Spark

by John Lutz

  “I thought you guys would have uniforms,” Carver said, looking at Val’s white slacks and green golf shirt. And he was wearing white slip-on shoes that looked like house slippers. Not good for chasing bad guys.

  Val smiled, staring straight ahead. “Maybe this is the uniform. “

  “Okay,” Carver said, “I’m sorry if I seem to be taking the Posse lightly. Desoto said you people did good work.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “Homicide lieutenant in Orlando.”

  Val slowed to five miles an hour for a stop sign, clunked the Dodge into second gear, and regained speed. The houses slipped by on either side of the car, all of identical height and architecture, like the same house over and over; might have been an Andy Warhol poster. “Desoto the one Hattie went to about Jerome?” Val asked.

  “Right.”

  Carver said nothing while Val slowed the car and looked to the side at a shirtless, white-haired man picking up something from a dark lawn. The man saw the car, waved, and ambled back inside the house carrying a rolled-up newspaper. “I drove over to talk to Maude Crane like you suggested,” Carver said. “I found her dead.”

  Val made a left turn and nodded. “Heard it on the news, that she went and hung herself. Wasn’t surprised. Guilt and loneliness, if it wasn’t murder.”

  “What makes you think murder?”

  “I done some talking with Hattie, and I kinda agree with her it don’t seem logical Jerome’d just keel over with a heart attack.”

  “I thought we were talking about Maude Crane.”

  “Talking about her and Jerome.”

  Val’s concentration tended to slip off the track occasionally. Carver decided it was a good thing the Posse wasn’t armed.

  “Suicides happen frequently in retirement communities,” Carver said. “So do heart attacks.”

  “Not to Jerome. He was a healthy guy, strong and fulla piss and vinegar. Popular with most everybody, ’specially the ladies. Jerome didn’t sleep sometimes at night, so he roamed around the house, sometimes woke up Hattie. Living next door like I do, I heard things. I didn’t like him much, considering how he treated Hattie.”

  “He mistreated her?”

  “Ordered her around like dirt, is what he did. Then of course he had his thing on the side with Maude Crane.”

  “Did he know Hattie knew about Maude?”

  Val rubbed his chin and held the Dodge at about five miles an hour on the deserted street. Most of the houses were dark. Bedtime was early in Solartown. “He probably knew and didn’t care. Nothing I know was said about it by either of them. Married man getting some strange on the side, and with a wife like Hattie, it sure ain’t right. She let it go on. She let too many things go on with Jerome. It’s a terrible thing to say, but myself, I think it’s better for her in her remaining years that he’s passed on. And if she could settle in her mind the suspicions about his death, she could forget him and move on with her life. End the chapter, sorta. You think?”

  Carver said he did, he thought so. Which was why he was working for Hattie.

  He sat silently for a while as they followed the grid of dark streets. Then he said, “You know, if anybody really believed Maude Crane was murdered, Hattie’d be the prime suspect.”

  Val tromped a floppy white shoe down on the brake pedal. Carver had to brace with a palm against the dash to keep from hitting the windshield. As the car stopped rocking, he grabbed his cane and held it.

  “Hattie killing anyone is a ridiculous idea!” Val said angrily. “Her exact problem is she’s too kind and considerate. I spent time in Korea, Carver. I knew killers. There’s something about them, and Hattie’s not one of them.”

  “I don’t see her that way, either,” Carver said, though he’d known killers who would have fooled Val. Who’d fooled everyone for a long time, including their victims.

  Mollified, Val slipped the Dodge into gear and goosed it up to ten miles an hour, shifted choppily to second, and held that speed as the motor lugged along like an asthmatic.

  “We’re talking about two victims, if you include Maude Crane,” Carver said. “And maybe more. You hinting there might be a serial killer operating in Solartown?”

  Val didn’t seem taken aback by the idea. “Well, I never considered it, but it’s possible. Generally, though, they use knives or guns, don’t they?”

  “Generally. But there are ways to induce heart attacks. The Russians have done it chemically for years. Maybe even the C.I.A. Any former C.I.A. operatives living in Solartown?”

