Scorcher (22 page)

Dewitt let out a long, trailing breath and released the cane. He looked around, his eyes dull and his mouth slack. Blood was dripping from the point of his chin onto the floor. Carver listened to it
plup! plup! plup!
onto the rug. One drop sounded different; it had landed on the toe of Dewitt’s right shoe.

He stepped over Bingham and stalked out.

“Joel!” Nadine cried, and ran after him, leaving Bingham whimpering on the floor. “Dammit, come back, Joel! Please, honey!” Not hard to see where her loyalty lay. Carver knew she hadn’t met Bingham last night. Or Joel Dewitt.

He and Adam Kave helped Bingham to his feet.

“You hurt bad?” Adam asked.

Bingham, still pale, shook his head. “ . . . Be okay,” he mumbled. “Pain going away. A little sick to my stomach.”

Adam helped him walk to the sofa. Bingham slumped down on the cushions, clasping his right side where Dewitt had scored with some well-placed kicks. Pain was bending his body forward in a tight coil.

Elana stood up slowly, almost as if she were bored, and without speaking left the room. The lilac scent of her perfume followed her.

“You should get upstairs and rest, dear,” Adam called after her unnecessarily. “Try not to worry about all this.” She didn’t answer. He turned toward Carver. “She seems calm, but inside she’s upset, sucked dry of energy. This kind of scene can . . . well, it takes a toll on her.”

“I imagine,” Carver said.

“The bastard!” Bingham groaned, feeling better and getting mad again. “He kicked me in the balls!” As if mayhem were a sport and there were rules.

Carver limped over to the sofa. “I’ll drive you to get those ribs X-rayed,” he said.

“I can drive,” Bingham snapped, acting as though Carver had insulted him. He struggled to his feet. His tall, lanky body swayed, then steadied. His long face was still pinched with pain. He couldn’t quite believe what had happened. The good guys were supposed to win. This was an aberration and an outrage.

“Mel, you need help,” Adam told him. “Go have yourself looked at by a doctor. Promise to do that?”

“A doctor and a lawyer,” Bingham said. Man of the eighties. He hobbled bent-over out the door.

Carver and Adam said nothing while they waited, then they listened to the sound of his Jeep starting and screeching away. Tires counted for nothing in his budget.

“Shit!” Adam said, uncomfortable with this new silence and what had gone before it. “For something like this to happen . . .” He glanced up at the beamed ceiling, as if suddenly he’d heard thunder and remembered there was a storm in the forecast. “You’ll have to excuse me, Carver; I better go upstairs and see to Elana.”

“You should. We can talk later.”

Adam clenched and unclenched his fists, as if exercising with invisible devices to strengthen his grip. His spring-trap jaw moved silently; he wanted to say more but couldn’t formulate adequate words to direct Carver’s way. He gave up and shambled from the room with his head bowed.

Carver put weight on the cane and moved out to the veranda; he needed fresh and less vibrant air.

Nadine was seated at the glass-topped table that was still cluttered with dishes and flatware and wadded napkins from breakfast. She was staring at the mess as if it were the remnants of her ruined young life. When she heard the clack of Carver’s cane she looked up at him, and then away. Her eyes were black with a nameless fear. “How’s Mel?”

“I think he’ll be all right,” Carver told her. The steady pulse of the ocean and the vastness of the sky made everything seem more placid out here. Eternity close by. Waiting.

“God, I thought Joel was gonna kill him!”

“He might have.”

Far out at sea hundreds of gulls were circling in the wake of a fishing boat, like a cloud of fleas following an indifferent dog.

“Joel’s in the bathroom washing blood off his shirt,” she said. “Mel hit him and cut his lip.” She talked as if a split lip were as serious as a cracked rib or ruptured spleen. “Despite what Mother says, Joel’s an honest and honorable man. I mean, just because he’s in a business where there are some crooks . . .”

“I know,” Carver said. “In fact, I sympathize. Private investigators suffer from an unfair stereotype just like used-car dealers.”

“A couple of times I’ve driven down to Miami with Joel to pay back money his grandfather lent him. That old man’s Joel’s only relative; his mother deserted him when he was an infant. Joel’s always repaid the loans, and on time. That’s how he’s kept his business going through rough times, not by stealing people’s money like Elana or Mel Bingham would have you believe. His grandfather himself told me that. Joel’s a man who feels the responsibility of his debts.”

