by John Lutz
He sat transfixed, staring at the empty space she’d occupied.
Then birds started nattering again and crickets resumed chirping. The sea continued sighing on the beach. A gull screamed in the endless blue distance beyond the house. The world back to normal.
His encounter with Elana had been so brief and unsettling, Carver drove away wondering if it had been something he’d imagined in the heat.
“How did Adam Kave find out about you?” Edwina asked that night in their dark bedroom in Del Moray. Carver lay beside her and stared at the blue-black rectangle of the window, watching the curtains swaying in the ocean breeze. The scent of the sea was in the room. “Laura told him.”
Edwina didn’t ask the questions she might have. She could live not knowing the answers.
She said, “I don’t like Laura.”
“Laura did what she thought she had to. Can’t blame her for that.”
“That’s not what I blame her for. Anyway, she was wrong in going to Adam Kave.”
“She was,” Carver agreed.
“You have this sick streak of moderation where Laura’s concerned. I’d have thought you’d be mad enough to choke her.”
“I was, for a while.”
“Uh-huh. Then you got all philosophical.” She stared off to the side in the dimness. The ocean was loud in its timeless assault on the beach. “Goddamned ex-wives!”
“You’re one, and you’re kinda nice.”
“Are you planning to sit back now and wait for the ax to drop on your neck?” Edwina asked.
“No. I’ll finish what I began.”
“Good. That’s what life’s about, finishing what we start.”
“Sometimes.”
The bedsprings groaned. She rolled onto her side, close to him, and rested a cool hand on his chest. “Begin something now and finish it,” she suggested.
He did.
Chapter 32
The next night, Carver found a different vantage point to watch the garage exit of Dewitt’s apartment building.
He sat sipping bitter black coffee from McDonald’s and listening to soft music on the Olds’s radio. Sade was sighing her bluesy, velvet version of love. The car’s canvas top was up, but he had both front windows cranked down so a breeze pressed through the interior. It was 11:00 P.M. It had rained that afternoon, and though the temperature was still in the eighties the air smelled fresh, carrying the scent of the untended flower bed bordering the low stone wall around the apartment grounds. In the swimming pool a lone teenage girl frolicked like a carefree mermaid, splashing and submerging, then surfacing to tread water with her head and shoulders above the rippling surface. Now and then she’d shake her long hair and hurl drops of water glistening in the pale and shimmering artificial light bouncing off the pool. Carver hoped someone had cleaned the water and added chemicals, or the mermaid might contract anything from athlete’s foot to trench mouth.
Nadine and Dewitt had eaten supper at a steakhouse downtown, then stopped for a while at something called Roll-the-Dice Corner Lounge. There was a mural of a huge pair of dice showing snake eyes painted on the front brick wall near the entrance. The place seemed to be one huge speaker cabinet from which hard rock music pulsed. It made Carver’s head hurt even where he was parked halfway down the block.
Dewitt had finally driven Nadine back to where her car was parked at his dealership, and she’d followed him in her sleek red Datsun to his apartment. There was no indication that either of them had been drinking; they both drove straight and true.
They’d been inside the apartment since just after ten, maybe trying to recover their hearing. The lights were still burning, lessening the likelihood that any of what Lloyd Van Meter called Girl and Boy Stuff was going on.
Occasionally Carver chanced leaving his parking space to drive to the McDonald’s two blocks away, either to relieve his bladder or to get another cup of coffee to help keep him alert. The two things seemed to be related.
He was on his third cup, and the inside of his mouth tasted flat and stale. The coffee itself was beginning to taste flat and stale. It made his teeth ache.
The garage’s wide door twitched and then started to roll up, tugged by an automatic opener. Pale fluorescent light spilled out onto Low Citrus Drive. Carver placed his foam cup of coffee in a plastic holder he had stuck with adhesive on the dashboard. He waited to see what would emerge from the garage.
It was a gray Cadillac, with the darkly tinted windows that seemed almost mandatory for luxury cars in Florida. Carver had learned a lot about the building and its tenants, and he knew the car belonged to the gem dealer on the second floor.
