Spark

36

From where he sat at the kitchen table, Carver heard the chimes sound two more times, Hattie was in no rush to go to the front door.

Then he heard the door open, Beed’s voice from out on the porch. Carver couldn’t understand what he was saying, but his tone was amicable.

“He isn’t here, I’m afraid,” Hattie said. “He left with Lieutenant Desoto ten or fifteen minutes ago. Should I-”

There was the sound of a slap.

“How dare-” Another slap.

The front door closing.

Silence.

Carver gripped his cane and fought the impulse to get up and go into the living room. He hadn’t expected Beed to become violent so quickly; if he’d been boozing as heavily as Desoto suspected, he might be on the very edge. Carver had handled it wrong. He knew that now but it was too late; he had to follow the course he’d set.

“I assume Mr. Carver’s in the house,” Beed said loudly in the living room.

“I told you-”

“I know,” Beed interrupted Hattie. At least he didn’t slap her this time. “Carver, you hear me?”

Carver held his silence. He’d screwed up about as much as fate would allow.

He heard movement in the living room, footsteps going away, then coming nearer. He drew the Colt from its holster and laid it on the table with his fingertips resting lightly on it. He hadn’t wanted to use it, but he thought now there might be no choice. He’d used the gun before and knew he could do it.

Adam Beed appeared in the kitchen doorway. He was holding an AK-47 automatic weapon in his right hand. His thick left arm was clamped around Hattie. The left side of her jaw was ballooned out and her eyes were teared with rage and fear. The automatic’s sleek blue barrel wasn’t aimed at Carver. It was digging into Hattie’s ribs.

“Ah, here’s where you’ve been keeping yourself,” Beed said, as if making small talk at a party. So neatly and conservatively dressed-blue suit, white shirt, red tie-and holding gun and hostage, he looked like a political fund raiser who’d gone too far. He was grinning but there was a tic in the parchmentlike flesh beneath his right eye. He appeared pale, strung out, and dangerous. A wave of fear hit Carver, and he waited until he had control before answering.

“What caused you to drop by?” he asked. He was pleased that his voice remained level and conversational. He hadn’t removed his fingertips from the gun, but he knew he couldn’t use it while Beed had Hattie.

“The social butterfly in me, I guess. Why didn’t you say something when I called your name?”

“That old maxim, ‘If you don’t have anything nice to say about somebody . . .’ ”

Beed nodded toward the Colt. “I’d like that gun for my collection.”

“I don’t want to sell it.”

“No, but I’m sure you’ll give it away rather than see old lady all over the walls. Drop it on the floor and slide it over here with your foot.”

Carver obeyed.

Beed released Hattie as he stooped gracefully and picked up the gun. He stuck it in his belt inside his suit coat and came all the way into the room. Hattie edged over to stand near Carver. She seemed calm but for a faint quivering in the fingers of her hand near Carver’s cheek.

Beed’s glance traveled around the kitchen. “Another thing I want,” he said, “is a small brown bottle.”

Carver said, “I’ll just bet.”

The flesh beneath Beed’s eye danced again and he leveled the automatic at Carver. “The old bitch here’s all I need to get that bottle. Something you should keep in mind.”

“Another thing to keep in mind is that if I tell you where it is, you’ll kill us both.”

“Definitely. Gonna kill you both either way and it doesn’t matter if we all know it. You two fall on the debit side of the ledger, and there’s nothing I enjoy more than balancing the books.”

“The way you subtracted Roger Karl and Otto Fingerhut?”

Beed shrugged. “There are layoffs in every business.”

A sound from outside caught his attention. Carver hadn’t heard it.

Now he did hear something, the slam of a car door.

“Let’s go into the living room,” Beed said, like a considerate host trying to put his guests at ease.

Carver stood up and limped after Hattie. Beed followed with the automatic, an unwanted, menacing shadow.

Through the living-room window Carver saw a gray Cadillac parked behind the Winnebago. Nurse Monica Gorham and an extremely thin Latin man were walking up Hattie’s driveway toward the house. The man was wearing a dark pinstripe suit even spiffier than Beed’s. Nurse Gorham was dressed in a severe gray business suit with pale stockings and white high heels beneath its modest-length skirt. Everyone other than Carver and Hattie was dressed for a board of directors’ meeting.

Keeping the gun trained on Carver, Beed opened the front door to admit them.

Inside, Nurse Gorham gazed at Carver and Hattie with remote curiosity, as if they might be objects in an aquarium.

