Spark (22 page)

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 searching 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.

C
ARVER 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.”

“Is that tact you’re attempting?” Carver asked.

“Sure. I’m not always disarmingly blunt, only when I’m harassing crooked politicians and lesser liars. Fact is, Carver, Beth’s smart and physically capable. I worry less about her out in the field, or in a hostile environment, than I do most of my other reporters.” He waited a beat. “
Is
it a hostile environment?”

“Not unless you count murder.”

“Huh?” Jones sounded interested enough to crawl through the phone line. “Who was murdered? Where and why? You mean the old guy, Jerome Evans? You manage to get proof?”

“Beth should be the one to tell you all that,” Carver said, “if you can locate her. She’s the journalist. So maybe you should try to find her.”

“But I don’t know where she is.”

“So you mentioned.” Carver believed him.

“Carver. Er, Fred—”

Carver gently hung up on Jones, not without pleasure.

He’d decided to stay out of Hattie’s way while she searched for Jerome’s medication, but he could drive into Solartown and cruise around, possibly see Beth’s white LeBaron convertible parked somewhere. Maybe in the medical center lot.

It nagged him that maybe they hadn’t been careful enough. He recalled the lipstick stain on Beth’s Styrofoam coffee cup. Even something as trivial as that might have tipped Beed to the fact there was another player in the game.

Leaving the air-conditioner thermostat at its coldest setting, he limped out into the afternoon glare and crossed the parking lot to the Ford, feeling individual pieces of gravel probe through the heat-softened soles of his moccasins.

Less than a mile from the motel, he saw the motor home in his rearview mirror.

It moved in closer, its cumbersome, boxy shape casting a stark rectangular shadow that traveled beside it and somehow made it seem even more oversize and awkward. Carver glanced at the Ford’s speedometer and saw the needle hovering near sixty, but the motor home was gaining. To the eye, it seemed not to be moving at all, too large and square to cut the wind on its inset, dwarfed tires, yet its image in the mirror was becoming larger.

He could see what kind it was now, a Winnebago. There were probably thousands of them roaming the Florida highways. Some canvas- and plastic-wrapped objects were lashed to the roof rack; the wind was whipping loose plastic like proud black pennants. Glare on the tinted windshield kept Carver from seeing the motor home’s driver clearly, and the front passenger seat looked unoccupied.

A vacationing family in a rush, Carver thought. Running late to Disney World. Mickey Mouse waited for no man. Kept to his schedule. Had a wristwatch.

The Winnebago had closed to within fifty feet of the Ford, and he expected it to pull into the other lane and pass. The highway was flat and there were no other vehicles in sight.

The hulking vehicle picked up speed, but it didn’t veer. It was almost on the Ford’s rear bumper. Carver’s eyes flicked to the speedometer needle, now at sixty-five. To the rearview mirror. So close was the motor home that it filled the mirror and he could see minor chips and dents in the dusty, bug-spotted cream surface of its flat, fiberglass snout.

He could hear it, too. Its engine didn’t sound like that of other motor homes; above a ferocious roar it was emitting a throaty high-pitched whine, as if souped up and equipped with a turbocharger.

He glanced again at the smashed bugs on the wide surface. The motor home suddenly yowled and grew in the mirror. It was shocking to see something so ponderous move so quickly, fooling the eye in the way of a huge express locomotive. Carver’s head snapped back as the Ford’s rear bumper was crunched.

The Ford careened into the opposite lane. Carver panicked and yanked at the steering wheel, and the car rocked up on two wheels and squealed back directly in front of the Winnebago. He’d barely managed to wrap his perspiring hands around the slick plastic steering wheel when the Ford was slammed forward again. He was ready for the impact this time and mashed his foot down on the accelerator. The Ford was a production model Taurus, but it had guts. It squatted low and charged up to seventy-five miles an hour. Eighty. Ninety.

But the seemingly lumbering Winnebago hadn’t lost an inch of ground after the Ford’s initial burst of speed.

Ninety-five!

The Ford was battered again by the Winnebago’s wide front bumper. Rubber screamed on the hot highway as the car rocked and fishtailed back into the left lane. Carver’s cane clattered against the dashboard and dropped out of sight.

As he fought for control and tried to build up speed again, the motor home shot forward and was suddenly beside him, preventing him from steering back to the right side of the road.

Then the vast fiberglass surface began to edge toward him, as if to force him off the left shoulder where there was a drop of several feet. At this speed, he knew the car would flip. If the impact didn’t kill him, whoever was driving the Winnebago would probably return and make sure his injuries were fatal. Another one-car Florida accident, and who could prove otherwise?

Something had come into view up ahead, wavering in the heat like a mirage.

A car—no, a truck! A big semi, speeding toward them in Carver’s lane, directly at the Ford!

The Winnebago driver saw his opportunity; if he couldn’t force Carver off the road, he could hold him in the left lane where he’d be struck by the truck that was bearing down on them. The big motor home slowed slightly, then held absolutely steady with Carver’s speed. The truck looked huge now through the windshield. The wail of its air horn came to Carver over the roar of engines, like the howl of a charging beast.

He caught a glimpse of a side curtain moving in the motor home as he slammed on the brakes and steered right, gripping the wheel tight enough to make his hands and arms ache.

The side of the Ford met the motor home, scraping against it as the Winnebago, with its greater bulk and momentum, couldn’t reduce speed at the same rate. Its wide, flat surface was an advantage to Carver now, holding the brake-locked Ford to a straight course as long as he kept steady pressure against it, preventing the car from going into an uncontrollable skid and possibly rolling.

They traveled that way for several seconds, the Ford nestled against the side of the big motor home for perilous advantage, like a pilot fish snuggling up to a shark. When the speedometer needle had fallen to fifty, Carver abruptly yanked left on the steering wheel, away from the motor home.

The unexpected maneuver allowed the Ford to fall back. The massive grille of the truck seemed to fill the windshield as Carver willed himself to be patient until the rear bumper of the motor home had passed.

He rode the brake gently, praying his timing would be right, as the Winnebago’s rear side window, then the back bumper, with a bicycle lashed above it, glided past with maddening slowness.

Then he jerked the steering wheel to the right, and the truck, its brakes and tires screaming and smoking, flashed past both motor home and car. The bucking and wind-rocked Ford hit the soft right shoulder, and its nose almost dropped off the embankment, but Carver braced with his stiff leg against the floor and wrestled the slippery steering wheel. Gave the brake pedal butterfly taps and brought the hood around to aim toward safety, amazed at the core of cool calm in the depths of his terror.