John Lutz - Spark

No one answered.

He leaned on his cane and peered into the kitchen. There were some crumpled fast-food paper bags on the tiny Formica table, dishes in a rubber-coated pink drainer on the sink counter. A clock on the grease-stained wall above the stove said it was much later than it was. The clock probably had something there.

A yellowed coffee brewer sat on the table near the paper bags. It was plugged into the nearby wall socket, but there was no coffee in the glass pot other than a sludgelike residue from yesterday. If Karl had awakened here this morning, he’d eaten breakfast out.

Carver turned away from the kitchen and limped down a short hall off the living room. The bathroom was empty, not even a toothbrush. He looked in the medicine cabinet over the white pedestal washbasin. An empty aspirin bottle. A plastic disposable razor with a rusty blade that had been there so long it had left a mark on the glass shelf. There was a bar of soap on the washbasin. Carver ran his finger over it. Damp. Gummy, the way cheap soap got. A towel draped over the shower curtain rod was also damp. He looked into the tub and saw wet dark hair like a spider in a clump over the drain.

He backed out of the bathroom and shoved open the door that must lead to the bedroom, looked inside.

The bed was unmade. Crawling across the stained white sheet was the largest and blackest palmetto bug Carver had ever seen. He stepped the rest of the way into the bedroom. Two of the dresser drawers were half open, empty. He examined the other drawers. Also empty. When he opened the closet’s sliding door, he found only a worn-out striped shirt on a wire hanger, a black sock wadded in a dusty corner. He felt around on the rough closet shelf and came up with an empty shoebox and a pornographic novel about two cheerleaders forced to spend their summer vacation on a farm. He placed both items back where he’d found them.

The overalled mountain must have reported his failure to deter Carver from the investigation, must have given some hint as to the difficulty he’d experienced at the motel. Roger Karl had moved out, and in a hurry, possibly on Adam Beed’s orders. Beed wouldn’t have sent an unskilled laborer like the mountain to work on Carver, and he wouldn’t appreciate Roger Karl’s having done so.

The rooms had the look of a furnished apartment, so clothes and a few personal possessions would be all Karl had to gather and pack. Carver glanced over at the bed and couldn’t see the palmetto bug. It had probably crawled beneath the stained and wrinkled top sheet. Karl couldn’t have been too upset about having to leave this place, cozy though it was.

Carver nosed around the apartment for another fifteen minutes, not knowing what he was seeking, not knowing if he’d recognize it if he found it. He tried to remember if he’d ever found a genuine clue of the sort stumbled upon in novels and movies: a matchbook cover from a nightclub, a dying message, a bloody handprint. He didn’t think so. Well, a murder victim once.

This time, too.

Curled alongside the kitchen stove lay a dead brown and white beagle. It hadn’t gone easily. Its body was contorted with final agony and its teeth were bared. There was fresh blood in its mouth; it hadn’t been dead very long.

Carver saw something glittering in the partly eaten glob of dog food in a red plastic tray. He noticed an ice-cube grinder on the sink, the kind that prepares crushed ice for drinks. He went to it and found it contained the thick bottom of a drinking glass and some glistening shards like the ones in the dog food. Roger Karl had left in a hurry and fed his dog ground glass so he wouldn’t have to bother with it. Or maybe Adam Beed had taken care of that for him.

Carver limped from the apartment and back out onto Morning Star, where he could breathe easier, where the cruel sun at least seemed to purify the air.

Leaning on the warm trunk of the Plymouth, he decided that if he ever found himself in a different occupation, he’d miss the job but not the people.

Carver had taken the last Percodan. He found a drugstore and bought a bottle of extra-strength Tylenol. He stood just inside the door, looking out at the sun-drenched avenue, and managed to swallow two of the tablets without water. There. Maybe his head wouldn’t explode.

Just swallowing the tablets seemed to lessen the throbbing ache behind his eyes. He touched a finger to the lump on the side of his head. It hadn’t realized he’d taken medication and was as egglike and painful as ever. First Beed, then the giant in bib overalls. It sure put a strain on a body. It would have been a lot worse if the big man in overalls had been good enough at his work to leave Carver with more than a headache. New bruises on top of the old ones inflicted by Adam Beed might have taken decades to heal.

He was about to push open one of the glass doors and reluctantly step outside into the heat, when he noticed a line of sit-down phone booths near the hair care aisle along a side wall of the drugstore. He fished for and found the proper change in his pocket, then limped to the end booth, settled down on the hard oak seat, and phoned Desoto.

“I don’t know anybody whose description fits your big friend in overalls,” Desoto said, when Carver was finished telling him about the morning’s events. “You want me to inquire?”

“No, I don’t think it matters. He was cheap help, and he’d probably have less idea than I do why he was hired.”

“You don’t think Adam Beed sent him?”

“Beed would have come himself,” Carver said, watching a pretty blonde in a white tennis outfit saunter down the aisle and study the hair spray display. “Or if he had hired some muscle, it would have been competent help.”

“So you figure Roger Karl did the hiring on his own, eh, amigo ?”

“That’s how I see it. Then, when the job was botched and he knew I’d be coming for him, he told Beed about it. Beed instructed him to run, if Karl didn’t bolt on his own.” The blond woman bent low to pick up a pink can of hair spray with gold lettering. She had long, tan legs. The tennis outfit was stretched taut across her shapely hips and buttocks. Watching her, Carver thought of Beth even through the headache. True love? Or lust?

“Amigo?”

“I’m here.” He kept his gaze on the woman as she walked away toward the registers. He suspected she knew he was watching, but she was used to men watching her.

Desoto said, “You do want me to ask around and see if I can get a line on Karl’s whereabouts, right?”

“Him I’d like to see again,” Carver said.

“Would you like to see Adam Beed again?”

“At the proper time.”

“I can’t imagine a proper time for that. His execution, maybe. But I’ll keep you informed, you keep me informed, hey?”

“Your back and mine,” Carver said.

Desoto was quiet for a moment, then said, “ Amigo, maybe we should end this conversation we never had.”

“I don’t recall any conversation,” Carver said. “But thanks just the same.”

He hung up.

He knew what Desoto meant. It wasn’t good for a police lieutenant to possess information about a parole violator and not take official action. Carver had placed Desoto in the position of betraying either professional ethics or personal friendship. Hardly fair. Carver felt rotten about it. On the other hand, it was Desoto who’d sent Hattie Evans to him. So Desoto had already committed himself to the personal code that at times overrode the restrictions of his job, that extended his neck to a length where his head might be lopped off. That was what made him a good cop and a better friend.

As Carver limped from the drugstore, he noticed the edge had been taken off his headache.