John Lutz - Scorcher

He got into the Olds and started the engine. The vinyl upholstery was searingly hot, and he put the car in Drive immediately to get out of there and enjoy the breeze of motion.

Carver thought he glimpsed Elana’s pale features floating behind a front window as he pulled sharply out onto the driveway and coasted toward the highway. He hoped he wouldn’t see Mel Bingham’s red Jeep twisted around a tree on the way.

Nadine was crazy to prefer Dewitt, he thought. Bingham belonged in this family.

Carver found Dr. Roland Elsing’s office easily. Paul Kave’s psychiatrist was listed in the phone directory, the detective’s friend. There was more information in phone books than most people thought; they were short-form encyclopedias of cities, revealing economic standing, status, neighborhood, entertainment and industrial trends-the stage setting in which the detective had to play out his or her role.

Elsing’s address meant he was expensive; most of his patients would be affluent if not downright obscenely rich like the Kaves. Carver remembered Emmett’s scathing opinion of psychiatrists, apparently shared by Paul.

The doctor’s office was on the second floor of a newish glass and pale-stone building on Commercial, in the heart of town. Architecturally, it looked a lot like a crypt with a view. Next to Elsing’s office was a broker who dealt in “pre-owned” yachts. There was a glassed-in corkboard in the hall, plastered with photographs and typed information on various boats, some of them big enough to be called ships. Carver looked at a few of the photographs, a few of the prices. Looked away.

He buttoned his powder blue sportcoat, which felt comfortable in the coolly air-conditioned tomb of a building, and pushed through a brass-lettered oak door into Dr. Elsing’s office.

The reception area was carpeted in deep green. The walls were pale green. Most of the Danish furniture was dark green or beige, and the long, curved receptionist’s desk had a greenish tint to its gray wood. Must be true about green being the calming color, Carver thought.

He set sail across the sea of green carpet. It wasn’t easy to stay on his feet, but the softness sure felt good beneath and around his soles. His cane dragged in the plush pile.

The receptionist herself wasn’t green, though she wore a light brown dress with an off-white collar, and went with the decor very nicely. She was attractive in an intellectual way, with probing gray eyes behind round-rimmed glasses, and a prim, lipsticked mouth that looked as if it had never done anything unnatural. Though she was sitting down, it was apparent that she was trim and shapely. There were no sleeves to her dress, and her biceps were firm and smooth: an athlete. Maybe racquetball or Nautilus training on weekends. Body and mind as one, Carver thought. And here was a woman-Beverly, according to her desk plaque-who didn’t look as if she’d neglected either. Could she stay with Nadine at tennis?

There was no one other than Carver and Beverly in the reception room. He approached the desk and she smiled up at him. Great teeth. Was there no flaw in this person? He said, “Does it always smell like spearmint in here?”

“It’s probably my sugarless gum,” she said, holding her perfect smile. “May I help you?”

“I’m a private investigator. I’d like to talk with Dr. Elsing concerning one of his patients.”

Beverly stopped smiling and stared inquisitively at him through her round glasses. Maybe she didn’t believe he was really a private detective even if he did. Could be a common delusion. This was, after all, a psychiatrist’s office. Some of the people who came here probably acted crazy, maybe thought they were Marlowe or Spenser or other dead English poets.

Carver showed her his identification. “Lighten up, Bev. I’m who and what I say.”

She nodded and leaned back in her chair, crossing her creamy arms and thinking about Carver’s request. It was part of her job to protect Dr. Elsing from the sort of people who might wander into a psychiatrist’s office unannounced to sell medical supplies or malpractice insurance. Or to look for trouble instead of help.

“I don’t have a salesman’s sample case with me,” Carver said. “And I sometimes think I might be going mad, so I must be sane.”

“Uh-hm. Which patient did you want to discuss with the doctor?”

“Paul Kave. I’ve been hired by his family to try to locate him. I really could use Dr. Elsing’s help.”

At the mention of Paul she uncrossed her arms and sat forward. The Kave name was magic in places where money changed hands. Dr. Elsing wouldn’t like it if Beverly pissed off Adam Kave, even indirectly.

She lifted her pale green phone delicately, as if it might be coated with something that would burn her fingers. Then she pecked out a number with a long pencil to protect her painted nail, and explained the situation briefly to Dr. Elsing.

“He’s with a patient now,” she said to Carver, replacing the receiver. “He’ll talk to you in about twenty minutes, if you’d like to wait.”

“I’d like,” Carver said.

He limped across the soft green carpet and sat down in a leather Danish chair that sighed as it took the brunt of his weight. Beverly glanced with disinterest at his cane, then got busy with paperwork. The maimed were the maimed, physically or mentally. Infirmities were all the same to her, whether she could or couldn’t see them.

Ten minutes later an unbelievably obese girl in her teens wedged herself through the reception-room door and said hello to Beverly. Beverly smiled and said hello back, calling the girl Marie. Marie had a face that was all flesh-padded sweetness. She said a shy “hi” to Carver and sat down as far away from him as possible. The chair popped and groaned beneath her. Then she picked up a Seventeen magazine and started leafing through it, and Carver ceased to exist.

Some seventeen it must be for Marie, he thought. Grossly overweight and seeing a psychiatrist. Fate was a sadist.

Then it occurred to him that Chipper would never see any kind of seventeen, and he felt less pity for Marie. He looked at the four-color, glossy ad for skin cream on the back cover of the magazine, then looked at Beverly, who was engrossed again in making entries in a large ledger book with pages that crinkled as she leafed through them.

“We can talk in about five minutes, Marie,” a man’s voice said. It was a soothing voice that came down softly on the crisp consonants. If voices had color, this one would be green.

Dr. Roland Elsing was standing by a light-oak door that had just opened. He was a medium-height man in his late forties, with a balding pate and a moon-shaped face that had deeply etched lines, like bloodless incisions, running symmetrically from the sides of his nose to the corners of his thin lips to form a sort of triangle. They were the kind of lines people with poorly fitted dentures developed. He wasn’t dressed the way Carver imagined psychiatrists clothed themselves; he had on a windowpane check sportcoat, wrinkled charcoal slacks, and brown shoes with thick and wavy gum-rubber soles and heels. Practical shoes, made more for comfort and hiking than for impressing wealthy clients who wandered in with phobias and fat wallets. Emmett might be wrong about this guy.

“Mr. Carver?”

Carver leaned on the cane and stood up.

“Come in, please.” No flicker of eye movement to the cane. Elsing opened the door wider to make room for Carver to pass.

The soft green decor was carried into the office. There were tall, glass-lined bookcases along one green wall, with books and papers stuffed into the shelves in a jumble. The doctor’s desk was dark mahogany. The thick brown drapes behind it were closed. A pale ceramic bust of someone who looked like Beethoven sat on top of one of the bookcases, gazing down on the scene with blank eyes. There was a tiny beige sofa in the room, a love seat. Also a comfortable-looking chocolate brown easy chair. Though it was afternoon, a brass gooseneck lamp with a green-tinted shade glowed on Elsing’s desk. It was a restful room, unnaturally quiet. Almost made you wish you had mental anguish so you could come here now and then and pass the time. It was impossible to hear the street sounds down on Commercial.