Spark

9

Val invited Carver to park his car and ride with him on patrol. “It’ll be a quiet night,” Val promised, “like all the rest of ’em.

Carver lowered himself into the passenger’s side of Val’s five-year-old green Dodge and rested his cane between his legs. The car’s air conditioner worked well. There was a CB radio mounted below the dash with a microphone hooked into a bracket. The Dodge was a stick shift. Val let it wind out in first gear, then shifted with a clunk! and a jerk into second, then almost immediately into third. The little car whined but responded peppily to this abuse.

“Gotta keep an eye out over on N Street,” Val said, glancing at Carver from the corner of his vision. The glow of the dashboard lights made the white of his eye gleam. “There was a spate of vandalism over there last week. Woman reported her citrus trees bent, all the fruit on the ground.”

Sounds serious, Carver thought, if you’re an orange.

“Kids from the city, way I figure it,” Val said. “Come cruising through here now and then, mostly looking for something to do. Don’t generally amount to much, but it’s the kinda thing’s gotta be contained.”

Carver said, “You like doughnuts?”

“Yeah, but I don’t make it a habit to eat while I’m on duty.”

“I thought you guys would have uniforms,” Carver said, looking at Val’s white slacks and green golf shirt. And he was wearing white slip-on shoes that looked like house slippers. Not good for chasing bad guys.

Val smiled, staring straight ahead. “Maybe this is the uniform. “

“Okay,” Carver said, “I’m sorry if I seem to be taking the Posse lightly. Desoto said you people did good work.”

“Who’s he?”

“Homicide lieutenant in Orlando.”

Val slowed to five miles an hour for a stop sign, clunked the Dodge into second gear, and regained speed. The houses slipped by on either side of the car, all of identical height and architecture, like the same house over and over; might have been an Andy Warhol poster. “Desoto the one Hattie went to about Jerome?” Val asked.

“Right.”

Carver said nothing while Val slowed the car and looked to the side at a shirtless, white-haired man picking up something from a dark lawn. The man saw the car, waved, and ambled back inside the house carrying a rolled-up newspaper. “I drove over to talk to Maude Crane like you suggested,” Carver said. “I found her dead.”

Val made a left turn and nodded. “Heard it on the news, that she went and hung herself. Wasn’t surprised. Guilt and loneliness, if it wasn’t murder.”

“What makes you think murder?”

“I done some talking with Hattie, and I kinda agree with her it don’t seem logical Jerome’d just keel over with a heart attack.”

“I thought we were talking about Maude Crane.”

“Talking about her and Jerome.”

Val’s concentration tended to slip off the track occasionally. Carver decided it was a good thing the Posse wasn’t armed.

“Suicides happen frequently in retirement communities,” Carver said. “So do heart attacks.”

“Not to Jerome. He was a healthy guy, strong and fulla piss and vinegar. Popular with most everybody, ’specially the ladies. Jerome didn’t sleep sometimes at night, so he roamed around the house, sometimes woke up Hattie. Living next door like I do, I heard things. I didn’t like him much, considering how he treated Hattie.”

“He mistreated her?”

“Ordered her around like dirt, is what he did. Then of course he had his thing on the side with Maude Crane.”

“Did he know Hattie knew about Maude?”

Val rubbed his chin and held the Dodge at about five miles an hour on the deserted street. Most of the houses were dark. Bedtime was early in Solartown. “He probably knew and didn’t care. Nothing I know was said about it by either of them. Married man getting some strange on the side, and with a wife like Hattie, it sure ain’t right. She let it go on. She let too many things go on with Jerome. It’s a terrible thing to say, but myself, I think it’s better for her in her remaining years that he’s passed on. And if she could settle in her mind the suspicions about his death, she could forget him and move on with her life. End the chapter, sorta. You think?”

Carver said he did, he thought so. Which was why he was working for Hattie.

He sat silently for a while as they followed the grid of dark streets. Then he said, “You know, if anybody really believed Maude Crane was murdered, Hattie’d be the prime suspect.”

Val tromped a floppy white shoe down on the brake pedal. Carver had to brace with a palm against the dash to keep from hitting the windshield. As the car stopped rocking, he grabbed his cane and held it.

“Hattie killing anyone is a ridiculous idea!” Val said angrily. “Her exact problem is she’s too kind and considerate. I spent time in Korea, Carver. I knew killers. There’s something about them, and Hattie’s not one of them.”

“I don’t see her that way, either,” Carver said, though he’d known killers who would have fooled Val. Who’d fooled everyone for a long time, including their victims.

Mollified, Val slipped the Dodge into gear and goosed it up to ten miles an hour, shifted choppily to second, and held that speed as the motor lugged along like an asthmatic.

“We’re talking about two victims, if you include Maude Crane,” Carver said. “And maybe more. You hinting there might be a serial killer operating in Solartown?”

Val didn’t seem taken aback by the idea. “Well, I never considered it, but it’s possible. Generally, though, they use knives or guns, don’t they?”

“Generally. But there are ways to induce heart attacks. The Russians have done it chemically for years. Maybe even the C.I.A. Any former C.I.A. operatives living in Solartown?”

“Not as I know of. But then, they wouldn’t put up a sign in their yards to that effect, would they? Listen, Carver, why would a serial killer pick on us old folks? I mean, what’d be the motive?”

That was the question, all right. “Inheritance, maybe,” Carver said, hoping he wouldn’t have to explain that.

“Rathawk Two, you read me?” the CB radio suddenly blared.

“ ’Scuse me,” Val told Carver. He undipped the microphone and held it an inch in front of his mouth. “Rathawk Two here, Louella.”

“Woman over on O Street, number five twenty-two, says grandkids visiting next door won’t stop playing the stereo too loud. Same songs over and over, Gloria Estefan records are driving her bananas. Wanna check that one out? Over.”

Val pressed his mike button. “Ten-four, Louella. Out.”

Val clipped the mike back to the dash. “Sometimes we handle that kinda thing,” he explained. “Save the police a trip out here when they need to be chasing crooks and crack addicts.”

“Logical,” Carver said.

“I can drop you back at your car. Another couple bars of Gloria Estefan ain’t gonna make much difference.”

Carver was a Gloria Estefan fan, but he didn’t mention that to Val.

When Val had braked the Dodge next to the parked Olds, he said, “You get lonely, come ride with me again. Maybe I’ll buy the doughnuts.”

“Too much cholesterol,” Carver said. “Bad for the heart.”

“Like Russian metal,” Val said, depressing the clutch and jamming the gearshift lever into low.

“Russian metal” was the irradiated material KGB espionage agents used to induce seemingly natural death in their victims.

As he watched the Dodge round the corner at a leisurely pace to respond to the audio assault call on O Street, Carver wondered where Rathawk Two had learned such a thing.