“My, my. Butter wouldn’t melt.”
“Will you do it?”
“Sure. Burrow’s got computer people working for them who make NASA seem like hackers. What you need to know? How to get the Ninja Turtles past all those obstacles?”
He listened to the voices of the young from down at the beach. Listened to the rush of traffic over on the Orange Blossom Trail, not so unlike the eternal sigh of the sea. “I need to know how the death rate at Solartown compares with the rates at similar retirement communities.”
She was silent for a moment. Then she said, “It’d all be public record, in state data banks. It’s the kind of information Jeff could come up with.”
“Jeff?”
“Jeff Mehling, computer guy at Burrow. He’s part microchip himself.”
“How long would it take this Jeff to do the job?”
“Nanoseconds, if he knows what keys to punch. He’s hooked into the office with his home computer, so I can probably call you back with the information tonight.”
Carver told her he’d be waiting, she should take as many nanoseconds as she needed.
“There a story in this for Burrow?” she asked. “That’d be part of the bargain.”
“Our bargain?”
“It’s what Clive’ll ask.” Clive Jones was the founder and managing editor of Burrow, an intrepid former ACLU lawyer who wore conservative business suits while riding a motorcycle with suicidal abandon. “What should I tell him?”
“Say that if there’s a story, you’ll be the one to get it.”
“What Clive’ll say, Fred, is that I oughta be where you are, covering this thing firsthand.”
“There’s nothing yet to cover with any hand.”
“But there will be, right?” She was like a radar-homed missile.
“My sense of it is there will be,” he admitted. “Why don’t you drive here tomorrow, meet me at the motel about noon.”
“So, you need my help in more ways than one.”
“Many more ways.”
“You need many ways, I got ’em.”
“I miss you,” he said, scratching a mosquito bite.
“That all you think about?”
He said, “No, but I think about it a lot.”
“We got a lunch date,” she said, and broke the connection.
He hung up the phone and stretched out on his back on the bed, thinking about it.
The room was dark when the phone’s persistent ringing hauled him up from deep sleep.
The first thing he realized was that he had an erection. The second was that his head throbbed with pain each time the phone jangled. The second realization had taken care of the first by the time he’d dragged the receiver to him and mumbled a hello.
“You been sleepin’, Fred?”
Beth.
He shook his head, trying to rattle sleep from his brain. “Just resting my eyes.” The room was cool and dim. He peered at the glowing red numerals on the TV clock radio: 10:30. “Jesus!”
“Whazza matter, lover?”
“Didn’t realize it was so late.”
“Well, you gave your eyes a good long rest. Other parts of you might get tired, but those eyes are probably good for all night.”
Carver was awake enough now to be irritated. “You call to aggravate me, or do you have that information?”
“Called ’cause I’m doing you a favor, remember?”
“Yeah, I recollect.” He switched on the lamp, wincing as the light assailed his eyes. “Sorry.”
“You’re a bear when you first wake up, Fred.”
He waited in bearish silence. There was a terrible taste in his mouth. Possibly the fur on his teeth.
“Jeff accessed various data banks, did some checking and cross-checking. He worked this out on a per-capita basis, deaths per thousand people in various age groups. Compared to other retirement communities in Florida, California, and Arizona, the Solartown death rate is nine-point-eight percent higher across the board.”
“Across the board? That mean in every age group?”
“Jeff said there’s less than a three-tenths of a percent difference in the rates within age groups. Of course, the higher the age bracket, the more annual deaths per thousand residents.”
Carver didn’t know what to think. “That seem reasonable, that nine-point-eight percent difference?”
“Jeff thought it was high, but within the realm of a statistical fluke. Might mean something or nothing. In Solartown, out of a population of over four thousand, there were two hundred twenty natural deaths. So you’ve got an extra twenty-one-point-something people died there over the average. That mean anything to your investigation, Fred?”
“Not necessarily. It doesn’t mean there’s a serial killer operating in Solartown, but it doesn’t mean there isn’t. It might simply have been a bad year for fatalities.”
“Bad couple of years. These figures cover twenty-four months.”
“Jeff’s thorough. Tell him I said thanks.”
“Sure. Remember our lunch date.”
Carver assured her he would, then hung up. He lay back down on the bed but left the light on. It would be interesting to know how many of Solartown’s 220 deaths last year were due to heart attacks, and how many of them were male. How many widows were created.
It was time to talk with Dr. Arthur Wynn at the medical center.
Rather, it would be time tomorrow. Carver knew he had a better chance of meeting the subject of a seance than convincing a medical doctor to talk with him at ten-forty in the evening.
He dragged the phone over to him and rested it on his chest. Remembering the number on the POSSE bumper sticker on Val Green’s car, he pecked it out with his forefinger.
An elderly female voice told him which part of Solartown Val was patrolling.
Carver thanked her, then replaced the phone, got up, and went into the bathroom. He rinsed his face, brushed his teeth, then limped outside into the warm night to where the Olds was parked.
He wanted to find out what Val Green had to say away from Hattie’s presence and influence.
Val was doubtless an honorable and tight-lipped man, but Carver was reasonably sure he could bribe him with free coffee and doughnuts. Make him feel like a real cop.
9
Val invited Carver to park his car and ride with him on patrol. “It’ll be a quiet night,” Val promised, “like all the rest of ’em.
Carver lowered himself into the passenger’s side of Val’s five-year-old green Dodge and rested his cane between his legs. The car’s air conditioner worked well. There was a CB radio mounted below the dash with a microphone hooked into a bracket. The Dodge was a stick shift. Val let it wind out in first gear, then shifted with a clunk! and a jerk into second, then almost immediately into third. The little car whined but responded peppily to this abuse.
“Gotta keep an eye out over on N Street,” Val said, glancing at Carver from the corner of his vision. The glow of the dashboard lights made the white of his eye gleam. “There was a spate of vandalism over there last week. Woman reported her citrus trees bent, all the fruit on the ground.”
Sounds serious, Carver thought, if you’re an orange.
“Kids from the city, way I figure it,” Val said. “Come cruising through here now and then, mostly looking for something to do. Don’t generally amount to much, but it’s the kinda thing’s gotta be contained.”
Carver said, “You like doughnuts?”
“Yeah, but I don’t make it a habit to eat while I’m on duty.”
“I thought you guys would have uniforms,” Carver said, looking at Val’s white slacks and green golf shirt. And he was wearing white slip-on shoes that looked like house slippers. Not good for chasing bad guys.
Val smiled, staring straight ahead. “Maybe this is the uniform. “
“Okay,” Carver said, “I’m sorry if I seem to be taking the Posse lightly. Desoto said you people did good work.”