The Man With the Iron-On Badge

by Lee Goldberg

  The guy finds out that the sister he thought was dead is alive, and that he’s been fucking her for weeks, and what’s his first reaction?

  He asks her to marry him!

  It didn’t make sense to me.

  I mean, I could think of a lot of reactions to news like that, but a marriage proposal wasn’t one of them.

  “I wish I could say we lived happily ever after, but she was tormented by guilt,” Cyril said. “I told her if there was a price to pay, she’d paid it long ago. She’d earned her happiness. She didn’t believe it, so she threw herself into to charity work, thinking that would make the guilt go away. It almost did.”

  How could he not understand her guilt? Didn’t he think there was anything wrong, anything unusual, about marrying his own sister?

  Apparently, he didn’t feel the least bit uncomfortable with the arrangement.

  The only thing I could figure was that the shock of finding out who she was must have turned his brain to Cheese Whiz.

  What other explanation could there be for his bizarre reaction?

  And then I realized there was another one, and that it explained everything.

  My vision was still a blur, but for the first time since I got involved in this case, I saw everything clearly.

  “You were sleeping with your sister before,” I said. “Here, at the lake, when you were teenagers.”

  Cyril nodded without a trace of shame. “Arlo saw us in the woods. He was going to tell, unless Kelly slept with him, too. That’s why she killed herself. Only she didn’t, did she? Not then, anyway.”

  The rest of the story I already knew or could guess. After staging her suicide, she somehow made her way to Seattle and started another life. After the car accident gave her a new face, there was nothing stopping her anymore from searching out her brother and reuniting with him as lovers once more. No one would ever know the truth about who she was.

  But once again, Arlo Pelz discovered her secret.

  That’s what I meant about fate being cruel and inescapable. Twice Kelly Parkus had killed herself to protect her brother, only this time, she wouldn’t be coming back.

  I almost felt sorry for Cyril.

  Then I remembered what he did to Arlo and what was probably in store for me, and he lost my sympathy.

  That’s when I should probably have instigated my cunning escape plan, only I didn’t have one. But at that point, I couldn’t even stand up on my own, much less wrestle the Rambo knife away from Cyril. There was nothing stopping him from dragging me to a boat and tossing me overboard the same way he did with Arlo.

  “I guess you underestimated me, huh?” I said.

  He looked up at me as if he’d forgotten I was there. “What do you mean?”

  “I wasn’t just the jerk in the guard shack, the clown with the iron-on badge, was I? You paid me to do a job and I did it, and then some. You sure as hell didn’t expect that, not from a guy you thought couldn’t pick his nose without illustrated instructions. But I found Arlo Pelz and I figured out who your wife really was, didn’t I?”

  I was reciting my own epitaph and I knew it.

  I wanted him to know how wrong he’d been about me, how smart and capable I’d been. I wanted him to acknowledge it, if only with a nod of his head.

  “You’re right, Harvey, I made a big mistake hiring you.” Cyril said. “I was afraid a professional detective might find out who Lauren really was. I never thought you would. Then again, a real detective would have stopped working when I fired him and wouldn’t be sitting here right now.”

  “So what happens now, Cyril? Are they going to find two boats tomorrow morning drifting without anchors?”

  Cyril rose to his feet, clutching the knife and the towel, and looked down at me. “I’m not a murderer, Harvey.”

  “Let’s ask Arlo about that.”

  “That was justice. He killed my sister and I made him pay for it,” Cyril said. “I’ve got no reason to hurt you.”

  “Except to stop me from going to the police and telling them what you’ve done.”

  It was only after I said it that I realized how I stupid I was to say anything.

  What the hell was I thinking?

  Did I want him to kill me?

  “I haven’t done anything,” Cyril said. “At least nothing that can be proved. The only person you’d be causing trouble for is yourself.”

  “I didn’t push Arlo out of a boat with an anchor tied to his feet.”

  I don’t know what was making me say those things, except maybe some deep-rooted death wish I didn’t realize I had. Was I trying to talk him out of sparing my life?

