Scorcher

Chapter 9

The Kave estate on A1A could barely be seen from the road as a glimpse of bright red tile roof through the trees. Carver waited for a break in the passing Lincolns and Cadillacs, then turned the Olds sharply into the graveled entrance.

McGregor had indeed laid the groundwork for Carver’s visit. When he identified himself over the intercom at the gate, a male voice immediately instructed him to drive through.

It wasn’t a gate, really; it was a drop barrier of the type used at railroad crossings, only smaller. The black-and-white-striped, tapered length of lumber rose smoothly to allow the Olds to pass, then automatically settled back into place behind it. Made Carver feel like a locomotive engineer.

He tapped the accelerator, and continued up the gently sloping, winding drive toward the red roof and now a section of stark-white stucco wall. The top was down on the Olds and the sun was just beginning to get serious about making misery, and over the rumble of the car’s big V-8 engine he could hear the rush and sigh of the ocean beyond the house.

The grounds abruptly became immaculately tended: neatly trimmed hedges; colorful yet controlled explosions of lush bougainvillea; healthy-looking, precisely placed palm trees with symmetrical white stripes about their trunks; deep-green grass of uniform height and at erect attention. A lizard, green as the grass and primitive as the Mesozoic age, struck a travel-poster pose on a nearby tree trunk, as if it had been bribed by the gardener. Carver felt like the only flawed object on the grounds. He paused and let the engine idle as he took in the house. Sat feeling the vibration of the powerful car.

The house was two stories and rambling, all white stucco and black wood trim and fancy wrought iron. Spanish architecture, with rough-hewn cedar arches and decorative rails. Red shutters and red front double doors matched the vivid color of the tile roof. The driveway curved to run beneath a wide portico from the ceiling of which dangled a heavy iron-and-stained-glass Spanish-style light fixture.

To his left, Carver saw a path winding to wooden steps that led down to the beach and blue-white rolling surf and a boat-house and dock. A white-and-brown pleasure boat-a forty-foot Gulf star with a flying bridge-bobbed gently at the dock. The private beach was wide, and the sand was clean and flawless except where the sea had washed in some globs of oil from passing ships, along with dark tangles of kelp. The place made Carver wish he were rich.

He parked the Olds in the black shade of the portico and struggled out with his cane.

As soon as he slammed the car door one of the tall red front doors opened and a sturdily built man of medium height well into his sixties stepped outside. He was wearing dark slacks and a gray silk short-sleeved shirt buttoned halfway up. Casual but unmistakably expensive. His straight, black but graying hair was brushed back as if he were facing a stiff wind. Silver-rimmed squarish glasses magnified his intense dark eyes and made him look as if he’d never blink, even if you touched his pupil with a pencil point. Around the loosening flesh of his thick neck hung a glinting gold chain that lost itself in the gray mat of hair on his chest. He had prominent cheekbones and very thin lips, and a wide, square jaw that looked capable of cracking walnuts.

“Mr. Carver,” he said. There was something mechanical about the way his lips and lower jaw moved, as if there might be a battery pack in him somewhere. He shaped a lower-face smile as he stepped down off the concrete stoop. “I’m Adam Kave.” He extended a hand and Carver shook it. Kave squeezed hard, sensed the unexpected power in Carver’s grip, and let up quickly. Not a man to waste time on losing battles.

He led Carver through a large foyer with a terra-cotta floor and some high-priced Spanish-style furnishings, along a hall lined with mirrors and paintings, and into a room spacious enough for indoor polo.

The Spanish touch was here, too. Massive wood beams sectioned off the high ceiling. The walls were rough-textured white stucco, like the house’s exterior, with decorative colorful tiles set in them. Except for a massive, gold-framed oil painting of a three-masted battle galleon forging through a wild ocean storm, the ornate tiles were the only wall decorations.

