Scorcher

Chapter 33

Carver stayed away from the pool of light cast by the yellow porch bulb and made his way around the side of the house. He checked the windows, but Emmett had all the shades drawn. The blank glass panes gave back only the night. From inside came the drone of voices, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying.

For several minutes he crouched beneath the window where the voices were loudest. Then he gave up trying to interpret them and, as quietly as possible, moved along the dirt-and-gravel driveway toward the dilapidated garage with the sway-backed roof. Ahead of him a black cat with white paws, and gleaming eyes like mysterious twin moons, glanced at him and then padded silently into the bushes.

Ivy had climbed wildly up the near side of the garage, clinging to checked paint and bare, rotted wood. Carver could smell the age and the dry corruption. There was a stone path to a bulky and crooked side door with a thick piece of rough plywood nailed over what once had been a window. The persistent vines had been cleared away from the area of the door, and moonlight gleamed off new metal-a heavy hasp and large brass padlock.

Carver limped around to the garage’s wide front doors and discovered a similar hasp and lock. Heavy-duty hardware.

He moved along the far side of the garage to the back and found a spot where the wood was particularly rotted. Stooping on his good leg, he inserted the cane into the space between two boards and pried back and forth. He had help from termites; the two boards gave like cardboard and crumbled rather than splintered. Carver wedged his fingers between them, yanked once, and rusted nails creaked and gave way and a board pulled free.

He pressed his face close and peered into the musty garage, and was hit by the stench of cat urine. He remembered the feline prowler with the pale paws.

There was enough moonlight filtering through the cracks in the garage to reveal an old but shiny blue Lincoln sedan with a white top; a jewel in an unlikely setting.

“So what’s inside?” a voice whispered behind him.

Carver’s head jerked around so quickly it hurt his neck.

He knew immediately the identity of the youth crouched behind him. The long, sensitive face. The mussed blond hair. The firm jaw contrasting with unfocused dark eyes. Poet’s eyes. Frightened eyes. Eyes of the hunted.

Paul Kave.

Carver’s heart was slamming hard and he was having difficulty breathing. He planted the cane and pulled himself to his feet.

“What’s inside?” Paul repeated in a voice more curious than demanding.

“Look for yourself,” Carver growled. He wasn’t quite sure how to treat his longtime quarry’s sudden presence. This was something Carver hadn’t figured on, this three-dimensional Paul so close to him; not separated from him by a thick pane of glass or the distance of deception, but here, speaking to him, as human as Carver himself. It was goddamned unsettling. Almost paralyzing.

Paul bent down easily and peered through the space left by the pried-out board. He was wearing faded jeans and a blue or green T-shirt that said Buccaneers across the chest in black letters. He might have been any kid roaming the Florida resort areas looking for girls. That was the thing about Paul that threw Carver-the boy’s apparent normalcy. Except for the lost look in his eyes, and the faint but unmistakable scent of desperation that clung to him the way it lingered on junkies and drifters.

He glanced up at Carver and stood, not seeming surprised at finding a near-duplicate of his car in the garage. Carver knew Paul was finally ahead of the game. It had to happen, given that he’d survived this long. Paul had access to most of the knowledge Carver had, plus what Nadine had told him. He’d analyzed the same information and reached the same general conclusion. That lofty I.Q. at work. But what did he have in mind now?

“Why are you here, Paul?”

“When I talked to Nadine earlier tonight things clicked in my mind. She told me what you’d said to my dad, about how some of what’s happened didn’t fit. I decided someone was trying to set me up. Uncle Emmett had to have told you about my being at the Mermaid Motel in Orlando; he was the only one who knew I was there. And I remembered how he felt about my father. And mother.”

“Your mother?”

“Years ago Uncle Emmett tried to rape her. Didn’t anyone tell you about that?”

“No,” Carver said. “Not the sort of dirty linen a family’s likely to air out.” He understood now the depth of Adam’s hatred for his brother. And Emmett’s intense jealousy of Adam.

“Uncle Emmett said it was all a big mistake, that my mom and dad misunderstood what had happened and he was the one who was wronged. I believed him. Up till now.”

Carver thought about a younger Emmett. And a younger Elana. What must she have been before age and illness had worn her down? The wife that was her possessive husband’s treasure.

“Why did my father hire you, Mr. Carver?”

“To find you before the police did. To protect you from harm.”

“That’s not easy to believe.”

“Doesn’t make it less true. Where’s Nadine?”

“Where I left her, I guess. Where I sneaked away from her with Dewitt’s car in Fort Lauderdale. Hated to trick her like that, but I needed a car. I thought I should drive here and talk to Uncle Emmett about this. I was surprised to see your car parked down the block. I turned off my headlights and stopped across the street, and got a glimpse of you sneaking up the driveway. But what’s Nadine’s car doing parked out front?”

“Joel Dewitt drove it here. He went inside the house about twenty minutes ago-carrying a scuba diver’s air tank.”

Paul was quick, all right. He put out a palm and leaned hard against the garage, as if he needed support to stand. Carver thought he saw the old garage sway. He waited while Paul assembled all the available pieces and got most of the picture. Insects droned nearby and racketed in the field beyond the back fence. Something tiny and brittle that flew very fast bounced off Carver’s forehead and buzzed angrily into the night.

