Ultimate Thriller Box Set (115 page)

If she hadn’t met Harvey Mapes, she’d be alive. She wouldn’t be sticking out of a TV set, her body rotting in her own blood, shit, and piss.

The thought made me gag again, and I hunched over the sink, my mouth wide open, but there was nothing left to heave, except maybe what was left of my rib cage.

This was a nightmare. I’d been hired to follow a cheating wife. That’s it. Now I was in a mobile home in Snohomish, Washington, with a corpse. This was the life of adventure I’d always wanted but I never thought it would feel, look, or smell like this.

I straightened up, looked at my reflection in the mirror, and ordered myself to leave the bathroom. I couldn’t stay here, as much as I wanted to. I couldn’t hide from what was in the living room. It had happened. Now I had to deal with it. Coolly. Calmly. Professionally.

The first thing I had to do was make sure I was really alone.

I picked up my gun off the floor and, breathing through my nose to avoid the stench, stepped out into the hall. I didn’t look in the living room. I put it off by checking out the bedroom first. The only thing that’d changed since I’d last seen it was that Arlo’s tennis shoes were gone. I checked the closet and behind the bureau. There was no place for Arlo to hide in here, and I was reasonably certain he wasn’t outside.

Now there was only one more place I could go.

I put my gun in my holster and, breathing through my mouth, staggered back into the living room. Again, I tried not to look at the body. I studied the room.

My coffee cup was where I’d left it and so was hers. It didn’t take a forensic expert to see that she’d died only a few minutes after I was gone.

Arlo must have been hiding outside when I showed up that day and he recognized me. After I left, he must have come in, found out what she’d told me, and got so mad that he smashed Jolene’s face into the big-screen TV.

I wondered if he really meant to kill her or if he’d even stuck around long enough afterwards to know that he had. Not that it mattered. Jolene was dead. And Arlo killed her, just as surely as he killed Lauren Parkus.

And I was his unwitting accomplice both times.

I thought about what I should do next.

The right thing to do, ethically and morally, was to call the police, report the murder, and tell them everything I knew.

If I did that, I would probably be charged with something for misleading them about the fire last night and maybe, if they were really sharp, about the accident in Santa Barbara. Everything I did would get back to Westland Security, and they’d fire me. And then there would be the reports in the press, and the embarrassment that came with it, which would be hard to live down and make it difficult for me to get future employment as a security guard, much less as a private eye.

The only good that would come out of calling the police was that it might get Arlo arrested faster for Jolene’s murder. But I didn’t see the hurry, not if it meant my life would get totally destroyed.

So, I didn’t call.

I decided to stick to my mission and bring in Arlo Pelz myself for what he’d done to Lauren. At that point, I could suggest to the authorities that he was responsible for the fire at the Sno-Inn. As for Jolene’s murder, by then they’d have discovered her body and, if they hadn’t, I could always point them in the right direction without admitting ever having been here myself.

To pull that off, I had to clean things up, so there was nothing that linked me to the crime scene.

I thought back to my conversation with Jolene and tried to remember everything I did and what I’d touched. I’d seen CSI, I’d read those Patricia Cornwell and Kathy Reich novels, I knew how they could nail me on microscopic evidence I didn’t even know I’d left. Carpet fibers, lint, hairs, dirt particles, footprints, it was almost too much to comprehend. I’d have to just wash down everything.

Which meant that not only would I be removing any trace of myself, but probably important evidence about Arlo being there, too.

There was no way around that. I was sorry Jolene was dead, but I had to look out for myself.

I found a pair of rubber dish gloves draped over the edge of the kitchen sink. They were too small for my hands, but they covered my fingertips, which was all that mattered. I opened a few drawers and cupboards, found plenty of cleanser and Hefty trash bags, and got to work.

I scrubbed down every surface I touched or might have touched. I vacuumed the couch and the carpets. I removed the vacuum bag and I shoved it into the trash, along with my coffee cup. I mopped the kitchen and bathroom floors, then took the sponge off the end of the mop and put it in the trash, too.