Carver negotiated the floor carefully. It was set with large hexagonal sections of tile or marble, strewn with thick throw rugs. The furniture was black leather and dark, heavy wood. All the tables and a few elaborate wooden chairs had curlicued black iron legs. The room was cool. No need to switch on either of the two large, wicker-bladed paddle fans that extended on slender brass pipes like bizarre gigantic spiders at rest and at watch from the center beam of the lofty ceiling.

“Sit down, please, Mr. Carver,” Adam Kave said in his deep, phlegmy voice. He was one of those men who always seemed to need to clear his throat, and who had probably cultivated and disciplined the timbre of his voice to approximate a tone of command.

Carver set the tip of his cane and lowered himself into a black leather sofa that faced a wide window overlooking the beach. The ocean seemed vast from here. A gull touched down nimbly on the pure sand, gazed about, realized it was trespassing, and uneasily took to the air again. It was no stranger to packing orders.

“Something to drink?” Adam Kave asked.

“Thanks, no.”

“I’ll have a Scotch,” he said, as if it were Carver who’d offered. He moved to a dark-stained wood credenza and opened its doors. There was a kind of compact power in the way he swung his arms and carried his shoulders as he walked; he’d probably been physically tough when he was younger, and might have a few good minutes in him even now. Carver caught a glimpse of glittering crystal, a miniature refrigerator, a bright row of bottles.

Kave plunked ice cubes into a glass, doused them with Cutty Sark, then closed the credenza doors and turned again toward Carver. The force of his attention came in waves.

Carver said, “I’m sorry about your son’s trouble.”

Kave stared into his glass, swishing the Scotch and ice around. The ice made a tiny tinkling sound. Musical. “Not sorry for the victims?”

“Them, too,” Carver said. He took a deep breath, plunged. “My own son was killed a few years back in Saint Louis, Mr. Kave. A boy about Paul’s age was holding up a convenience store. My son walked in at the wrong time; he wanted a can of root beer and instead he got a bullet through the brain.”

Kave was watching him, still swirling the liquid in his glass. More slowly now. Carver couldn’t hear the ice.

“At first I wanted the boy who did the shooting tried and executed. Could have easily killed him myself. Without conscience, I thought. Then his sister came to me, told me about him, and eventually, despite myself, I began to feel sorry for my son’s murderer. He had a history of mental illness and was married and had a son of his own. He was actually robbing the store for food to feed his wife and child, and he saw my son as a threat and panicked. The clerk testified that he hadn’t demanded money; he’d asked for a bag filled with canned goods and ice cream.” Carver shifted on the sofa, almost knocking over his cane leaning on the arm. “I know it doesn’t make sense, that kind of risk for ice cream and canned vegetables. But the sister convinced me it made sense to her brother. Or it did at the time he walked into that store with a gun.”

Kave was staring hard at Carver through the thick-rimmed squarish glasses. His wide jaw was set like a curbstone.

This guy isn’t buying it, Carver thought, with a falling sensation. Not believing me for a second. McGregor’s idea was loonier than the story Carver was concocting. He began to sweat; he could feel it in his palms and beneath his arms.

“Go on,” Kave urged. Carver wondered why.

“The boy was declared legally insane and is confined for life in a mental institution in Missouri,” Carver said. “When I heard the verdict, I was glad. Glad he wasn’t executed. And when I read about your son Paul being on the run, and having had his own share of mental problems. .” He paused, picked up his cane, and ran its tip lightly over the tile floor in a circle, as if trying to describe boundaries for his emotion. “Well, it struck a responsive chord and made me want to help you. Help your son. Empathy, I suppose they call it.”

“I’d assumed it was counter to professional ethics for a private investigator to solicit business,” Kave said calmly.

“I’m glad you feel that way,” Carver said. “Most people don’t credit the profession with any ethics at all.”

The iron-vise jaws were clenched, but again the thin lips snaked into a slight smile. “I thought Detective McGregor said Chicago.”

“Pardon?”

“Chicago. I thought, when he recommended I employ you, he told me your son was killed in Chicago.”