And Nadine was a woman who knew how to avoid an uncomfortable subject. Carver leaned with both hands cupped over his cane and looked deep into her dark eyes, trying to understand what was staring back at him and making him uneasy. “You met Paul last night, didn’t you, Nadine?”

She’d been waiting for him to ask. She pushed away from the table and stood up, not realizing her arm had brushed crumbs from the smooth glass onto her pale yellow shorts, where they clung like tiny insects.

She said, “Let’s go down to the beach, Mr. Carver. We need to talk where no one can overhear us but the fishes.”

C
ARVER WAS HAVING DIFFICULTY
walking with the cane on the damp sand, near where the surf foamed on the beach. Nadine looked over at him and stopped. He turned, and supported himself gingerly with the cane, facing her. She was wearing white Reebok jogging shoes that were wet from waves that had crawled far enough up on the sand to reach them. She didn’t seem to care that her shoes were wet. The mind was where she lived.

“I didn’t meet Mel Bingham last night,” she said. “I did meet Paul.”

Surprise, surprise, Carver thought. “Where?”

“At a marina in Fort Lauderdale. And if you’re thinking of trying to figure out which one, forget it. We won’t meet there again.” Her voice was taunting, as if she were playing a game and had gone one up on Carver.

“How’d you know where to go?”

“Paul swam to the boathouse here and left a note for me where we used to hide things when we were kids. It told me where and when to meet him. We talked for over an hour, Mr. Carver. I mean talked about everything, really deep. The way we used to confide in each other when we were in grade school. Nothing but the truth.” Her strong Kave features, half in bright sunlight, became serious. “Paul didn’t kill anyone.”

“Paul would say that.”

“Of course. Because he’s innocent.”

“The evidence says he’s guilty.”

She tilted her head to the side and stared at him with the mocking tolerance of youth. Wisdom time. “Isn’t that for a judge or jury to say?”

Carver matched her trite for trite. “I’d like to help Paul so he’ll stand in front of a jury instead of police guns.”

“That’s bullshit and we both know it.” Really, she was grown-up. At times, anyway.

Carver wasn’t sure how much she knew. He let her remark go by. He guessed she was letting her emotions talk for her. Like every other kind of love, sibling affection had a flip side that could cause pain. She’d learned, like everyone else; vulnerability was part of love’s bargain.

Then she said, “Paul didn’t kill your son.”

Carver felt his stomach dive.

Nadine had found him out and knew who he was and what he was doing, and there was nothing below him but space and a haunted future. Haunted by things interrupted. Incomplete. His son’s life. Justice and balance after death. Even simple revenge. He wondered with dismal detachment if he could live with that.

“How did Paul know one of his victims was my son?” he asked. His own voice sounded unfamiliar, muted by the sibilant roll of the surf.

Nadine spread her feet wide and propped her fists on her ample hips. Long-legged and sturdy, she stood as if nothing in the universe could budge her. She was a female colossus in complete charge of the conversation now. Or thought so. Information could do that to people. “He first knew you were . . . stalking him when he learned you were asking about his car at Scuba Dan’s. You were all over the beach, asking about the murders, so he followed you and learned your identity and your relationship to the boy who was burned to death in Fort Lauderdale. He read in the papers that you were working for the family, trying to locate him, and he knew you must have lied to us about who you were.”

“Where’s Paul now?” Carver asked.

Her dark eyes were level, calm yet defiantly candid, as if it were only Carver who should fear the truth. Strength through naïveté. “I don’t know. He doesn’t want me to know. It has to be that way.”

Carver believed her. Paul Kave was turning out to be wilier than he’d anticipated. Not to mention more persuasive. But then, Paul was supposed to possess a stratospheric I.Q. It would be easy for someone like him to take advantage of a sister’s unquestioning, simple love. To sense weakness and exploit it.

“He wanted to meet with me,” Nadine said, “to assure me he was okay, and to convey to you that he’s innocent.”

“And to ask you to bring him some of his antidepressant medicine?”

Nadine jerked her head high and held it there, staring down at Carver. “You’ve been talking to Dr. Elsing.” This wasn’t fair; Carver had been caught cheating at whatever game they were playing. Seeing Dr. Elsing had been against the rules, maybe even off the board.

“The police know Paul was on medication to control his schizophrenia, Nadine.”

