Spark

by John Lutz

  Desoto gave his wide, white, movie-star smile, but his eyes were hard. Cop’s eyes. “My, my. You afraid of such pressure, amigo?”

  Carver limped across the soft carpet toward the door. “If they throw you off the force, don’t ever consider being a psychologist.”

  “Two days, my friend. I’m afraid that’s all I can give.”

  Carver said, “That’s more than I asked for,” and went out.

  He didn’t feel like the pope.

  31

  “JEROME WAS DECLARED perfectly healthy at the medical center two months before his death,” Hattie Evans said the next morning, seated across from Carver in her cool, neat living room. “Don’t you remember, that’s one of the reasons I hired you.” The colorful oil painting on the wall behind the sofa where she sat was of a weeping clown against a black velvet background. Nothing like the art on Desoto’s walls.

  “Your neighbor Val once mentioned that Jerome didn’t sleep well, roamed the house at night.”

  “That’s true, but it’s hardly a forewarning of a heart attack.”

  “Was he given any explanation or medication for his insomnia?”

  A subtle light entered Hattie’s eyes, and her back became even more rigid. Her posture gave the impression her spine might snap at any moment. Carver knew he’d struck a chord—just the sort of thing he was hired to do. It gave him satisfaction to see the light in Hattie’s gaze become a gleam of respect, as if he’d finally earned his due from his tough fourth-grade teacher.

  “It was a prescription drug to help him sleep,” she said. “I remember now he came home after his physical examination carrying it in a little white paper sack.”

  “Do you know where he had the prescription filled?”

  “Right at the medical center pharmacy,” Hattie said.

  “Because it was more convenient?”

  “I suppose. Though usually we got our prescription medicine at Philip’s Pharmacy in Orlando. They beat everyone’s price on drugs. But their bags aren’t white, like the one Jerome had that day. And he’d hardly have driven into Orlando after his physical examination.”

  “Remember the name of the medicine?”

  “No. But I might recognize it if I heard it. It was liquid, in a little brown bottle I saw in the medicine chest or on Jerome’s dresser where he kept it sometimes to take in the middle of the night without going in the bathroom and switching on lights.”

  Carver got the sheet of paper with the drugs the medical center had purchased direct from Mercury Laboratories listed on it and showed it to Hattie, leaning low over the sofa arm to see past her shoulder as she ran a finger down the list of Latin words and abbreviations.

  “I can’t be sure,” she said, after several minutes. “Sorry, I simply can’t.”

  Carver straightened up, folded the paper, and slipped it back into his shirt pocket.

  “What we could do,” she said, “is look at the bottle.”

  Carver let out a long breath and smiled. She’d beaten him to his next question. “You been toying with me, Hattie?”

  “I wouldn’t consider it, Mr. Carver. The dosage was small and Jerome didn’t finish the bottle, and I don’t recall throwing it away. It should still be somewhere around the house.”

  “I thought it might be something you’d hold on to,” Carver told her, remembering what Beth had said about widows’ sentimentalism.

  She stared at him. “Why on earth would I do that? Do you think I’d get all misty-eyed over a bottle of medicine just because I’d associate it with Jerome?”

  “No, I guess you wouldn’t at that.”

  “I live for the present and future, Mr. Carver. One exists and the other will. The past no longer exists and never will again except in memory, and your profession must have taught you the reliability of that particular faculty.”

  “Let’s test memory again,” he suggested, “and see if you can find that prescription bottle.”

  She gazed sternly at him. “Wait here,” she commanded brusquely, letting “young man” hang in the air. He watched her rise and stride erectly from the room. She’d easily be able to balance a book on her head as she walked. She was still constantly setting an example as she had for years in the classroom. Posture and penmanship had been important in her life and always would be.

  He heard her rattling around the contents of the medicine chest. Then she left the bathroom and went into another room. The master bedroom, Carver assumed.

  Silence for a long time.

  She came back into the living room empty-handed.

