John Lutz - Hot

Rainer’s words made a horrifying kind of sense. And probably all too soon, in another place, in another manner, he’d be back in his profitable and terrible business.

Willing himself not to tremble with the rage building in him, Carver said, “Don’t you ever feel the same self-loathing that made Dr. Sam hang himself?” He knew even as he spoke that his was a futile hope. The evil wouldn’t corrupt and destroy itself. Real evil seldom did that, and Rainer was the bulky embodiment of genuine evil.

“Ah, Mr. Carver, you should try to move beyond your simplistic and inhibiting delusions of right and wrong. You need to learn what Dr. Sam came to know and couldn’t live with because he was weak. The world’s like the ocean he studied, an arena of prey and predator in endless succession. A food chain without moral meaning. Sappy sentimentalism aside, the abducted children are merely prey, nothing more. They simply fell prey to a larger predator. Despite the naive moral interpretation you put on it, actually nothing could be more natural and correct.”

As Carver listened to Rainer he was watching the huge torpedo shape of the shark gliding in circles behind the fat man, its image wavering and shrinking with distance, then growing into sharp and ominous focus.

“You’re burdened with morality and an absurd code of honor,” Rainer said confidently, “so you’re not going to shoot me. You’re not a predator. Not the sort who can slay a defenseless man in cold blood, anyway. And nothing criminal can be proved, so face the fact that the game’s over. Henry Tiller lost when Davy ran him down. Now you’ve lost. But you get to live, lucky you.” He folded his pudgy hands in front of him. “And that, Mr. Carver, is simply that.”

Still staring at the shark, Carver was backing awkwardly up the stairs. He knew Rainer was right. About too much, but not about everything. He said, “Have you noticed, Rainer, that this room’s smaller than the shark tank?”

Rainer appeared puzzled. He glanced around the square concrete room and shrugged. “So it is.”

“About the size of a swimming pool. You swim as well as your wife, Rainer?”

Rainer cocked his head to the side, pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows. The thought was forming.

Carver said, “Time for you to be introduced to a larger predator.”

That was when Rainer fully grasped it. Carver saw it on his face as he reached the steel landing and opened the door. Set the tip of his cane and emptied the Colt into the thick glass wall of the shark tank, spreading the pattern of bullets from floor to ceiling. He glimpsed Rainer’s mouth gaping soundlessly as the wide expanse of glass behind him went milky and bulged. Carver hurled himself out of the room, slamming and locking the door.

As he limped away he heard the thunder of crashing glass. Water roaring into the tiny room. The thumping and flailing of the startled and ravenous shark.

Possibly a scream.

It was Rainer’s widow, Lilly, the FBI finally persuaded to talk by allowing her to swim to immunity. She thought it wise to cut a deal with the law before Millicent Bing had the chance.

Arrest warrants were issued for Davy and Hector. Davy was shot to death during a car chase in Nevada the next month. Hector disappeared, probably into Mexico. Mexican authorities were cooperating with the FBI to clean up that end of the abduction operation, while in the United States arrests were made in cities along the eastern seaboard and throughout the Midwest. The Evermans were captured without resistance early one morning in a motel outside Tampa.

Chief Wicke had decided Walter Rainer’s death was as much an accident as Henry Tiller’s. He felt guilty for turning a deaf ear to Henry and a blind eye to what had been happening in his jurisdiction. Silently he’d dropped the spent bullets from Carver’s gun into Carver’s hand, eliminating the evidence that the glass wall had shattered as the result of gunfire, or that Carver had been responsible. The only court appearance required of Carver would be as a witness in the prosecution of the ring members. A repentant Millicent Bing, who’d surrendered to authorities in Ohio and also been promised immunity, would be an even more damaging witness than Rainer’s widow.

Two days after Rainer’s death at the research center, Norman Tiller, Henry’s cousin from Milwaukee, showed up at the cottage and said he was in a legal hassle with the state of Florida over his inheritance, and his attorney had advised him to move into Henry’s cottage. Carver and Beth introduced him to Effie and left for Del Moray. Effie’s father needed a part shipped in before he could repair Beth’s car so it would run dependably, so she left the LeBaron at Norton’s Gas ’n’ Go. She paid a transport service to drive it north when it was repaired, and traveled in the Olds with Carver.

On the sun-drenched highway just north of Miami, he slowed the car after passing a teenage girl hitchhiking on the gravel shoulder. Beth laid a hand over his on the steering wheel, then shrugged and removed it. Carver stopped the Olds, put it in Reverse and backed toward the girl. She snatched up a faded blue duffel bag and ran toward him, glad she had a ride.

Up close she looked even younger, no more than fifteen. Blond, pretty despite a fresh scar beneath her left eye. She was wearing dirty jeans and a T-shirt with virginia is for lovers lettered faintly across the chest.

“Hey, thanks,” she said, as she ambled the final few feet to Carver’s side of the Olds, her charity-case Reeboks crunching on the gravel.

“How far you going?” he asked.

“Don’t really matter how far or where.”

“How about back to Virginia?”

She studied his face, and her expression changed to one of fear and wariness. She’d been awhile on her own.

“Climb in,” Carver said. “I’ll drive you to a bus station, stake you to your fare home. It’s a promise.”

She was slowly backpedaling now. She hooked a middle finger at Carver and yelled, “Fuck you!” Wheeled and began jogging away, her shadow stark in the brilliant afternoon sun.

“Hey!” Carver yelled after her, thinking of his own daughter in St. Louis. St. Louis was no safer than Florida. “Get back here, please!”

Beth said, “Forget it, Fred. Maybe home’s not so good for her, either.”

The girl glanced back and made another obscene gesture, switching her hips deliberately as she stopped running and walked away fast.

“Jesus!” Carver said.

“It’s luck she’ll need,” Beth told him. “It’ll all be in her luck.”

“Luck hell! Why can’t she be made to see it’s dangerous being fifteen and thumbing your way through life with strangers? Why can’t she be made to understand so she’ll go someplace safe even if it’s not back home?”

“She doesn’t wanna understand.”

“Why not?”

Beth smiled and shook her head. “People don’t know why they do anything, Fred, or why things turn out the way they do. Kids, adults, none of us. We think we know, but we don’t. You shoulda learned that by now.”

The sun was giving him a headache. “I don’t like to think the world’s that way.”

“Nobody does. That’s why it works the way I said.”

He watched the girl’s slim form disappear around the corner of a bridge abutment. Caught a brief glimpse of her cutting across a grassy field toward a cloverleaf. He felt helpless. Furious.

He slammed the Olds into Drive and pulled back onto the highway, spinning the tires until burning rubber screamed his rage. Drove too fast and didn’t look back.

He almost made it. Ten miles outside Del Moray a state patrol car pulled him over and he was a given a lecture and a speeding ticket.