Scorcher

by John Lutz

  Carver decided not to return her call. Edwina was right about Laura’s renewed interest in him, and that scared him. He’d gone around the course once with Laura and didn’t want to again. Yet he knew that a mutually dependent attraction had been engendered by their son’s death, embryonic now, waiting to grow. She needed him, her fellow voyager through the mourning process. Carver didn’t want to need her.

  He punched the Play button again on the answering machine and listened to a wrong number, a pitch to buy into a time-share project in Clearwater before his rare opportunity was gone forever, and a reminder from his insurance agent that the premium was due on the Olds.

  Nothing from Emmett or Nadine Kave.

  Carver had barely eaten at lunch, but he was feeling better now and figured he’d soon be hungry. He clomped with his cane into the kitchenette and opened the refrigerator.

  Not an inspiring sight. Only two cans of beer, a small steak he’d allowed to go bad, and a container of yogurt that never had a chance. Edwina had bought the yogurt weeks ago. Carver loathed the stuff; it looked like cream trying to be something else.

  Plan ahead, he thought. Resolving to eat an early dinner out this evening and then do some elemental grocery shopping, he pulled the tab on one of the beer cans, shoved the refrigerator door shut, and carried the can out onto the porch.

  It was hot outside, even in the deep shade beneath the porch roof. But there was a breeze off the ocean that now and then evaporated perspiration on his arms and face and cooled. He settled into the webbed aluminum lawn chair, propped his good leg up on the wooden porch rail, and watched a tan and shapely woman in a red bikini dashing in and out of the surf far down the beach. She was animated and loud; she swayed her hips in exaggerated motion when she ran, and her shrill, desperately happy screams carried to Carver on the breeze. Some great time she was having, everything about her shouted. Trying to impress someone Carver couldn’t see. Her hair was long and dark and flew wildly with each foray into the waves. Carver enjoyed watching her.

  One of the woman’s shrieks trailed off, then was continued by the phone inside the cottage.

  Carver lowered his leg, pushed himself up out of the light-weight chair, and limped inside with his cane. Because he was in a hurry, he allowed the screen door to shut too fast and it nipped him on the right heel. Hurt like crazy for a second or two. He didn’t need another bad leg.

  He snatched up the receiver and snarled a hello, still mad at the door.

  “Carver?”

  “Yeah.” He recognized McGregor’s voice. Wished he hadn’t picked up the phone.

  “Whazza matter? You sound outa sorts and outa breath.”

  “Just giving the place a quick coat of paint; you interrupted me.”

  “Nice you can still joke,” McGregor said. “Now here’s something to cheer you down: your ex-wife’s been by to see me and threatened to tell Adam Kave you’re the father of one of his son’s victims. The poop’d hit the propeller then, hey? I thought she lived in Saint Louis; how the hell she even know you were on the case?”

  “She’s been reading the Florida papers to keep track of the hunt for Paul Kave. When she read I’d been hired by the Kave family, she figured out the rest.”

  “Well, I got her promise to stay clear of the case for a while. Scared shit out of her with the official-police-business line, then played nice cop and asked for her cooperation. It won’t last long, though; she’s too smart to buy it. I was very impressed. You seem to attract smart women, Carver. And good-lookers. Guess it’s that opposites thing. Anyway, you’re gonna have to talk to her, see she keeps her mouth shut.”

  “I’ve already talked to her.”

  “So talk again. Fast and hard. Do whatever you got to fast and hard. Damn it, she’s your ex, Carver; you oughta be able to control her.”

  “Yeah, that’s logical.”

  “You’re the only one’s got a chance, pal. I could tell that after spending fifteen minutes with the lady. She’s worried all to hell about her daughter.”

  “My daughter, too,” Carver said.

  “Sure. What’s happening with the all-American Kave family? Not exactly Ward and June Cleaver and the kids, hey?”

  Carver told him about Dewitt’s fight with Mel Bingham, and Nadine talking with Paul. He didn’t mention he was trying to set up a meeting with Paul through Nadine or Emmett Kave.

