Burn (3 page)

Carver knew it, but he didn’t have quite the same slant on the problem as McGregor. “You don’t seem to have much concern for Marla Cloy.”

“Oh, if we get the call in time, we’ll save her fucking ass. I think that’s concern enough.”

The clang of hammer on steel became even louder, as did the ratchety scream of the drill. Carver was getting a headache, and his clothes were clinging to his perspiring flesh. It was truly miserable in the stifling office; he was glad McGregor was stuck there. “What do you know about Joel Brant?” he asked, noticing a bead of sweat dangling from the tip of McGregor’s nose.

“The guy that wants to plant her?” The drop of sweat plummeted to his already stained tie to join coffee and gravy and maybe blood on the polyester.
Clang! Clang!
went the hammer.
Eeeeek!
screamed the drill. The workmen were persistent, probably suffering in the heat themselves and eager to finish the job. “From what I can recall, he builds houses or something. Doesn’t have a record of violence, but that doesn’t mean much in these cases.”
Clang! Clang! Eeeeek!
“Guy’s in his forties, probably got the hots for this Marla Cloy, then she did him dirty and now he wants to get even. Way the world works. Maybe if we knew what this cunt did to him, we’d think she deserved whatever it is he wants to do to her.”

“You ever talk to him?”

“Not my department. Uniforms talked to him. Gave him the usual speech, I suppose. He hasn’t done anything yet, so we can’t charge him with a crime.”

Clang! Clang! Eeeeek!
“What about Marla Cloy? What if she does something to him?”

“That’s his problem. If she snaps and picks up a gun or knife, or if he comes at her and she kills him in self-defense, then I get involved in a professional way.”

“You think she’s telling the truth about how Brant’s stalking her? I mean, the details?”

Eeeeek!
“Sure. They’re usually telling the truth. Sometimes they deserve to have the holy hell scared outa them, sometimes not. It doesn’t concern me until a crime’s actually committed.”

“Then?”

“Then I’ve got more paperwork.” He picked up a few of the papers on his cluttered desk and let them fall back onto the felt pad, where a ballpoint pen lay. “Speaking of which, it’s time for you to leave so I can get back to something worthwhile.”

Carver’s head was throbbing with pain and he found himself waiting anxiously for the next noisy assault on the faulty air conditioner. He didn’t mind leaving. He used the back of his wrist to wipe sweat from his forehead. “Why don’t you open the window?”

“Air conditioner works from time to time, and maybe you haven’t noticed, but it’s ninety-two degrees outside.”

“You’d get a little breeze, maybe.”

“The breeze I wanna feel is from you walking out the door, Carver.”

“Me, too,” Carver said, smiling.
Eeeeek!
He turned around and made for the door.

“Carver.”

He paused and twisted his upper body over the cane so he could look at McGregor.

McGregor was standing up now, leaning forward with his knuckles on the desk and glowering at him. “I don’t care if this Marla Cloy bitch is your client. Far as I’m concerned, she’s just another citizen gets protected or stuffed in a body bag—whatever the job calls for.”

Carver stood silently, letting McGregor assume Marla Cloy was his client.

“Even if that restraining order doesn’t get granted,” McGregor said, “I don’t want you meddling in this and getting in the way of the police. You just peek through keyholes like usual and hang around your place on the beach and fuck that dark meat of yours. Be the best way for you.”

Carver knew McGregor wouldn’t let him leave without trying to infuriate him. It was a little game McGregor played with everyone. He fed on other people’s rage and frustration, his own misery seeking company.

“It sure is hot in here,” Carver said, keeping his voice calm even though sweat was stinging the corners of his eyes and his head was pounding, “You should try not to get overwrought. You could have a heart attack—if you had a heart.”

And he went out the door into the equally hot hall, leaving McGregor seething and stinking behind him.
Clang! Clang! Eeeeek!

He craved untainted air.

Carver found Marla Cloy’s address easily enough in the phone directory. A freelance writer had to be listed and available for jobs from all comers. Then he picked up the phone and called his friend Lieutenant Alfonso Desoto at police headquarters in Orlando and asked him to get some information on Marla Cloy from when she lived in that city.