“Saint Louis,” Carver said. Christ! he thought; what had McGregor told Kave? This whole thing should have been worked out more carefully.

Yet Kave seemed to believe. For now.

“Shall we talk about fee, Mr. Carver?”

“Not unless I show you some results.” Something to prove this one is from the heart.

“That’s generous of you,” Kave said, “and I’ll be generous back if in time you do obtain results.”

He walked to the wide window and looked out at his grounds and his beach and his ocean. At his boat berthed at his dock. His, his, his. His business had bought it all, made for him a well-managed world under control. Except for his son. Paul wasn’t under control. He was wandering around burning people to death. Carver wondered, was it parental love prompting Adam Kave to try to retrieve his murderous son from pursuit and retribution, or was it something else?

Whatever Kave’s motives, Carver had his own. Apparently McGregor had set the stage well enough and Kave was going to hire him. For an instant Carver regretted that. But for no more than an instant. Then his mind flicked up the image of Chipper’s blackened body in the morgue. He experienced a deep, dark satisfaction as he smiled and said, “I’m glad you’re allowing me to help Paul, Mr. Kave.”

A girl who looked to be about twenty flounced into the room, stopped short when she saw Carver, and turned abruptly as if to leave before she became visible and interrupted something.

“Nadine,” Adam Kave snapped in his throaty voice of command, “this is Mr. Fred Carver.”

The girl returned to the center of the room as if drawn by a string. She was tall and well built, though her hips and thighs beneath her white ankle-length slacks appeared on the heavy side. Her features were strong, with a hint of Adam Kave’s wide cheekbones and jaw. She had the Kave straight, black hair and vivid dark eyes. She was attractive but would appear more formidable than alluring if she gained much weight as she aged.

“This is my daughter Nadine,” Adam Kave said.

Nadine nodded at Carver and smiled. There was something challenging in her eyes; she hadn’t liked him seeing her so meekly obey her father’s command. She was her own woman, she was telling Carver, despite her youth and her habit-imposed obedience to her father in small matters. If Carver didn’t believe it, just let him try to boss her around!

“Get your mother, Nadine,” Kave told her. Then to Carver: “It would be best if you met the rest of the family now.”

Nadine said, “Elana’s sleeping in her room.” One of those daughters who referred to her mother by first name.

“Go get her,” Adam repeated. “Tell her Mr. Carver’s here.”

Nadine glared at him, spun neatly on her sandaled heel, and left the room.

“I’m afraid Nadine shows a streak of stubbornness now and then,” Kave said. “The rebelliousness of youth. She’ll settle down after she’s married next spring.”

Carver wouldn’t have described her actions exactly as stubborn or rebellious, despite what was probably going on in her mind. But then he didn’t know Nadine. Certainly there was a flinty spark of defiance in her. As there must have been in Lizzie Borden.

The intimidated yet high-spirited Nadine returned within a few minutes accompanied by a beautiful but faded blond woman in her sixties. Elana. Mrs. Kave. Paul and Nadine’s mother. Though age had robbed her of fluidity of motion, she still conveyed a gliding grace and elegance as she crossed the room and smiled. Adam Kave introduced her with possessive pride. She was wearing slippers and a long, pink and lacy robe that swished stylishly around her ankles as she walked, as if being worn by her was a privilege. Maybe the robe had something there.

“I hope you can help Paul,” she said, as Carver gently shook her cool and bony hand. Up close, the frailty and a kind of resignation in her were obvious. There was also a precarious tension, a balance maintained with difficulty.

Carver and Adam Kave sat down, Carver on the black sofa, and Kave on an uncomfortable-looking wooden chair with ornate iron legs. The women remained standing, as if both of them secretly longed to flee from the room and the presence of either Carver or Adam.

“I’ll have to find Paul to help him,” Carver said to Elana.

Her large but dimmed blue eyes took on a sad expression. Something tragic flared then died in them. “We’ve been given to understand the police probably won’t give Paul a reasonable chance to surrender if they find him before you do, Mr. Carver.”