  “Memory fails again,” she said in a distressed voice. She was frowning now, worried.

  Carver laid his cane across his knees and smiled up at her. “The only thing in this world I never misplace is my cane.”

  She stood studying him. She didn’t smile, but the etched worry lines in her face softened. “I understand that,” she said. He thought she probably did.

  He leaned forward in his chair, set the cane, and stood up.

  “I’ll keep searching,” she told him. “I do think I’d remember if I threw away the bottle. And I’m sure it was more than half full. I can see it in my mind’s eye, about five inches high with a black cap the medicine had left a crust around.”

  “Call me right away if you find it,” he said. Then he scrawled Beth’s room number on the back of one of his business cards. “If I’m not there to answer the phone, hang up and then call the motel again and ask for this extension. If you get Beth Jackson, tell her you’ve found the bottle.”

  Hattie nodded, took the card, and glanced at it before inserting it in a wide pocket of her paisley skirt.

  “Don’t forget to keep your doors and windows locked,” Carver said as he was leaving.

  She said, “I never really needed that advice. I’ve been locking the house securely since Jerome died.”

  As he was limping to his rented Ford, Carver glanced back and saw Val Green standing at his window. Standing guard over his ladylove, Carver figured. Val saw him and lifted a hand in greeting.

  Carver waved back, climbed into the car, and drove away. Feeling better knowing Val was losing sleep over Hattie.

  As he turned the corner off of Pelican Lane, a large gray Cadillac flashed past going the opposite direction on Golden Drive. He caught a glimpse of the driver. It might have been the infamous Nurse Gorham, but he couldn’t be positive. He’d only seen her once before, that time he’d talked to Dr. Wynn at the medical center, and he couldn’t trust his memory.

  32

  CARVER FOUND PHILIP’S Pharmacy easily enough on Washington in downtown Orlando. It was a small shop, unusual in that it specialized in prescription and over-the-counter drugs rather than the general run of merchandise most drugstores now carried. No shoes or motor oil here. There was a kid behind the register up front, and a middle-age man in a white smock was working behind the counter in the back, near a display of vitamins and drugstore eyeglasses.

  The cashier, a dumpy little girl about sixteen, looked at Carver as expectantly as a puppy when he entered the pharmacy. He smiled at her and limped back toward the prescription counter. She returned to pricing cartons of cigarettes, maintaining a profitable symbiotic relationship.

  The guy behind the high, polished wood prescription counter was gray but fit looking, as if he exercised religiously and consumed scads of vitamins from the nearby display. He was wearing those half-glasses for reading and glancing knowledgeably at people over the frames, and, amazingly, they made him appear younger from a distance. Up close now, Carver saw that he was probably in his sixties. The plastic tag on his pristine white smock was curved up at the corners like a smile and said his name was Mark and he was a registered pharmacist. Carver wondered if that was how he was registered, simply “Mark.”

  “Help you?” he asked.

  Carver figured most people could say yes. He saw that the front of the counter contained shelves of condoms and spermicides. “Hope so,” he said. “I’m investigat
ing something that involves prescription drugs. I need answers, so who better to ask than a pharmacist?”

  “You’re the police?” Mark asked, regarding Carver’s question as rhetorical.

  Carver told him he was private, which impressed Mark to the point where he didn’t bother asking for any identification beyond Carver’s plain white business card. Carver thought maybe he should get a wide-open eye, or maybe a figure in a trench coat engraved on his cards. He could go anywhere then.

  He drew the list of Mercury Laboratory drugs from his pocket and laid it on the counter. “Which of these might be prescribed for insomnia?” he asked.

  Mark studied the creased sheet of paper for a minute or so, while Carver listened to the distinctive double-clicking of the mechanical pricer on the cigarettes up by the register. Then Mark gazed wisely at Carver over the dark frames of his half-glasses. “Nothing on this list of drugs matches any prescription I’ve filled for insomnia.”

  Disappointment was heavy in Carver. “What might a doctor usually prescribe to help someone sleep?”