Desoto agreed to help, though he sounded reluctant. Carver understood. Desoto was basically paid to solve crimes, not prevent them. Which was also true of McGregor. That was how the system worked; there wasn’t much emphasis on prevention. Perpetrators were caught and punished. Victims were finally finding much-needed help, in statutes and in support groups.

Everyone seemed to be covered except for intended victims.

T
HIS WAS ONE OF
those times when Carver loved the wind. It seemed to scatter troubles like leaves in its wake, though he knew that was only fancy. Trouble could hang on through a hurricane.

But he drove with the canvas top down on his ancient Oldsmobile convertible until he neared Marla Cloy’s address on Jacaranda Lane. Then he pulled over to the curb and raised the top, but he left the windows down. The old car’s air conditioner worked only slightly better than the one at police headquarters, and since it was now late afternoon some of the heat had gone out of the day. The breeze that swirled in the car when he began to drive again felt cool when he got up enough speed.

Jacaranda Lane was lined with scruffy-looking palm trees and untrimmed foliage, but there were no jacaranda blossoms in sight. The houses were small, relatively cheap, and not in very good repair. Most of them were stucco and some had faded red tile roofs. What residents were visible suggested the neighborhood was a mixture of whites, African-Americans, and Hispanics. Some of the houses had freshly painted shutters or well-tended lawns or flower beds, and one of them appeared to have a new porch roof. Though the area had declined, it was a long way from being a slum. It still had a chance.

Carver drove past the Cloy house to look it over before parking and settling in to wait for Marla Cloy to make an appearance. He kept the Olds’s speed steady so as not to attract attention and took in the house with one long glance out the side window. It was small, like the rest of the houses in the block, cracked yellow stucco with a tiny concrete front porch shaded by a slanted roof. The grass needed mowing. There were several large terra-cotta pots nestled against the porch’s black iron railing. The plants in them were all brown and dead. Some of the house’s side windows had fringed green canvas awnings that drooped low to resemble half-closed eyelids. One of them was ripped and hanging crookedly. The house next door had a
FOR RENT
sign stuck in the front yard. Carver thought it was a good guess that many of the houses were rented, including Marla Cloy’s.

There was no garage, but in the narrow gravel driveway that ran alongside the modest house, Carver saw a rusty maroon Toyota Corolla sedan, five or six years old, with a caved-in front fender. If Marla Cloy was a financially successful writer, she must be putting most of her earnings in CDs or mutual funds. She might also be home, since her car was there.

After circling the block of similar houses, Carver parked a discreet distance down from Marla’s on the other side of the street. He was in the sparse shade of a palm tree, and because of the curve of the flat street would be barely visible from the house. At the same time, he could see the front porch and most of the small front yard from where he sat. The few folks he’d seen on the sidewalks hadn’t paid much attention to him. It was that kind of neighborhood; everybody had plenty of trouble and didn’t consciously look for more. And it was still too hot for many people to be walking around in the sun.

He leaned back on the warm vinyl upholstery and relaxed, his eyes half closed like Marla’s awninged windows, slipping into the half-awake but hyperalert mode of the reptile on the hunt and the experienced cop on a stakeout.

It was almost five o’clock before the house’s front door opened and a medium-height, slender woman wearing black slacks and an orange and white striped T-shirt stepped onto the porch. She was carrying a large brown purse with its strap slung diagonally across her chest and over her shoulder, the way women do sometimes when they fear purse snatchers. From this distance she seemed a fairly attractive woman. Not at all the dreary number McGregor had described. But who knew what kind of female McGregor would find attractive? Something of another species, perhaps.

After rattling the doorknob to make sure the lock was set, she bounced nimbly down the three porch steps and disappeared as she walked around to her car.

Carver sat up straight and started the Olds’s rumbling old V-8 engine. He was ready to follow when she backed out of her driveway and headed away from him down Jacaranda Lane toward Shell Avenue.

