John Lutz - Torch

Holding his breath, Carver clutched the sheet and slowly peeled it down toward the foot of the bed.

A rubber, flesh-colored doll about ten inches long was resting on the pillow. A child’s doll. It had auburn hair like Maggie’s, even had wide gray eyes like Maggie’s. It looked as Maggie might have looked as a child. At a glance the doll seemed to be in one piece, but a closer look revealed that its limbs and head had been neatly severed and carefully placed within a quarter inch of the torso. Carver nudged it with a finger and it cried once, mechanically and pitifully.

There was something else about it. It was one of those anatomically correct dolls, and a long nail had been inserted in its vagina.

Carver backed away, leaving the doll as he’d found it, and moved to examine the rest of the cottage, bracing himself for what he might encounter.

He didn’t find the doll’s human counterpart, as he’d feared. He was the only human alive or otherwise in the place.

Now that his fear had left him, he realized it was hot in the cottage; none of the window units was running. He went back into the bedroom and examined the closet. Half a dozen simple but expensive dresses were draped on hangers. The dresser drawers contained panties, bras, folded blouses. There was a pair of well-worn Reebok jogging shoes in a corner near the dresser, white sweat socks balled nearby on the carpet.

He checked the bathroom next. The tub and walls of the shower stall were damp, and there was a mushy bar of soap near the drain. A turquoise towel on a brass rack was damp. A one-piece black swimming suit tied by its straps to another towel rack was dry. On the tub’s edge was a green plastic bottle of shampoo without a cap.

When Carver opened the vanity drawers, he found an electric hair drier and bottles of makeup and nail polish, an emery board, a large red comb, and an unopened box of tampons. On the washbasin was a clear glass tumbler containing a red toothbrush and a tube of Colgate toothpaste. He ran a finger across the toothbrush’s bristles and found they were soft and damp. He sniffed them and smelled toothpaste.

He went to the phone he’d noticed in the cottage’s main room. It was a gimmick one that looked like a tennis shoe, complete with untied laces. He picked it up and pressed the heel to his ear. After Information gave him the number of Burnair and Crosley, he called it and asked to speak with Maggie Rourke.

He hadn’t really expected her to be there and was slightly surprised when he was put on hold. The Muzak was Mozart. Class. How could anyone lose money at a place that played Mozart?

“I thought you were taking time off work,” he said, when Maggie had come to the phone and abruptly stopped Mozart so commerce might commence.

She thought he might be a client. Carver told her he wasn’t interested in commerce.

“Who is this?” Her voice had an edge to it. Fear?

“Fred Carver. Remember? We talked yesterday about Donna and Mark Winship. That’s when you told me you were taking your vacation time.”

“I remember. I changed my mind about using my vacation days. The solitude at the cottage was getting on my nerves, making me feel things more deeply. Things I didn’t want to feel.”

“What about the shooting?”

“Shooting?”

“Beni Ho, the Oriental man I asked you about yesterday, needed to be shot.”

After a static-filled pause, she said, “That’s a curious way to phrase it.”

“He’s a curious kind of guy.”

“So are you. Who shot him?”

“I did,” Carver said. “Outside your cottage. But only in the leg.”

“I think I should call the police.”

“I’ve already been to see them.”

“What was this Ho person doing at the cottage? Did he follow you there?”

“Seems so.”

“Why did you call me, Mr. Carver?”

That was a tough one. He wasn’t exactly sure of the answer. “I wondered if anyone had told you about the shooting. You were sunbathing down on the beach and didn’t hear it over the sound of the surf, and Ho and I both drove away afterward.”

“If he could drive, you must not have hurt him very bad.”

“Bad enough, only he was even badder. Didn’t you notice the blood on the ground near where you park your car?”

“I noticed it. I assumed a cat or dog had caught and killed a small animal, maybe a squirrel. There are a lot of squirrels around there.”

Carver considered asking about the dismembered doll on her bed, but she wouldn’t like the idea of his nosing around inside the cottage. He said, “I think you and I should talk some more.”

“I don’t see why.”

“A lot about the Winships is still up in the air.”

“Since they’re both dead, I don’t understand why it should have to come down.”

“Maybe I could explain.”

She muffled the phone and said something indecipherable to someone in the office. Or maybe she was putting on the busy act. No more time for Carver. “Let me think about it,” she said into the phone. “Call me some other time.”

He settled for that and hung up the shoe that played Mozart.

He was parked in the Olds across the street from Burnair and Crosley at noon, near the park where he’d spoken with Beverly Denton. There was a chance Maggie would cross the street to have lunch with the squirrels and pigeons, or walk or drive to a restaurant where Carver could follow.

He raised the car’s canvas top for what shade it provided and sat in the heat and suffered, waiting and watching the building.

She didn’t emerge from the tower of reflecting planes until after two o’clock. By then the back of Carver’s shirt and the seat of his pants were molded by perspiration to the Olds’s vinyl upholstery. He wondered from time to time what it would be like to ply his trade in Minneapolis.

Maggie looked crisply businesslike and stylish in a pale blue skirt and blazer, a white blouse, and blue high heels. A black leather purse was slung by a strap across her shoulder. Gripped in her right hand and swinging at her side was a flat brown attache case.

She strolled down to the corner, drawing men’s admiring glances, then crossed the street and walked toward where he was parked. Her skirt clung to her thighs with each step, making it difficult for Carver to avert his gaze. Never had he been more appreciative of static cling.

She showed no inclination to enter the park. He was afraid she was going to approach the Olds, but instead she stopped and appeared to get into a car that was parked out of sight in front of a van half a dozen spaces away. Carver sat up straight and started the Olds’s engine. Ahead of him, a shimmering haze of exhaust fumes drifted from in front of the van.

Seconds later, Maggie’s black Stanza with the rose on its antenna pulled away from the curb to join the bright flow of traffic on Atlantic Drive, and Carver followed.

Maggie Rourke drove north on Atlantic, then turned west on Gull, all the time sitting stiffly behind the wheel and seemingly staring straight ahead. She drove fast but not recklessly, and with a disdain for stop signs that had to garner her several moving violations per year. Maybe she knew somebody with more clout than ethics, so she didn’t worry about traffic tickets. Maybe she knew McGregor.

She’d mentioned the cottage where she’d been staying belonged to someone else. Carver thought she might drive to her own address in Del Moray, but she was headed in another direction. Gull Avenue ran straight west away from the ocean, into the poorer part of town.

In a declining neighborhood near the Cuban section, Maggie pulled the Stanza to the curb lane and parked in the middle of the block.

It was a block lined with small shops, many of them bankrupt and boarded. Among those still in business were a tiny pharmacy whose door and windows were protected by heavy mesh curtains that could be lowered and locked at night, an occult bookstore, a barbershop that looked as if it might feature dog-eared back issues of Hustler , a plumbing supply shop, a tattoo parlor, and a lounge whose red neon sign, drab in daylight, proclaimed it to be S ELLIE’S.