Spark

32

Carver found Philip’s Pharmacy easily enough on Washington in downtown Orlando. It was a small shop, unusual in that it specialized in prescription and over-the-counter drugs rather than the general run of merchandise most drugstores now carried. No shoes or motor oil here. There was a kid behind the register up front, and a middle-age man in a white smock was working behind the counter in the back, near a display of vitamins and drugstore eyeglasses.

The cashier, a dumpy little girl about sixteen, looked at Carver as expectantly as a puppy when he entered the pharmacy. He smiled at her and limped back toward the prescription counter. She returned to pricing cartons of cigarettes, maintaining a profitable symbiotic relationship.

The guy behind the high, polished wood prescription counter was gray but fit looking, as if he exercised religiously and consumed scads of vitamins from the nearby display. He was wearing those half-glasses for reading and glancing knowledgeably at people over the frames, and, amazingly, they made him appear younger from a distance. Up close now, Carver saw that he was probably in his sixties. The plastic tag on his pristine white smock was curved up at the corners like a smile and said his name was Mark and he was a registered pharmacist. Carver wondered if that was how he was registered, simply “Mark.”

“Help you?” he asked.

Carver figured most people could say yes. He saw that the front of the counter contained shelves of condoms and spermicides. “Hope so,” he said. “I’m investigating something that involves prescription drugs. I need answers, so who better to ask than a pharmacist?”

“You’re the police?” Mark asked, regarding Carver’s question as rhetorical.

Carver told him he was private, which impressed Mark to the point where he didn’t bother asking for any identification beyond Carver’s plain white business card. Carver thought maybe he should get a wide-open eye, or maybe a figure in a trench coat engraved on his cards. He could go anywhere then.

He drew the list of Mercury Laboratory drugs from his pocket and laid it on the counter. “Which of these might be prescribed for insomnia?” he asked.

Mark studied the creased sheet of paper for a minute or so, while Carver listened to the distinctive double-clicking of the mechanical pricer on the cigarettes up by the register. Then Mark gazed wisely at Carver over the dark frames of his half-glasses. “Nothing on this list of drugs matches any prescription I’ve filled for insomnia.”

Disappointment was heavy in Carver. “What might a doctor usually prescribe to help someone sleep?”

“Oh, a number of things. Seconal’s a favorite.”

Carver nudged the list with a finger. “You know what these all are for sure?”

“No, several of them I don’t recognize.” Mark adjusted the glasses on his narrow nose. “But if I had to guess which was a soporific, I’d choose this one.” He pointed with a slender, manicured finger. “Luridus-X.”

“Why’s that?”

“I remember my Latin, ‘Luridus’ roughly translated could mean ‘a deathlike state.’ Possibly a description of sleep.”

“What about the X?” Carver asked. C-click! C-click! went the pricer at the front of the pharmacy. The cashier still at it, getting to the cartons she’d missed.

Mark shrugged and adjusted his glasses again. “I couldn’t say.”

A tall woman basted to a glowing red approached the counter and asked, too late, which was the most effective sunscreen she could buy.

Carver thanked Mark and left him to his work.

After a stop at a McDonald’s for scrambled eggs, sausage, and a biscuit, he drove the rented Ford back to the Warm Sands Motel.

Beth’s car was missing from the parking lot. Carver figured she must be out being a journalist. There was a battered black pickup truck parked in the only shade, so he parked the Ford in a slot near his room and climbed out. The sun had risen high enough to hit with brutality, and he felt perspiration break out on his back and seep into his shirt even as he limped the short distance to his door.

The first thing Carver saw when he entered the dim room was the message light on the phone blinking out a frenetic red signal. Maybe Hattie calling to say she’d located her husband’s leftover medication.

It was cool in the room, but not cool enough. After turning the air-conditioner thermostat as far as it would go to the Cool side, Carver sat on the edge of the bed and punched out the number for the motel office.

Not Hattie. It was Desoto who’d left a message for Carver to call as soon as possible.

Carver rattled the cradle button until he got a dial tone, then phoned the Municipal Justice Building.

He was put through immediately to Desoto, who got right to business.

“Something you should know happened this morning down in Fort Lauderdale, amigo. A fella went to board his yacht at the dock of one of those ritzy houses backing up to the canals. Right away he noticed something big and blue floating facedown near the hull.”

Fear formed a cold lump in Carver’s stomach, then began to spread tentacles. He said, “Let me guess.”

“No need to guess. Large man in blue bib overalls, dead.”

