Spark

33

Carver limped back to his room and called Clive Jones at the Burrow offices in Del Moray. Jones, who, as publisher and editor of the pesky little newspaper, should know, assured Carver that Beth’s absence meant nothing ominous. While Beth hadn’t checked in with the paper that day, and Jones didn’t know precisely where she was or what she was doing, that situation wasn’t unusual. Once Burrow assigned a writer to a story, complete freedom was allowed, and Beth was a top-notch journalist who took full advantage of that freedom. Jones added wryly that she might not have notified Carver of her intentions or whereabouts because she thought he might disapprove. Jones’s tone implied his own disapproval of Carver interfering with one of his ace journalists.

“That makes me feel loads better,” Carver said. He liked the free-spirited and altruistic Jones, but the man could be a pain in the ass, like so many thoroughly candid people who casually tossed around barbs of truth.

“I mean,” Jones went on, “maybe she took time out to have her nails done, or went shopping for a flannel nightgown. That sort of thing.”

“Is that tact you’re attempting?” Carver asked.

“Sure. I’m not always disarmingly blunt, only when I’m harassing crooked politicians and lesser liars. Fact is, Carver, Beth’s smart and physically capable. I worry less about her out in the field, or in a hostile environment, than I do most of my other reporters.” He waited a beat. “Is it a hostile environment?”

“Not unless you count murder.”

“Huh?” Jones sounded interested enough to crawl through the phone line. “Who was murdered? Where and why? You mean the old guy, Jerome Evans? You manage to get proof?”

“Beth should be the one to tell you all that,” Carver said, “if you can locate her. She’s the journalist. So maybe you should try to find her.”

“But I don’t know where she is.”

“So you mentioned.” Carver believed him.

“Carver. Er, Fred-”

Carver gently hung up on Jones, not without pleasure.

He’d decided to stay out of Hattie’s way while she searched for Jerome’s medication, but he could drive into Solartown and cruise around, possibly see Beth’s white LeBaron convertible parked somewhere. Maybe in the medical center lot.

It nagged him that maybe they hadn’t been careful enough. He recalled the lipstick stain on Beth’s Styrofoam coffee cup. Even something as trivial as that might have tipped Beed to the fact there was another player in the game.

Leaving the air-conditioner thermostat at its coldest setting, he limped out into the afternoon glare and crossed the parking lot to the Ford, feeling individual pieces of gravel probe through the heat-softened soles of his moccasins.

Less than a mile from the motel, he saw the motor home in his rearview mirror.

It moved in closer, its cumbersome, boxy shape casting a stark rectangular shadow that traveled beside it and somehow made it seem even more oversize and awkward. Carver glanced at the Ford’s speedometer and saw the needle hovering near sixty, but the motor home was gaining. To the eye, it seemed not to be moving at all, too large and square to cut the wind on its inset, dwarfed tires, yet its image in the mirror was becoming larger.

He could see what kind it was now, a Winnebago. There were probably thousands of them roaming the Florida highways. Some canvas- and plastic-wrapped objects were lashed to the roof rack; the wind was whipping loose plastic like proud black pennants. Glare on the tinted windshield kept Carver from seeing the motor home’s driver clearly, and the front passenger seat looked unoccupied.

A vacationing family in a rush, Carver thought. Running late to Disney World. Mickey Mouse waited for no man. Kept to his schedule. Had a wristwatch.

The Winnebago had closed to within fifty feet of the Ford, and he expected it to pull into the other lane and pass. The highway was flat and there were no other vehicles in sight.

The hulking vehicle picked up speed, but it didn’t veer. It was almost on the Ford’s rear bumper. Carver’s eyes flicked to the speedometer needle, now at sixty-five. To the rearview mirror. So close was the motor home that it filled the mirror and he could see minor chips and dents in the dusty, bug-spotted cream surface of its flat, fiberglass snout.

He could hear it, too. Its engine didn’t sound like that of other motor homes; above a ferocious roar it was emitting a throaty high-pitched whine, as if souped up and equipped with a turbocharger.

He glanced again at the smashed bugs on the wide surface. The motor home suddenly yowled and grew in the mirror. It was shocking to see something so ponderous move so quickly, fooling the eye in the way of a huge express locomotive. Carver’s head snapped back as the Ford’s rear bumper was crunched.

The Ford careened into the opposite lane. Carver panicked and yanked at the steering wheel, and the car rocked up on two wheels and squealed back directly in front of the Winnebago. He’d barely managed to wrap his perspiring hands around the slick plastic steering wheel when the Ford was slammed forward again. He was ready for the impact this time and mashed his foot down on the accelerator. The Ford was a production model Taurus, but it had guts. It squatted low and charged up to seventy-five miles an hour. Eighty. Ninety.

But the seemingly lumbering Winnebago hadn’t lost an inch of ground after the Ford’s initial burst of speed.

Ninety-five!

The Ford was battered again by the Winnebago’s wide front bumper. Rubber screamed on the hot highway as the car rocked and fishtailed back into the left lane. Carver’s cane clattered against the dashboard and dropped out of sight.

As he fought for control and tried to build up speed again, the motor home shot forward and was suddenly beside him, preventing him from steering back to the right side of the road.

Then the vast fiberglass surface began to edge toward him, as if to force him off the left shoulder where there was a drop of several feet. At this speed, he knew the car would flip. If the impact didn’t kill him, whoever was driving the Winnebago would probably return and make sure his injuries were fatal. Another one-car Florida accident, and who could prove otherwise?

