John Lutz - Spark

“Know anything about heart attacks?” Carver asked.

Beth said, “I know enough to see what happened here. The heart had no way to pump blood out while it was still pulling blood in. It exploded.”

He tried to imagine how that might have felt, acutely aware of the thumping of his own heart. What he felt was a pang of pity for Jerome Evans. Then a tickle of fear. It could happen to him. He decided he’d better pay more attention to his diet, cut down on fats and cholesterol. Definitely.

“Ready to move on?” Beth asked. She was watching his reflection in the mirror over the dresser but near the desk. He nodded and she scrolled the information on the screen.

The brief history of Jerome Evans’s treatment at the medical center was there, from when he’d come in for his routine checkup, to when he’d been brought in two months later by ambulance on the day of his death. Readings from his blood sample workups (Carver noticed Jerome’s cholesterol level had been only slightly higher than his own), a record of body temperature, reflex responses, and blood pressure readings.

Beth reached the end of the file. “Notice,” she said, “there’s no record of an electrocardiogram?”

“He was almost dead when they brought him in,” Carver said.

“I meant from before then, from his physical examination. Heart’s something they always check, ’specially in a man that age.”

She was right, but that wasn’t what interested Carver. “Something else is conspicuous by its absence,” he said. “There’s no record of medication.”

“Digitalis,” Beth said, scrolling up and pointing at the screen. “Day of his heart attack. Looks like massive, desperation doses.”

“But that’s it,” Carver said. “Nothing else. Nothing earlier in relation to his routine physical. Wouldn’t you say that was odd for a seventy-year-old patient? I mean, he wasn’t given blood pressure pills or anything.”

“This says he didn’t have high blood pressure.”

“Maybe not that, but you’d think he’d have some ailment. According to his file, the old guy was healthier than I am.”

Beth smiled at him in the mirror. “Maybe you better enjoy life while you can.”

“Will that thing print?” he asked, pointing to the computer with his cane.

“I don’t have a printer with me, but there are places that rent them or charge to use them. I can probably scare one up.”

“All I need,” he said, “is a list of the drugs supplied directly from Mercury Labs.”

“We can do that with paper and pencil,” she said. She scrolled back to the beginning of the file, got some Warm Sands stationery and a ballpoint pen from the desk drawer, and jotted down the information Carver had requested. Her left hand worked the computer, her right hand worked the pen, while she glanced back and forth between screen and paper. Very dexterous, physically and mentally. He thought she was beautiful in her intensity.

When she was finished she handed him the product of low and high tech, and he folded it and slipped it in his shirt pocket.

“Gonna cross-check with Hattie?” she asked.

“That’s the plan,” Carver said. “I want to know if Jerome was on any medication.” He thought again of his own cholesterol count; the doctor had cautioned him to cut down on fatty foods, mentioned something about too much bad cholesterol, not enough good, as if health were a question of ethics. “And if so, was it part of a drop shipment from Mercury? Hattie should be able to remember what he might have been taking. Could be she even still has the container, if he died before he’d emptied it. Trouble is, empty prescription bottles aren’t the sort of keepsakes grieving widows tend to save.”

Beth leaned back from the desk and looked up at him. “No, Fred, you’re wrong about that.”

He hoped so. He’d try to find out as soon as he finished his doughnut.

Nine o’clock. Carver figured Hattie would be up and about by now. Probably she’d been awake for hours, watering plants, dusting, waxing, organizing her world so it had purpose, so she could continue to cope. Carver understood. Didn’t he do the same sort of thing? Wasn’t that his work, keeping the world orderly via something called justice?

When he phoned Hattie she told him she’d been awake since seven. “I’ve been up since six,” he lied, not wanting to be topped, then told her why he’d called. She invited him to come right over to the house, if he had something he wanted to discuss in person. No sense burning up the phone line, she said, and she had things to do. And she hoped he’d be able to make sense, having been awake since six o’clock.

Carver smiled and hung up. He told Beth where he was going and asked what she had planned for the rest of the morning.

“Gonna modem those files to Jeff Mehling,” she said, “and let him come up with an analysis that might tell us something more. Then I’m gonna crawl back in that bed and doze awhile. Recover from last night.”

Six A.M. Carver couldn’t argue with that one. “Will Mehling keep all this secret?”

“You can count on it. We’ve worked together before and he’s been tight as a clam. I tell him, he’ll delete everything from his system after we exchange information and he’s had time to study it, maybe run some software on it.”

“Tell him, then,” Carver said. “And point out he’s involved in the theft of confidential medical records.”

She rose from her chair and leaned back, supporting herself with her buttocks against the desk, tall enough to be almost in a sitting position. She crossed her arms and smiled. “He’ll know that, Fred. Not to worry, we’re all thick as thieves.”

“Thieves have been known to fall out.”

“Not thieves like us, lover.” She ran a finger along the inside of one of her bra straps, causing the cup to strain away and reveal a swell of breast highlighted with perspiration in the lamplight and glow from the computer screen. “Wanna come back to bed with me for a while?”

“Wanting and doing are two different things.”

“Never noticed that about you, Fred, when you didn’t have some kinda substitution in mind.”

There was no point in trying to deal with this woman when she was in the mood to dogfight.

Carver walked to the window and parted the drapes a few inches, peered outside. Up near the other end of the parking lot a blond man and a blond woman were loading suitcases into the trunk of a car with one of those phony convertible tops that made no sense to Carver. It had a green license plate. He didn’t know which state the plate represented, but it wasn’t Florida.

He waited until the man and woman had gotten into their ersatz convertible and departed. It was wise not to let anyone see him leave Beth’s room, even an apparently vacationing couple from out of state.

The lot was deserted now in the thick morning sunlight. He nodded good-bye to Beth and slipped out the door. Heard her say, “Later, lover,” as the latch clicked solidly behind him.

He twisted the knob both directions to make sure the door was locked.

The Olds was parked on the edge of the lot, in partial shade from a grouping of date palms. The hazed plastic rear window of the canvas top, the overlaying jagged shadows of the palm fronds, kept Carver from noticing until he was almost to the car that there was a figure on the passenger side of the front seat.

He stopped and planted his cane in loose gravel, feeling his adrenaline kick in as if he’d just downed a jolt of hundred-proof liquor. The Colt was in its belt holster beneath his untucked, baggy tropical shirt, multicolored flowers and birds of paradise on a black background. He touched its comforting bulk, keeping his thumb beneath the hem of the wild shirt so he could get the gun out in a hurry if necessary.