The Latino barely glanced at them. He had a smooth complexion and was almost feminine looking, naturally dark around the eyes as if he wore makeup. It took a second glance to see that he was probably in his forties. He gave the impression this was all distasteful and he’d rather be someplace else. Well, so would Carver. Philadelphia, even.

Carver guessed and said, “Hello, Dr. Sanchez.”

The man nodded to him with a slight smile that wasn’t at all infectious. He had the unrevealing eyes of a snake.

“It hardly matters if he knows you,” Beed said to the man.

Dr. Sanchez said, “If it did, I wouldn’t be here.” He spoke with a slight accent, probably Cuban, and a calm authority that meant he was in charge. “Did you get what we want?”

“Haven’t had a chance.”

“What about next door?”

“Game old fucker,” Beed said. “I worked on him last night until he lost consciousness once too often and I couldn’t revive him. He never really spilled his guts, but whatever he knows, he won’t be telling it around town.”

“Val!” Hattie said. “What have you done to Val?”

“Old fart’s in love with her,” Beed said. “That’s why he wrote her those anonymous letters about her husband’s death and got this whole mess started.”

“Val wrote those letters?” Hattie said. So the culprit was right next door. She glanced over at Carver. What a detective he was.

Beed said, “Shut the fuck up.” His professional veneer was falling away fast. He looked at Carver. “I followed you into Orlando and had a talk with Mark the friendly pharmacist, told him I was your assistant. He told me about that list of medications you showed him.”

“Then I suppose Nurse Gorham checked the medical center files.”

Nurse Gorham said, “I found a spreadsheet program in the files instead of the Keller Pharmaceutical disk, and the computerized Christmas card mailing list instead of Jerome Evans’s medical history.”

“How did you find out Val wrote the murder notes?” Carver asked.

Beed gave his narrow, bean-counter smile. “Afraid I’m a better detective than you are? That’s one thing he told me under the influence of physical persuasion.”

“You tortured him,” Hattie said. “Your euphemisms won’t alter that fact.” She moved abruptly toward the door.

Beed grabbed her and she wheeled and tried to rake her fingernails across his eyes. He laughed and shoved her into the wall. Carver heard her head hit hard against it and she slid to the floor. He started to raise his cane to strike at Beed but the automatic’s barrel swung his way.

Dr. Sanchez gripped Carver’s arm, not so much to restrain him as to get him to change his mind about tangling with Beed. Hattie was lying on her back with her eyes closed. Carver was relieved to see her chest moving. She was breathing.

“She might be seriously hurt,” he said.

Nurse Gorham’s expression was bland as she walked over to Hattie and knelt beside her. She felt the pulse in her neck, lifted her eyelids and peered at her pupils, swiveled her head to examine where it had smacked the wall.

“She’ll be okay,” Nurse Gorham said in a professional tone. “Possible concussion, but that’s about all.” She smiled then and pinched Hattie’s cheek.

“Monica likes to see people hurt sometimes,” Beed said. “Gives her a tingle.”

“That’s the rumor,” Carver said.

Nurse Gorham ignored them. “When the old lady regains consciousness, she needs to be watched.”

“I hardly think so,” Beed said.

Nurse Gorham and Dr. Sanchez looked at each other, then at Carver. The doctor said, “Save us the bother of searching the house for Jerome Evans’s medication bottle, Mr. Carver. Save yourself a lot of bother.”

“You’re the only ones talking about a bottle,” Carver said.

“No,” Beed said, “before he, uh, lost the ability to converse, Val next door informed me that Hattie told him all about searching for the bottle. Your motel was being watched this morning. We figure you charged over here because Hattie called and said she’d found it. That means the bottle is here in the house, and you know where.”

“Why’s this bottle so important?” Carver asked.

“You know why, Mr. Carver,” Dr. Sanchez said.

“Hattie told me she poured what was left of her husband’s insomnia medication down the drain.”

“I don’t believe you, Mr. Carver. Neither do my associates.”

“What’s Luridus-X?” Carver asked.

“An experimental drug,” Dr. Sanchez said.

“Why tell him?” Nurse Gorham asked.

“Why not?” Beed said, smiling at Carver. He sure had a creepy smile, like a bookkeeper with secret hideous knowledge. Charles Manson’s accountant.

“He’s puzzled it out anyway,” the doctor said. “That’s why he’s here.” He clasped his narrow, feminine hands where his suit coat gaped in front and faced Carver squarely, a smugly confident man but with the human impulse to boast. “Mercury Laboratories is in the business of developing new and wonderful drugs, Mr. Carver. For this to be done with maximum effectiveness, tests have to be conducted. Solartown patients make ideal subjects. Sometimes the drugs are dispensed through the medical center pharmacy. Nurse Gorham administers the drugs secretly at the hospital, then monitors and reports results to Mercury.”

