Scorcher

“Sam will be here soon,” Laura said. “We’ll take Chipper back to Saint Louis to be buried.”

Carver turned away from the ocean view. “I’ll fly up for the funeral. You need help with the arrangements?”

“No.” She seemed distant, lost somewhere in her vast grief. Carver wanted to comfort her but didn’t know how. He was surprised to find himself angry at the thought of Sam Devine holding her and nursing her through the inevitable eruption of sorrow and tears. It was Carver’s son, their son, who had died.

“Where’s Ann?” Carver asked.

“I put her on a plane this morning. She’s with my father.”

“She all right?”

“Yeah. So far. She doesn’t understand what happened yet.”

“I’m going to find out who did this,” Carver said. “I’m going to make him pay.”

She glanced up at him, held his gaze with her grief-deadened eyes. “Why?”

“Justice,” Carver said.

She said, “Revenge.”

“Call it whatever suits you.”

She sighed and looked out at the sea and the beach, at the glaring sunlit world beyond the dim room. “I was afraid you’d react this way. It’ll only make things worse, Fred.”

“Worse for the animal who’s going around burning children to death. And I’ll admit it, I crave revenge. Jesus, I crave it! You can’t tell me you don’t feel the same way.”

“I feel that way, Fred. I don’t think that way. What I want is to get through this somehow, not live with it any longer than is necessary.” She bowed her head; it didn’t hide the tic in the delicate flesh beneath her eyes. The light from the glass doors revealed some kind of rash along the left side of her neck and her cheek, a mark of her violent emotion. “What I feel, Fred, is guilt. If I hadn’t forgotten my purse, sent Chipper back inside to get it. .”

Carver was standing before he realized it, leaning on his cane, his free hand on her quaking shoulder. She was about to sob. He didn’t want that; he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to calm her. And he feared his own reaction; something he didn’t understand was drawing him to her. “That’s irrational, Laura. There’s no guilt involved except for whoever killed Chipper and the poor guy in the restaurant.”

“Dammit, I know that! It doesn’t help. Your obsession for revenge is irrational, too.”

There was a knock on the door, then the knob rattled. Whoever was out there was impatient. Laura sniffled, got up, and trudged to the door and opened it. Carver sat back down.

Sam Devine stepped in, his beefy face contorted with concern. He was a big man, all lawyer. Acres of pinstripe material topped off by mobile, sincere features and a head of thick white hair any politician would have given back graft money to own.

Laura threw herself at him, hugged him, and he encircled her with his thick arms and patted her on the back. She was sobbing now; she’d been waiting for Devine before trusting a release of her pain. She couldn’t get close enough to his protective bulk. Her entire body was convulsing, thrusting mindlessly against him in an obscene, unintentional parody of sex.

Who needed to watch this? Carver nodded to Devine and got up out of the chair.

“I’m sorry as hell, Fred,” Devine said, holding Laura tighter.

Carver said, “Thanks, Sam. I’d better get going.”

“You don’t have to, Fred.”

“I do,” Carver said.

Laura stopped sobbing as Carver stepped near her and Devine on his way to the door. Incredibly, her face became composed and soft. It struck Carver that she might rather be in his arms than Devine’s. For an instant he felt like snatching her away from Devine and clutching her desperately, merging their suffering. She drew a deep breath that caught halfway like something fuzzy in her throat, dropping her voice an octave and making it someone else’s. “Fred, think about what you said. Don’t commit yourself to anything too soon. Please!”

Devine held her away from him and put on a curious expression. She’d left tearstains on his blue pinstripe suit. Then he understood and stared at Carver. “Christ, Fred, don’t do anything crazy. I mean, I’m a lawyer and I’ve seen the results of what you must be considering. Hey, it’s natural to think in terms of revenge, but please don’t do anything but think it. If you feel like you gotta turn it over in your mind, that’s okay; that’s legal. Could be it’s even some sort of release.”

“Listen to him, Fred,” Laura said. “Remember what he’s telling you.”

Devine said, “Some things you should leave alone, Fred. That’s just the way it is.”

Carver set his cane and stepped around Devine and Laura. “Call me if you need anything,” he said.

“You call us,” Devine said magnanimously, as Carver limped out.

Carver drove north on 100, stopping once, at a grocery store, for a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label. Then he put up the canvas top on his rusty Oldsmobile convertible and continued north toward his cottage, driving too fast.

The cottage was isolated on a curve of bright sand. A low finger of land jutted out to the north, and the public beach to the south was seldom occupied by swimmers and sunbathers, never crowded. Carver had bought the place with his disability settlement last year after being shot.

He entered the one-room cottage, sniffed the stale air, and left the door hanging open. The sparse furniture had a dusty, unused look about it, and the viny potted plants that dangled on chains from the frame of the wide front window were dark and dead. Outside, the ocean whispered like a vicious gossip. Damn, the place was depressing!

After prying open a couple of screened side windows, Carver sat at the Formica breakfast counter with the bottle of Scotch in front of him. He didn’t feel like uncapping the bottle, wasn’t sure why he’d brought it. A fat and glistening blue-black fly touched down exploringly on the counter, and he watched it crawl, wobbling out of sight over the far edge. Story of life.

“Carver.”

Edwina was standing in the doorway. He stared glumly at her.

“Great welcome,” she said, “but not unexpected.”

“I don’t feel like Mr. Effervescence,” Carver said. “Don’t feel like companionship. That’s why I came here.”

She walked inside and stood near him. He used his cane to shove one of the stools out from the counter for her. Its legs made a loud scraping sound on the plank floor.

Edwina sat down and said, “You came here to grieve and brood about how you’re going to avenge your son’s death.”

“Incisive bitch.”

She smiled. “That’s me.” She stood up, got a glass from the cabinet above the sink, and rinsed it out. Then she poured two fingers of scotch from the bottle and handed the glass to Carver. She sat back down, got a small brown plastic bottle from her purse, and set an incredibly tiny white pill in front of him on the counter.

“What the hell is that?” he asked, staring at the pill.

“It’ll help you sleep. It’s prescription stuff I’ve had around the house for about a year. It’s still plenty potent, though. I took one last month. It’ll have you blotto in no time.”

“I don’t want to be blotto, God damn it! Don’t want to sleep. How’d you know I was here?”

“Desoto told me.”

“Figures.”

“He’s your friend; he knows what’s best for you.”

“He’s a plague.”

“You know better.”

Carver did. He picked up the pill, popped it into his mouth, and washed it down with a generous pull of Scotch. It was so minute he had to probe around the inside of his mouth with his tongue to be sure he’d swallowed it.

“C’mon, baby,” Edwina said, and helped him to stand up, though he didn’t need help. She acted as if he should be groggy from the pill he’d taken only seconds before. He used the cane for balance for both of them and let