Burn fc-9

by John Lutz

  “To talk to Brant’s foreman, Wade Schultz.”

  Carver told Desoto about Marla’s claim that Brant tried to run her down. About Brant’s disappearance, then Marla’s. About McGregor’s repeated threat to nail him as Brant’s accomplice.

  Desoto’s brown eyes darkened and seemed to lose depth, as if his attention had flagged and turned inward. Carver knew better. He’d seen Desoto angry before.

  “This gets more serious,” Desoto said. “And don’t worry about McGregor. His Marla Cloy and Brant are part of my homicide case. I’m going to give him a call.”

  Carver wasn’t so sure Desoto could hobble McGregor. “Don’t expect professional courtesy.”

  “I don’t. But McGregor can expect a professional reaming out if he doesn’t stop playing personal games and cooperate. Where are you going when you leave here?”

  “Red Feather Realty, to try to see Gloria Bream.”

  Desoto arched an eyebrow in puzzlement. “Who is?”

  “A real estate agent. Red Feather handles the listings in the condo development where Brant lives. Gloria Bream and Brant are rumored to be in a personal relationship.”

  “Hmm. You better let us talk to her. Brant might have hired Achilles Jones to scare you off delving into his life when you were supposed to be investigating Marla Cloy. Questioning Gloria Bream might qualify as delving.”

  “Or Marla might have hired Jones to scare me off investigating her claims of harassment against Brant.”

  “That could be. Why do you think he killed Spotto?”

  “He knew Spotto was working for me, but that doesn’t tell us much. He might have thought Spotto’s involvement was in regard to either Brant or Marla. If you find Jones, that’s what I need to know from him, which of the two hired him.”

  “It might not have been either of them.”

  “There’s that possibility,” Carver admitted.

  Desoto unconsciously caressed a gold cuff link with the very tip of his middle finger. “It’s difficult,” he said, “to know where the truth lies. Maybe we won’t even know the truth for sure when this is over.”

  “That’s what Beth says. You two think amazingly alike at times.”

  “About you, I expect we do. Where’s Beth now?”

  “My cottage.”

  “I think you better go to her. I’ll send some of our people over to talk with this Gloria Bream. Achilles Jones might still be searching for you, and he might find Beth.”

  Carver knew he was right, and suddenly he was struck by a sense of urgency so strong that he almost felt he could dash from the office without his cane.

  “Call me after you get Gloria Bream’s statement,” he said.

  “Sure. And you remember to be careful,” he heard Desoto say behind him as he headed for the door and the hot, fast drive back to Del Moray.

  38

  They’d made love within minutes after Carver arrived at the cottage, the Colt handgun within easy reach on his side of the bed. Though the breeze that found its way in through the screened window was warm, its whimsical movement kept the dim room comfortable.

  Beth slept sprawled loosely on her back, while Carver lay awake, listening to the ocean continue its endless and ultimately victorious assault on the land. He tried to discern some primal truth in its hushed message, but failed. Something profound was always there, inches or seconds beyond reach and understanding, Carver had read somewhere that ancient philosophers believed the basic elements of all things, singly or in combination, were earth, fire, water, and air. Maybe, in a way that had little do with hard fact, they were right.

  The phone by the bed trilled, and so alert was Carver to sound that he snatched it up before its first ring was completed.

  He glanced over at Beth, who hadn’t moved, then whispered a hello into the receiver.

  Desoto said, “Isn’t it early to be in bed?”

  “How do you know I’m in bed?” Carver asked.

  “Someone is, or you wouldn’t be whispering, right?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Besides, I heard bed springs squeak as you picked up the phone. I know that sound.”

  “All right. I’m in bed.”

  Desoto could probably guess why, at four in the afternoon, but he dropped the subject. “We were told at Red Feather Realty that Gloria Bream was on vacation, visiting her mother in Kansas City.”

  “You check on that?”