He relaxed and watched the overhead door glide down as the Caddy made a smooth left turn and drove past him. The last glimmer of light disappeared from the pavement in front of the door. The street was dark and quiet again. He reached for his coffee.
At eleven-thirty the garage door rose again. Carver glanced up and saw that the lights were still on in Dewitt’s apartment, but he wedged his half-full coffee cup in the plastic holder and sat ready.
Dewitt’s dark blue Jaguar four-door sedan pulled slowly from the garage and picked up speed as it rolled toward the corner. In the wash of illumination from the streetlight, Carver could see only one figure in the car’s front seat.
The right side of the seat!
Then he remembered the Jag was imported from England, and the steering wheel was on the right. Dewitt was alone. The smooth snarl of the car’s turbo-charged engine drifted back to him as Dewitt played the accelerator.
Nadine was in the apartment by herself. Maybe she and Dewitt had had an argument. Maybe Dewitt was driving to pick up Paul and bring him back to see Nadine. Maybe Dewitt was going out for ice. Carver cautioned himself; it was easy to make much of nothing.
He settled back again to wait. The breeze picked up, bringing more fragrance of flowers, mingled with the noxious residue of the departed Jag’s exhaust fumes.
Fifteen minutes later the gleaming gray Cadillac came back and disappeared down the shallow ramp into the garage, like an exotic craft returning to its mother ship.
The garage door stayed open. Nadine’s red Datsun darted out and screeched into a sharp left turn, following the course of the Jaguar.
Carver sloshed warm coffee onto his hand as he jammed the cup into the plastic holder. He started the Olds, crammed the shift lever into Drive, and fell in behind the Datsun, hanging well back.
Nadine knew she’d been watched, and even if she’d talked with Adam and gotten the impression Carver was off the case, she might be warier than usual. Paul possessed an I.Q. of over 140, but Nadine might be ahead of him. It was difficult to know; youth had a way of overriding intelligence.
Through the Datsun’s rear louvers Carver saw that Nadine was alone. On the left side of the car this time. He smiled. No momentary surprises.
Keeping several cars between them, Carver followed her out of town. The Datsun had a dim left taillight and was easy to track from a distance. Nadine turned north on Highway 95.
He thought she might be going home, but she soared past the Hillsboro turnoff, holding a steady seventy-five. The Olds, with its prehistoric powerful V-8 engine, kept pace easily a quarter of a mile back.
There was very little traffic on the wide highway. The car’s tires whined on still-warm pavement. Carver relaxed and rested an arm on the metal window frame, feeling the cool wind pound at his bare, crooked elbow. The rush of air whirled in the Olds, ballooning the canvas top and howling out the unzipped back window. The speedometer needle might as well have been painted on seventy-five. The Olds slipped into that automotive high-speed trance that only big cars can achieve.
Nadine drove for about an hour, then cut west at Palm Beach Gardens and got on Florida’s Turnpike. An uneasy feeling started at the nape of Carver’s neck and spread coldly. This wasn’t Nadine’s normal behavior. She was on her way somewhere out of the ordinary tonight, in a hurry even for her, and that could spell
Paul Kave. Paul Kave, the kid the odds and the law said suffered from a compulsion to burn people to death.
And the odds and the law might be right. Carver still wasn’t sure about Paul, despite what he’d told Adam to try to get Adam to back off and give him room and time to operate. Paul was still the number one possibility as the killer of Carver’s son.
Carver reached over and pulled his old Colt automatic from the glove compartment and checked the action. He placed a hand over the top of the gun and yanked backward on smooth steel; a round snapped from the clip into the chamber.
Just below Orlando, Nadine exited the turnpike at 192 and drove west toward Kissimmee. The sensation on the back of Carver’s neck grew colder. He was beginning to suspect where she was going, and it didn’t figure. Why would Nadine drive to see family black sheep Emmett Kave?
Unless Paul was at Emmett’s place and wanted to talk with both of them before deciding on a meeting with Carver.
That was it, Carver figured. Must be it!
