John Lutz - Burn

“The driver probably thought you were the police and panicked. Teenagers have been parking there to make out, since it’s dark and secluded.”

“ ‘Make out,’ huh? You’re dating yourself, Fred.”

“Well, it’s the age of safe sex.”

“Couldn’t prove it by me,” she said, and leaned over and kissed his forehead, then dropped back onto her pillow. “I’m as pregnant as if it were nineteen-forty.”

“Hubba, hubba,” he said. “What kind of day did Marla Cloy have?”

“Normal, I’d say. She worked until late afternoon, then ran some errands in that little car of hers. In the evening she ate supper alone at a steakhouse-no steak, though, just a baked potato with a godawful assortment of goodies heaped over it till it had more calories than steak. After that she went home, came out half an hour later with a basket of clothes, and drove to a coin laundry. It was about nine o’clock when she went home and stayed there. I could see her through the window, folding and putting away clothes. Then she watched TV for a while and went to bed. Lights went out about ten-thirty. I hung around another half hour to make sure she was down for the night, then I left. Stopped for some doughnuts and slaw and drove back here.”

“Doughnuts and slaw?”

“Sounded good. Was good.”

“Marla still reading her Rendell novel?” he asked.

“Nope. She was absorbed in a different novel in the Laundromat. Something by Robert Parker.” The mattress shifted again and she lay on her side in the shadows, facing him, propped on her elbow, her chin cupped in her hand. “The whole thing was too damned normal. Fred, I got a sort of sense about the woman.”

“A sense?”

“There’s something not genuine there.”

“Maybe not. But I’m getting a different sense of Joel Brant, too. I thought Marla might be setting him up so she could kill him and plead self-defense. Now I’m not so sure. What if he’s using me to help him set up an alibi for himself? Maybe he is the one doing the persecuting, just as Marla claims, and he’s building a record of her having harassed him, so he can murder her and successfully plead self-defense.”

Beth was quiet for a moment, then she said, “Damn it, Fred, you almost sold me on the notion that Brant might be an innocent victim. After watching Marla Cloy, I think you were right-he could be the one being harassed. Now that I’ve moved to the position Marla might be playing a double game, you’ve moved to thinking Brant might be lying to you, using you to help set up his alibi.”

“It’s a possibility,” Carver said, “and I don’t like being used. One way or the other, I’m going to lay this thing bare and find out the truth.”

Beth laughed, still grimly amused by their switched positions on Marla and Brant. “You’ve got too simplified and moralistic a view of the world, Fred. The real truth’s sometimes too ambiguous for human understanding, and maybe that’s the way it is here. If these two people don’t want to level with each other or anyone else, it could be we’ll simply never know the truth, despite your compulsion to dig and dig until everything’s revealed. Who’s doing what to whom, why they’re doing it. . there’s more than one reason for most things. Brant and Marla might have lost sight of the truth themselves.”

He didn’t see how, but then there might be a lot he didn’t know.

“Sometimes,” Carver said, “the truth is gigantic and simple and so obvious we don’t recognize it at first. Or there can be some of that denial you mentioned, if the truth’s too terrible to bear. We all prefer to think we’re on the side of the angels.”

“Hmm. You been reading the Old Testament, Fred?”

“I talked to Vic Morgan on the phone today. He thinks Brant’s on the level, but it’s possible Morgan’s judgment is skewed against Marla because she’s a woman.”

“Oh, you’ve been reading Naomi Wolf.”

“Maybe Marla’s toying with us,” Carver said. “Poking her nose in a detective novel while you were tailing her.”

“The irony wasn’t lost on me. That’s one reason I think she might be taking everybody for a ride on her delusion. Or maybe she’s got a solid, old-fashioned motive for setting up Brant. Revenge, money, publicity. There could be a lucrative book contract in this for her if she claims she had to kill him in self-defense because the system failed her.”

Carver hadn’t considered that one. Another layer of possible meaning.

“She might not care if Brant’s hired you,” Beth said. “It could be presented as another example of male harassment. If Brant were dead, it would be your word against hers as to why you were hired. She might be using you, Fred, if Brant isn’t.”

Carver lay for a while with his hands behind his head, staring up at the dark ceiling, listening to the gentle rush of the surf.

“I don’t like being used,” he said again.

Beth moved close to him. He could feel the heat of her body as she leaned in and kissed his cheek. Her breath was warm. Her fingers brushed his chest, then trailed lower.

“That right?” she said.

“Wait a minute, I’ll get a condom.”

“Fred.”

Carver was on Jacaranda Lane at ten the next morning.

This time he parked the Olds directly in front of Marla Cloy’s house. The maroon Toyota was parked in a patch of sunlight in the driveway, though there was no sign of life around the house. The drapes were closed and the green awnings drooped over blank windows. The lineup of dead plants on the small concrete porch hadn’t been moved. The cracks in the faded yellow stucco oddly gave the house the look of permanence, as if it had obtained a patina of long-ago minor damage and wear as it settled in for centuries. Age-checked oil paintings had that look about them, as did ancient mausoleums.

It was warm but not yet brutally hot, and a slight breeze kicked up to pop the house’s green awnings like sails and ruffle the palm trees that lined the sad avenue. A good morning to sleep in late with the windows open. Maybe that’s what Marla Cloy was doing, escaping into sleep from her daytime nightmare.

Or maybe not escaping anything and not dreaming at all, sleeping the sleep of the not-so-innocent.

Carver thought it would be fine if he woke her. Then she might not be thinking clearly enough to maintain whatever facade she could be hiding behind. The cobwebs of sleep might reveal more than they concealed.

He’d decided it was time to confront Marla directly. If she really was persecuting Brant with false claims of harassment, knowing that he’d hired help might prevent her from continuing. At least make her think twice before doing anything bold.

And if Brant really was harassing her, and was using Carver in whatever scheme he was working, Carver might be able to find out why.

He limped up onto the porch and pressed the doorbell button with his cane. The button had been painted over, and he had doubts as to whether it still worked, but he heard faintly from inside the house what sounded like the old triple-note NBC signal chimes. It brought to mind hours spent listening to the twilight of radio drama when he was a boy, the tiny arched dial glowing feebly in the dark.

The drapes in the window to the left of the porch moved a few inches to one side, then back.

Then the door opened. Carver had passed inspection. Meaning he wasn’t Brant.

Marla was wearing cutoff Levi’s with a tucked-in white T-shirt with BEYOND BITCH lettered on it. She was barefoot, and Carver was fascinated by the perfection of her squarish feet with their pedicured bright red nails. For the first time in his life he wondered if he might be a latent foot fetishist. Her dark hair was slightly mussed and her eyes-so deep a blue they were almost purple-looked lazy and sleepy, and bruised because of their odd color, which seemed to reflect on the flesh around them. Beneath the bleached and stringy unhemmed cutoffs, her legs were shapely and tan, so free of blemish that sheathing them in nylon would be redundant. She smelled un-perfumed but clean, a fresh, soapy scent. Carver noticed that her hair behind her ears and around the back of her neck was wet. She might have just gotten out of the bathtub or shower. Maybe she bathed as often as she washed her clothes.