John Lutz - Scorcher

“I thought I’d made it clear,” Elsing said. “There is at this time no cure for schizophrenia.”

“You also made it clear that stress intensifies the symptoms. And Paul Rave’s under plenty of stress.”

“Paul’s got a pisspot full of trouble,” Elsing said, momentarily dropping his air of professionalism and surprising Carver with his profanity. “That doesn’t mean he’s a killer.”

Carver didn’t see it that way. Not in the face of the evidence.

“Can you tell me that, in your expert judgment, Paul couldn’t kill another human being?”

“No,” Elsing said, with a sigh almost too soft to hear. “But that’s an unfair question. I can’t state that about anyone. Including you, Mr. Carver.”

Carver said nothing as he limped through the reception room, past Beverly and Marie and the cool spearmint scent, out into the hall with its bulletin board advertising millionaires’ floating toys. He was sweating when he reached the elevator.

Seated in the heat in his car, he tried to reconcile Dr. Elsing’s apparent affection and belief in Paul Kave with his own unrelenting anger. There were times when that rage for revenge slackened, when Paul Kave was humanized and seemed almost sympathetic. Almost.

Deliberately this time, Carver called up the nightmare, blackened ruin of his son. His namesake. Flesh of his flesh. Burned flesh. Tortured flesh. Black twisted hole of a mouth, tendons drawn tight by blast-furnace heat to curl the limbs into a praying posture. Face like that of a darkened, shrunken head bobbing on a cannibal’s hip. A wizened trophy no longer a person except to those who’d loved him. In this case, Paul Kave’s grotesque trophy. What had the moment been like when Chipper saw the flames? Felt their first paralyzing licks? How long had that instant lasted in human, clockless time?

Carver started the engine and slammed the Olds into Drive. People on the sidewalk stared as the big car roared out of its parking space.

Paul wasn’t as Elsing or his family saw him.

Carver felt like screaming into the hot, booming wind that Paul Kave was a killer.

A monster.

One that breathed fire.

What to do when confronted with a smooth surface and no handhold? Carver wasn’t sure, but the way things were going, he might have to find out. His visit with Dr. Elsing hadn’t exactly sprung open doors to fresh vistas of knowledge.

He didn’t know how long he’d be in the Fort Lauderdale area. That depended on Paul Kave. But it was here, near where Paul disappeared, that Carver had to seek the beginning of the trail, where he’d find something to grasp and build on and follow to ultimate revenge. Always there had to be at least some thin indication of direction. People changed the world as they moved through it, even as it changed them.

He drove north the short distance to Pompano Beach and registered where Laura had stayed, at the Carib Terrace Motel on Ocean Boulevard. He was given a ground-floor unit, and he sat for a while on the edge of the bed and gazed through the sliding glass doors at the beach.

It was essentially the same view as the one from the unit upstairs, where he’d visited Laura after Chipper’s murder. Probably some of the same sunbathers lounged out there on the pale sand, and some of the same children ran and kicked through the surf. Down where the beach was darkened from high washes of foam, an elderly man with his pants rolled into doughnuts just below his knees was walking slowly with his head down, squatting occasionally on spindly legs to examine seashells, none of which was apparently worthy of his collection. Not far from the glass doors, a potbellied man in violent tropical-print swimming trunks was trying earnestly to fold or unfold a bulky redwood lounge chair, wrestling with it as if it were his conscience.

After a while the glare outside caused Carver’s eyes to ache. He got up and pulled the drapes closed. Light and sound were instantly muted, and he suddenly felt isolated and lonely. Remotely afraid of something he couldn’t identify.

He phoned Adam Kave and told him where he could be reached if there was any news on Paul. Then he walked down the street to a Chinese restaurant and had a lunch of crab Rangoon appetizers, Hunan beef and broccoli, and two Budweisers. East meets West.

As soon as he returned, the motel owner’s wife stopped him as he passed the office door and told him he had two messages. He was supposed to call Nick Fanning sometime that afternoon or evening. And a Lieutenant Desoto had phoned from Orlando and wanted Carver to call back as soon as possible.

The youngish, pretty woman handed him a slip of lined paper with the phone numbers written on it. She yelled “Don’t run-walk!” at a skinny tan kid by the motel pool, then stepped back into the air-conditioned office. Sometimes good advice, Carver thought, sometimes not.

He glanced at Fanning’s number but didn’t recognize it. He did recognize the other number: Desoto’s extension at police headquarters in Orlando. The times of the calls to Carver were scrawled next to the numbers. Fanning had called half an hour before Desoto. Carver bore down on his cane and walked, didn’t run, away from the lapping blue pool and the acrid scent of chlorine and went into his room.

The phone was ringing. He lifted the receiver and said hello, expecting to hear Fanning or Desoto.

A man’s unfamiliar voice said, “Her tits swelled up and sort of split open when they burned, then they shriveled up. Hey, it was something to see. And hear. I’ll always think of her as my old flame.”

Carver sat on the edge of the bed, dragged the phone to him, and rested the base unit in his lap. His good leg was trembling. “Who is this?”

“You know who I am, Carver. And I know who you are. Yeah, I know.”

“Paul?. .”

Click. Buzz.

The connection had been gently but abruptly broken. Carver sat listening to the hum of the dial tone for a long time. It seemed as if the buzzing might be in his head, the sound of fury and futility. It was a frantic, wavering drone that made his pulse race and his hands clench. Don’t run, walk!

He made himself calm down and tried to memorize every nuance of the young male voice that had casually projected such horror in him. There was nothing distinctive about the voice. A nice normal voice; that was what had been so chilling about the words it had spoken.

He slowly pressed down on the cradle button, let it up, and pecked out Nick Fanning’s number. How had Fanning known where to phone him and leave a message? But Carver realized anyone might have followed him from the Kave estate and found out where he was staying, and then told anyone else.

“I was with Adam Kave when you called to let him know where to reach you,” Fanning said, after answering on the second ring and exchanging hellos. “I noticed the name of your motel when he jotted it down on his desk pad.” Very pat.

But it didn’t explain why Fanning had called. “Do you know something about Paul, Mr. Fanning?”

“More to the point,” Fanning said, “I think there’s something you oughta know. Whatever Paul’s problems, they aren’t entirely Adam Kave’s fault.”

“I didn’t suppose so.”

“You’re going to talk to people,” Fanning said, “and they’re going to give Adam a bad rap. Or is that the case already?”

“Adam Kave hasn’t rated glowing reports as a father,” Carver admitted.

“And it’s true he hasn’t been a good father to Paul, but probably not so true as some of the people you’ve talked to would have you believe. I’m in a position to know. I’ve watched their relationship, and even tried to intercede a few times. While Adam certainly is too critical of Paul, it’s also true that he loves Paul very much.”