  “Not as I know of. But then, they wouldn’t put up a sign in their yards to that effect, would they? Listen, Carver, why would a serial killer pick on us old folks? I mean, what’d be the motive?”

  That was the question, all right. “Inheritance, maybe,” Carver said, hoping he wouldn’t have to explain that.

  “Rathawk Two, you read me?” the CB radio suddenly blared.

  “ ’Scuse me,” Val told Carver. He undipped the microphone and held it an inch in front of his mouth. “Rathawk Two here, Louella.”

  “Woman over on O Street, number five twenty-two, says grandkids visiting next door won’t stop playing the stereo too loud. Same songs over and over, Gloria Estefan records are driving her bananas. Wanna check that one out? Over.”

  Val pressed his mike button. “Ten-four, Louella. Out.”

  Val clipped the mike back to the dash. “Sometimes we handle that kinda thing,” he explained. “Save the police a trip out here when they need to be chasing crooks and crack addicts.”

  “Logical,” Carver said.

  “I can drop you back at your car. Another couple bars of Gloria Estefan ain’t gonna make much difference.”

  Carver was a Gloria Estefan fan, but he didn’t mention that to Val.

  When Val had braked the Dodge next to the parked Olds, he said, “You get lonely, come ride with me again. Maybe I’ll buy the doughnuts.”

  “Too much cholesterol,” Carver said. “Bad for the heart.”

  “Like Russian metal,” Val said, depressing the clutch and jamming the gearshift lever into low.

  “Russian metal” was the irradiated material KGB espionage agents used to induce seemingly natural death in their victims.

  As he watched the Dodge round the corner at a leisurely pace to respond to the audio assault call on O Street, Carver wondered where Rathawk Two had learned such a thing.

  10

  CARVER KNEW HE’D BE dealing with a medical doctor, and he wasn’t being operated on, so after breakfast the next morning at the Seagrill Cafe, he sipped coffee until almost ten o’clock before driving over to the medical center.

  The same pleasant redhead was at the fourth-floor receptionist’s desk, but she didn’t seem to recognize Carver. Dr. Wynn was in, she told him, and like yesterday she invited him to have a seat and wait.

  He settled down on a hard little sofa for what he figured would be a long time, resting his cane against one of the cushions. From hidden speakers, an FM station that boasted of playing “soft rock” sent out waves of neutered sound from the sixties. It was cool in here, anyway. He might as well relax and listen to violins play Jefferson Airplane.

  Only seconds after he’d turned the first page of a tattered two-month-old Newsweek, he was aware of someone standing near him.

  He looked up and saw a fortyish woman who surely at some point in her life had won a beauty contest. Her white uniform couldn’t mute the effect of her long, shapely legs, lean waist, high and full breasts. Shoulder-length, artfully tousled auburn hair framed a face with high cheekbones, luminous gray eyes, and a narrow, perfect nose. The only break in the symmetry was a slight overbite and pouty lower lip, but that only added to her appeal. It was a mouth made for uninhibited love.

  She knew why he was staring at her and smiled, used to men’s eyes and what went on behind them. “Mr. Carver?”

  He nodded and laid down the Newsweek.

  “If you’ll follow me, I’ll lead you to Dr. Wynn�
�s office.”

  She’d noticed his cane without seeming to, and she walked ahead of him at a slower than normal pace so he could keep up. He didn’t mind limping behind her.

  She knocked twice perfunctorily on a closed oak door that had a brass DR. ARTHUR WYNN plaque on it, then opened the door and ushered Carver inside.

  Carver was in a large, well-furnished office. Soft green leather furniture on a deep brown carpet. Paneled walls adorned with framed diplomas and certificates. In a corner stood a waist-high piece of modern sculpture that appeared to have been fashioned from scores of gleaming steel surgical instruments welded together. Carver wondered what it was called.

  The door closed behind Carver, leaving him alone with an athletically built man about fifty who stood up behind his wide desk. He was six feet tall and wore pleated blue pinstripe slacks, a white shirt, red tie, and red and white suspenders, only he probably called them braces. On a corner of the desk was one of those little gadgets with half a dozen suspended steel balls that clicked against each other and maintained seemingly perpetual motion. They were still now.

