John Lutz - Burn

“Of course she’s stable! It’s that Joel Brant sicko who isn’t stable. She’s not some kind of nut! This is just the kind of thing a woman can expect-Marla’s the one being persecuted and here you are blaming her for what’s going on. It’s too bad you won’t be able to arrest her for her own murder!”

“Take it easy, Willa. I agree with you. Nobody’s trying to blame Marla Cloy for anything. It’s just that I have to ask these questions, establish the facts. Maybe someday the law will be changed.”

“Some of us can’t wait.”

“What sort of stuff does Marla Cloy write?”

“Whatever she can sell, I guess. Newspaper and magazine articles, short stories. A poem, once. She’s been trying to sell a book, but that isn’t easy. Marla says you can’t sell a book without an agent, and you can’t get an agent unless you’ve sold a book.”

“Sounds like a lot of businesses,” Carver said. “But Marla seems to be doing OK.”

“She makes enough to pay the rent and buy groceries,” Willa said. “Like most of us. It isn’t easy for a woman alone.”

“I guess not,” Carver said. He shifted his weight over the cane and stood up.

“Guess is all you can do. There’s no way a man could understand how it is being part of an oppressed minority.”

“Aren’t there more women than men in the country?” Carver asked.

Willa smiled, but not in a nice way at all. “You better hope we never all pull together.”

Carver went over to the crucifix and gun display, trying to imagine Beth and Willa pulling on the same rope. He couldn’t conjure it up.

The display case looked handmade but was neatly constructed and finished with thick coats of brushed-on varnish. The Tokarev was behind a small glass door and resting on pegs against a gray silk background. It was a blue-steel piece of work with a five-pointed star set into its grooved grip. It looked like too much gun for a woman as slight as Willa Krull.

“That one’s only for display,” she said, as if reading his mind. “It’s not very valuable, but it’s still something of a collector’s item. I target shoot with a twenty-two revolver and have a small nine-millimeter for protection.”

“You’re a woman who means business, Willa.”

“I don’t want to hurt anyone. And I don’t want to give the impression I’m the kind of simple-minded woman who automatically thinks all men are immoral, testosterone-driven beasts. My victimhood hasn’t become my identity. But next time around, things will turn out differently. I’m absolutely determined about that.”

“I understand,” Carver told her.

“I no longer ask for understanding.”

He thanked her for her time and trouble, then he moved toward the door. She didn’t say goodbye when she showed him out. He didn’t mind.

He sympathized with her, but she scared him.

Early the next morning Carver drove over to Highway One, then south to the Bee Line Expressway and into Orlando.

Orlando police headquarters was a long, beige building with vertically pinched windows that gave it the look of a fortress. Desoto was in his office, listening to soft Latin music seeping from the Sony portable stereo on the windowsill behind his desk. He was dressed like a GQ model, as usual, in a cream-colored suit with a pale yellow chalk stripe, white shirt, yellow silk tie with a knot almost too small to see, and gold cuff links, watch, and rings. Desoto seemed to like jewelry more every year. Carver noticed that now he wore a diamond pinkie ring.

He was an impossibly handsome and collected man, with a classic Latin profile and sleek black hair that Carver had never seen mussed-a tough cop who looked as if he’d missed his calling as a gigolo, but not by much.

Desoto was seated behind his desk, talking on the phone. “Of course, Miss Belmontrosaigne,” he was saying. “Of course, of course.” He flashed his white, lady-killer smile, as if Miss Belmont-whoever she was-could see him over the phone. Well, maybe the smile came through in his voice. “We’re doing our best for you. That I personally guarantee. It’s not only a duty, it’s a pleasure. Yes, yes, yes. .” he said soothingly.

He said goodbye as if he regretted having to break off the conversation, but they’d always have Paris.

“Who’s Miss Belmontwhatever?” Carver asked.

“Woman whose shop over on Orange Avenue keeps getting held up. Three times in the past month. She called to complain that nothing’s being done about it. We’ve got the place staked out, but it’s best not to let her know that. She might behave suspiciously and tip whoever comes in. Which could put her in danger.”

Desoto the chivalrous; he was the only cop Carver knew who might be described as gallant. He truly liked women. Not as conquests or ornaments, but as people. Miss Belmontwhatever was as likely to be a seventy-year-old woman as a young, nubile beauty.

“What about Marla Cloy?” Carver asked.

“Ah! Shut the door, amigo. ”

Carver did, blocking out the sounds of activity elsewhere in the building. The soft guitar music seemed louder. As Carver lowered himself into the chair angled toward the desk, Desoto reached back and delicately twisted a knob that gradually reduced the volume of the portable Sony.

“Why do you need to know about this Marla Cloy?” he asked.

Carver told him.

“The question is who to believe,” Desoto said, when Carver was finished talking.

“Right now,” Carver said, “I believe my client.”

“Because he is your client?”

“That’s not the entire reason, but it’s a factor.”

“And if you find out he’s lying?”

“Then he’s no longer my client.”

“McGregor won’t help you at all,” Desoto said. “He’s a human reptile and should be shot.”

“That’s why I called you,” Carver said.

“Ah, to shoot him?”

“Maybe someday. He won’t get involved in the Marla Cloy- Joel Brant problem until someone’s dead. But I figured you could help, since she lived in Orlando until about three months ago.”

Desoto leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head. The movement caused his jacket to gap, revealing an empty leather shoulder holster. Carver figured his gun was in a drawer. Desoto had all his suits altered to disguise the bulk of his gun, but he still resented the break in the line of his tailoring.

“To be stalked like a prey animal is a terrible thing for a woman,” he said.

“If that’s what’s happening. Why would Brant come to me, if he was really stalking Marla Cloy?”

“Why would she lie about him stalking her?” Desoto asked.

“I don’t know. To set him up, maybe.”

“For what?”

“I’m not sure. Possibly she wants to kill him and claim self-defense.”

“That would sound more logical if she had a motive.”

“I’m trying to find one,” Carver said. “Believe me, I want this to make sense.”

“Yes, that’s how you are. You need for your little patch of the world to be a just and understandable place.”

“Call it a character flaw.”

“More like an obsession. Do you know how they catch monkeys in Africa?”

Carver said that he didn’t.

“They cut round holes in sheets of plywood just large enough for the monkeys to work their hands through to grab coconuts.” Desoto accompanied this information with appropriate hand motions, scrunching his fingers together with a forward, twisting motion. “They can’t remove their hands as long as they hold the coconuts, and the monkeys are too obsessed with the coconuts to release them.”

“Catching monkeys in Africa, huh? That sounds like something you saw in one of those late-night old movies you watch.”