The huge man slammed the door hard enough to make a framed Norman Rockwell print drop from the wall. The one where the big ruddy cop is scolding the skinny, contrite boy for stealing apples.
Carver let out a long breath, then slumped down on the bed and picked up the receiver. Said, “Yes?”
“Housekeeping,” a voice said. “You got plenty of towels?”
Carver said thanks, the towels were fine, and hung up.
Limp now in action’s aftermath, he sat for a long, long time on the edge of the bed, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, both hands cupped over the crook of his cane. Throbbing pain made him probe above his right ear. There was a lump there from when he’d struck the wall just after the huge man had entered the room. He realized he was miserably hot and sweat was pouring down his bare arms and dampening the thighs of his pants.
After drying off with a towel in the bathroom, he retrieved the notes he’d taken during his phone conversation with Desoto and made sure his keys hadn’t dropped out of his pocket. Then he slipped his stockinged feet into his moccasins and hobbled squinting from the room into the bright and baking morning.
The vestibule of the cracked, often-patched stucco apartment building on Morning Star smelled faintly of frying bacon. Graffiti on the peeling walls informed Carver of all sorts of interesting things he could do with his own body. He scanned the mailboxes and saw Roger Karl’s scrawled name above the slot for apartment 2E. There was an intercom system, but half the buttons were missing, including the one next to Karl’s apartment number. Didn’t matter, Carver discovered, because the door allowing access to the stairwell and halls was missing.
He set the tip of his cane down and climbed creaking wood stairs to the second floor, feeling the thick air get warmer as he rose. There was loose rubber matting on some of the steps; he made a mental note of that so he’d be careful if for some reason he had to take the stairs in a hurry on the way out. Walk with a cane and you had to plan ahead sometimes.
The scent of frying bacon was stronger on the second floor, nauseating him and making his head ache. The carpet here was worn in the center all the way through to the wood floor. A dirty window at the far end of the hall provided just enough illumination to make out the apartment letters painted large and bold and recently on the doors. From behind the nearest door came the faint sound of an infant screaming desperately. Carver limped down the alphabet and knocked on the door with the oversize black E painted on it like a “Sesame Street” graphic.
No answer.
A TV began playing loudly behind the door of F across the hall. “Here’s what you’ve won!” a voice cried ecstatically.
Carver tried E’s door.
He won just like the contestant on television. The door swung open and he stepped inside fast. If Roger Karl was alert, it would be best to surprise him.
The apartment was hot and still and furnished with cast-off furniture, not with the decorator touch. Carver limped across the faded blue carpet toward a door leading to the kitchen. “Roger Karl?” he called, being polite before he wrung Karl’s neck for siccing the menacing mountain in overalls on him.
No one answered.
He leaned on his cane and peered into the kitchen. There were some crumpled fast-food paper bags on the tiny Formica table, dishes in a rubber-coated pink drainer on the sink counter. A clock on the grease-stained wall above the stove said it was much later than it was. The clock probably had something there.
A yellowed coffee brewer sat on the table near the paper bags. It was plugged into the nearby wall socket, but there was no coffee in the glass pot other than a sludgelike residue from yesterday. If Karl had awakened here this morning, he’d eaten breakfast out.
Carver turned away from the kitchen and limped down a short hall off the living room. The bathroom was empty, not even a toothbrush. He looked in the medicine cabinet over the white pedestal washbasin. An empty aspirin bottle. A plastic disposable razor with a rusty blade that had been there so long it had left a mark on the glass shelf. There was a bar of soap on the washbasin. Carver ran his finger over it. Damp. Gummy, the way cheap soap got. A towel draped over the shower curtain rod was also damp. He looked into the tub and saw wet dark hair like a spider in a clump over the drain.
He backed out of the bathroom and shoved open the door that must lead to the bedroom, looked inside.
The bed was unmade. Crawling across the stained white sheet was the largest and blackest palmetto bug Carver had ever seen. He stepped the rest of the way into the bedroom. Two of the dresser drawers were half open, empty. He examined the other drawers. Also empty. When he opened the closet’s sliding door, he found only a worn-out striped shirt on a wire hanger, a black sock wadded in a dusty corner. He felt around on the rough closet shelf and came up with an empty shoebox and a pornographic novel about two cheerleaders forced to spend their summer vacation on a farm. He placed both items back where he’d found them.
The overalled mountain must have reported his failure to deter Carver from the investigation, must have given some hint as to the difficulty he’d experienced at the motel. Roger Karl had moved out, and in a hurry, possibly on Adam Beed’s orders. Beed wouldn’t have sent an unskilled laborer like the mountain to work on Carver, and he wouldn’t appreciate Roger Karl’s having done so.
The rooms had the look of a furnished apartment, so clothes and a few personal possessions would be all Karl had to gather and pack. Carver glanced over at the bed and couldn’t see the palmetto bug. It had probably crawled beneath the stained and wrinkled top sheet. Karl couldn’t have been too upset about having to leave this place, cozy though it was.
Carver nosed around the apartment for another fifteen minutes, not knowing what he was seeking, not knowing if he’d recognize it if he found it. He tried to remember if he’d ever found a genuine clue of the sort stumbled upon in novels and movies: a matchbook cover from a nightclub, a dying message, a bloody handprint. He didn’t think so. Well, a murder victim once.
This time, too.
Curled alongside the kitchen stove lay a dead brown and white beagle. It hadn’t gone easily. Its body was contorted with final agony and its teeth were bared. There was fresh blood in its mouth; it hadn’t been dead very long.
Carver saw something glittering in the partly eaten glob of dog food in a red plastic tray. He noticed an ice-cube grinder on the sink, the kind that prepares crushed ice for drinks. He went to it and found it contained the thick bottom of a drinking glass and some glistening shards like the ones in the dog food. Roger Karl had left in a hurry and fed his dog ground glass so he wouldn’t have to bother with it. Or maybe Adam Beed had taken care of that for him.
Carver limped from the apartment and back out onto Morning Star, where he could breathe easier, where the cruel sun at least seemed to purify the air.
Leaning on the warm trunk of the Plymouth, he decided that if he ever found himself in a different occupation, he’d miss the job but not the people.
24
Carver had taken the last Percodan. He found a drugstore and bought a bottle of extra-strength Tylenol. He stood just inside the door, looking out at the sun-drenched avenue, and managed to swallow two of the tablets without water. There. Maybe his head wouldn’t explode.
Just swallowing the tablets seemed to lessen the throbbing ache behind his eyes. He touched a finger to the lump on the side of his head. It hadn’t realized he’d taken medication and was as egglike and painful as ever. First Beed, then the giant in bib overalls. It sure put a strain on a body. It would have been a lot worse if the big man in overalls had been good enough at his work to leave Carver with more than a headache. New bruises on top of the old ones inflicted by Adam Beed might have taken decades to heal.