Heat (The Frank Pagan Novels) by Campbell Armstrong

Author:Campbell Armstrong [Armstrong, Campbell]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781504007108
Publisher: Open Road Media Mystery & Thriller
Published: 2015-02-17T00:00:00+00:00

25

CAPSICUM, NORTH CAROLINA

In a Chrysler rented under a false name, Ralph Donovan drove through the town of Capsicum at five o’clock in the afternoon. It wasn’t much of a place. The fastest moving thing in the small town was the lengthening of shadow as the sun descended. Main Street was moribund, a dead-dog thoroughfare where a few stores were open for business, and the others had been vacated and boarded-up.

A diner called Molly’s, a general store, a barber’s, a filling-station – everything else had gone, although you could still read the signs. Jenn’s Bridal Wear. Frank Saxx, Men’s Clothing. Cutesy’s, Everything Your Pet Could Want. Donovan wondered what kind of lives people led in these doomed places.

He switched off his air-conditioning, because he worried about the engine overheating – which would mean getting stuck in this butthole burg for hours – and he rolled down his window, allowing his arm to hang outside. The heat was palpable, the air dry as kindling. It was the kind of heat that constituted a personal assault, an insult to your body. People who lived here would surely shrivel. Eyes would dry in sockets, skin peel from bone.

Donovan left Capsicum and drove three miles on a narrow blacktop whose surface had begun to melt. It was a straight road and it shimmered in front of him, and the sun, glinting with outright malevolence, blinded him. He slipped on his dark glasses.

When the house came in view he turned into the long driveway. The house, surrounded by thick willows, was an old plantation number that had been allowed to run into a state of fatal disrepair. The stone steps crumbled, the columns were larded with birdshit and smothered in deep red ivy, and a couple of upstairs windows were broken. Not at all a cheerful place. He caught a glimpse of dilapidated shacks out back, old slave quarters surrounded by a forest of weeds. He parked his car at the foot of the steps and got out.

He wiped sweat from his eyes as he reached the columns. He’d hoped the shadow beyond the columns would provide some respite, but they didn’t. If anything, it was hotter in shade than in direct sun. Maybe heat just got trapped here in the unstirred, heavyweight air. He rang a doorbell and waited.

Skidelsky had said that only two people lived in the joint – an elderly man in a wheelchair, and his mildly deranged wife. As he waited, Donovan had the feeling he’d stumbled inside the attic of America, the place where everything useless was stored – houses like this, slave shacks, faded newspapers, sepia photographs, maybe even broken-necked banjos. Hey-ho, he thought. The business wasn’t going to take long, provided somebody came to answer the god-damn door. He rang the bell again. Nobody came.

He decided he’d step inside anyway. Maybe they had ceiling fans, cool air. He found himself in a big gloomy entranceway with open doors on either side. A great staircase swept in a curve to the upper part of the house.

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