John Lutz - Hot

“Might have,” Carver said.

Millicent Bing hadn’t answered the phone when Carver called to offer condolences and ask if he could come over and talk with her. He suspected she was home, though, so he left Beth at the cottage and drove to the Bing house. Mr. Persistence.

The breeze still pushed steadily in from the sea, the leaning palm tree’s fronds still rattled on the green tile roof, and if she was inside the house, Millicent wasn’t making herself available.

Carver stood for a while in the heat, keeping an eye on the bees in the bougainvillea, occasionally knocking on the door, finally leaning on the bell’s brass push button and listening to the rolling repetition of chimes from inside the house. Then he gave up and headed back to the Olds.

As he jockeyed the big car down the driveway, he braked near the mailbox, wondering. Carver cranked down the car window and lifted the mailbox’s aluminum door. He pulled out two sun-warmed envelopes.

One was an advertisement for life insurance-too late. The other was personal, addressed to Millicent Bing in pencil. It had a Forest, Ohio, postmark, and the return address was a rural route number.

Carver looked at the neatly scripted address, remembering a hated fifth-grade teacher who was a disciple of the Palmer penmanship method. Then he pried open the envelope’s flap carefully, tearing it only once and very slightly.

Inside was a sheet of lined notepaper on which a letter was composed in the same light pencil and precise handwriting that was on the envelope. The letter was dated three days ago. It asked how “Milly” was, and by the way how was brother Sam. Then it told about the successful removal of a brain tumor from someone named Dwayne, complained about federal farm policy, mentioned new furniture in the den, and expressed the wish that Milly and Sam would come up for a visit. Milly should lean on Sam about driving north, it said. It was signed “Love, Sandy.”

After copying the return address, then licking what mint-flavored glue remained and resealing the flap, Carver replaced both envelopes in the mailbox. He glanced back at the house. There was no sign of anybody peering from the one visible window. He’d taken a chance, tampering with Millicent’s mail, but surely if she’d seen him she would have stormed out of the house and objected. Or phoned the police. But he’d had to risk it; there was always the possibility Dr. Sam had written a note and mailed it to his wife. Suicides did that sometimes, trusting the postal service more than whoever might discover the body. The uniform, maybe.

If Millicent had seen him and phoned the law, Carver would soon find out. He accelerated along Shoreline, keeping pace with and then outdistancing a large white gull winging parallel to the coast. He was curious as to what Chief Wicke would have to say about Dr. Sam’s suicide.

“Autopsy?” Wicke said, leaning back in his desk chair and clasping his hands behind his head. “Why the fuck should there be an autopsy? Man died of asphyxiation brought about by the rope around his neck. Hell, the only thing more purple than his face was his tongue.”

“I’m not suggesting it wasn’t suicide,” Carver said, “or that Bing didn’t die of strangulation. But what about bruises or marks on the body indicating he didn’t just climb up on those boxes, slip the noose over his head, and kick away his life?”

Wicke looked at Carver with exaggerated tolerance and shook his head. “You saying Dr. Bing was made to hang himself?”

“Under the circumstances, I wouldn’t take anything for granted.”

“I seen hanging suicides before,” Wicke said, now with an edge of impatience. “Believe me, Bing did it to himself without any help.”

“But you didn’t have the M.E. check the body for any sign of coercion? Any results of a struggle?”

Wicke dropped forward in his chair, propping his elbows on his green felt desk pad. When he did that, the breeze from the air conditioner sent a strong whiff of deodorant and perspiration across the desk. “I looked over the body myself, Carver, at the death scene and later.” He brought his hands together and laced his thick fingers. “No marks.”

“No note, either?”

“Dr. Sam didn’t leave a note, not unless he mailed it.”

Carver saw no change of expression at the mention of mail. Apparently he hadn’t been seen at the Bing mailbox. He said, “Were there any keys on the body?”

“You’re thinking about the girl saying she unlocked the door,” Wicke said. “Well, there were keys in Bing’s pants pocket, and one of them fit the lock to the storage room. The girl said she couldn’t be sure if the door was actually locked when she inserted her key and turned it, but so what? Bing coulda let himself into the room and locked it from the inside so he wouldn’t be disturbed. Maybe he knew his assistant would open the door in the morning, wanted her to discover him instead of having his wife go to the research center looking for him and finding him like that. Does that make sense, Carver?”

“Kind of.”

“So forget keys, forget Walter Rainer, forget Henry Tiller. Dr. Sam’s death’s got nothing to do with either of them.”

“Any thoughts on why he did commit suicide?”

Wicke shrugged, as if to say it wasn’t his business to harbor curiosity. “Who knows why people kill themselves? Sometimes there’s some big problem in their lives plunges them into depression, other times it just seems to come on them like a black mood and they give up on life and slit their wrists or jump in front of a train or string themselves up like Dr. Sam. You were a cop; you oughta know suicides can be unpredictable as lightning.”

“Sometimes people close to the victim have an idea why it happened,” Carver said. “You talk with Millicent Bing?”

“An hour after Dr. Sam’s body was discovered,” Wicke said. He frowned. “I was the one broke the news to her.”

“How’d she take it?”

“Like I just told her her husband was dead.”

“I mean, she have any idea why he might have killed himself?”

“About as many ideas as you and me.”

“You got any inkling at all about it? I’m not talking facts, I’m asking about your cop’s instincts.”

“Ho-ho! Like Henry Tiller’s instincts?”

“Just like.”

“Okay. Maybe Dr. Sam’s business was going bad, maybe he had something hot going with the young assistant and it turned cold, maybe his sex life at home was all messed up, maybe it was male menopause. Point is, who gives a fuck now? I mean, the man’s dead. Better to have worried about all this when he was alive and prevented him from hanging himself. But it’s too late for that now, so it’s on to other business for me. And that oughta be the way you look at it. You been in your line of work long enough to know the world don’t screech to a halt for any one person’s death.”

“It does for the person who’s dead.”

“Well, there’s no sense getting all overwrought about it after the fact.”

Carver gripped his cane and stood up. “You’re probably right.”

Wicke smiled dubiously at him. “Now, why are you telling me that, Carver?”

“Because I believe it.” He thanked Chief Wicke for his time and limped toward the door.

“Carver,” Wicke said behind him, “don’t get any ideas about looking over the body. Dr. Sam’s remains are already on the way to his family in Ohio.”

Carver opened the door, paused and looked back. “How come everybody dies here gets shipped north? Isn’t anybody ever buried on Key Montaigne?”

“We got sandy soil here,” Wicke said. “They come back up when the tide’s in.” He wasn’t smiling. Man could probably play good poker.