  No, I was only saying what Mannix, or Spenser, or even Rockford would in the same situation. They never let the bad guy get away with anything, even if their own lives were at stake. The bad guy had to know that the detective knew what was really going on. Now, more than ever, I felt the need to fulfill the duties of my role.

  “Think a moment, Harvey. No one knows I’m here, no one has seen me. And I’ll let you in on a secret: there are no plane tickets, rental car agreements, or gas station receipts proving I was here. I drove up here in my own car, paid cash for gas, and didn’t stop until I got to these woods, where I waited and watched, never encountering a soul,” Cyril said. “You, on the other hand, have left big tracks.”

  I didn’t see what he was getting at; then again, I’d just suffered a concussion. I could be forgiven for being a little slow on the uptake.

  “I haven’t done anything illegal,” I lied.

  “That’s not how it will look, if you are stupid enough to bring the police into this,” Cyril said. “You flew up to Seattle and, masquerading as a detective, interrogated Mona Harper. You rented a car and drove to Deerlick, where you made a spectacle of yourself, going all over town asking questions about Arlo.”

  “So what?” I said. “I didn’t kill him.”

  “Really? Let’s look at the evidence. You beat up Arlo, his blood is all over your clothes and this cabin. You bound and gagged Arlo, your fingerprints are on the duct tape. As far as the motive, well, I’ll tell them how I hired you to follow my wife and you became obsessed with her. They won’t have to take my word for that; it’s clear from those pictures you took of her and kept for yourself, the ones in your pocket right now. You obviously blamed Arlo for her suicide and tracked him down. To anyone objectively looking at the evidence, you killed Arlo Pelz.”

  His scenario was pretty damning, I had to give him that. And he didn’t even know about the Sno-Inn fire, or about Jolene’s murder and how I’d altered the crime scene, or about the highway robber I beat up the same way I did Arlo. If all those events were uncovered, and were looked at in the wrong way, they would only support Cyril’s take on things. Even if I revealed that Lauren was Cyril’s sister, it wouldn’t change things for me. He’d be embarrassed and humiliated, but he wouldn’t be on death row. I would be.

  Yeah, he had it all worked out. I should have been happy about it, too, because it meant he didn’t have to kill me. But I wasn’t happy. I felt thoroughly screwed. I wasn’t going to bring anyone to justice, unless I wanted to turn myself in, and I was too selfish to do that.

  “That’s all hypothetical, though,” Cyril said. “Because no one besides us knows what happened to Arlo Pelz and nobody cares. No one is ever going to be looking for him anyway.”

  Except maybe the Snohomish police, to question him about Jolene’s murder. They’d assume his disappearance was a flight from justice. They’d never suspect he was at the bottom of Big Rock Lake, being nibbled by fishes. And, after a while, they’d just stop looking.

  Cyril wiped his prints off the knife with the towel, then tossed the weapon on the table. He gathered up his flippers and goggles and started towards the door. He must have thought we were finished. We weren’t.

  “That’s all fine and dandy, Cyril, but don’t walk out that door thinking you’ve fooled me or yourself,” I said. “You’d have killed me if you thought you
could get away with it. The only reason I’m still alive is the same reason Arlo is dead. You can’t risk the truth about you and your sister coming out.”

  He turned around slowly.

  I pulled myself up into a standing position, using all the willpower I had not to fall. I staggered, and I swayed, and had to brace myself against the couch, but at least I was facing him. I didn’t want him looking down on me one second longer.

  “You didn’t kill Arlo for justice, you killed him to save yourself,” I said. “If I turned Arlo over to the police, there would have been a trial and the truth about Lauren would have come out. You couldn’t allow that. The only thing stopping you from killing me are those big tracks I left. You can’t risk what an investigation into my disappearance would reveal about you and Lauren. In the end, that’s all that matters to you.”

  Cyril shook his head sadly. “You really don’t understand, do you? I don’t care if anyone finds out about Kelly and me. I don’t care about anything now that she’s gone.”