When Paul pushed away from the rotted wood and stood up straight, he said, “Why, Mr. Carver?” He didn’t mean, why was Dewitt here with the scuba tank? Why was the old Lincoln hidden in the garage? He meant, why was Dewitt involved in this at all?

“I’m not sure. Emmett or Dewitt can tell us that.”

Paul’s jaw was thrust forward. He looked as fierce as Nadine in the final set of a tennis match, and at the same time he resembled Emmett and Adam in a way that was uncanny. Reaction had set in. The Kave blood was up. “Damn it, Mr. Carver, let’s go ask!”

He dug in a heel and took a long stride toward the driveway.

Carver hooked his arm with the crook of the cane and dragged him back. “Think it out first,” he said. “Do this my way, Paul.”

“They tried to make me out a murderer!” Paul sputtered, knocking the cane away with such force that Carver almost lost his grip on it. The kid was powerful. He’d become strong the way Carver had-all that swimming in choppy water.

“They killed my son,” Carver reminded him.

That calmed Paul somewhat. He squared his shoulders and let out a long breath, managed to unclench his teeth. “Yeah, I know they did. Your way, then, Mr. Carver. Time for the cops, I guess.”

Carver knew it was, but he said, “Not just yet.”

Paul looked closely at him and understood. A balance had shifted and their roles had changed. They both sensed it; they’d spent so much time trying to think each other’s thoughts that a subtle telepathy had developed. It was Paul now who must be the moderating influence. And Paul knew it.

“I think I oughta call the law, Mr. Carver.”

“Sure,” Carver said. “You can drive to a phone and do that while I keep watch on things here.” A breeze whispered through the yard, molding his sweat-soaked shirt to his back. Unexpectedly cool, but for only a moment. Then the heat enfolded him again like an unwelcome lover with its suffocating embrace.

Paul squinted at him. “You’re not going into the house, are you?”

Carver asked himself the same question and wasn’t sure of the answer. But he said, “No, Paul, I’ll just make sure Dewitt and Emmett don’t leave.”

Paul didn’t know whether to believe him, but had little choice. Carver watched him wrestle with the idea of driving away to find a phone. A car passed on Jupiter Avenue, making a swishing sound as its headlights ghosted through the night. A lonely sound.

“You’re supposed to be the head case here,” Carver reminded him with a tight smile, “not me.”

“So I’ve been reading and hearing on the news.”

“Get to a phone, Paul. It’ll be all right.”

“Okay. Sure.” Still dubious.

Carver nodded toward the street, a signal to move, and they started down the driveway.

When they’d almost reached the rear corner of the house, a light came on in a basement window, spilling faint light outside.

In silent agreement, Carver and Paul both crept to the window and peered in through its dirty glass.

It was a half-basement of the type developers once sold as tornado shelters. During the hurricane season, tornadoes often ripped through central Florida, amazing in their unpredictability and destruction. The walls were thick poured concrete, stained by cloudlike patterns of dampness.

Dewitt and Emmett were standing near an ancient wooden workbench with a bare light bulb dangling on a cord above it. A cylindrical tank, and a tangle of hoses and gauges, rested on the workbench. Emmett had the scuba tank valve unscrewed and was fitting a brass hose connection to it. The hose led to what looked like an ordinary cleaning-fluid can. Beside the bench were a number of glass jugs and square, gallon-size cans bearing chemical symbols and naphtha-based household-solvent labels.

Carver realized Dewitt and Emmett were charging the scuba tank with propellant and homemade napalm to commit another murder. To burn someone the way they’d killed his son.

He thought about the searing pain that must seem to last forever, and then the endlessness of death. He felt the pain!

Comprehension, and a rage he never dreamed would be so overwhelming, wrested control of him. It was as if something silently exploded within him, wiping out reason. Obliterating almost everything except his desire to strike back at the people who’d scorched the flesh he’d created. Images of death and horror tumbled through his mind. But even through his consuming emotion he was recalling the layout of the house, acting the good cop, the one Desoto and McGregor had described.

Beside him, Paul felt the heat of his building fury. Carver pulled the automatic from his belt, aware of the front sight snagging for a moment on the leather. Paul’s hand was on his shoulder, clutching desperately. The boy was afraid now, like any twenty-year-old staring at the front end of violence and death, unable to comprehend something terrible and imminent that had taken on its own will and couldn’t be stopped. “Mr. Carver, for God’s sake, don’t-”

Carver shoved Paul away so violently that the boy stumbled back and went sprawling into the hedge on the other side of the driveway. He saw Paul struggle to get up, catch the look Carver gave him, then settle back down on his elbows. Paul’s dark eyes were huge pools of helpless resignation and horror.

Too much noise might have been made already; Carver turned and limped fast toward the rickety back porch.

When his cane thumped on the porch boards he gave up any thought of silence and opted for suddenness and surprise. He used the crook of the cane to smash in a back-door window, reached through and yanked a bolt lock free, then flung the door open and charged through the kitchen toward the basement stairs.

He knew Emmett and Dewitt would hear his cane clattering on the linoleum above them and be ready.

He didn’t care.