  “Sounds like an ordinary tiff over pussy,” McGregor said. “We checked Bingham. He’s a senior at Florida State, going back soon for the fall semester. Working toward a degree in biochemistry. Normal asshole college kid. Drives a Jeep and thinks he’s living a beer commercial. Family’s well off, but not like the Kaves. Maybe he’s chasing the daughter for her money. Seems he dated Nadine all through high school and for awhile when she went to college, but the past several years she’s been spreading it around. Kind of wild, but no legal trouble. A minor drug charge two years ago, but it was dropped. One fella after another for her, though. Until Joel Dewitt. You’d think a girl like that, her money and looks, could do better than a guy like Dewitt. I can see why her mother wishes Dewitt would get run over by one of his used cars.”

  “Could be they’re in love.”

  “Uh-huh. I was younger, I’d try to move on that Nadine. Put it to her like one of her daddy’s jumbo hot dogs and change both our lives for the better. Hey, maybe you oughta try getting to her, Carver.”

  “You’re twisted in a lot of ways,” Carver said.

  “It’s the world made me that way,” McGregor said, agreeing and not caring. “What I am’s a realist. Better for you if you were one too. If you’d spent another five years on the force as a real detective, you’d be one. Then you’d see life the way it is: damned yeast pile, Carver, and it’ll fester till the planet quits spinning.”

  It scared Carver to think McGregor might be right. And it bothered him that he’d developed a modicum of compassion for Paul Kave, and a loathing for the police lieutenant stalking him. What had started out so simply had become a horrendous tangle of emotions and confusion, thanks mainly to McGregor, who seemed to care about nothing so much as McGregor.

  “Buncha hypocrites out there in the world, Carver,” McGregor said. “Specially here in Florida. It’s all that fundamental religion bullshit; them people won’t fuck standing up ’cause somebody might see ’em and think they’re dancing. At least I know what I am and accept it. Tell you the truth, kinda enjoy it now and then. Like this gamble I’m taking on you.”

  “I admire your honesty,” Carver said. Damned if he didn’t.

  A car drove up outside and parked, its tires grinding on the sandy soil alongside the cottage. Carver heard its engine race, then die. Dust from its arrival drifted like a heat-spawned apparition across his field of vision outside the window.

  He moved a few feet to the left and saw Laura’s tiny blue rental car. The driver-side door opened and she climbed out, glanced at the ocean and perhaps the young woman romping in the surf, then strode toward the cottage. She was wearing a plain navy blue dress today, and dark high heels. The wind grabbed at her hair and ruffled it, like the hair of the girl down the beach. She touched it lightly with spread fingers and smiled absently, as if luxuriating in the breeze’s caress. Something in Carver moved.

  “Thing is,” McGregor said, “you gotta corner that ex-wife of yours and work on her. Tell her any fuckin’ thing, but keep her away from Adam Kave. Will you do that?”

  “If I can find her,” Carver said.

  As he hung up, she was peering into the dimness through the screen. She knocked on the door. Wanted in.

  “I phoned you earlier,” she said, when he’d called for Laura to enter and she stood a few feet inside the door.

  “Did you? I just got here, haven’t had time to check my calls.”

  “It’s warm in here.”

  “It doesn’t have to be. Switch on that air-conditioner.”

  She walked to the window unit, studied the controls for a second, then turned
it on High. The compressor clunked on and the blower began a wavering, powerful hum. She closed her eyes and sucked in some of the cool, filtered air, then moved away from it. She seemed instantly refreshed, oddly invigorated. Or had she been that way since she’d entered?

  Some of the cool air found its way across the room to Carver. “Why’d you call?” he asked.

  “We need to talk.”

  “About Ann?”

  “About what you’re doing. About you. I talked to Lieutenant McGregor in Fort Lauderdale. I don’t like him. Or trust him. Being around him makes my flesh creep.”

  “And he thinks he won you over.”

  She walked to the water-stained chair Carver usually sat in after swimming and lowered herself onto it, then folded her hands in the lap of the blue dress. As if she were planning on staying awhile.

  “What’s Sam Devine think about you coming to Florida?” Carver asked.

  Her hands tightened on each other, fingertips whitening around pink-enameled nails. “We argued about it. He tried to talk me out of it. Then he wanted to come with me. I think he would have, but he’s wrapped up in a case with the Highway Department. Something about land acquisition.”