Something had come into view up ahead, wavering in the heat like a mirage.

A car-no, a truck! A big semi, speeding toward them in Carver’s lane, directly at the Ford!

The Winnebago driver saw his opportunity; if he couldn’t force Carver off the road, he could hold him in the left lane where he’d be struck by the truck that was bearing down on them. The big motor home slowed slightly, then held absolutely steady with Carver’s speed. The truck looked huge now through the windshield. The wail of its air horn came to Carver over the roar of engines, like the howl of a charging beast.

He caught a glimpse of a side curtain moving in the motor home as he slammed on the brakes and steered right, gripping the wheel tight enough to make his hands and arms ache.

The side of the Ford met the motor home, scraping against it as the Winnebago, with its greater bulk and momentum, couldn’t reduce speed at the same rate. Its wide, flat surface was an advantage to Carver now, holding the brake-locked Ford to a straight course as long as he kept steady pressure against it, preventing the car from going into an uncontrollable skid and possibly rolling.

They traveled that way for several seconds, the Ford nestled against the side of the big motor home for perilous advantage, like a pilot fish snuggling up to a shark. When the speedometer needle had fallen to fifty, Carver abruptly yanked left on the steering wheel, away from the motor home.

The unexpected maneuver allowed the Ford to fall back. The massive grille of the truck seemed to fill the windshield as Carver willed himself to be patient until the rear bumper of the motor home had passed.

He rode the brake gently, praying his timing would be right, as the Winnebago’s rear side window, then the back bumper, with a bicycle lashed above it, glided past with maddening slowness.

Then he jerked the steering wheel to the right, and the truck, its brakes and tires screaming and smoking, flashed past both motor home and car. The bucking and wind-rocked Ford hit the soft right shoulder, and its nose almost dropped off the embankment, but Carver braced with his stiff leg against the floor and wrestled the slippery steering wheel. Gave the brake pedal butterfly taps and brought the hood around to aim toward safety, amazed at the core of cool calm in the depths of his terror.

The Ford skidded to a halt broadside on the highway.

Carver put it in reverse, backed onto the shoulder, and watched the motor home disappearing in the distance. He cranked down the window, breathed in fresh air. The truck had stopped several hundred yards down the road and was on the shoulder. The driver, a husky man in a sleeveless black shirt, jeans, and boots, was jogging toward Carver, his beefy arms pumping as if he were punching a steadily backpedaling opponent.

Carver sat with his head bowed, both hands locked on the steering wheel, as the driver approached.

“What the fuck was that all about?” the man asked disbelievingly.

“Guy tried to force me off the road,” Carver said. His voice was firm and controlled. Okay. Didn’t sound like him, though.

“Sure as shit looked that way. You okay, buddy?”

Carver released his grip on the steering wheel, flexing his fingers to work the soreness from them. “All right far as I know. Safety belt kept me from bouncing around.” He hit the seat-belt buckle release and leaned over, retrieving his cane from the floor. Then he climbed out of the car and stood unsteadily with his arm resting on the hot metal roof. He blinked and looked at the truck driver. The man was about forty, with thinning red hair and a seamed, sunburned face. There was a Confederate flag tattooed on his right forearm. “You catch a look at the motor home’s license plate?” Carver asked.

“You serious? What I was tryin’ to do was keep everybody alive.”

Carver raised his cane in a kind of salute. “You did a helluva job.”

“You’re the one did the fancy drivin’,” the trucker said. “You pull off that stunt-driver shit on purpose, or’d it just look that way?”

Carver said, “I don’t know, myself. Little of both, I guess.” He drew a long deep breath, something he keenly appreciated.

“Now you mention it,” the driver said, “I don’t think that motor home had a license plate. I can see it clear in my memory, you know?”

“I know,” Carver said.

“Crazy fucker drivin’ it mighta stole it, you think?”

“Probably.” But Carver doubted it. The normally slow Winnebago had been specially modified for speed.

“Fucker drivin’ like that, he musta been drunk.”

“Very possible,” Carver said.

The driver fished in a shirt pocket and came up with a restaurant receipt and a stubby yellow pencil. He jotted something on the receipt. “You talk to the law, your insurance company”-he pointed to the long scrapes on the Ford’s right side- “and you call me if you need a witness. That asshole in the Winny’s gonna kill somebody if he keeps up them games.”

Carver thanked him, glanced at the receipt, and saw that the man had written “Tom Shannon” above a scrawled phone number.

“That thing still driveable?” Shannon asked, motioning toward the Ford.

Carver said he thought so. He climbed in and started the engine.

Tom Shannon grinned. “That a rental?”

“ ’Fraid so.”

“Bet they put you in some kinda pool. Tell you, though, they don’t make a lotta cars would of taken that kinda damage and still run.”

“Not even the Japanese,” Carver said.

The driver stopped smiling. “ ’Specially not the Japanese.”

Carver decided not to argue.

He thanked Shannon again, then drove him down the road to where he’d left the truck with its big diesel engine still breathing black wisps of exhaust into the hot blue Florida sky.

After watching the truck disappear in the baking, shimmering distance, he waited until a string of cars came along traveling in the direction of Solartown. A white Plymouth, probably a rental. An old station wagon loaded with suitcases and kids. A green four-wheel-drive vehicle plastered with religious bumper stickers.

When the minicaravan had swished past, he jockeyed the Ford in a U-turn and fell in behind it. Speeded up and joined it.

He did fifty-five the rest of the way, drawing some comfort from the bumper stickers, flinching each time he passed a motor home traveling in the opposite direction.