She didn’t drive far. The maroon Toyota turned right into a McDonald’s on Shell, jounced over a yellow speed bump, then stopped in a parking space near a Dumpster, facing a picket fence. Carver parked the Olds in a slot farther from the restaurant’s entrance and watched Marla carefully lock her car before walking inside. He couldn’t decide if she was acting like a woman whose life was in danger.

Since she had no idea who he was, Carver climbed out of the Olds and limped with his cane across the heat-softened blacktop and into McDonald’s.

It was bright and cool inside; he was glad Marla had come here. She’d just paid for her food and was carrying a tray toward the seating area. Carver ordered a Big Mac, fries, and diet Coke, then carried them to a booth where he could see Marla. There were about a dozen other customers scattered about the seating area: An old man, three teenage girls having a delicious confab, two guys in white coveralls loudly discussing the new Dodge pickup trucks, a harried-looking mother with three small children—the usual McDonald’s crowd. Even the single woman sitting alone, glumly and methodically chewing her food then sipping soda through a straw, fit right in. Marla Cloy. She didn’t look like a psychopath who’d try to ruin an innocent man’s life.

In the harsh light of the low evening sun streaming through the window, Carver decided she was rather pretty, with delicate features and eyes that were probably dark blue rather than brown—it was difficult to tell from where he sat. Her medium-length black hair framed a round but not fleshy face with cheeks that were either rouged or naturally flushed to give her a healthy, hearty look, like a robust skier who’d just clomped inside from the cold. She moved her head as if sensing she was being stared at, and Carver looked away and concentrated on salting his fries.

When he chanced another glance at Marla she was twisted sideways in the booth and was drawing something from her large brown purse.

It was a paperback book. She opened it to a middle page that was bent at the upper corner, then became engrossed in it, eating slowly and automatically without looking at her food. Now and then, also with her eyes still trained on the book, she moved her head sideways to sip from the straw protruding from her drink. Carver stared hard and tried to catch the paperback’s title. Marla’s fingers covered most of it, but he could make out that the book was written by a novelist named Ruth Rendell.

He finished his supper while Marla was still eating and reading, then he went outside to wait for her.

Within ten minutes she emerged, carrying her purse with its strap slung diagonally across her body again, and walked to her car without glancing in Carver’s direction, He wondered if she thought someone might try to snatch her purse between the restaurant door and the little Toyota. What might she have in there besides the paperback novel? Mace? A gun? This was Florida, land of sun, sand, and the occasional homicide. Not a few purses contained guns.

He followed her to a combination gas station—grocery store on Shell, where she filled the Toyota’s tank with low-octane gas and bought a half-quart carton of milk. Then she drove the short distance back to her house on Jacaranda and parked in the driveway. She was disappearing inside and shutting the door behind her as Carver drove past.

He circled the block again and parked in his previous spot, but a few feet nearer the house this time so he could see the front and one of the side windows.

That didn’t make much difference. Only faint movement was visible for a few seconds in the side window, then a pale hand as the shade was lowered. The front drapes were already closed.

A few minutes after seven-thirty, Marla came out of the house again and climbed into the Toyota. This time she was wearing a simple green dress with bare shoulders and had on black patent leather high heels.

Carver followed her to a lounge called Willet’s Bullet on Tenth Street and watched her stride inside.

He sat in the heat and waited until it was almost dark before going in after her.

Willet’s Bullet was crowded, which was no surprise to Carver, who for more than an hour had watched more people enter than leave. It was one of those bars that served finger food. Half the folks at the tables along the wall opposite the long bar were eating as well as drinking. An old man with stooped shoulders was acting as bartender while two women in black-and-white outfits were serving the tables. An all-female rock group with skull makeup, wearing black plastic trash bags cut to serve as dresses, was writhing around on a large video screen and moaning loudly and rhythmically about cancer and death and hell. Apparently girls didn’t just want to have fun.

Carver saw Marla sitting alone at a small table in back, near the entrance to the rest rooms, staring at the video and sipping what looked like a glass of white wine. He sat at the bar where he could see her in the mirror and ordered a draft Budweiser.

“How long you walked with that cane?” the man next to him asked. His words were slightly slurred, and Carver figured he was only a little drunk. Just enough to be a pest, if he was talkative.