Bloodfire

4

Carver lay curled on his side on the carpet, where he’d dropped automatically once he realized the woman had been shot.

His cheek pressed flat against the rough fibers, he glanced over and saw her lying spraddle-legged on the floor, her skirt bunched up around her hips. Her bowels had released. The ruined side of her head was turned away from him. Thanks for that! There was a wide smear of blood and gray brain matter on the wall, like horrifying modern art. What looked like a tiny black hairpiece with something shiny and white poking through it lay beneath the smear, near the baseboard. Carver saw a dark pattern of blood on his shirt and bare right forearm and felt his stomach lurch. He swallowed a taste bitter and metallic. Almost gagged.

What now? It was quiet outside and in the condo. Mingled with the stench of feces, he caught a whiff of roses. The dead woman’s perfume. He felt shaky.

Jesus, he was hot! He swiveled his head in sudden alarm and was relieved to find he was low enough that no one could see him through the window; the gunman might still be out there, finger on the trigger.

Might. But Carver was pretty sure the killer had gotten away as soon as possible after accomplishing his mission. People didn’t tend to hang around murder scenes if they were the perpetrator.

The cane was on the floor, near the woman’s sprawled body. Carver stretched out an arm for it, closed fingers on the crook of hard walnut, and pulled it toward him. He felt immediately better, whole and more secure now.

Still staying low, he used the cane for support and worked himself into a sitting position. He scooted away from the window, but not before seeing the single round bullet hole in the thick thermal glass. It was just left of center in the middle pane; it had turned the glass milky but none of it had fallen from its metal frame. Safety glass, but not safe enough for the woman on the floor.

Not looking at the dead woman, Carver crawled awkwardly to the window, his shoe making a scraping sound as his bad leg dragged behind him on the carpet. He peeked outside, around the fold of the drape.

Several people were milling around below, including the old security guard who’d stopped and questioned him on the way to the condo. They’d heard the shot, though in his rush of shock he hadn’t, even though he’d been standing next to the victim. He remembered hearing only the sickening impact of the bullet.

The curious and remotely alarmed folks below were craning their necks, peering this way and that to determine where the noise had originated. Sooner or later one of them would notice the milky window in the third-floor unit, and realize that what they’d heard might indeed have been what it sounded like: gunfire. He drew the drapes closed.

Carver made his way across the rough carpet to the phone. The effort was hard on his good knee, of which he took exceptional care. He pulled the desk-model white phone down to him; it dinged when it struck the floor. Leaning his back against the wall, he depressed the cradle button a few times to make sure he had a dial tone. Then he made two phone calls.

The first was to the Holiday Inn on Collins in Miami.

He was told there was no convention of medical suppliers there, nor was one scheduled. No Robert or Bob Ghostly was registered there, either.

So much for loyalty to the client.

Carver’s second call was to Lieutenant Alfonso Desoto of the Orlando police department.

Carver sat on the low white leather sofa with the stainless-steel arms, comfortable as a cat on a fence top. Someone had thought to turn the air conditioning on and the condo wasn’t so warm, but he was still sweating.

The ME was finished with the body, but the evidence team was still bustling about in its murmuring, controlled way. Vacuuming, photographing, dusting for prints. Establishing facts if not some sort of logic that might explain the carnage. The hope was that logic and pattern would emerge later, spawned by meticulous attention to minutiae.

Desoto finished talking to the departing ME, then he walked over to stand near Carver. A tall man with broad shoulders and a waspish waist, he was as darkly handsome as a Hollywood bullfighter. Tailored cream-colored suit, white shirt, mauve tie, oxblood shoes that looked made for dancing. He smiled down at Carver, teeth carnivorous white perfection against his smooth tan complexion. His wavy black hair, impeccably combed as always, shone in the shaft of light beaming through the crack left by the drapes that didn’t quite meet. Dust motes swirled in the slanted golden ray, stirred up by police activity.

Irritated by Desoto’s smile, Carver said, “Not a fucking thing I can think’s funny about this.”

Desoto shrugged, but his dashing smile lost candlepower. “I was just considering all the shit you get yourself into, amigo. It’s amazing.”

Carver took that kind of observation from Desoto without rancor or firing back a smartass answer. They’d been friends for years, since Carver’s days in the department. They knew each other layers deep. Desoto had goaded Carver to stay in police work, become a private investigator instead of a self-pitying beach bum. There were no hard feelings except from time to time, when it wasn’t lost on Carver that, on average, beach bums outlived private cops.

Neither man said anything as two white-uniformed attendants fitted the corpse into a black rubber body bag. Zipped the bag noisily with a ratchety sound that sawed through Carver, then eased it onto a gurney that was raised with a lot of metallic clicking as its mechanism locked it into place. The gurney had large, chrome-spoked rubber wheels. One of them made a faint, rhythmic squeaking noise as the attendants rolled their grisly burden across the carpet and out the door. Out in the hall, the attendants began discussing where they’d have lunch. This was all a normal day’s work for everyone involved. Well, not everyone. The day hadn’t been normal for the woman in the bag.

