John Lutz - Torch

She was still working at eleven o’clock when he went inside and said goodnight. He was unable to fall completely asleep. It was almost one when he felt her crawl into bed beside him. The springs groaned and the mattress shifted in her direction as she settled in. Still only half-asleep, he heard a steady, persistent pattering sound and realized it was raining. A semi over on the highway gave two long, lonely blasts of its airhorn as it ran through bad weather. The room was illuminated as if by a flashbulb, and a moment later thunder roared and rumbled. Glassware in the kitchen vibrated shrilly on shelves. Within seconds, more lightning washed the cottage with light.

“You asleep?” Beth whispered.

“No,” Carver said, “I was just lying here hoping for high winds.”

“I finished my Burrow article. It’s gonna make some people in the mail-order business mighty uncomfortable.”

“Good.”

Lightning glare danced over the walls and ceiling. “You get to talk with Sincliff?”

Carver waited until a sharp peal of thunder faded into a silence occupied only by the rain. Then he told Beth about his visit to Nightlinks.

She lay quietly for a while, then said, “Beni Ho’s more dangerous now than before he lost some use of a leg.”

“He’s that sort of guy,” Carver agreed.

“You need to be more careful, Fred. Since he’s temporarily crippled, Ho’s liable to use something long-distance, a gun or throwing weapon.”

“I don’t think so. He likes to see the eyes of the people he kills.” Another roll of thunder, this time without lightning. The storm was moving away. “I wonder if the women he escorts for Nightlinks suspect what he’s capable of doing.”

“On a certain level, probably. But they still might request him next time. You know how it is, Fred. Some women like dangerous men.”

He moved his hand over and felt the smooth warm surface of her bare thigh. “Is that why you and I are here together?”

She rolled onto her side and kissed him on the lips, then drew her head back and smiled seductively at him in the faint illumination of a distant lightning strike. “Maybe. On the other hand, some men like dangerous women.”

Carver awoke alone to bright sunlight.

Beth had left quietly before dawn to resume her watch on Gretch’s apartment before Gretch got out of bed.

Carver remembered last night and passed his hand lightly over the cool sheet where she’d lain beside him. He looked out the window, and another hot and glaring Florida day looked back at him. The only indication it had rained heavily last night was that the air felt more humid than usual. It was only a little past nine, and already the cottage was uncomfortably warm. He wished Beth had switched on the air conditioner before leaving.

He lay for a while gazing out the window at blue sky and darker ocean rippling with a diamond glint of sunlight, listening to the wavering snarl of a speedboat playing out of his line of sight. Then he located his cane where it had fallen on the floor during sex last night, knocked by one of Beth’s long legs from where it had leaned against the wall.

He struggled out of bed and hobbled into the bathroom, relieved himself, and splashed cold tap water over his face. Then he got down his swimming trunks from where they were draped over the shower rod, worked them on, and left the cottage for his morning therapeutic swim.

The speedboat had gone somewhere else and the sea was quiet except for the sighing, slapping sound of the swells rolling in from the eastern light and hunkering down in white foam beyond Carver as they encountered the shallows and ran for the beach. He rode the swells easily, rising and falling in the timeless rhythm that had worn away continents. He floated and thought again of last night and realized anew how much Beth meant to him. And how much a woman like Maggie Rourke must have meant to Mark Winship, even in the agony of guilt he’d apparently suffered knowing what he’d done to his wife. Mark and Maggie must have experienced nights like last night, yet Mark had taken his own life rather than face the dilemma of Donna’s death. Of course he’d felt grief and remorse, and perhaps he’d turned on himself, but still there was Maggie, waiting for him. Maggie, possible now for the rest of his life without complication. Mark’s Maggie, like Carver’s Beth. It wasn’t getting any easier for Carver to believe Mark Winship had committed suicide.

The sigh of the swells had become a low roar, and he saw that he’d drifted too far from shore. He rolled onto his stomach and swam with the hot sun on his back.

He’d returned from his swim and showered and shaved, and was eating a late breakfast of eggs, sausage, toast, and coffee, when the phone rang.

The abruptness of the first ring made him start and almost knock his cup over. He hurriedly chewed the bite of toast he’d just taken and reached for the phone where it sat on the breakfast counter. Swallowed and said hello.

“Me, Fred.”

He knew by the flat tone of Beth’s voice that something had happened.

It was eleven-thirty when Carver parked the Olds behind Beth’s LeBaron and crossed Belt Street toward Gretch’s apartment.

Hodgkins was standing outside in the hot sun, smoking a cigarette and waiting for him, watching him cross the street. The old man drew hard on the cigarette, as if it might be his last and life-prolonging inhalation, then flicked the butt off to the side in a wide arc that left a trail like a tracer bullet.

He must have been holding his breath. When Carver got near him, he exhaled loudly and the morning breeze shredded the smoke that had been in his lungs.

“We did like you said,” he told Carver, “which was exactly nothin’ and don’t let nobody else do otherwise.”

Carver sorted that out and concluded that Hodgkins and Beth had followed his instructions.

They went inside and Hodgkins led the way up the creaking wooden steps. Though he appeared composed, excitement urged him on; Carver had to hustle with the cane to keep up with him. Their footsteps and the clatter of the cane echoed in the bare, enameled stairwell, but no one opened a door to peer out at them.

“I was the one that found him,” Hodgkins said over his shoulder. “But I knew enough not to touch anything and mess up the scene. Mizz Jackson had told me she’d be watchin’ the place, so I knew she was parked across the street. I went and told her about what I found, then she phoned you.”

The door to Gretch’s apartment was slightly ajar. Hodgkins, breathing heavily from taking the stairs so fast, stood to the side and let Carver enter first.

Beth was standing and staring out a living room window whose Venetian blinds were raised crookedly. When she heard them enter, she turned. She looked older, but she was calm. The dead weren’t strangers to her.

She said, “In the bedroom, Fred.”

She led the way into Gretch’s bedroom. The first thing Carver noticed was the old blue carpet that had been on the floor, wadded now against the far wall. Sprawled on his back on the bare wood floor was Carl Gretch, his limbs in close to his body but at odd attitudes. His face was so swollen that his eyes were dark slits that looked like folds of pinched flesh. No matter. He wouldn’t need eyes where he was now.

“I seen earlier this mornin’ that his door was open,” Hodgkins said, “so I stuck my head in and called. Didn’t get no answer.” He looked apprehensive and scratched his scalp beneath his gray hair. Dandruff flakes settled on the shoulder of his blue shirt. “I know I shouldn’t have, but I figured maybe somethin’ was wrong, maybe a prowler’d been there, so I went on inside and seen nobody was home and the carpet had been rolled up in here. I knew right away somethin’ was inside it, so I lifted one end and unrolled it, and that’s what fell out.” He nodded toward Gretch’s body.