying down. She was still lean, with traces of the natural athlete’s lithe movements; the middle-aged set of her face hadn’t entirely caught up with her body. Time was taking her by degrees, toying with her.

  She sat down on the edge of the bed, opposite Carver, her knees pressed together beneath her dark skirt. He wondered if she’d viewed Chipper’s body at the morgue. He hoped not. His identification, along with the dental-work findings, should be sufficient to establish positive I.D.

  She said, “Yesterday I was worried about him growing out of his clothes, and today he’s dead.”

  Carver didn’t know what to say to that; he cleared his throat and used the tip of his cane to make quarter-sized depressions in the deep-pile carpet. Then he looked out at the beach. A speedboat towing a water-skier circled in too close to shore, angering a few swimmers who’d ventured beyond the breakers. One of them waved a fist at the boat, which swung wide and made another pass. The drone of its outboard motor, like that of an angry insect, found its way into the room.

  “Sam will be here soon,” Laura said. “We’ll take Chipper back to Saint Louis to be buried.”

  Carver turned away from the ocean view. “I’ll fly up for the funeral. You need help with the arrangements?”

  “No.” She seemed distant, lost somewhere in her vast grief. Carver wanted to comfort her but didn’t know how. He was surprised to find himself angry at the thought of Sam Devine holding her and nursing her through the inevitable eruption of sorrow and tears. It was Carver’s son, their son, who had died.

  “Where’s Ann?” Carver asked.

  “I put her on a plane this morning. She’s with my father.”

  “She all right?”

  “Yeah. So far. She doesn’t understand what happened yet.”

  “I’m going to find out who did this,” Carver said. “I’m going to make him pay.”

  She glanced up at him, held his gaze with her grief-deadened eyes. “Why?”

  “Justice,” Carver said.

  She said, “Revenge.”

  “Call it whatever suits you.”

  She sighed and looked out at the sea and the beach, at the glaring sunlit world beyond the dim room. “I was afraid you’d react this way. It’ll only make things worse, Fred.”

  “Worse for the animal who’s going around burning children to death. And I’ll admit it, I crave revenge. Jesus, I crave it! You can’t tell me you don’t feel the same way.”

  “I feel that way, Fred. I don’t think that way. What I want is to get through this somehow, not live with it any longer than is necessary.” She bowed her head; it didn’t hide the tic in the delicate
flesh beneath her eyes. The light from the glass doors revealed some kind of rash along the left side of her neck and her cheek, a mark of her violent emotion. “What I feel, Fred, is guilt. If I hadn’t forgotten my purse, sent Chipper back inside to get it . . .”

  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.

  Chapter 4

  IT 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.”