  “Oh, a number of things. Seconal’s a favorite.”

  Carver nudged the list with a finger. “You know what these all are for sure?”

  “No, several of them I don’t recognize.” Mark adjusted the glasses on his narrow nose. “But if I had to guess which was a soporific, I’d choose this one.” He pointed with a slender, manicured finger. “Luridus-X.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I remember my Latin, ‘Luridus’ roughly translated could mean ‘a deathlike state.’ Possibly a description of sleep.”

  “What about the X?” Carver asked. C-click! C-click! went the pricer at the front of the pharmacy. The cashier still at it, getting to the cartons she’d missed.

  Mark shrugged and adjusted his glasses again. “I couldn’t say.”

  A tall woman basted to a glowing red approached the counter and asked, too late, which was the most effective sunscreen she could buy.

  Carver thanked Mark and left him to his work.

  After a stop at a McDonald’s for scrambled eggs, sausage, and a biscuit, he drove the rented Ford back to the Warm Sands Motel.

  Beth’s car was missing from the parking lot. Carver figured she must be out being a journalist. There was a battered black pickup truck parked in the only shade, so he parked the Ford in a slot near his room and climbed out. The sun had risen high enough to hit with brutality, and he felt perspiration break out on his back and seep into his shirt even as he limped the short distance to his door.

  The first thing Carver saw when he entered the dim room was the message light on the phone blinking out a frenetic red signal. Maybe Hattie calling to say she’d located her husband’s leftover medication.

  It was cool in the room, but not cool enough. After turning the air-conditioner thermostat as far as it would go to the Cool side, Carver sat on the edge of the bed and punched out the number for the motel office.

  Not Hattie. It was Desoto who’d left a message for Carver to call as soon as possible.

  Carver rattled the cradle button until he got a dial tone, then phoned the Municipal Justice Building.

  He was put through immediately to Desoto, who got right to business.

  “Something you should know happened this morning down in Fort Lauderdale, amigo. A fella went to board his yacht at the dock of one of those ritzy houses backing up to the canals. Right away he noticed something big and blue floating facedown near the hull.”

  Fear formed a cold lump in Carver’s stomach, then began to spread tentacles. He said, “Let me guess.”

  “No need to guess. Large man in blue bib overalls, dead.”

  “After a hearty meal of ground glass?”

  “Not this time. His throat was slit. Lauderdale police think he was killed someplace else and dumped from a boat near where he was found.”

  “Lauderdale got any leads?”

  “I know one they don’t have.”

  Carver knew what he meant.

  “There was an empty Crown Royal whiskey bottle floating near the victim. Beed’s brand. If he’s boozing heavily, he’s hell walking, amigo.”

  “Maybe just purgatory,” Carver said, trying to believe it. Big talk before the big game.

  “Lauderdale’s still talking to people living along the canal,” Desoto said. “Another interesting thing, though, one of the dead man’s arms is missing. Torn or hacked off at the shoulder in messy fashion.”

  Carver remembered the story about Adam Beed attacking a fellow inmate in Raiford. Desoto had said the victim’s severed arm was never found.

  “Bet I know what you’re thinking, hey?”

  “That business about Beed’s first victim losing an arm,” Carver said, “and the murder Beed’s supposed to have done behind the walls. Is that on the level?”

  “I don’t know for sure,” Desoto said. “I only repeated what I heard from more than one source. It was something I thought you should hear. After all, a missing arm . . . On one hand you can believe it, but on the other . . .”

  “Okay,” Carver interrupted. He was in no mood for the kind of black humor that kept cops sane.

  “What this means,” Desoto said, “is we got two homicides now, and they’re connected.”

  The fear in Carver’s bowels inched over to make room for the guilt. “If you have to go to Metzger now,” he said, “I’ll understand.”

  “I said two days, amigo.”

  “Forget the two days.”

  “No.”

  “I know there’s more pressure on you now.”

  “More pressure on both of us,” Desoto said.