The low red Datsun veered onto an off-ramp, geared and growled neatly through a series of turns, and Carver found himself in Emmett Kave’s neighborhood. Oddly, the area was even more depressing at night. Flat streets, low houses, rusted cars and pickup trucks. The occasional glint of a discarded beer can glaring like a weary eye from the weeds. Glimpses of poverty caused the imagination to conjure up exaggerated pictures of despair.
Then he was on Jupiter Avenue, Emmett’s street.
Carver braked the Olds and pulled to the curb half a block from Emmett’s run-down house. He watched as the Datsun’s brake lights flared, and it slowed and right-turned into Emmett’s driveway, bouncing as it rolled over the bump at the sidewalk. It edged up near the front porch and stopped, then its headlights winked out.
The driver’s-side door opened.
Joel Dewitt stood up out of the car, raised his arms, and stretched.
Carver reached for the cold cup of coffee, fumbled it, and dropped it to the Olds’s floor. He felt some of the cool liquid splash onto his right sock at the line of his shoe. He ignored the spilled coffee and kept his gaze nailed on Joel Dewitt, even though the inside of the Olds reeked of the stuff. Hot night air closed in on the motionless car.
Damn Nadine! he thought. She’d fooled him, taken Dewitt’s car to meet Paul, while Dewitt, in her car, had deliberately misled Carver.
And Carver had snapped at the bait and devoured it and half the line in his eagerness.
But no. Dewitt had left the apartment too long after Nadine to be a decoy. He would, in fact, have left first if he’d wanted to trick Carver. Nadine had simply borrowed the Jaguar to throw Carver off the trail; possibly Dewitt hadn’t even given her permission or known about it until it was too late to stop her. Dewitt, even without a key, would have had no trouble starting Nadine’s car; every dealer knew how to hot-wire an ignition. Nadine was an independent girl.
One who might be anywhere tonight. With her brother.
As Carver watched, Emmett’s yellow porch light came on, flickering as if the bulb were loose. Dewitt slowly strolled around to the Datsun’s trunk, or what passed for a trunk, and raised the rear deck. He bent low and pulled something out of the trunk, then slammed the deck lid back down and carried the object toward the front porch, where Emmett was waiting now beneath the yellow light with the door open. The light had attracted a large moth that was flitting zanily around the porch. Though it was late, Emmett was fully dressed in bib overalls and a plaid work shirt with the sleeves rolled above the elbows.
And suddenly Carver knew for sure that, while Nadine might have taken Dewitt’s car to get past him, Dewitt hadn’t realized what she was doing or had an inkling of her purpose. The fact that his car instead of hers was missing from the garage had surprised him. He didn’t suspect that Carver had followed the Datsun from Fort Lauderdale, thinking the driver was Nadine.
And Nadine wouldn’t dream where Dewitt had gone after she’d left the apartment. Or why.
In the unsteady stream of light from the house, even from half a block’s distance, Carver recognized the bulky, cylindrical object cradled in Dewitt’s arms.
A scuba diver’s air tank.
Dominoes fell one after another in Carver’s mind, arranging themselves in a comprehensible pattern, revealing the landscape behind them.
Making clear what should have been obvious to him long before now.
He snatched up the Colt from beside him on the seat and tucked it beneath his belt. Then he quietly slid out of the car.
He limped toward Emmett Kave’s house, keeping his cane’s rubber tip on firm concrete in the dark. His shadow, a twisted, potent thing, writhed grotesquely before him like a tentative yet eager advance scout.
Chapter 33
Carver stayed away from the pool of light cast by the yellow porch bulb and made his way around the side of the house. He checked the windows, but Emmett had all the shades drawn. The blank glass panes gave back only the night. From inside came the drone of voices, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying.
For several minutes he crouched beneath the window where the voices were loudest. Then he gave up trying to interpret them and, as quietly as possible, moved along the dirt-and-gravel driveway toward the dilapidated garage with the sway-backed roof. Ahead of him a black cat with white paws, and gleaming eyes like mysterious twin moons, glanced at him and then padded silently into the bushes.