When I was done, I was drenched with sweat and my ribs were a row of jagged knives that stabbed me with each breath.

I felt I deserved it.

I gave the mobile home a quick once-over. I’d covered everything I could. The only thing left inside that I might have touched was the high school yearbook, but I was taking that with me. I shoved it in the trash bag for now. Then I remembered my roll of duct tape. I found it on the bathroom floor and stuck it in the bag, too.

The only trace of me that remained now were my footprints and tire tracks outside, and any fingerprints I might have left where I took cover. I grabbed some Lysol spray and a rag and stuck them in the bag, too.

Careful not to look at Jolene again, I carried the trash bag outside and closed the door behind me. I sprayed Lysol on the screen door, the wall, and the handrail along the steps to remove any fingerprints I might have left. I spotted a hose, which I used to wash muddy footprints and any microscopic stuff I might have left on the steps.

I shut off the hose and surveyed the area. I saw footprints and tire tracks in the mud. I didn’t know which tire tracks were mine from yesterday, but I could see where I’d crept from the weeds to the front steps. I could also make out a single, unique tire track that began behind the mobile home and went on down the road.

I followed the tire track behind the motor home. It ended beside a discarded gas can and a bunch of empty bottles and beer cans. Arlo might have used Jolene’s car last night, but he’d fled on a motorcycle. I walked to the front again and surveyed the clearing.

Although I couldn’t remove my footprints from the clearing without creating new ones at the same time, I could make my movements less obvious. I walked all around the clearing again and behind the trees, so by the time I was done, it was impossible to distinguish my footprints, or any particular path I’d taken, from among all the others in the mud. Besides, I planned on ditching my shoes, along with everything else.

Satisfied that I’d done all that I could, I grabbed the bulging trash bag, retrieved my sledgehammer, and crept back to my car, which I’d hoped no one had noticed parked in the weeds. I put my dish gloves in the bag, put the bag in the trunk, and drove off.

Since I had no more leads and no clue where Arlo was, I made a U-turn and headed for Seattle, simply because it was someplace to go. Along the way, I stopped at a drugstore, and washed down a handful of Advils with a half-bottle of Pepto Bismol; then I went to a Footlocker outlet and bought a new pair of sneakers. I stuck my old shoes in the trash bag and removed the yearbook, which I slid under the driver’s seat. I wasn’t ready to look at it yet.

Instead, I found a pay phone and called Carol. I didn’t tell her about the fire or about Jolene’s murder. I also didn’t tell her I was lost, driving around with a trash bag full of incriminating evidence, with no idea where to go or what to do next.

I pretended like I was confident, totally in charge, and just checking in to see if she’d come up with anything.

“I stayed up all night, searching Internet databases for stuff on Arlo Pelz,” Carol said, weary but excited. “I think I got some good information for you.”

She’d found out which prison Arlo had done his time at, the date of his trial, and the names of his public defender, his prosecutor, and the investigating officers. None of that struck me as particularly useful at the moment, but I thanked her anyway. Then she told me she’d discovered one other piece of information. Arlo was born and raised in Deerlick, Washington, just thirty miles north of Spokane, which was where he’d been arrested for his drug activities.

Now I had someplace to go. There was no guarantee that Arlo would go running back home after killing his ex-wife, but it was a place to start. If he wasn’t there, hiding among family and friends, I might at least come up with something that would help me find him.

I thanked her again and told her I’d call when I got settled.

“What is it you’re not telling me?” she asked.

I thought about it, and then said: “I love you.”

It came out stilted, awkward, and forced, but it was such a struggle to say it this time, I didn’t have the energy to dress it up.

“I appreciate the effort that went into saying that,” she said. “But that isn’t what I meant.”

I knew what she meant. She meant the fire. She meant Jolene. I hated her for knowing me so well and, at the same time, if I’d told her I loved her right then, it wouldn’t have come out stilted at all.

***

Deerlick was so small, it barely merited a dot on the roadmap, and even then, it was the smallest dot you could register with the naked eye. According to the map, the town was clear across the state, almost a straight shot on I-90 and a solid six-hour drive away from Seattle.

