Burn (8 page)

“I don’t blame you for taking precautions,” Carver said. “And you went about things the right way, not just buying a gun, but learning how to use it.”

“I’ve become proficient,” she said. It sounded like a threat.

“How long have you known Marla Cloy?”

“About three months. After she moved here from Orlando, she answered my ad in the
Gazette-Dispatch.
I’m a proofreader and word-processor operator, and she writes on a typewriter or in longhand. Some of the periodicals she sells to have a policy of requesting the articles on disk. And she needed someone to proofread and prepare manuscripts for her larger assignments, to help her meet deadlines.”

“Do you work out of your home?”

“Yes. I’ve turned the spare bedroom into my office.”

“So your business relationship with Marla blossomed into friendship.”

Willa seemed to become resigned to the fact that she was stuck with Carver for a while. She moved to a chair and sat down. “We got along well. Then, when that creep started to stalk Marla, we had a special empathy. As I said, I’m a recovering rape victim. I know the kind of terror she feels.”

“Has she expressed her fear of this man to you?”

“Several times. I’ve tried to get her to buy a gun for self-defense and take up target shooting, but she doesn’t want to. She will eventually, though. She’s that afraid.”

“Do you think her fear is genuine? I mean, we have to make sure in a case like this.”

Willa’s upper lip drew back over small, yellowed teeth, making her appear even more like a rodent. “Of course it’s genuine! I’ve felt the kind of fear she’s feeling now, and I can recognize it when I see it in someone else. My God, why
wouldn’t
she be afraid? She’s being stalked by a dangerous maniac.”

“We’re trying to do something about that,” Carver said.

“But you can’t do anything,” Willa said. “I know how the system works—or
doesn’t
work. The man hasn’t broken any laws until he’s killed her. Then it’s too late.”

“There’s a law against stalking people.”

She distorted her mouth in disdain. “It’s a crime that’s difficult to prove until the victim is dead.”

“You have a point. I won’t pretend it isn’t a problem.” Carver rested a hand on the crook of his cane. “Just for the record, do you regard Marla Cloy as stable and not the sort of person who might imagine things?”

“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.

E
ARLY 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.”

“Well, maybe it was India. The point is, obsession can be dangerous. You’re involved with people who might be out to kill each other, for all you know. Maybe you should let this one play out by itself, without your help.”

Carver said, “What about Marla Cloy?”

Desoto turned his hands palms up in a gesture of hopelessness and did a thing with his eyebrows to show he’d at least tried to save Carver from himself. “She lived in an apartment in the 4400 block of Graystone Avenue until about three months ago, then moved to an apartment on Bailock where she stayed briefly before moving to Del Moray. She doesn’t have a police record, and the neighbors described her as a quiet woman. Her only family’s her mother and father. They live in Sleepy Hollow, a trailer court outside of town.”

“What do you know about them?”

“Not much. He’s a retired railroad worker. That’s all I managed to learn. I figured it was the daughter you were interested in.”

Carver nodded. “The name Joel Brant pop up at all?”

“No. But then it might not, when a policeman’s asking questions.” Desoto absently polished his pinkie ring on the arm of his jacket, four quick, short swishes to buff it to a brilliant-enough shine to send a pattern of light dancing over the papers on his desk. “There is one notable thing in her background,
amigo.
She moved from her apartment on Graystone because it was damaged when the building burned. Three of the tenants died. Arson squad said the fire might have been set deliberately, but they could never prove it. They also said it might have been the flame from a hot water heater igniting gasoline fumes from a nearby can where paintbrushes were being soaked to clean.”

“Who’d be dumb enough to leave a can of gasoline near a hot water heater?”

“No one who’d admit it, apparently.”

“Did you get the names of the tenants who died?”

“Of course.” Desoto lifted a green file folder from his desk. “It’s all here for you, my friend. If I were you, I think I’d nose around about the fire. Three deaths such a short time ago, and the prospect of death seems to be dogging Marla Cloy again. It was probably coincidence, an accident. . . but we don’t believe in those things as much as some people, do we?”

“I’m not sure I believe in them at all,” Carver said. He leaned on his cane and stood up.

Desoto handed him the file folder. “How’s Beth?”

“Why?” Carver asked without thinking, realizing too late the brusqueness of his reply. But because of her background, her previous marriage to a drug dealer, Desoto had his reservations about Beth and hardly ever inquired about her.

Desoto appeared puzzled, then laughed. “I was only making conversation. You live with the woman, so I thought I’d ask about her. Is there a reason I shouldn’t have?”

“No. And she’s fine. I’ll tell her you asked,”

“Is she helping you on this Marla Cloy thing?”

“Yeah, she sees a story in it for
Burrow.”

“How does she figure it?”

“She thinks Marla Cloy is telling the truth about being stalked. Beth views her as another female victim of male oppression.”

“Politically correct,” Desoto observed, “and possibly correct all the way down the line. When you eliminate the improbable, whatever’s left, however probable, must be the answer.”

“From the same movie as the monkeys and coconuts, I’ll bet.”

“Yes, the same Amazon adventure. What it means is that what you’re mixed up in could be precisely as it appears, a woman being stalked by a psycho with a deadly compulsion, and Beth’s sized it up accurately.”

“Maybe she’ll change her mind,” Carver said.

“Tell her to be careful. I mean, a fire and three dead people.” Desoto languidly waved a hand, flashing a gold cuff link. “Who knows what might happen?”

Desoto had never before asked him to urge Beth to be careful. It struck Carver as odd that he’d worry so about Beth, a woman he accepted only grudgingly because she was Carver’s lover. It was eerie. Desoto had instincts like sensitive radar, especially when women were involved. He seemed somehow to know something, to sense that Beth needed particular protection and care.

Strangely enough, that even more than the doctor’s diagnosis brought home to Carver the unalterable and monumental fact of Beth’s pregnancy.