  “Of course. We talked to her. Then we even had the Kansas City police make sure the woman who told us on the phone she was Gloria Bream was actually there and was who she claimed to be. And her vacation and visit had been planned for a month, according to some of the other Red Feather employees. It looks like Bream’s out of the picture here.”

  “Unless Kansas City is where Brant’s gone.”

  “The K.C. police are onto that possibility, but they say it’s unlikely, given the situation there. They’re keeping the Bream house, and Gloria Bream, under observation in case Brant does show up, but it’s more a matter of touching all the bases than thinking in terms of a home run.”

  “There’s always the possibility of a wild pitch,” Carver said.

  “Ah! Another baseball analogy. Very good, amigo, but I’d already changed seasons to football.”

  “Football?”

  “Yes. I see your dilemma more as sudden-death overtime than extra innings.”

  “Is that your way of cautioning me?”

  “It is, though I don’t delude myself that it makes any difference. Still, one must try.”

  “One sure doesn’t talk like a cop sometimes.”

  “Like a friend, I hope.”

  “Like a friend,” Carver confirmed. “And it does make a difference.”

  “I’m assuming Beth’s okay.”

  “She’s never been better.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Carver thanked Desoto and hung up, letting the back of his head sink deep into the pillow. For more than the obvious reasons, he’d been hoping Brant had run to Gloria Bream. It would mean he hadn’t snapped entirely under the strain and frustration and been serious about his threat to kill Marla. Now Carver feared Brant was determined to thwart Marla by actually killing her, his judgment warped as he moved in a dream of vengeance. Carver knew how it was to be trapped in that dream, and how difficult it was to escape. Revenge could be as basic and powerful a craving as hunger or sex. He wondered how the ancient philosophers had regarded revenge. Fire, he decided.

  Fire and then earth.

  He didn’t remember falling asleep. His mind and body lurched, and suddenly he realized the room was dark. The digital numerals on the clock near the bed said it was almost ten o’clock.

  Beth’s form was barely visible, but he could hear her snoring lightly. She didn’t seem to have changed position. The crash of the surf on the beach was louder, with more time between incoming waves. Though it was probably cooler outside, the breeze had died and the bedroom was warm. Carver’s nude body was perspiring, and he could feel heat emanating from Beth. The scent of their coupling was heavier in the air than when he’d fallen asleep, stirring desire in him again, but only faintly. He became aware of the pressure of his bladder and reached for his cane so he could make his way into the bathroom.

  As he was standing at the commode relieving himself, he heard the phone trill again. It stopped after two rings. Beth must not have been sleeping as deeply as he’d thought.

  By the time he’d returned to the bedroom, she was sitting cross-legged on his side of the bed with the reading lamp on, holding the receiver to her ear with a hunched shoulder while she wrote with a pencil on the back of a magazine she’d managed to find.

  She said “Owe you” into the phone, then smiled and hung up.

  She stared at the magazine in her lap for a few seconds, as if double checking her information, then looked up at Carver. “Marla and Portia Zahn,” she said.

  “What?”

  “That was Jeff Mehling on the phone.
He’s been at his computer almost all day and worked his way back to Marla’s and Portia’s birth records. They were born within a year of each other in Winter Haven, Florida. Same mother and father. Jeff said the Zahns’ car was struck broadside by a tractor-trailer when the girls were eighteen months and seven months old. They were the only survivors. Since they had no other family, they became wards of the state and were put up for adoption.”

  Then it was true.

  Carver shifted weight over his cane and limped to the bed, but he didn’t sit or lie down.

  “Sisters,” he said. “Jesus!”

  He remembered again the alcohol level in Brant’s blood after the accident that killed Portia. Marla, for that or for whatever reason, might blame Brant for her sister’s death.

  Brant was probably unaware that Portia had a sister. Maybe Portia had been unaware of Marla’s existence. Adoption agencies invariably made the effort to begin their charges’ lives anew, especially if they were infants, to sever the past from them the way the umbilical cord had been cut to detach them completely from life in the womb. Like a second birth. It might be a necessary policy, but it could later cause pain and problems.