  Dr. Wynn introduced himself and shook Carver’s hand, inviting him to sit down in a small upholstered chair with dark wood that matched the desk.

  Carver sat. Wynn seemed oblivious of the cane.

  “I’m told you’re asking some questions on behalf of Jerome Evans’s widow,” the doctor said. He was tanned as well as fit, with blandly handsome features and razor-styled blond hair that would look white in a certain light. He had large, direct blue eyes, perfect teeth. He might have been a devout surfer who’d become serious between waves and gone into medicine.

  “And I’m told you signed the death certificate,” Carver said.

  Dr. Wynn nodded. “I looked in on the postmortem, then confirmed my conclusions by reading the examining physician’s report. More or less standard procedure here, Mr. Carver.”

  “And you saw nothing unusual in the manner of Jerome’s death?”

  “Of course not. It was a classic massive coronary. It would have dropped a bull moose dead in its tracks.” He swiveled in his chair and gazed out the window at some tall palm trees near the entrance of the parking lot. Swiveled back. “I sympathize with your client, Mr. Carver, I really do. But Hattie Evans isn’t the first surviving spouse to question a seemingly untimely death of a partner. This happens for a variety of reasons, from guilt to fear to loneliness. I’ve seen it before and I’ll see it again.”

  “She said her husband had recently passed a physical.”

  “At Jerome Evans’s stage of life, physical examinations aren’t passed or failed, like in the military.”

  “But neither turned up anything wrong with his heart.”

  “That’s true, and each examination included cholesterol count and an electrocardiogram. Everything seemed normal, so Dr. Billingsly quite correctly didn’t go further.”

  “Further how?”

  “Angiogram, CAT scan, various other tests if there’s historical or physical indication of heart trouble.” Dr. Wynn sank his perfect teeth into his lower lip and was silent for a moment, sitting there handsome, bland, and flawlessly groomed, the quintessential vice-presidential candidate. Then he said, “If Dr. Billingsly had asked him to undergo these tests, we might well have detected the blood clot that later changed position and killed him. But there was no apparent reason to extend testing. He fooled us, Mr. Carver. Unfortunately, it won’t be the last time we’ll be fooled, but we try to keep the percentages as low as possible.”

  “Speaking of percentages,” Carver said, “I’m told the death rate in Solartown is somewhat higher than at similar retirement communities.” He gave the doctor the figures Beth had recited on the phone.

  “A statistical fluke,” Dr. Wynn said, “assuming those figures are correct. There’s simply no reason why the death rate here should exceed the average, and I’m positive that over a sufficient period of time the numbers will even out.”

  “If the figures are accurate and not a fluke,” Carver said, “could you think of any possible explanation?”

  The doctor made a steeple with his manicured pink fingers and smiled. “Could you?”

  “Something in the water, maybe,” Carver said.

  The pink steeple contracted and expanded as Dr. Wynn flexed his fingers. “You’re joking, but that sort of thing actually happens. So for the record, the Solartown water supply is periodically checked, carefully monitored.” He laced his fingers and lowered his hands to the desk, gazing at Carver with a fresh awareness. “Are you suggesting the presence of a mass murderer in Solartown?”

  “That sort of thing actually happens, like something in the water,” Carver said. “But I’m not suggesting anything.”

  “I suppose if that kind of aberration were present, we here at the medical center would be in a position to see signs of it. As far as I know, there are no such signs.”

  “Except for the statistics I just quoted.”

  “I can promise you, Mr. Carver, I’ll personally check your numbers, and if they’re accurate I’ll do further research to confirm they can be dismissed as a meaningless statistical blip. Numbers occasionally lie. Despite the polls, Truman defeated Dewey for the presidency.”

  “Only once,” Carver said.

  “In the year the Cleveland Indians uncharacteristically won the World Series,” Dr. Wynn pointed out.

  He had Carver there.

  Carver thanked the doctor for his time, stood up, then limped to the door. As soon as his hand touched the knob, the door swung open, held by the smiling beauty who’d escorted him into the office. The lucky name tag on her left breast said she was Monica Gorham, R.N.