Desoto waited till the last of the evidence team had left. The door to the hall remained open. A tan-uniformed elbow was visible, and a black-holstered revolver with a checkered butt. A uniform was standing guard in the hall but was well beyond earshot of Carver and Desoto.

Desoto carefully unbuttoned his suit coat, revealing a thick gold tie clasp. He was wearing a gold watch, a gold-link bracelet on his other wrist, a gold ring on each hand. He liked gold almost as much as he liked clothes. Sitting down carefully on the opposite end of the sofa, he crossed his legs slowly and without much pressure, so he wouldn’t mash the creases in his pants. He said, “I think I better know about this in detail, my friend.”

And Carver told him everything, in detail. This was a homicide case and not an occasion to play cute.

When Carver was finished talking, Desoto stood up slowly and stretched. He tucked his shirt back in neatly and smoothed nonexistent wrinkles from the tropical weave material of his pants, then buttoned his suit coat and walked over to the milky window. He gazed outside through a clear section of glass, his back to Carver, looking like a soap-opera star striking a pose.

He said, “Place still smells like death, eh?”

“Yeah. You should be used to that smell.”

“Both of us, amigo.”

Carver didn’t say anything. Waited.

When he turned around, Desoto said, “The dead woman’s driver’s license gave an address in Indianapolis. Her name was Belinda Jackson.”

Carver said, “I don’t make a connection. Never heard the name.”

“This Ghostly guy never mentioned it?”

“Nope.”

“So Belinda Jackson wasn’t his wife? By Ghostly or any other name?”

Carver reached into his shirt pocket, drew out Beth Ghostly’s photograph, and held it out so Desoto could look at it. Desoto leaned very close to peer at the snapshot, making Carver wonder if his old pal had reached the age where he needed glasses. Desoto would be the last to admit it; he’d probably go to contacts on the sly.

But he saw the photo well enough. “Not the dead woman,” he said. He tilted the photo at a slight angle. “A beauty, eh? Cheekbones like a movie star’s.”

There wasn’t much Desoto didn’t notice about women. And women paid the same studious attention to him.

Carver rotated the tip of his cane on the soft carpet, making a deep depression, and waited for Desoto to continue.

Desoto unbuttoned his suit coat and slid his hands in his pants pockets. Poised and casual as a male model. He said, “If this guy Ghostly contacts you again, let me know, eh?”

“You’ll be my first phone call,” Carver told him. He didn’t like what he’d stepped into. Wanted out. Wanted to stay honest and alive. He suspected those goals might not be compatible.

“I guess what you’re thinking,” Desoto said, “is that the shooter might have been aiming at you.”

“It entered my mind.” Better than the way a bullet entered Belinda Jackson’s mind. He planted the cane more firmly in the deep depression in the carpet and raised himself up from the low sofa. “But I kinda doubt it. Such a perfect fatal shot. Be a real coincidence if a miss did such a thorough job on the person next to the intended target.”

“You’re probably right, amigo. Hope so, anyway.” He removed his left hand from his pocket and rotated his wrist to glance at his watch. Gold cuff links glittered, causing light to dance over the wall near the bloodstain. “Tell you what, give me a while to gather and coordinate what we’re finding out about this initially. Come by the office this afternoon, say about three o’clock, sign a statement, and we’ll see if we can make any sense outa all this, right?”

“Sounds sensible,” Carver said. “I’ll go to a motel. Wash off what I can of what happened here. Howard Johnson’s on the Orange Blossom Trail. I’ll call you if I can’t get a room there and wind up someplace else.”

“Fine,” Desoto said. Concern deepened his large dark eyes. “You want some temporary protection?”

“No. The key word’s temporary.”

“ ’Fraid you’re right.”

Desoto walked toward the door, his expensive suit moving like a second, silky skin. He paused and glanced back at Carver. “Leaving? Or are you feeling at home by now?”

“Leaving,” Carver said. “I’ve read all the magazines.”

“Bet not the ones on the back of the closet shelf,” Desoto said.

Carver didn’t know what he meant by that, and didn’t ask. He’d decided to let the resources of the law fit available puzzle pieces together, then he’d garner whatever information Desoto would share later at headquarters.

As he limped toward where Desoto waited at the door, he couldn’t keep from looking at the dark stain on the carpet. Seeing again the left side of Belinda Jackson’s head gushing outward. Hearing again the melon-solid thwump! of the high-velocity bullet smashing through bone and brain matter in thousandths of a second. Still so vivid, all of it. In dying color. Death wasn’t something off in the distance, gradually drawing nearer so we could be ready for it. Death jumped at us unexpectedly out of bright sunlight.

In the hall Desoto reminded him: “Three o’clock, amigo.”

Carver said he could hardly wait. Which was a wisecrack to help hold the horror at bay, but also true.