“I could use what comes out of this Brant investigation,” Beth said. “A story like that might make the difference in whether I keep drawing a steady paycheck or become a freelance.”
“Every other time Jones has threatened to fire you, you’ve dared him to go ahead and do it. Why are you so afraid of losing your job this time?”
“I think he might mean it this time.”
Carver figured there had to be something more to it. Beth had been on and off Jones’s hit list several times since she’d been at
“What if it turns out that Brant’s the one being victimized?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Then that’s the way I write it. It’s a good story either way it breaks.”
“I admire your journalistic integrity,” he said. “I’ll keep you clued in.”
She smiled, suddenly sweeter than the heady aroma of the chocolate-cinnamon coffee. “Do more than that. Make me part of the investigation, Fred.” She really did want this story, no matter who was being victimized.
When he didn’t answer immediately she bent low and kissed him on the forehead, then the lips. He felt the warm flick of her tongue, and the brush of her fingers on his shoulder.
“Maybe there is something you can do,” he said, feeling like a victim.
3
After leaving Beth, Carver drove to Del Moray police headquarters and asked to see Sergeant Greg Olson.
The desk sergeant relayed his request, but instead of Olson instructing that Carver come into his office, the graying, grossly overweight detective sergeant waddled into the booking area where Carver was waiting. He and Carver weren’t exactly friends, but they trusted each other and had a mutual respect for professionalism. There was little enough of that going around these days.
Olson wasn’t wearing a suit coat or tie. The top two buttons of his white shirt were unfastened and his sleeves were rolled above the elbows. He was sweating heavily. There were large crescents of dampness beneath his arms and his shirt took on a pinkish hue where the thin material was plastered to his flesh.
When he shook hands with Carver, his grip was strong and moist.
“You been exercising?” Carver asked.
“Naw. Damned air-conditioning’s on the blink. It’s not so bad here, but you get back in the offices or squad room and it’s a sauna. What can I do for you, Fred?”
“I need to know a few things about a woman who’s lodged a sexual harassment complaint. Her name’s-”
“Sorry,” Olson interrupted. “I’m gonna have to refer you to Lieutenant McGregor.”
The mention of McGregor’s name made Carver’s flesh creep. “Why’s that? He have a personal interest in the case?”
Olson’s chubby features creased in a sweaty smile. “He’s got a personal interest in you. We got standing orders that whenever you come in here for any reason, you get referred to Mc shy;Gregor.”
Carver wasn’t really surprised. Lieutenant William Mc shy;Gregor hated him with a grand and nurturing passion and had warned him more than once that he’d like to nail him with a felony count that carried a prison sentence, even if the charge was false. Maybe especially if the charge was false. Like most of the people who’d had dealings with McGregor, Carver hated him right back. McGregor preferred it that way. In a gloating, candid moment, he’d once confessed to Carver that he wasn’t really comfortable around people without the bond of mutual disgust. The sadistic, deliberately obnoxious lieutenant was the most corrupt human being Carver had ever met, in an occupation where you seldom consorted with angels.
“I suppose he misses you,” Olson said, still smiling. A bead of perspiration dropped from his chin and left a tiny mark like a comma on the front of his white shirt.
“Like mean little boys miss flies when they need something to pull wings from,” Carver said.
Olson exchanged glances with the desk sergeant, who was also smiling and sweating.
“He in his office?” Carver asked.
“Yeah,” Olson said. “You know where it is.”
“Better wait till I call back and tell him you’re on your way,” the desk sergeant said.
Carver stood and watched Olson sweat while the desk sergeant started to make the call. The desk sergeant suddenly began perspiring more profusely, maybe at the prospect of talking to McGregor. The uniforms all hated McGregor, their boss, and hate was impossible without fear.
“Lieutenant says you have permission to slink right in,” the desk sergeant said, hanging up the phone. “His words, not mine.”
“Buzz, buzz,” Carver said. He set down the tip of his cane, turned his back on the two sweaty sergeants, and limped down the hall toward McGregor’s office.
After taking only a few steps, he understood why Olson was soaked with perspiration. The bowels of headquarters were sweltering. A rivulet of sweat trickled from beneath the hair behind Carver’s ear and he felt its dampness as it worked its way beneath his collar. A shrill whine and chatter, like a powerful electric drill meeting resistance, cut through the hall. A muffled voice said “. . mother-friggin’ bastard!” as the drilling stopped, then was replaced by a loud, metallic hammering that came in irritating, intermittent bursts.
The first thing to hit Carver when he opened the door to McGregor’s office was the stench. The lieutenant was one of those people who believed cheap deodorant was an adequate substitute for bathing. In the sultry heat of the office his perfumed, stale odor was almost unbearable.
McGregor was behind his desk, leaning far back in his swivel chair. For some reason he had his suit coat on, though his tie knot was loosened. His suit was brown and wrinkled and soiled, as usual. His severely parted, lank blond hair hung Hitler-style above one small, cruel blue eye. There was a shaving cut on a prognathous jaw that looked capable of crushing rock. He was a pale and elongated creature, well over six and a half feet tall and with the angular build and disjointed way of moving you often saw with very tall men. Despite his lankiness and concave chest, there was about him the suggestion of strength coiled and waiting.
“I thought the heat and that fucking drilling and hammering would be the worst things about this day,” McGregor said, “until you showed up.”
“I’d rather talk with anybody else,” Carver said. “You’re the one who left orders you wanted to see me.”
“It’s crazy,” McGregor said, “but I just have to see you now and then. In the same way I have to glance at my own shit sometimes before I flush the toilet.”
“Talking with you always makes the world seem cleaner and brighter,” Carver said, as he moved nearer to the desk and leaned with both hands on the crook of his cane. He took shallow breaths through his mouth, trying to ignore the corrupt stench of McGregor. McGregor noticed and smiled. There was a wide space between his yellowed front teeth that he habitually probed with the tip of his tongue, making his smile remarkably evil.
The hammering and drilling began again.
“You guys interrogating a suspect?” Carver asked.
“I’d like to interrogate the jerks working on that air conditioner,” McGregor said. “They been banging away on it for two hours now and it’s still hot as the inside of a pussy in here.” He swiveled this way and that in his chair, stirring the fetid air and increasing the cloying odor in the tiny office. “So let’s get to the reason you came,” McGregor said. “I got things to do here or I wouldn’t be staying in this sweatbox.”
“A woman named Marla Cloy has filed harassment complaints against one Joel Brant.”
“I’m familiar with that,” McGregor said. “Del Moray’s not so big a city it’d escape my notice. So what is it you need to know?”
“How many of her complaints do you have on file?”
“Couldn’t tell you offhand. Three or four at least.”
Carver knew that was as precise an answer as he was going to get from McGregor. “I understand she’s filed for an order of protection to keep Brant away from her.”
The pink tip of McGregor’s tongue probed and squirmed between his teeth like a writhing worm. “You