“You might thank us someday if you become gravely ill,” Nurse Gorham said.

Beed said, “Might not.” He seemed amused that she couldn’t shake her healer’s instinct, even if she was a practicing sadist.

“Solartown residents provide perfect demographics for such experimentation,” Dr. Sanchez continued. “The test subjects are all in the same age group, from the same general socioeconomic background, receive all their medical treatment at the center, and are easily available for tracking. And when the tests do occasionally go awry, a subject’s death attracts little attention in a retirement community where advanced age makes death a frequent occurrence.”

Carver had to admire such tidy logic and its implementation; Solartown patients were like custom-bred laboratory rats, only better. “Difficult to believe it all goes on under Dr. Wynn’s nose,” he said. It bothered him that Sanchez was talking so freely; it underlined that they fully intended to leave dead bodies in the house when they’d recovered the bottle. But he couldn’t resist asking questions, now that he could get answers.

“Dr. Wynn has long had a serious addiction,” Dr. Sanchez said.

“Drugs?”

“Me,” Nurse Gorham said.

Dr. Sanchez raised a hand to silence her and continued talking, calmly and in an amiable tone, as if discussing a perfectly legal and respectable enterprise. “One night after an arranged evening of drinking with Nurse Gorham and Mr. Beed, Dr. Wynn was in an inebriated state and was indiscreet. His sexual adventures with both Mr. Beed and Nurse Gorham were videotaped.”

“So he knows what’s going on and you’re blackmailing him into cooperation and silence.”

“Paying him, actually,” Dr. Sanchez corrected. “Still, Dr. Wynn understands the situation. When a Solartown test subject dies, he performs the autopsy, Nurse Gorham assisting, and signs the death certificate.”

“But Dr. Billingsly’s sure Jerome Evans died of a heart attack.”

“And so he did. Evans was the test subject for a cholesterol-dissolving drug, placed in his sedative, that unfortunately didn’t work out and produced massive blood clotting. So observation and the autopsy would reveal the cause of death to be an ordinary heart attack. Mercury has ceased researching and developing the drug.”

“And now we want what’s left of it back,” Adam Beed said.

Dr. Sanchez fixed his unwavering cold gaze on Carver. “The residue in Jerome Evans’s prescription bottle is evidence of what Florida law would consider homicide.”

“The law and Jerome Evans-if he could speak from the grave.”

“Not if he were a visionary, Mr. Carver. He’d understand that what we’re doing here in Solartown is proper, that the overall benefits far outweigh the discomfort or even deaths of a few test subjects. They don’t know it, but their last years of life are made into something beneficial and beautiful for mankind.”

“Another thing they’re doing is making Mercury Laboratories and its corporate officers wealthy.”

Beed said, “Some black clouds have more than one silver lining.”

Dr. Sanchez smiled with philosophical sadness. “Time for you to tell us where the bottle is, Mr. Carver.”

“Can’t do that,” Carver said.

“I didn’t think so.” Dr. Sanchez turned his steady gaze on Beed.

Beed shoved the automatic’s barrel hard into Carver’s chest, causing him to stumble. Carver tried to catch himself with his cane but fell back into a sitting position in an upholstered chair with wooden arms. Beed aimed the automatic at his midsection and said, “Stay still; this won’t hurt a bit.”

Nurse Gorham drew a thick roll of broad white surgical tape from her purse and approached Carver. Quickly, deftly, she began taping his forearms to the chair arms, the calf and ankle of his good leg to a chair leg. The thigh of his stiff leg was taped against a chair-arm brace, and more tape was wrapped around his waist and the chair back.

When she was finished and Carver could barely move, she stepped back with obvious satisfaction and dropped what was left of the tape back in her purse.

“Shouldn’t take long,” Beed said.

“This should be fun to watch,” Nurse Gorham said from deep in her throat. “Maybe fun to take part in.”

Dr. Sanchez said, “I’d rather not watch, I’m in research. We’ll be leaving. Call me when everything’s settled, Adam.”

“Mind waiting for a few minutes in the car?” Nurse Gorham asked. Her voice was tight, almost pleading.

“Come with me now, Monica,” Dr. Sanchez said in an irritated tone. “This is business, not pleasure.”

He and Nurse Gorham left by the front door. As she stepped out onto the porch, Nurse Gorham glanced back and smiled at Carver very much as Adam Beed was smiling.