  “And you came anyway.”

  “I had to. I told you why.”

  “I guess you did,” Carver said.

  She looked out past the dead plants hanging in the window. The rush of surf was still audible over the hum of the air-conditioner. The place was cooling off fast.

  “Edwina Talbot’s more than pretty,” she said. “She’s beautiful.”

  “Yeah, she’s that.” Carver thought of Edwina, and, for some reason, of the woman down on the beach.

  Laura tilted her head to the side and sighed, then stood up and walked over to stand near him. She moved as if she had no choice in the matter, as if some celestial puppet master were skillfully working her strings. “She can’t give you what you need right now. Sam can’t give me what I need.”

  “Maybe not,” Carver said, somehow not surprised by her direct approach. It was all so clear to her, as she must think it was to him. Or would be to him if only he’d open his mind and let the light in. If only he’d read that survey in People. Or was it Cosmopolitan?

  He hadn’t wanted this, but then he hadn’t counted on Laura’s candidness, and the effect she’d have on him standing close and looking so honestly, so yearningly, into his eyes. Years hadn’t passed. Acid hadn’t spilled. Fire hadn’t burned. Their son was still alive.

  No, he was dead.

  Dead forever.

  Carver’s throat tightened. He felt his eyes well with tears.

  Laura said, “We can give each other what we need. Only you and me. That’s how it is, I’m afraid.”

  Carver reached for her before he knew what he was doing and was pressing her to him, feeling her body vibrate as if she were trembling on the edge of an endless drop. Her forehead and cheek were crushed against his chest and her tears saturated his shirt like warm blood. “Oh, Christ! . . .” she moaned, and clung to him as if he alone and not Christ could save her. This was shared self-pity, he realized. Maudlin. A staged catharsis. But she was right: they needed it.

  On the bed they twisted grief into desperation and desire, and hid from death in the ultimate act of life.

  Her sharp cries were still lodged like shards of pain in his mind when Carver rolled exhausted from her, dragging his bad leg across her perspiration-slick thigh. The heated scent of their lovemaking lay over them. He let his eyes slide sideways to study the sweat-gleaming plane of her stomach and the faintly quivering swell of pale breast. Her breathing was shallow and ragged, as if just enough to sustain life. There were distinct dividing lines where her swimming suit had shielded flesh from sun at the Andrew Johnson Motel.

  Carver realized he was parched and thirsty. He felt like a man suddenly awakened after sleeping off a long drunk. Hair of the dog, he thought, and said, “There’s a beer in the refrigerator. Want to share it?”

  “Sure.” Her voice was slow and drained of feeling. Cold beer time. Cold logic time. The way it had been years ago. He wondered what she was thinking now, lying among the ruins.

  He got up and considered leaving the cane and using walls and furniture for support to cross the floor to the kitchen. But his good leg felt rubbery, and he didn’t like the idea of possibly falling in front of Laura. He grabbed the cane, and, barefoot, he padded and thumped across the plank floor.

  She was sitting up when he returned behind the folding screen that partitioned off the sleeping area. His bedroom. With Laura in it. Her breasts were bare and seemed larger and more pendulous now as she leaned her back against the oak headboard. She seemed relaxed.

  She said, “Don’t worry, I’m up to date on my pills.”

  “I should have asked,” Carver said. “Didn’t even think about it.” Or maybe some part of him had thought about it and he hadn’t wanted to ask. But he didn’t want her to be pregnant; God, he didn’t want that!

  He took a long swallow of beer, feeling some of it dribble coldly onto his chin, then handed her the can. She tilted back her head and drank deeply. A few drops of beer or condensation from the can rained onto her right breast, and she absently lifted her left hand and rubbed away the glistening dampness without lowering the can. He waited, watching her drink.

  Finally she handed the half-empty can back to him.

  He placed it on the table by the bed and sat down on the mattress, twisting his body so he could face her. She smiled and said, “So how do you feel?”

  “Relieved,” he said. “Not good, though. Not at ease.”

  “Why not?”

