Lightning

32

It was late afternoon when Desoto called Carver’s office. Seated at his desk, Carver had finished billing for the second time a client whose son had joined a paramilitary unit training in the Everglades. Carver had managed to talk the boy into coming home by persuading him that communism was dead or dying and his own government wasn’t plotting against him, thus taking away the reason and dignity of training in blackface for combat among the mangroves and making it a child’s game. So persuasive had Carver been that within days after returning home, the boy had joined the U.S. Marines. Now the boy’s parents, Carver’s clients, were refusing to pay him, on the grounds that Carver hadn’t recovered their son for them but had merely effected a transfer from one military unit to another. Even the uniforms were similar. Carver had included a threatening letter with their latest itemized bill, but he, and probably they, knew his threats were futile, what with the expense of actually following up with legal action. Official red tape! Sometimes Carver thought it was a government plot against him.

“You’ve come up with a real pip of a bad guy, amigo,” Desoto said as Carver sat back in his desk chair, pressing the cool plastic receiver to his ear. He gazed out the window at the traffic on Magellan baking and glinting in the tropical glare as it waited in the shimmering heat of exhaust fumes for the traffic light at the corner to change. “This photo you sent me was all I needed to get a quick trace. Your thug is one Ezekiel Masterson. He’s a former leg breaker for the union.”

Carver could hear Spanish guitar music faintly in the background, from the Sony portable stereo in Desoto’s office. “Which union?”

“Whichever needed him at the time. Ezekiel seems to be more of a tough guy for hire than a dedicated union man-unless there’s a skull smashers union. Thirty-five years old, blond and blue, 230 pounds, he’s from Miami originally, got a sheet there featuring three assaults and one attempted murder. Only one conviction, but it was for the attempted murder. Did six years and found religion somewhere in his cell or the weight-lifting room before he was paroled two years ago. That’s when he hooked up with Reverend Martin Freel and Operation Alive.”

“Hmm, you think he’s really found religion?”

“No, I think he’s found a new employer.”

“Norton’s a religious man, even though he killed. Or allegedly killed and is at least willing to do so, judging by what his wife says. She thinks it’s admirable to let blood for the Lord, too. Ezekiel Masterson might be the same kind of fanatic. He did spout scripture while he was killing Lapella.”

“No, what you just described is not my idea of religion.”

“If Ezekiel’s connected with Operation Alive, maybe Freel would go so far as to kill, and Norton was acting on the reverend’s orders. And Ezekiel was acting on Freel’s orders when he beat up and killed Lapella at the hospital in front of Beth.”

“I think it’s likely,” Desoto said. “But it’ll be impossible to get anything on Freel. He was here in Orlando when the deaths occurred in Del Moray.”

“Do you think they’re set-up alibis?”

“I don’t know. We’re going to look into them more closely and see if Freel can provide a lead so we can find Masterson. There’s a murder warrant out for Masterson now, for Lapella’s death. I’ve notified the FBI and the Del Moray police. He’s a cop killer, and we want him in the worst way.”

“He won’t be easy to find. Lapella’s death was in the news, and he knows he’s good for a murder charge. He’s got to be running hard.”

“Whichever direction he’s running, it’s toward a cop.”

Carver knew what Desoto meant. The fraternity of police made justice top priority when one of their own was murdered. And efforts weren’t restricted only to the police force to which the victim belonged. When a cop was killed, all police departments became one.

“Something else about Masterson,” Desoto said. “About a year ago, he wrote a letter to the Del Moray Gazette-Dispatch editorial page criticizing Dr. Harold Grimm. It contained nothing technically libelous or otherwise illegal, which is why he signed his name so the paper’d print his letter. It was part of a letter-writing campaign to discredit Grimm and the Women’s Light Clinic. When I talked to Wicker this morning, he said a similar letter was in Grimm’s mail postmarked last month, this one unsigned.”

Carver looked away from the bright light outside and thought about that one. “Maybe Norton didn’t plant the bomb. Maybe Masterson’s good for that one, too.”

“We’ll certainly ask him about it,” Desoto said, “and in the harshest possible way.”

“If you find him.”

“When we find him. And until then, you’d be smart to stay out of that particular hunt, try not to meet this guy again. Masterson might have found his version of religion, but the word is that he’s psychotic and an extremely volatile combination of steroids and Christian zeal. Probably sees himself as King David slaying the heretics.”

Carver was impressed by Desoto’s biblical knowledge. He knew Desoto was Catholic but couldn’t remember him ever going to church. On the other hand, Carver, an occasional Protestant, wouldn’t have seen him there.

“You need to exercise great care, my friend.”

“I will,” Carver said, “but with Lapella dying, Masterson’s probably fled the state.”

Desoto laughed softly, a sound as tragic as the music seeping softly from the Sony behind his desk.

“He won’t run that far, amigo. Remember, he knows he’s right.”