  He turned and walked out.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I was getting pretty good at cleaning up crime scenes.

  I changed out of my bloody clothes and, once I felt clear-headed enough to drive, I went up the highway to the next town and stopped at a 7-11. I bought some cleaning supplies and a baseball cap to hide the ugly lump on my head.

  I got back to my cabin around dawn and wiped up the blood and anyplace I thought Arlo might have left his prints. At the same time, I was also unwillingly removing any trace of Cyril, too. That made me an accomplice-after-the-fact to two murders.

  I wasn’t proud of it.

  There wasn’t anything I could do about the slashed blanket on my bed. I figured if I took it, that would call more attention than the tear would. Besides, I had to believe those ratty blankets tore pretty easily, so I turned the tear into a rip and left it.

  I put all the dirty paper towels, my bloody clothes, the stabbed pillow, the roll of duct tape, and the Rambo knife into a trash bag and put it the trunk of my rental car, alongside the sledgehammer and the spare tire.

  I gave the apartment another quick once-over. Any other trace evidence I left behind I figured would be vacuumed up and washed away by the maid when she cleaned up the cabin for the next guest.

  I was about to go, when I remembered one more thing. I went back into the bedroom, took the kitchen chair out of the closet, and returned it to its place at the table.

  When I walked up to the store, Tom Wade was standing on the porch, looking out at the lake through a pair of binoculars. Betty Lou was wiping the counter with a rag and didn’t see me.

  “Is that one of our rowboats out there?” Wade asked.

  “I don’t know, Tom,” his wife replied. “Why don’t you go down to the beach and see if any of our boats is missing.”

  “I think I’ll do that.” He lowered his binoculars, turned around, and smiled when he saw me. “Well, good morning, Harvey. How about some breakfast?”

  “I’m making pancakes,” Betty Lou said.

  “It will have to be next time,” I said, setting my key on the counter. “I’m afraid I have an early plane to catch in Spokane.”

  “Let me get you a slice of pie for the road,” Betty Lou said, hobbling off into the kitchen. “It will only take a minute …”

  “Did you enjoy your stay?” Wade asked me.

  “I’ll never forget it,” I replied.

  Before I left, I borrowed Wade’s binoculars, stood on the porch, and took a look at the lake. I stared at the little boat floating out on the water and wondered about all those missing anchors.

  I wondered if Esme Parkus was really down at the bottom, or if she’d staged her suicide too, so she could try a new life somewhere else. And if she had, I wondered if I could find her and what I’d learn about fate if I did.

  I dumped the contents of the trash bag in dumpsters around Spokane and tossed the Rambo knife, my BB gun, and the sledgehammer I never used into the river.

  I kept the yearbook, though.

  I dropped the Crown Victoria off at the EconoCar outlet at the Spokane airport; then I called Carol and told her I’d be home that afternoon.

  She had a lot of questions, and I promised I’d answer them all when I got home. I was still trying to decide if I really would. I wasn’t sure which would make her fall out of love with me faster, the truth about what I’d done to solve the mystery or the lies I’d have to tell to convince her I’d failed.

  While I was waiting for my flight, I went to the gift shop and browsed through the selection of paperbacks for something to read on the plane. They had a lot of mysteries there, but none of them interested me. I’d lost my taste for detective stories.

  Instead, I spent the three-hour flight to LA flipping back and forth through the yearbook, looking into the eyes of two young women, searching for clues to what happened to them and what might become of me.

  I ransomed my car from airport parking and drove home. After driving those big cars up in Washington, my Kia Sephia felt unbearably small and cramped. But I’m not sure the tiny car was entirely to blame for my sudden claustrophobia. I was boxed-in by the stop-and-go, rush hour traffic on the San Diego Freeway and by the inevitability of the questions Carol was going to ask.

  Even my own skin felt too tight. Between my cracked head and cracked ribs, it hurt to think and it hurt to breathe.

  I tried to do as little of both as I could.

  I could have flown halfway back to Seattle in the time it took me to drive from the airport to the Caribbean, but once I got there, I wished the journey had taken a little longer.