  Carver turned and moved to where his pants were folded over a chair.

  “Where are you going?” Beth asked when she saw he intended getting dressed.

  He sat down on the bed and quickly worked his legs into his pants, got them all the way on, then zipped them and fastened his belt. It was more of a struggle to get his socks on, but he was used to that, too.

  “Fred?” Beth said.

  He slipped his feet into black leather moccasins. “I’m going to see if Marla’s returned home. If she has, I plan to confront her with the evidence that she’s Portia Brant’s sister, blames Joel Brant for the accident that killed Portia, and is setting him up for a vengeance killing.”

  He knew she was watching as he worked his muscular upper body into a black T-shirt, then used his fingers to smooth back the thick hair above his ears.

  He went to the bed and picked up the Colt from beside the clock radio on the table. Oiled metal clucked and clacked smoothly as he jacked a round into the chamber. Then he showed Beth where the safety was located and how it worked. He knew she was familiar with firearms, but he wasn’t sure she knew about this one. “I’m leaving this with you in case Achilles Jones happens to show up.”

  “I know how to use it,” she said.

  He almost told her not to hesitate if she had time to shoot, then he realized there was no need. She wouldn’t hesitate, and her aim would be steady.

  At least, the aim of the former, nonpregnant Beth would have been steady.

  “What makes you think Marla might be home?” she asked.

  “If what I suspect is true, she only pretended to leave town because that’s what a terrified woman would do. She actually wants Joel Brant to find her. On her terms and home turf.”

  He made sure he had his wallet and keys, then he got a firm handhold on his cane and headed for the door.

  Behind him Beth said, “None of it’s going to be that simple, Fred.”

  He didn’t look back. “Why not?”

  “Because it never is. You know that.”

  He did know it, but not the way she did. His heart had never learned.

  The night was warm and the stars were bright and seemed to float low and huge, like the diffuse globs of yellow that were stars in a Van Gogh painting. There was very little breeze now.

  Finally, theory suited probability. As he gunned the Olds’s engine to follow its headlight beams to Jacaranda Lane, he thought Beth might be wrong.

  Sometimes, when you pulled the right lever or pushed the right button, it was precisely that simple.

  Sometimes.

  39

  Carver parked half a block away from Marla Cloy’s house on Jacaranda. If she was home, he didn’t want to chance her seeing him drive up. She might decide to leave by the back door.

  He climbed out of the Olds and made his way along the uneven sidewalk, feeling the slant of its cracked and jagged planes of concrete through his cane. The air was thick and still. There weren’t enough street lights on Jacaranda, and only a few of the houses showed light at their windows. People here went to bed early. Cicadas screamed and ratcheted in the dark yards behind the houses and in the shadowed palm fronds above Carver, but that was the only sound.

  As he neared Marla’s house, he noticed that the sidewalk and street were brighter there. And there was a strange orange cast to the light. He glanced up to see if it was coming from an overhead street lamp, but he saw only stars and a silhouetted palm tree.

  Then he noticed that the orange glow was flickering.

  Almost simultaneously, he realized something else. The cicadas had stopped their relentless mating scream and the night was quiet.

  A slight sound or movement made him turn around just in time to see the massive, shadowed form of Achilles Jones emerge from the darkness of the bushes between two houses.

  Carver stopped and stood still, gripping his cane tighter just below its crook, wishing he hadn’t left the Colt with Beth.

  Beth, who’d known it wouldn’t be simple.

  Jones said nothing as he advanced. He was limping badly, and when he got within ten feet of Carver the faint light shone on a white gauze bandage that covered one eye. There was a long gash across his forehead. Another was visible on his bare stomach where his wool-lined leather vest was ripped away to hang like a flap of skin. He looked like hell. He was hell.

  He said nothing, only growled, as he launched himself at Carver.