“That’s a fair statement,” Carver told her, “though the police would deny it.”

“Detective McGregor doesn’t exactly deny it,” Adam said. “He confided to me that Paul wouldn’t have a prayer of survival if the law located him and he offered the slightest resistance.”

“Would he resist?” Carver asked.

“He’d resist,” Nadine said. Her voice vibrated as if she were the one who might be called upon to summon resistance and she were already geared up for it. This one was a fighter, all right.

“Are you fond of your brother?” Carver asked.

“Very.” She stared directly at him with her dark eyes, daring him to contradict her, to tell her Paul was no longer worthy of affection. Carver let the challenge slide.

“Nadine is twenty-one,” Elana said, “only a year older than Paul.” She glanced at her husband. “Growing up together, they developed a truly remarkable closeness.”

Carver wondered what exactly she meant by that. He decided to prod. “You think Paul’s guilty?” he asked Nadine.

“No!” she snapped, and turned away, her sandal heel making a squeaking sound on the tile floor.

“If Paul is guilty,” Elana said evenly, “he wasn’t responsible for what he did.”

“You’re referring to his history of mental problems?”

“Yes.” Elana wiped her hands on the laced robe as if they were dirty, holding her fingers stiff as she ran her palms down her hips. Carver again sensed something tightly wired in her. “Paul has long been under treatment for mild schizophrenia, Mr. Carver. Do you know anything about the affliction?”

“Very little.”

“Those suffering from it have a distorted sense of reality, and sometimes delusions of persecution. At times, in the advanced stages, they even hear voices, sometimes giving them destructive, bizarre instructions.”

“Did Paul hear voices?”

“Only his father’s,” Nadine said.

Elana ignored her. Adam Kave worked his jaw muscles. He’d wear down his molars in no time like that.

“Paul’s been in and out of therapy for years,” Elana went on. “Schizophrenia is still something of a medical mystery, though there’s a theory now that it’s a physical aberration in the brain, a chemical imbalance. The disease often appears in a victim in his or her teens, then gets progressively worse as the person grows older.”

“Was Paul getting worse?”

“No,” Adam said, “his medication seemed to be controlling the symptoms.”

“Would you describe him as paranoid?” Carver asked, remembering what Desoto had told him about the cousin hurling change in a clerk’s face for no reason.

“At times, mildly,” Nadine said. “But he never would have killed anyone.”

“For God’s sake,” Adam said, “none of us is a psychiatrist! Let’s leave the diagnosis to Dr. Elsing.”

“Dr. Elsing?”

“The psychiatrist who treats Paul,” Elana said. “His office is in Fort Lauderdale. Paul had improved lately, though. He hasn’t seen Dr. Elsing in over six months.”

“Before the murders and before he ran away,” Carver said, “did Paul say anything that might lead you to believe he was tilting toward violence?”

“The police asked us that,” Adam said. “Paul’s behavior was better than it had been in years, actually. He’s had his minor skirmishes, but he’s never been really violent.”

Until he set three people on fire. One of them my son. Carver felt his hate for Paul Kave grow to a revulsion he had difficulty hiding.

“The past several years, he’d become enthused about scuba diving,” Adam continued. “And of course he liked to work in his lab in the carriage house.”

“Lab? Carriage house?”

“The garage, actually,” Adam said. “It has a room over it where the chauffeur used to live. We haven’t had live-in servants for years. Paul uses the place-used it-for his chemical lab.”

“What did he do in his lab?”

“Experiments,” Nadine said. “He’d gotten away from actual chemistry in the past several years. He was interested in oceanography, and he used his equipment to study sea life.”

Carver thought about the deadly, flammable naphtha compound. He turned his mind away from a vision of fire and death, screams he couldn’t bring himself to imagine when awake yet couldn’t exorcise from his dreams. What he was doing here was worth it. He wanted Paul Kave! And Mc shy;Gregor was right; this was the way to get Paul.

“Are there any other family members I haven’t met?” he asked.