But it took me a lot longer. There were a lot of reasons for that. For one thing, I drove slowly because I’d never traveled that stretch of highway before, or any road in central Washington State, and I didn’t want inadvertently to take the wrong fork in the darkness and end up in Peshastin, Wenatchee, Ephrata, Moxee City, or some other strange-sounding place. I also didn’t want any highway patrolmen to notice me.

The other thing that slowed me down was that I got off the Interstate at just about every exit that promised gas, food, or lodging. I got off to find out-of-the-way garbage cans to dump a few items from my Hefty bag of incriminating evidence. Dish gloves in Hyak, a coffee mug in Kachess Lake, a mop-head in Cle Elum, a vacuum bag in Thorp, my old sneakers in Kittitas. I spread bits of Jolene’s trailer across the state as if they were her ashes.

Before I was even halfway to Deerlick, somewhere around midnight, I’d disposed of everything except the memory of Jolene’s corpse and the yearbook that was stashed under the driver’s seat, both of which I’d managed put out of my mind for a few hours. I’d been so intent on running and covering up, that I’d avoided thinking about the case entirely.

Not about the case. About the suicide. About the murder. About two dead women. About my responsibility for it all.

But alone on that dark road, with no more tasks to complete and several long hours ahead of me before I arrived at the unknown, there was nothing else to think about.

I’d gone my whole life without affecting anyone else’s. I never mattered enough. During the day, I slept in my apartment. During the night, I sat in a guard shack. I didn’t see many people and I know they didn’t see me.

It was fine.

And then I changed that and within days a friend became a lover, a stranger beat me up, a woman killed herself, a building burned down, and a woman got murdered.

Would any of that have happened if I’d just stayed in my shack?

No, probably not.

And then I realized something that should have made me feel sick, that should have made me pull over suddenly to the side of the road, throw open the door of my car, and cough up a layer of stomach lining. But it didn’t, which only proved my realization was the inescapable truth.

I wasn’t sorry.

I’d puked my guts out back in Jolene’s mobile home out of terror and revulsion, not guilt. Maybe I knew it even then and just didn’t want to believe it.

Yes, two women were dead. But I was alive.

Alive in a way I’d never been before.

If I’d stayed in my shack, yeah, Lauren and Jolene might have lived. And the Sno-Inn Motel might still be open for business. And I might not have a bunch of broken ribs and a stomach eaten away by painkillers.

But I would still be dead.

I learned then that living doesn’t come without painful sacrifices, and that they aren’t always your own.

***

When I got too tired to drive any longer, and I felt the car starting to weave, I pulled over at a rest stop somewhere between Moses Lake and Ritzville.

I didn’t go to sleep right away. I pulled out the yearbook from underneath my seat, turned on my map light, and flipped through the pages.

The first thing that tumbled out was the “Where Are They Now?” newsletter. There was a nice write-up on Lauren that made her sound happy, successful, and very rich. It was an enticing advertisement for easy money to Arlo Pelz.

I flipped through the stiff, glossy pages of the yearbook and found Lauren’s class picture. She had a bright smile, full of hope and enthusiasm, that was in sharp contrast to her eyes, intense even then, hinting at a darkness I didn’t see in any of the other teenagers’ faces. It was a darkness that was still in Lauren’s eyes when she looked at me on the overpass, right before she took a flying leap.

There was nothing in Jolene’s picture that hinted at the disappointments and violence in her future. Her face, like most of the others, radiated nothing but boundless expectation and desire. When she leaped into the air in her cheerleading photos—her arms and legs spread, her face arched up into the sky—the borders of the page could barely contain her from soaring free.

A few pages later, alongside another photo of Jolene in liberating flight, was a picture of Lauren, looking slyly at the camera as she emerged, slick and wet, from the swimming pool. It was the women’s sports page, the page a hundred horny high school boys undoubtedly jerked off to. I would have. It was a page for dreaming, for looking at a picture of a cheerleader or swimmer or runner and thinking as you came in your fist . . .

She could be mine.

Years later, Arlo Pelz looked at that page and had the same dream.