“After a hearty meal of ground glass?”

“Not this time. His throat was slit. Lauderdale police think he was killed someplace else and dumped from a boat near where he was found.”

“Lauderdale got any leads?”

“I know one they don’t have.”

Carver knew what he meant.

“There was an empty Crown Royal whiskey bottle floating near the victim. Beed’s brand. If he’s boozing heavily, he’s hell walking, amigo.”

“Maybe just purgatory,” Carver said, trying to believe it. Big talk before the big game.

“Lauderdale’s still talking to people living along the canal,” Desoto said. “Another interesting thing, though, one of the dead man’s arms is missing. Torn or hacked off at the shoulder in messy fashion.”

Carver remembered the story about Adam Beed attacking a fellow inmate in Raiford. Desoto had said the victim’s severed arm was never found.

“Bet I know what you’re thinking, hey?”

“That business about Beed’s first victim losing an arm,” Carver said, “and the murder Beed’s supposed to have done behind the walls. Is that on the level?”

“I don’t know for sure,” Desoto said. “I only repeated what I heard from more than one source. It was something I thought you should hear. After all, a missing arm . . . On one hand you can believe it, but on the other . . .”

“Okay,” Carver interrupted. He was in no mood for the kind of black humor that kept cops sane.

“What this means,” Desoto said, “is we got two homicides now, and they’re connected.”

The fear in Carver’s bowels inched over to make room for the guilt. “If you have to go to Metzger now,” he said, “I’ll understand.”

“I said two days, amigo.”

“Forget the two days.”

“No.”

“I know there’s more pressure on you now.”

“More pressure on both of us,” Desoto said.

Well, that was for sure.

After a long pause, Desoto said, “You got less to worry about from the big farmer, him being dead and disarmed and all. But from where I sit, Adam Beed looks twice as dangerous. You need to keep that in mind, amigo, watch your back all the time. You carrying?”

Carver absently touched the butt of the holstered Colt beneath his shirt. “Everybody in Florida’s carrying.”

“Gun World,” Desoto said. “Stay careful, my friend.”

Carver thanked him for the call and hung up.

Lifted the receiver again and called Hattie Evans.

“Luridus-X,” he said. “Is that what Jerome was taking?”

“That does sound familiar,” Hattie told him.

“It was on the list I showed you.”

“But hearing it instead of reading it makes a difference. Jerome might have mentioned it. But I can’t be positive. I’ll keep searching for the bottle.”

“Let me know as soon as you find it.”

“Mightn’t the medical center still have a record of Jerome’s medication?”

“Don’t contact them,” Carver said. “They might be part of the problem.”

She didn’t say anything for a while. Then: “When I collected my mail this morning, I found another note stating Jerome had been murdered. It looks just like the first one. Same color ink, same printing. Quite brief and to the point.”

“What exactly does it say?”

“Simply ‘Your husband was murdered. Don’t give up.’ ”

“Was it in a stamped and postmarked envelope?”

“No, it wasn’t even in an envelope. Just a piece of white notepaper folded once lengthwise.”

“Save it,” Carver said. “I’ll want to look at it.” But he was sure the note would be exactly as Hattie described and would offer little new. He said, “Has Beth Jackson been by to see you?”

“No. Should she have?”

“Not necessarily,” Carver said. “I’m trying to locate her.”

“You sound worried.”

Carver realized that he’d asked about Beth because he was worried. She’d left no message saying where she was going, and the death of the man in bib overalls had him spooked. “I’m worried about you insisting on staying in that house, Hattie.”

“If I weren’t here, Mr. Carver, I could hardly be searching for Jerome’s medication.”

Faultless schoolmarm logic.

Carver cautioned her again to keep her doors locked, then hung up.

It was still warm in the room, and he felt overheated except for his forehead and bare forearms. They felt cool and were coated with perspiration.

Slumped on the edge of the mattress, his bad leg extended with its heel dug into the carpet, he called Beth’s room.

After ten rings he hung up.

He told himself she was plenty capable of looking out for herself, and she was simply gone somewhere attending to business.

Nevertheless, he limped down to her room, stood in the merciless sun, and knocked on her door.

Got no reply.

He considered trying to slip the lock and examine the room for clues to her whereabouts, even fought an impulse to kick the door open and storm inside.

Then he turned his back on the door. Beth’s unoccupied room would almost surely tell him nothing, and he’d be running the risk of being seen breaking in.

He wondered why he’d thought circumstances warranted that kind of drastic action.

The heat, he decided.