John Lutz - Scorcher

“Joel Dewitt drove it here. He went inside the house about twenty minutes ago-carrying a scuba diver’s air tank.”

Paul was quick, all right. He put out a palm and leaned hard against the garage, as if he needed support to stand. Carver thought he saw the old garage sway. He waited while Paul assembled all the available pieces and got most of the picture. Insects droned nearby and racketed in the field beyond the back fence. Something tiny and brittle that flew very fast bounced off Carver’s forehead and buzzed angrily into the night.

When Paul pushed away from the rotted wood and stood up straight, he said, “Why, Mr. Carver?” He didn’t mean, why was Dewitt here with the scuba tank? Why was the old Lincoln hidden in the garage? He meant, why was Dewitt involved in this at all?

“I’m not sure. Emmett or Dewitt can tell us that.”

Paul’s jaw was thrust forward. He looked as fierce as Nadine in the final set of a tennis match, and at the same time he resembled Emmett and Adam in a way that was uncanny. Reaction had set in. The Kave blood was up. “Damn it, Mr. Carver, let’s go ask!”

He dug in a heel and took a long stride toward the driveway.

Carver hooked his arm with the crook of the cane and dragged him back. “Think it out first,” he said. “Do this my way, Paul.”

“They tried to make me out a murderer!” Paul sputtered, knocking the cane away with such force that Carver almost lost his grip on it. The kid was powerful. He’d become strong the way Carver had-all that swimming in choppy water.

“They killed my son,” Carver reminded him.

That calmed Paul somewhat. He squared his shoulders and let out a long breath, managed to unclench his teeth. “Yeah, I know they did. Your way, then, Mr. Carver. Time for the cops, I guess.”

Carver knew it was, but he said, “Not just yet.”

Paul looked closely at him and understood. A balance had shifted and their roles had changed. They both sensed it; they’d spent so much time trying to think each other’s thoughts that a subtle telepathy had developed. It was Paul now who must be the moderating influence. And Paul knew it.

“I think I oughta call the law, Mr. Carver.”

“Sure,” Carver said. “You can drive to a phone and do that while I keep watch on things here.” A breeze whispered through the yard, molding his sweat-soaked shirt to his back. Unexpectedly cool, but for only a moment. Then the heat enfolded him again like an unwelcome lover with its suffocating embrace.

Paul squinted at him. “You’re not going into the house, are you?”

Carver asked himself the same question and wasn’t sure of the answer. But he said, “No, Paul, I’ll just make sure Dewitt and Emmett don’t leave.”

Paul didn’t know whether to believe him, but had little choice. Carver watched him wrestle with the idea of driving away to find a phone. A car passed on Jupiter Avenue, making a swishing sound as its headlights ghosted through the night. A lonely sound.

“You’re supposed to be the head case here,” Carver reminded him with a tight smile, “not me.”

“So I’ve been reading and hearing on the news.”

“Get to a phone, Paul. It’ll be all right.”

“Okay. Sure.” Still dubious.

Carver nodded toward the street, a signal to move, and they started down the driveway.

When they’d almost reached the rear corner of the house, a light came on in a basement window, spilling faint light outside.

In silent agreement, Carver and Paul both crept to the window and peered in through its dirty glass.

It was a half-basement of the type developers once sold as tornado shelters. During the hurricane season, tornadoes often ripped through central Florida, amazing in their unpredictability and destruction. The walls were thick poured concrete, stained by cloudlike patterns of dampness.

Dewitt and Emmett were standing near an ancient wooden workbench with a bare light bulb dangling on a cord above it. A cylindrical tank, and a tangle of hoses and gauges, rested on the workbench. Emmett had the scuba tank valve unscrewed and was fitting a brass hose connection to it. The hose led to what looked like an ordinary cleaning-fluid can. Beside the bench were a number of glass jugs and square, gallon-size cans bearing chemical symbols and naphtha-based household-solvent labels.

Carver realized Dewitt and Emmett were charging the scuba tank with propellant and homemade napalm to commit another murder. To burn someone the way they’d killed his son.

He thought about the searing pain that must seem to last forever, and then the endlessness of death. He felt the pain!

Comprehension, and a rage he never dreamed would be so overwhelming, wrested control of him. It was as if something silently exploded within him, wiping out reason. Obliterating almost everything except his desire to strike back at the people who’d scorched the flesh he’d created. Images of death and horror tumbled through his mind. But even through his consuming emotion he was recalling the layout of the house, acting the good cop, the one Desoto and McGregor had described.

Beside him, Paul felt the heat of his building fury. Carver pulled the automatic from his belt, aware of the front sight snagging for a moment on the leather. Paul’s hand was on his shoulder, clutching desperately. The boy was afraid now, like any twenty-year-old staring at the front end of violence and death, unable to comprehend something terrible and imminent that had taken on its own will and couldn’t be stopped. “Mr. Carver, for God’s sake, don’t-”

Carver shoved Paul away so violently that the boy stumbled back and went sprawling into the hedge on the other side of the driveway. He saw Paul struggle to get up, catch the look Carver gave him, then settle back down on his elbows. Paul’s dark eyes were huge pools of helpless resignation and horror.

Too much noise might have been made already; Carver turned and limped fast toward the rickety back porch.

When his cane thumped on the porch boards he gave up any thought of silence and opted for suddenness and surprise. He used the crook of the cane to smash in a back-door window, reached through and yanked a bolt lock free, then flung the door open and charged through the kitchen toward the basement stairs.

He knew Emmett and Dewitt would hear his cane clattering on the linoleum above them and be ready.

He didn’t care.

The door to the basement stairs was hanging open. Carver hurled himself through it and half fell down the steep wooden steps. His knuckles hit the banister and his cane bounced and racketed down the stairs ahead of him.

Dewitt had a revolver and was firing at him, blue eyes not startled but wide and cold and calm; for some reason Carver couldn’t hear the shots. Then something snapped past the side of his head. He saw the banister miraculously splinter beside him. His own arm and hand, holding the Colt automatic, were extended, acting of their own volition. He was returning fire, feeling the solid kick of the gun and watching his arm jerk upward and settle back with each squeeze of the trigger.

Something exploded behind Carver’s right ear. He thought he’d been shot, but he fell to the side and saw a grim-faced McGregor crouched on the steps above him, gun drawn and blasting away at Emmett and Dewitt-McGregor, who must have been keeping tabs on Carver personally in the absence of Gibbons. Like the goddamned O.K. Corral, Carver thought inanely. He glimpsed more dark, tumultuous figures behind McGregor. On the stairs. Above them, in the kitchen outside the basement door. Everything seemed to be moving unnaturally fast but with vivid clarity. Someone was screaming; a man’s voice. Not in pain, but to fill the lungs and heart with something other than fear.