  Well, that was for sure.

  After a long pause, Desoto said, “You got less to worry about from the big farmer, him being dead and disarmed and all. But from where I sit, Adam Beed looks twice as dangerous. You need to keep that in mind, amigo, watch your back all the time. You carrying?”

  Carver absently touched the butt of the holstered Colt beneath his shirt. “Everybody in Florida’s carrying.”

  “Gun World,” Desoto said. “Stay careful, my friend.”

  Carver thanked him for the call and hung up.

  Lifted the receiver again and called Hattie Evans.

  “Luridus-X,” he said. “Is that what Jerome was taking?”

  “That does sound familiar,” Hattie told him.

  “It was on the list I showed you.”

  “But hearing it instead of reading it makes a difference. Jerome might have mentioned it. But I can’t be positive. I’ll keep searching for the bottle.”

  “Let me know as soon as you find it.”

  “Mightn’t the medical center still have a record of Jerome’s medication?”

  “Don’t contact them,” Carver said. “They might be part of the problem.”

  She didn’t say anything for a while. Then: “When I collected my mail this morning, I found another note stating Jerome had been murdered. It looks just like the first one. Same color ink, same printing. Quite brief and to the point.”

  “What exactly does it say?”

  “Simply ‘Your husband was murdered. Don’t give up.’ ”

  “Was it in a stamped and postmarked envelope?”

  “No, it wasn’t even in an envelope. Just a piece of white notepaper folded once lengthwise.”

  “Save it,” Carver said. “I’ll want to look at it.” But he was sure the note would be exactly as Hattie described and would offer little new. He said, “Has Beth Jackson been by to see you?”

  “No. Should she have?”

  “Not necessarily,” Carver said. “I’m trying to locate her.”

  “You sound worried.”

  Carver realized that he’d asked about Beth because he was worried. She’d left no message saying where she was going, and the death of the man in bib overalls had him spooked. “I’m worried about you insisting on staying in that house, Hattie.”

  “If I weren’t here, Mr. Carver, I could hardly be se
arching for Jerome’s medication.”

  Faultless schoolmarm logic.

  Carver cautioned her again to keep her doors locked, then hung up.

  It was still warm in the room, and he felt overheated except for his forehead and bare forearms. They felt cool and were coated with perspiration.

  Slumped on the edge of the mattress, his bad leg extended with its heel dug into the carpet, he called Beth’s room.

  After ten rings he hung up.

  He told himself she was plenty capable of looking out for herself, and she was simply gone somewhere attending to business.

  Nevertheless, he limped down to her room, stood in the merciless sun, and knocked on her door.

  Got no reply.

  He considered trying to slip the lock and examine the room for clues to her whereabouts, even fought an impulse to kick the door open and storm inside.

  Then he turned his back on the door. Beth’s unoccupied room would almost surely tell him nothing, and he’d be running the risk of being seen breaking in.

  He wondered why he’d thought circumstances warranted that kind of drastic action.

  The heat, he decided.

  33

  CARVER LIMPED BACK to his room and called Clive Jones at the Burrow offices in Del Moray. Jones, who, as publisher and editor of the pesky little newspaper, should know, assured Carver that Beth’s absence meant nothing ominous. While Beth hadn’t checked in with the paper that day, and Jones didn’t know precisely where she was or what she was doing, that situation wasn’t unusual. Once Burrow assigned a writer to a story, complete freedom was allowed, and Beth was a top-notch journalist who took full advantage of that freedom. Jones added wryly that she might not have notified Carver of her intentions or whereabouts because she thought he might disapprove. Jones’s tone implied his own disapproval of Carver interfering with one of his ace journalists.

  “That makes me feel loads better,” Carver said. He liked the free-spirited and altruistic Jones, but the man could be a pain in the ass, like so many thoroughly candid people who casually tossed around barbs of truth.

  “I mean,” Jones went on, “maybe she took time out to have her nails done, or went shopping for a flannel nightgown. That sort of thing.”