After hanging up on Desoto, Carver finished his paperwork, then drove by the post office and dropped the mail in an outside box for early pickup. He could feel heat emanating from the metal mailbox and wondered if glue would melt and the flaps on his envelopes would come unsealed. Nothing to be done about it now.

He drove up the coast highway toward the cottage, the top down on the Olds, hearing the sighing of the ocean on his right even over the rush of wind and the rumble of the dinosaur-ancient V-8. A pelican kept pace with him for a while, flapping along parallel to the coast and only about a hundred feet away from the car and fifty feet above the ground. It seemed to glance at Carver from its round, inhuman eye. Then the bulky yet graceful bird veered away toward to ocean, looking for fish flashing silver just beneath the sea’s surface so it could dive and catch one for its supper. Everyone was trying to catch something for one reason or another. There were food chains and then there were food chains.

Beth wasn’t at the cottage. Neither was Al. Beth had left a note saying she was trailing Nate Posey again. Al hadn’t left a note, but Carver assumed he was with Beth. Carver was pleased about that. It did seem to him that Al should do something to earn his keep and make the cost of Bow-Wow-WOW!, marinated in beef broth, money well spent.

He sat out on the porch and watched the ocean for a while, trying not to think about Beth and Al and anything happening while she was watching Posey. He was sure Posey was a dead-end suspect despite the life insurance policy on his late fiancee. He’d met him, talked to him, and seen dark and real grief in his eyes, heard it in his voice. Beth was acting only on the dry facts of the case. She hadn’t had the opportunity to talk with Posey and feel the force of his despair.

After awhile Carver realized that the feeling in the pit of his stomach was hunger as well as worry. He went inside and put a frozen sirloin steak dinner into the microwave. The carton said the dinner was low in saturated fat and contained only 250 calories. Carver didn’t see how that was possible, but he wanted to believe.

When he was finished eating, he understood how it was possible to have steak with a minimum of fat and calories; the key was in eliminating taste.

Back on the porch, his stiff leg propped up on the wooden rail, he watched dusk close in and slowly smoked a Swisher Sweet cigar. His mind gave him no rest. Now he couldn’t help thinking about Ezekiel Masterson, about the letters sent to the Gazette-Dispatch and to Dr. Harold Grimm.

Then he looked at his wristwatch, barely visible in the gloom. He wanted to talk to Grimm’s widow Adelle, and it might be a good time to catch her at home. He doubted that she was eating dinner out these days, other than occasionally buying fast food somewhere and then returning to her house. Grieving widows tended to stay close to home, a tangible piece of their less troubled past.

He scribbled a note for Beth and left it next to the one she’d left him, then got in the Olds and raised the top before driving back into Del Moray.

In the dark, the yellow stucco Grimm house looked white, its droopy green awnings black. Most of the visible windows in the house were glowing; Adelle was home.

Carver was steering the Olds toward the curb across the street when he noticed a vertical bar of light on the front porch-the door opening. He nudged the accelerator with the toe of his moccasin and drove on past, parking half a block down and turning off the Olds’s lights. Carefully he adjusted the rearview mirror so he could see the front of the Grimm house.

More light, spilling onto the driveway. A few seconds passed, then a car backed into the street and maneuvered to face the opposite direction the Olds was pointed. The light cast on the driveway dimmed as the automatic opener closed the garage door. Red taillights flared, then dimmed and began to draw closer together as the car drove away.

Carver started the Olds, used a nearby driveway to turn it around, and followed.

When he got close enough, he saw that the car was a black or dark blue Oldsmobile sedan, a younger and sedate cousin of Carver’s own car. The perfect vehicle for a doctor.

Or a doctor’s widow.

Adelle Grimm was driving and she was alone in the car, he was sure now. She’d left by the front door and opened the garage door from outside with a key or opener from her purse. She was sitting very erect, her head and shoulders, her graceful neck, set and stiff. Even from behind, the squarish symmetry of her features was evident whenever the Olds turned a corner or was driving away at an angle beneath enough light to allow the briefest glimpse of her in profile.

Carver was slightly disappointed. He would rather have seen someone else driving the car, someone who had paid a visit to Adelle and whose destination might prove meaningful. The larger the cast of characters, the greater the possibilities.

She drove fast, intent on her destination. Carver kept watching the back of her head, which remained perfectly steady. She didn’t so much as glance at her rearview mirror. Why should she? The thing she feared might catch up with her already had.

He fell back a prudent distance anyway, and when they reached traffic let a few cars get between them.

Adelle stayed exactly two miles an hour over the speed limit, probably using the car’s cruise control, and was heading east, maybe going somewhere mundane like a McDonald’s or to a liquor store. Maybe she was a secret drinker like Leona Benedict. They’d both been under the same kind of strain the last several years, and Adelle’s husband had been killed.

Still, Carver was curious.

When she reached the coast highway and turned north, driving away from Del Moray and putting distance between herself and her home, as Leona Benedict had been so anxious to do, he became even more curious.