  Carver stuck the cane out like a spear then pulled it back, causing the giant to hesitate, allowing Carver to barely avoid the swipe of his huge arm. Injuries had slowed the big man, taken the edge off the smooth flow of his great strength, but he was still a dangerous force, like a grizzly bear on an off day.

  Carver jabbed again, quickly, and felt the cane make contact with Jones’s face. He pushed off Jones, reeled, and almost fell, but regained his balance. Jones stumbled on his bad leg and banged into the side of a parked car, leaving a shallow dent in its door and sinking to the ground. Carver thought inanely that Jones was death on vehicles.

  Jones reached up with a plate-sized hand and grabbed a door handle to pull himself up. Before he could get completely to his feet, Carver moved toward him, jabbing at his face again with the cane, yanking it back just in time to avoid Jones’s frantic attempts to grab it. The best Jones seemed able to do was brush the cane as if by accident. Carver realized that with one eye bandaged Jones had no depth perception. If he could spike the other eye, he’d blind the giant completely and have a chance to survive. He doubled his efforts, zeroing in on the unbandaged eye.

  Jones realized what Carver was doing. He roared like a tortured beast in his frustration as he tried to protect his eye and figure out where the cane was so he could snatch it away from Carver. The cane’s tip missed the good eye but bounced off the bridge of Jones’s nose and struck the bandaged eye. Jones yelled in pain and instinctively raised his arms to shield his face. Carver whipped the cane hard across Jones’s legs, hoping he’d hit the injured one, and Jones slid back down to a sitting position from where he’d been leaning with his back against the parked car.

  Carver was breathing hard now, feeling the strain in his arms and good leg. Maintaining his balance after each strike with the cane took tremendous effort, and he was sweating heavily and tiring. He had to back up a step and try to catch his breath and regain a firm grip on the hard walnut cane.

  Jones grinned, seeing that Carver was almost spent. He rolled to the side and gained his feet, listing to the left and teetering for a moment. Then, still with his eerie, vacuous grin, he lurched toward the exhausted and vulnerable Carver, risking a chance injury to the good eye, his arms spread wide so Carver couldn’t avoid their terrible reach.

  But Carver didn’t jab at the eye. He faked with the cane as if to strike at the legs again, and Jones
dropped his arms for a second. That was when Carver raised the level of the cane and lashed it sideways with all his might as if it were a baseball bat, knowing it was his last chance.

  He felt the shock of the blow connecting and heard the cartilage-cracking sound of Jones’s larynx being crushed.

  Jones gave a ghastly, choking gurgle and stood very still except for both his huge hands fluttering with a weird delicacy at his throat, as if feeling for something that wasn’t there. The slowly comprehending expression on his face said he knew he’d been badly hurt. Maybe he sensed already that it had been a death blow, the way fatally injured animals somehow knew.

  The effort of the swing had caused Carver to lose his balance and fall. He raised himself to his feet with the cane and waited for Jones to drop, seeing behind him the flickering orange glare from the flames consuming Marla Cloy’s house. He became aware of several people standing outside their houses, unmoving on porches and lawns. Sirens were screaming, drawing near. Flashing lights illuminated the end of the block, and a yellow Del Morray fire engine blasted its horn and roared around the corner.

  At the sound of the sirens, then the blaring horn, Jones gazed incredulously at Carver with eyes like clouded glass. Instead of toppling like an ordinary man, the giant staggered into the street, trying to escape, his hands now clawing desperately at his ruined throat. He was a creature of raw will. He’d been dealt death, but life was a force in him.

  With an undeniable admiration that he tried to ignore, Carver limped past him, toward Marla’s house. His injured ribs were aching again, as if he’d just been struck there.

  Above the wail of sirens he heard tires screech and air brakes hiss, and without slowing down he glanced to the side and saw Jones raise his arms high and go down beneath the gleaming front bumper of a huge yellow vehicle lettered 4TH DIST. LADDER. Voices shouted and there was a rush of activity behind Carver as he reached Marla’s front yard and hobbled toward the tiny porch with its dead potted plants.