Scorcher

Chapter 27

Carver 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 naivete. “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.

“But I don’t know where Paul is. He was afraid I might be pressured into revealing his whereabouts, so he kept that a secret from me.”

Dewitt shuffled his pointy black loafers on the damp sand, staring down at the odd indentations the smooth leather soles were leaving on the beach. More surreal artwork, indecipherable and temporary. “Okay, don’t tell even if you know. You love the guy. He’s lucky.” He managed a painful smile. “Hell, I’m lucky, too. For the same reason, even if it’s a different kinda love.”

Nadine, the reason, lit up like neon and leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

“Would you know how to get in touch with Paul again?” Carver asked.

“No,” Nadine said. “He said he’d contact me if he wanted to talk again. He’s being careful; you can’t blame him for that.”

Carver felt like telling her that mass murderers usually were careful, until near the end when they killed more and more often, riding their relentless compulsion to oblivion. Which maybe was what they yearned for all along. He knew it would be useless to point this out to Nadine, to tell her about the woman in Orlando and what her death might signify. Paul, with or without his medication, was probably going to take more lives, with less time between murders. He was losing control.

“Think Paul would meet with me?” Carver asked Nadine.

“Maybe. Under certain, safe circumstances.”

“If he contacts you again, will you tell him I want a meeting? Only to talk, to get his side. He can arrange it so he’s safe.”

“Sure, I’ll tell him. If I talk to him again.”

The waves were building higher, curling in on themselves as they met the undertow from shore-“tubing,” as the surfers called it. Maybe it meant a storm was moving in, though the sky was blue except for a couple of broken white slashes very high. They might have been clinging vapor from a jet plane, marring the heavens like scrawls from a giant hand.

“Want to go back up to the house?” Nadine asked, staring at Dewitt intensely and deliberately excluding Carver.

“No,” Dewitt said. “Fanning’s up there with your father. Let’s walk the beach awhile and talk.”

Nick Fanning again. Carver wondered just how Fanning fit into the Kave family equation in matters other than business. How much did he know? How much did he pretend not to know?

Carver left Nadine and Joel Dewitt prowling the angry edge of the sea. Then he drove to a roadside phone and called Emmett Kave in Kissimmee.

He asked the same promise of Emmett: If Paul contacted him again, would he try to set up a meeting with Carver? In a safe place where they would talk and nothing more.

Emmett agreed, but he skeptically asked Carver why he wanted the meeting, if it was for a reason other than tricking Paul into getting caught. Wary Emmett; a survivor of the jungle.

Carver told him he was having doubts about Paul’s guilt. It would help if he could talk face-to-face with Paul, and straighten out some problems regarding the evidence. A plausible He.

When he hung up the phone and got back in the baking Olds, he sat for a while perspiring, staring without focus through the insect-dashed windshield and seeing nothing but opaque swimming patterns of heat.