Ivy had climbed wildly up the near side of the garage, clinging to checked paint and bare, rotted wood. Carver could smell the age and the dry corruption. There was a stone path to a bulky and crooked side door with a thick piece of rough plywood nailed over what once had been a window. The persistent vines had been cleared away from the area of the door, and moonlight gleamed off new metal-a heavy hasp and large brass padlock.
Carver limped around to the garage’s wide front doors and discovered a similar hasp and lock. Heavy-duty hardware.
He moved along the far side of the garage to the back and found a spot where the wood was particularly rotted. Stooping on his good leg, he inserted the cane into the space between two boards and pried back and forth. He had help from termites; the two boards gave like cardboard and crumbled rather than splintered. Carver wedged his fingers between them, yanked once, and rusted nails creaked and gave way and a board pulled free.
He pressed his face close and peered into the musty garage, and was hit by the stench of cat urine. He remembered the feline prowler with the pale paws.
There was enough moonlight filtering through the cracks in the garage to reveal an old but shiny blue Lincoln sedan with a white top; a jewel in an unlikely setting.
“So what’s inside?” a voice whispered behind him.
Carver’s head jerked around so quickly it hurt his neck.
He knew immediately the identity of the youth crouched behind him. The long, sensitive face. The mussed blond hair. The firm jaw contrasting with unfocused dark eyes. Poet’s eyes. Frightened eyes. Eyes of the hunted.
Paul Kave.
Carver’s heart was slamming hard and he was having difficulty breathing. He planted the cane and pulled himself to his feet.
“What’s inside?” Paul repeated in a voice more curious than demanding.
“Look for yourself,” Carver growled. He wasn’t quite sure how to treat his longtime quarry’s sudden presence. This was something Carver hadn’t figured on, this three-dimensional Paul so close to him; not separated from him by a thick pane of glass or the distance of deception, but here, speaking to him, as human as Carver himself. It was goddamned unsettling. Almost paralyzing.
Paul bent down easily and peered through the space left by the pried-out board. He was wearing faded jeans and a blue or green T-shirt that said Buccaneers across the chest in black letters. He might have been any kid roaming the Florida resort areas looking for girls. That was the thing about Paul that threw Carver-the boy’s apparent normalcy. Except for the lost look in his eyes, and the faint but unmi
stakable scent of desperation that clung to him the way it lingered on junkies and drifters.
He glanced up at Carver and stood, not seeming surprised at finding a near-duplicate of his car in the garage. Carver knew Paul was finally ahead of the game. It had to happen, given that he’d survived this long. Paul had access to most of the knowledge Carver had, plus what Nadine had told him. He’d analyzed the same information and reached the same general conclusion. That lofty I.Q. at work. But what did he have in mind now?
“Why are you here, Paul?”
“When I talked to Nadine earlier tonight things clicked in my mind. She told me what you’d said to my dad, about how some of what’s happened didn’t fit. I decided someone was trying to set me up. Uncle Emmett had to have told you about my being at the Mermaid Motel in Orlando; he was the only one who knew I was there. And I remembered how he felt about my father. And mother.”
“Your mother?”
“Years ago Uncle Emmett tried to rape her. Didn’t anyone tell you about that?”
“No,” Carver said. “Not the sort of dirty linen a family’s likely to air out.” He understood now the depth of Adam’s hatred for his brother. And Emmett’s intense jealousy of Adam.
“Uncle Emmett said it was all a big mistake, that my mom and dad misunderstood what had happened and he was the one who was wronged. I believed him. Up till now.”
Carver thought about a younger Emmett. And a younger Elana. What must she have been before age and illness had worn her down? The wife that was her possessive husband’s treasure.
“Why did my father hire you, Mr. Carver?”
“To find you before the police did. To protect you from harm.”
“That’s not easy to believe.”
“Doesn’t make it less true. Where’s Nadine?”
“Where I left her, I guess. Where I sneaked away from her with Dewitt’s car in Fort Lauderdale. Hated to trick her like that, but I needed a car. I thought I should drive here and talk to Uncle Emmett about this. I was surprised to see your car parked down the block. I turned off my headlights and stopped across the street, and got a glimpse of you sneaking up the driveway. But what’s Nadine’s car doing parked out front?”