  “I’ll show you out, Mr. Carver,” she said in a voice suitable for 900 numbers.

  This time she walked beside him in the wide hall.

  “Did your talk with Dr. Wynn go well?” she asked.

  “Well enough.”

  “I suppose you wanted to ask him about Jerome Evans.”

  “What makes you think so?” Carver asked.

  “You were here yesterday, making inquiries. It just seemed natural you’d want to see Dr. Wynn. I hope he reassured you.”

  “He’s a reassuring sort,” Carver said noncommittally.

  “He’s a superb administrator,” Nurse Gorham said.

  “What do you do here?” Carver asked.

  “My title is executive director of nursing.”

  “Head nurse?”

  She smiled. “Sometimes much more than that.”

  It was odd that the executive director of nursing had ushered him into Wynn’s office in the manner of a secretary. Maybe she’d wanted to get a close look at Carver, size him up.

  They’d reached the elevator. Carver punched the DOWN button with the tip of his cane and said, “Do you have any personal opinions about Jerome Evans, Nurse Gorham?”

  “I wouldn’t be in a position to form opinions,” she said. “I can tell you this, though: Mrs. Evans isn’t the first widow to get suspicious in her grief. Even though I wasn’t in the O.R. at the time, I know that no one shot or stabbed her husband. This isn’t a big-city trauma center, Mr. Carver. We deal with old people, and they die at a faster rate than the young. And very often they go swiftly and unexpectedly, like Jerome Evans.”

  “Exactly like?”

  “Exactly.”

  A young, heavyset woman in a nurse’s uniform was ambling down the hall. She saw Nurse Gorham and immediately picked up her pace. For an instant the kind of hate that can only be generated by fear was in her eyes.

  Carver waited until the young nurse had hurried past.

  “What about Maude Crane?” he asked.

  Nurse Gorham seemed puzzled. “It’s a name I don’t know.”

  “It was on the news. She’s a Solartown resident who committed suicide the other day.”

  “I don’t have time to keep up with the news, Mr. Carver.”

  “Maude and Jerome Evans were not-so-secret lovers.�
��

  She began to answer, but the elevator arrived and he thanked her and limped inside, leaving her standing there with her mouth open. On any other woman it wouldn’t have been attractive.

  As the elevator dropped, he wondered why she was more interested than she should be about his talk with Dr. Wynn.

  11

  THE TEMPERATURE WAS OVER ninety by the time Carver got back to the Warm Sands Motel. As he parked the Olds, he noticed the little artificial beach down by the lake was crowded, and there were about a dozen preteen children splashing around in the swimming pool while their parents watched.

  Heat from the pavement radiated through the thin soles of his moccasins as he limped to his room. He was perspiring by the time he closed the door behind him.

  It felt cool in the room. The drapes were still closed, muffling the voices of the kids in the pool. His grip was slippery with perspiration on the crook of his cane, and his shirt was still plastered to his back from sitting in the car. He made his way into the bathroom, leaned over the washbasin, and ran cold water. After splashing some on his face, he held his wrists beneath the cool stream that twisted shimmering from spigot to drain. He felt better when he limped back into the room.

  Until he saw someone standing near the bed.

  Carver stood still, tightening his hold on the cane. He knew how to use it as a weapon.

  “Startle you?” the man by the bed asked. He was conservatively dressed in a gray suit, white shirt, dark tie with diagonal stripes. His straight, dark hair was short and neatly combed with a part on the side, and he had the kind of clean-shaven, squarish face that prompted the description “clean cut.” His eyes were calm behind black horn-rimmed glasses that lent him a bookish air. The well-tailored suit was a fooler; Carver noticed that beneath the slimming effect of artfully draped material, the man’s shoulders, chest, and arms were immense.

  “I’m not used to walking out of the bathroom and finding Clark Kent,” Carver said.

  The man smiled. He might have been the muscular host of a TV game show, approving of Carver’s cleverness. Or maybe he’d been told before he’d make a great Clark Kent and knew he was really Superman.