“Joel,” Nadine told him.

“Not yet,” Elana said tightly. She was wiping her hands on the robe again, extending her wrinkled, lean fingers rigidly. Her brown-spotted arms and backs of her hands were the clues to her age. Still, she was innately lovely, as if it were her birthright. There were women like that, though Carver had only known a few. What had she been thirty years ago?

“I’m not feeling quite right,” she said.

Adam Kave was on his feet instantly. Time to tend to his treasure. “Why don’t you go to your room and lie down, Elana?”

She nodded. Her face was suddenly very pale. Her pained, parting glance took in Carver. Without speaking, she turned and hurried out the door.

“My wife’s ill,” Adam said. He said it in a way that discouraged any further inquiry by Carver. “In the past year she’s become more and more reclusive. And now Paul. .”

Nadine slip-slapped to the window in her sandals, turned and padded close to Carver. Challenge time again. “And as you can gather,” she said, “my mother’s less than enthusiastic about me marrying Joel. Not that it will stop us.”

Carver decided not to try to stop them either.

“Joel Dewitt,” Adam explained. “He’s a car dealer in Fort Lauderdale who’s just asked Nadine to marry him.” Kave didn’t seem to have any strong pro or con opinion about the upcoming nuptials. Maybe he was one of those wise ones who didn’t worry about what they couldn’t change.

“Why doesn’t your mother like Dewitt?” Carver asked Nadine.

“You’d have to ask her, but it wouldn’t do you any good. Elana has never come out with a direct answer to that question. Because she doesn’t have one.”

“So there’s Dewitt,” Carver said, as if making mental notes. “Not yet a family member, but almost.”

“And there’s Emmett,” Nadine said.

“We don’t usually talk of Emmett in this house, Mr. Carver. He’s my older brother. I wish he weren’t. We haven’t gotten along for years.”

“But Paul and Emmett got along,” Nadine said, “when Paul was younger. I don’t think they’ve seen each other for a while. Emmett lives in Kissimmee.” Kissimmee was a small town in central Florida, less than two hundred miles from the Fort Lauderdale area, but only a matter of a few hours or so on Florida’s Turnpike, where it seemed everyone drove over seventy.

“Paul have any close friends he might contact?” Carver asked.

“None, I’m afraid,” Adam said glumly. “The boy’s always played the loner.”

“I’d like to see Paul’s lab,” Carver said, standing up out of the soft leather sofa and leaning on his cane.

“I’ll go out to the lab with you,” Adam said, standing also. “There are some things I’d like to tell you privately.”

He started for a door at the far end of the room, walking fast. Was he doing that deliberately?

Carver limped after him, twisting his body to glance back and catch Nadine’s reaction to being shut out of the conversation.

But Nadine was already striding from the room, her thighs and buttocks working powerfully beneath the silky white slacks.

Carver followed Adam Kave out past a veranda and a large, screened swimming pool, along a path lined with junglelike foliage and the perfumed scent of blossoms, toward a garage the size of an average house.

The rolling surf sighed louder as they made their way in the direction of the sea. A gull screamed and a private helicopter thrashed its way across the blue sky above the sun-touched ocean. In the shade of the palm fronds, Carver felt sheltered and temporarily at peace.

He wondered what it would be like to grow up in a place like this. His own childhood had been lower middle class, with a father probably not much more sensitive to his youth and yearnings than Adam seemed to have been toward Paul’s. What had it been like here for Paul? It would help Carver to get a feel for that, to learn how to think like Paul-if such a thing was possible.

“This is a rough time for us,” Adam Kave said in his gravelly voice. “I can’t tell you how much we appreciate your kindness and help, Mr. Carver. Are you a religious man?”

“No, there’s too much of that in Florida.”

“Well, I go to church regularly, and somehow God seems to supply what’s needed in crises like this.”

Carver didn’t answer as he followed Kave along the winding stone path toward bright sunlight and blue sky and ocean.

For an uneasy moment he felt like the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Putting another one over on Adam.