John Lutz - Hot

“In case I wanna be a sex criminal?”

“You’d decide against it, once you learned how this DNA identification works.”

“It isn’t that I’m not interested, but I better get back.”

“Tell Beth I said hello,” Desoto told Carver. He tried; Carver appreciated that.

He said he’d convey the message, then thanked Desoto for his help and stood up.

Desoto said, “I’ll phone you soon as I get any information. Part of the reason I’m doing this is for Henry Tiller. You understand what I mean?”

“I understand,” Carver said. “Henry comes around, he’ll appreciate it, too.”

He limped over to the door. Behind him the vocalist with the haunting voice had joined the guitar in a melancholy but beautiful melody. Carver wondered if all of human experience was embodied in Latin music. Desoto thought so. Maybe he was right. For all of us the tragic and joyous music played while we lived and danced, and then it stopped. The only question was how soon.

Desoto switched off the radio and walked with him to the elevator.

After leaving Pier 66, Carver drove south toward Key Montaigne. The convertible’s top was up and all the windows were cranked down, and the wind beat like a pulse through the steel struts and taut canvas. Occasionally he checked his rear-view mirror, but Davy’s black van was nowhere in sight on the heat-wavering highway.

It didn’t really matter. Carver’s presence on Key Montaigne would be common knowledge within hours after his return. Davy wouldn’t like that. Walter Rainer wouldn’t like it.

Carver smiled and pushed the Olds’s speed over the limit.

Beth was sitting at the kitchen table, eating a sandwich and drinking a beer, when Carver entered Henry’s cottage. There was a lot of daylight left, and plenty of residual heat from the scorching afternoon. The ocean breeze that stirred the palm fronds was a warm one and brought no relief. But Beth had the air conditioner off; she wasn’t bothered by heat as much as most people. Growing up in a theft-gutted housing project in Chicago, living in an upper-floor unit where a safely opened window was a luxury, might have something to do with that.

As soon as he dropped his scuffed leather suitcase on the floor, he went to the living room window and switched on the air conditioner, set its thermostat on Coldest and its fan speed on High. Then he turned on the box fan sitting on the floor and aimed it so it blew a stream of the cool air into the kitchen.

“How’d it go in Miami?” Beth asked around a bite of sandwich.

Carver didn’t answer. Instead he limped into the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face and wrists. When he went into the kitchen, it was still too hot in there. Florida could be a beast.

“See Henry Tiller?” Beth asked. She was wearing a black T-shirt with a blue marlin on the chest, Levi’s faded almost white, no shoes. Her brown leather sandals were lying on the floor near the chair. Her body glistened with sweat but she didn’t seem to mind.

“Saw him,” Carver said. He got a can of Bud from the refrigerator and popped the tab. “He didn’t see me, though.” He took a long swig of beer and explained to Beth what had happened to Henry.

Beth finished her sandwich and licked her fingers. She said, “He doesn’t come outa that coma, we’re talking murder.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Serious shit,” Beth said. Now she finished her beer, leaving only a sudsy residue in the bottom of the tall, tapered glass she’d rummaged from Henry’s cabinet. “You gonna ask the girl spy if she saw anything interesting last night over at the Rainer place?”

“I’m asking.”

“Answer’s no. There was movement over there about three o’clock, but even with the night binoculars I couldn’t tell what was happening. So today I drove around to a couple of points on shore I noticed from the surveillance spot. An area around the research center or aquarium or whatever it is provides a clear view of the Rainer dock. So does a short section of coast you can’t see from this side with the boat docked where it is, down Shoreline where it turns before leading toward the major metropolis of Fishback. Nothing can go on in Rainer’s backyard that can’t be seen from those two parts of the island, so he’s got no choice but to move by night if he suspects he’s being watched. A wiry Latin guy was there with Rainer, Hector Villanova, I s’pose. And there was a tall blond woman, probably the missus, Lilly. What with the darkness and all the foliage and such, there was no way to know what all the bustling around on the dock was. I’m sure of one thing, though: that guy Davy wasn’t around last night.”

Carver told her he knew that, then told her how he knew. She seemed unimpressed by Davy’s theatrics with the sharpened cargo hook, but then she wasn’t the one who’d felt its point and almost became shish kebab.

She gnawed her lower lip for a few seconds and looked thoughtful. “If they’re trying that hard to scare you off the case, leaving no doubt that’s exactly what they’re doing and practically admitting they’ve got plenty to hide, you must be probing a mighty sensitive nerve.”

“Henry must have probed the same nerve.”

Beth toyed with her empty glass, rotating it on the table, running a long, lean finger down the tapered curve of its damp side. “You gonna?”

“Gonna what?”

“Do what Davy said, give this up and head back north?”

He smiled. “That what you plan on doing?”

She smiled back. “While it’s still light out, I can drive you over and show you the view of the Rainer estate from farther down the shore.”

Carver said he thought that was a good idea. She buckled on her sandals and stood up, then placed the empty glass in the sink and hook-shot her beer can into the wastebasket. She didn’t look as if she belonged in a kitchen.

He took his beer with him, letting her drive the LeBaron. The top was down and the sea breeze was just beginning to cool as it roiled around the car’s exposed interior, pressing on the back of Carver’s neck and flipping his shirt collar. If there was any doubt he’d returned to Key Montaigne, this ride in Beth’s open convertible would confirm his presence, and word would certainly get back to Walter Rainer. That was okay with Carver. He thought about Davy in Miami, felt himself getting mad, then very mad, and took a sip of beer.

Beth was looking over at him, grinning, a woman who’d been in hell and had the determination and character to escape the ruins of her dreams and delusions. After a certain point-the point she’d passed-that was impossible for most people, but not for her. She was something rare, all right. And still grinning. He wondered if she could read his mind.

Probably.

On the curve of Shoreline Road she’d described, it was possible to pull to the side and park on the gravel shoulder. She aimed the car’s sloping white hood toward the sea, sliding the shift lever into Park and letting the engine idle almost silently. A gull swooped low to examine them, then screeched in apparent anger and glided back toward the sea. They sat there in the breeze, looking along the stretch of shore to where it angled in the sun and provided a distant but comprehensive view of the ocean side of the Rainer estate. The white hull of the docked Miss Behavin’ looked smaller from here.

“Some regular binoculars in the glove compartment,” Beth said.

Carver got them out, a compact pair of 10X50 Bausch amp; Lombs with rubber eyepieces. He fit the binoculars to his eyes, trained them through the windshield, and brought the Rainer estate into focus.

The house was a massive layer cake of white clapboard and stucco with a red roof. Beside it the rectangular swimming pool glittered silver as tinfoil in the angled sunlight. For a second Carver thought he saw a blond woman in a swimming suit strolling from the pool into the house, but he couldn’t be sure from this distance even with the binoculars. There were palm trees and flowering tropical shrubs of every size on the ground sloping up from the dock. What appeared to be a stone path led through the foliage, from the house to where the boat was moored. The doors were raised on an attached four-car garage. Carver could see the trunk of what looked like a big gray Lincoln. A blue minivan was parked facing out of the deep shade of the garage.