  Carver wasn’t sure he could crystallize the reasons in his mind so he could analyze them and frame an answer for her. Guilt was in there. And Edwina. A part of him felt like a wayward teen who’d cheated on his steady. But it was more than that. It involved so many things, some of them indefinable right now and maybe forever. Uncertainty seemed to be a permanent facet of life. His life, anyway.

  He groped in his mind for what he was sure of, found it, and said, “I don’t want you to talk to Adam Kave, Laura.”

  She stared at him and something deep in her eyes changed. She seemed to retreat from him without changing position propped against the headboard. As if she were diminishing in the small end of a telescope. Soon she’d be too far away for them to hear each other. “Is that what this was about? An exercise in persuasion?”

  It hadn’t occurred to him that she’d think that; he knew it should have. “No! For God’s sake, Laura!” It hurt him physically that she believed that about him, a heavy ache in the pit of his stomach.

  She got up, stepped into her shoes, and raised her dress above her head and wriggled into it. Fumbling, she buttoned it up the front, missing half the buttons, and yanked its belt tight. Then she snatched up her underwear and pantyhose from the floor and stood angrily holding them bunched tightly in her right hand, as if they were something dead that she’d loved. She glared at him as if he were responsible for the death.

  Carver braced himself on the headboard and stood up, tried to reason calmly with her. “Laura, listen . . .”

  But she turned and stalked out. He didn’t follow. Instead he stood listening to the tap, tap of her high heels across the cottage floor. Then the reverberating slam of the screen door. The solid thunk of her car door. And the sound of her driving away. He didn’t know what he would have told her if he had managed to stop her and make her stand and listen.

  Still nude, he stretched out on his back on the bed, laced his fingers behind his head, and studied the ceiling.

  Maybe he’d had nothing to say to her, no words to stop her, because she was right. Maybe dissuading her from talking to the Kave family before he had a chance to find Paul had been what the last few hours were about. Lately he’d come to realize how little he knew about the man he’d become. As if a stranger were wearing his skin.

  He began to perspire, beads of sweat trickling from his
armpits to play over his ribs and down to the already damp sheet that still smelled of his and Laura’s physical reunion.

  Apparently it was only their bodies that had met and merged. The old distance was back.

  He reached over, found the warming Budweiser can, and drained the last few ounces of beer. It tasted flat and sour. Yummy, he thought, and tossed the empty can away and listened to it bounce clattering into a corner. Empty.

  Chapter 30

  BETWEEN EMMETT AND NADINE, Carver thought it was Nadine who was less likely to notify him if Paul contacted her. He decided to watch her, and periodically check to see if Emmett had phoned him.

  He borrowed Edwina’s incredibly complicated, many-knobbed answering machine, which had a beeperless remote feature that allowed him to phone his number and punch in a code that would command the machine to play back messages. The microchip was a hell of an invention, he thought. He’d be able to call from any phone to check for messages while he was following Nadine. He wondered if this technology was an offshoot of the space program, all those tons of metal and flesh and fire hurled from a point on the coast, out of Earth’s grace and gravity, and now Carver could hear from a distance people who wanted to sell him time shares and vinyl siding.

  Nadine spent most of her days at the Ray and Racquet Tennis Club on the coast highway, a sprawling white stucco complex interspersed with palm trees, angled concrete walkways, and neatly laid-out green asphalt tennis courts. There was a sunwashed symmetry about the place that hurt the eye.

  Carver didn’t attempt to get past the gate, which was guarded by uniformed security in the person of a small, white-haired man toting a large, black-holstered sidearm. He looked like an ex-cop past retirement age but still willing and capable. Police work could be an occupation that got in the blood and eventually took over the entire organism.

  There was only one way in and out, so Carver found a shaded, secluded spot off the highway to park the Olds. From there he could both observe the tennis-club entrance and sometimes with binoculars see Nadine seated at an outdoor table in the lounge, sipping drinks with her friends. One of the friends frequently near her at the crowded table was Mel Bingham. A lot of animated conversation went on among that group, tanned waving arms, glinting jewelry, perfect white smiles, and very sincere expressions above designer tennis shirts and gold chains. The rich at play, aimless but with style.