  Carol’s Toyota Camry was parked in her spot a few spaces down from mine. She’d come home early.

  Stalling, I stopped at the mailbox inside the lobby and got my mail. There were a couple bills and a letter from my insurance company. It looked like a check. That was good news.

  I stepped into the courtyard and the cloud of chlorine gas emanating from the pool. It was the sweet, toxic smell of home. It felt like I’d been away for years instead of days.

  I went up the stairs to my apartment. I opened the door, tossed my gym bag and my mail on the couch, and stood there for a minute, just breathing the stale air and looking at the place. I used to be able to look at the beaten-up couch and the sagging bookcases and think the place felt lived-in. But I didn’t see much of a life there anymore.

  I closed the door and walked down to Carol’s apartment. She must have heard me coming, because her door was open and she was standing there, waiting for me.

  And suddenly, I realized I couldn’t remember the last time anyone had waited for me, the last time anyone wanted to share what I’d felt or experienced.

  Seeing her at that moment, I never wanted a woman so much in my life. I took her in my arms and kissed her hungrily. She kissed me back with just as much appetite. She pulled me into her apartment and I kicked the door shut with my foot.

  We did it with a ferocity and urgency that approached the kind of thing you see in movies, only we didn’t rip our clothes into shreds, and our lovemaking was frequently interrupted by cries of pain, mostly from me. Maybe it wouldn’t have hurt so much if we’d made it to the bed instead of doing it on the floor, and if I was on top instead of her, but we weren’t thinking of comfort, only of slaking our need. And when it was over, about five minutes later, we lay beside each other on the floor, breathing hard, our bodies sticky with sweat and saliva and other stuff.

  We lay quietly like that for a while, then she rolled on her side to face me, rested her head on her arm, and said: “Tell me everything.”

  So I did, without even thinking about it. I didn’t leave anything out, or dress anything up so she’d still have some respect for me.

  I told her about Jolene’s murder, and how I’d cleaned up the crime scene to save myself. I told her how I took pleasure in the beating of the highway robber, and how later I used what I learned on Arlo Pelz. I told her how that he
lped Cyril drown Arlo and why Cyril did it. And I told her how I cleaned up the cabin and threw away the evidence to save Cyril and myself.

  I told her the whole story while looking up at the ceiling and feeling her gaze against the side of my head like a heat lamp. It was hard enough revealing my shortcomings while I was naked; I didn’t want to see the anger, the disappointment, and the disgust on her face while I did it. When I was done, I sat up with a grunt of pain and started to gather up my clothes.

  “What are you doing?” Carol asked.

  “Going home,” I said, peering under the coffee table for my underwear. “Isn’t that what you want?”

  I found a sock, but no underwear.

  She sat up and touched my shoulder. “You are home.”

  I clutched the sock, and my shirt, to my chest. “What about the things I did?”

  “You did some stupid things,” she said. “I’m not happy you did them. So what? You aren’t a perfect person. Neither am I.”

  “You’ve never covered up a murder or beat the shit out of somebody when they were defenseless,” I said. “You’ve got to be an idiot, a coward, and an asshole to do that.”

  “Yeah, that’s true. But the fact you know you fucked-up, and you recognize you can be an idiot, a coward, and an asshole, goes a long way towards making up for the things you did, at least with me,” she said. “Eventually, I’m going to fuck-up, and you’ll see all of my failings, and you’ll have to decide whether you can live with them, too.”

  I turned around and looked at her. I tried to keep my eyes on her face and not her breasts, because it was an important moment in our relationship, but I couldn’t.

  “I was planning on lying to you,” I said. “I’m not sure why I didn’t.”

  “I think I know,” she said. “And that’s another reason I don’t want you to go. You care about me so much that it’s important to you that I know you as you really are. That kind of honesty isn’t easy. It was a very brave thing you did for me.”

  Her words had a big impact on me, and I didn’t want to let her down. I wanted to continue to earn her respect, so I made another admission.