Free Spark by John Lutz Page B

He climbed out of the car, waited a few seconds, then limped across Hughey when there was a break in the traffic.
    The desk sergeant said Desoto was in a meeting, so Carver sat on a long wooden bench and watched people come and go. Plainclothes detectives with their loose-jointed, too-casual air. Uniforms swaggering with their arms swinging out from their bodies to avoid the gear strapped to their belts. A down-and-out old man who looked like a street person, being booked for loitering, but not understanding. Bewildered, as if old age and destitution had caught up with him overnight. He kept widening his eyes and asking about a lottery, apparently thinking he’d won something. The desk sergeant was getting exasperated. The young uniform who’d brought in the loiterer looked alternately sad and amused, learning about life’s puzzle.
    When the old guy had finally been booked and taken to a holdover cell, the phone rang, and the desk sergeant held it to his ear briefly then hung up and told Carver he could go back to Desoto’s office.
    A couple of plainclothes cops nodded to Carver as he limped along the hall, remembering him from his department days. They’d all been in uniform then.
    Desoto was hanging up his cream-colored suit coat when Carver entered through the open door. There was an ornate brass hook on the wall near his desk, where he often hung his coats. Only he never put them directly on the hook, always used a shaped wooden hanger.
    “Amigo,” he said, nodding a hello to Carver and sitting down behind his desk as Carver sat. He was wearing a white-on-white shirt with gold cuff links and a gold tie bar, flowered tie with a lot of yellow in it, tan leather shoulder holster. The well-dressed cop’s ensemble. Did Desoto have a different color gun for each outfit? “You’re moving a bit gingerly today.” He didn’t seem to have noticed that about Carver, but he had.
    Carver told him why he was moving gingerly.
    “So,” Desoto said, when he was finished, “you want to file a complaint?”
    “Maybe to complain that filing a complaint wouldn’t do any good.”
    “Yeah, we both know how it works. The guy who did a job on you has probably got an alibi and two backup alibis.”
    Carver said he knew. “What I want is to find out who he is.”
    “Oh, I just bet you do. You wanna let him finish what he started.” Desoto shook his handsome head. His sleek black hair didn’t budge. “You latch onto something like this, you make a pit bull seem like a quitter.”
    Carver hoped he wasn’t going to start in with that “obsessive” talk again. Like Beth on the drive over. There was too much psychoanalysis in the world; things were complicated enough without it. Therapy had its uses, but it had also become the narcotic of the law-abiding. Can’t cope? No need to learn. See an expert. Again and again and again. People were taking therapists like Valium.
    “Commitment to revenge can be your fuel, amigo , and it can also get you killed.”
    “It isn’t only revenge,” Carver told him. “If somebody wants me to turn loose of the Jerome Evans investigation, it’s because there must be something to investigate.”
    “That hadn’t escaped me,” Desoto said. “But it won’t make you any less dead.”
    “Beth’s waiting for me outside,” Carver said. “Why don’t you feed the tough guy’s description into the process while I examine mug shots?”
    “How come she didn’t come in with you?”
    “I think you make her nervous.”
    Desoto didn’t say anything. Then he stood up. “Can you walk okay?”
    Carver said he could. He stood up and leaned hard on the cane.
    Desoto led him to a small room not much larger than a storage closet. It contained three chairs and a rectangular oak table. The pale-green walls were grease-stained and badly in need of paint. There were three stacks of thickly bound mug books on the table. The only light was from the single, dust-coated window.
    “I’ll leave you here to