A wave made it far enough up the beach to lick at the toe of one of her already wet shoes. She didn’t move. Foam sloshed around Carver’s cane planted in the sand. “There’s no way I can get any of those pills,” Nadine said. “They’re strong stuff, prescription medicine. Only a doctor can help Paul that way.”

“You tell Paul that?”

“Of course.”

“Did you take him pills he already had in his room?”

She shot a dark look at Carver. “How did you know that?”

“A guess. You’re his only sister, and a devoted one.”

“You got that part right, Mr. Carver.”

“If Paul’s innocent, why’s he running?”

“Stupid question. He found out you and the police were looking for him, and read in the newspapers he was the chief suspect. He had no choice other than to run.”

“Smart answer. But has it occurred to you that the reason all the evidence points to him and he’s running is that he’s guilty? Despite what he told you.”

She gazed out at a large incoming wave and laughed hopelessly, shaking her head. “I told Paul you wouldn’t believe. You’re on a revenge mission; it’s as obvious as if it were stamped on your forehead like some kind of biblical mark. You want Paul’s blood.”

“I don’t equate what I’m doing with religion.”

“You should. It’s ages old and twisted, even if it’s fresh in you. It controls you. You’re lost in it. You must be, to have done what you did. Vengeance can be a religion, don’t you think?”

She was grown-up, all right. But not quite far enough to realize how badly people needed their faith, twisted or otherwise.

“Explain away the evidence,” Carver said, “and I’ll try to believe Paul.”

“I can’t explain it away. Neither can Paul. If he could, he wouldn’t be running.” Quite logical, in its fashion.

“I guess you’re going to tell the rest of the family about me?” Carver said.

“No. Paul made me promise not to. He sees you as his only hope. The only one who can help him.”

Stunned, Carver lifted the tip of his cane a few inches, then drove it back into the sand, as if trying to spear something elusive out of sight below the surface. “He knows who I am, and he expects me to
help
him?”

“He thinks you’re a better bet than the police to get at the truth.”

“He told you that?”

“Sure.”

“He’s even craftier than I thought.”

“Or else he’s innocent.”

Carver looked beyond Nadine at a figure descending the wooden steps by the boathouse. Joel Dewitt. Nadine noticed something had grabbed Carver’s attention and turned her head to look.

Dewitt was striding toward them along the beach now, five feet beyond where the surf was spreading like white lace and then reluctantly backwashing to the sea. He was walking heavily, heels kicking up the sand. His shallow footprints seemed insubstantial, at the mercy of the stiff breeze off the endless Atlantic.

“He’ll want to know what we’re talking about,” Carver said.

Nadine nodded. “I suppose he will. I’m planning on telling him. You object?”

“Would it make a difference?”

“Sure. It might make it more fun.”

Carver didn’t shoot back. He couldn’t blame her for not liking the man who was after her brother.

When Dewitt reached them, he tried a grin but it quickly rearranged itself into a grimace. His lower lip was swollen and split, and not for smiling. He touched a knuckle lightly to the lip, then drew it away and examined a speck of blood on it. He looked at Carver and wiped the blood from the knuckle with his other hand, rubbing his fist tightly, the way a pitcher rubs a baseball before launching it toward home plate. If he rubbed hard enough, it would be as if the blood had never been there and his lip was all right.

“Hope I didn’t hurt the idiot,” he said. “How’d he seem after I left?”

“You might have cracked some of his ribs,” Carver said. “Maybe he’s hurt worse than that.”

Dewitt looked miserable and shrugged. “Lost my temper. It doesn’t happen very often.”

“You looked in control to me,” Carver said.

“Yeah. That’s how it is when I really get mad. I get kinda calm at the same time.” The ocean breeze plastered his pale blue shirt to his body. The front of the shirt was bloodstained. Drips. Spatters. Unlikely bold patterns that reminded Carver of abstract art. Dewitt glanced at Nadine, back at Carver. “What’s going on here? More secrets?”

Nadine explained to him that she’d met Paul last night, and told him of Paul’s claim of innocence. She didn’t tell him that one of Paul’s victims was Carver’s son, and that Carver had conned the family into hiring him.

Dewitt dabbed at his split lip again with a knuckle. “Paul might be using you, Nadine, making you an accessory to murder. That’s major trouble, babe. Sorta thing can mess up your life. I think, for Paul’s sake as well as yours, you oughta tell Carver where he is.” The extended stretch of talking caused fresh blood to ooze from the lip.