Clouded Rainbow

by Jonathan Sturak

The road ahead was dark. Det. Cleveland was on his way toward the Belkin house hoping to find the clues he needed to answer the question, “Who is Jane Doe?” As the detective drove alone in his sedan, a pair of bright headlights illuminated the oncoming lane. They were higher than a normal car’s lights and were spaced apart a foot or two wider than the average automobile. As the speeding vehicle approached, Det. Cleveland realized it was a tractor-trailer. If he only knew that the man with the answer to his question, and the man who needed the detective to answer his own, was in that powerful vehicle, the story would be over. The vehicles passed each other. For an instant, the two men were side-by-side. Nevertheless, how would they know of this ironic passing? It was nothing more than speeding cars traveling in opposite directions, something all people experienced in their daily lives on the road. If one stops to ponder the existence of the hundreds, even thousands, of passing vehicles encountered in any given day, the answer to many questions could be in one of those passing cars. These ironic situations occurred all of the time, but if one was not aware of their existence, does the irony, in fact, still exist?

  Det. Cleveland arrived at the Belkin home. It was larger than he had expected and the affluent neighborhood said a lot about the man he was trying to question. As the detective pulled up alongside the curb, a muffler-less tow truck backed up from the driveway towing Roger’s heisted get-away vehicle. Det. Cleveland noticed two black-and-whites parked in the driveway as a tall, muscular patrolman watched the tow truck drive away. Det. Cleveland stepped out from his handsome sedan and walked toward the muscular patrolman.

  “Detective Ray Cleveland from the south precinct…What did you guys find?” the detective asked as he flipped his police badge.

  “Well, the guy skipped out. We figured he’d come back here after he stole a car from Saint Peters North Hospital. The owner is pretty pissed off.”

  “Did you find anything in the house?” Det. Cleveland asked as he took in the sizable structure.

  He felt dwarfed by the immense house, as its spacious two-stories housed a living area easily three times his own.

  The muscular patrolman followed the detective’s gaze, and then replied, “I don’t think so. We’re just finishing up our search. Ha! The nerve of this guy. This is a story for the guys back at the office.”

  The patrolman turned the conversation from professional to personal. Det. Cleveland knew that, until the case was solved, there was no time for pointless jests or personal opinions.

  “Thanks for the update,” he replied.

  The patrolman stepped back toward his squad car as Det. Cleveland gravitated toward the front door, which was wide open with the downstairs’ lights on.

  Det. Cleveland stepped through the front door. He swept his eyes around the entryway as he always had done when searching for clues. Nothing was insignificant when it came to investigating a case. He remembered the time when the evidence in a narcotics case was hidden on top of a cupboard, and his keen eyes noticed the tail of the string used to pull it down. Finding the location wasn’t a unique accomplishment, but the fact that he found it during his first pass of the apartment was unusual, as it would have puzzled most rookie detectives looking only for the obvious.

  His scan of the entryway didn’t answer any questions, but did provide crucial exposition to the man wanted for questioning. The affluence certainly suggested the man didn’t heist due to lack of money and implied he had a much stronger motive, one driven by a deeper human emotion. As Det. Cleveland looked around, he heard the banter of two men. They talked about a fellow officer’s follies on a police chase through the downtown streets. Det. Cleveland walked toward the location of the voices, the kitchen.

  The lights brightly burned as Det. Cleveland sneaked up on the two men. One was a skinny, twenty-eight-year-old patrolman whose uniform seemed two sizes too big. He had jet-black hair and a small mustache that looked unnatural on his boyish face. The other patrolman was thirty and had a round belly like Santa Clause. Opposite of St. Nick’s white hair, his head was shaved with a few days’ stubble poking through his scalp, which revealed his receding hairline. Both were inspecting Roger’s liquor cabinet. The sight of the detective widened their eyes, as if they were kids with their hands in a cookie jar.

  “Oh. Sorry, sir,” said the husky patrolman as he and his accomplice set down their respective bottles.

  “Detective Ray Cleveland,” the detective replied as he flashed his badge. “At ease gentlemen. What do you got?”

  “He has a nice collection of rums,” the skinny patrolman blurted.

  “No, you ass, he means the house,” rasped the burly man.

  Det. Cleveland remained emotionless on the outside, but he was rolling his eyes in his mind.

  “Oh. Well, we searched it. It looks like he was either in the house and left, or he was never here in the first place. We gave everything a once-over,” the skinny patrolman explained.

  “Any sign of struggle or other anomalies?”

  “No, sir. We are about done here anyway. They’re going to send a car by for a stake-out,” the scrawny patrolman continued.

  Det. Cleveland realized these first responders were worthless to him. He did give them credit for checking the immediacy of the situation and for taking care of returning the stolen car to its owner, but they lacked the killer instinct that only a well-bred detective could offer.

  “I see. Thanks, guys. I’m going to give the place a walk through. I’ll lock up,” Det. Cleveland responded.

  The two patrolmen removed their gaze from the prominent detective and walked past him with their heads held low. They resembled mischievous schoolboys leaving the principal’s office after being drilled with questions. Det. Cleveland heard the door shut behind him, which quickly brought silence into the spacious house. He walked over to the liquor cabinet, the structure that intrigued the two immature patrolmen. Several bottles of rum and brandy lined the top, but the large jug of wine that dominated the other inferior bottles caught his attention. Det. Cleveland picked up the jug and winced from its hefty weight. The label revealed it as Lambrusco. While the detective did not have much knowledge of wine, he figured this must have been a delicacy for the residents of the home.

  Det. Cleveland set the bottle down and turned to take in the kitchen. He walked slowly toward the window above the sink. It was as if he tried to mask the echo of his footsteps, but the hardwood floors provided no cushion to his posh dress shoes. Det. Cleveland peered through the window and noticed the swaying clothes hanging on the neighbor’s line. The fabric’s movement was soft and slow from the night breeze and it took some strength to remove his eyes from the hypnotic motion. After a minute, the detective turned and moved toward a floral arrangement. The daisies, tulips, and lilacs were still glowing and vibrant, which suggested to him that they had received a drink not more than thirty-six hours ago. Det. Cleveland walked toward the exit of the kitchen, and then flipped the light switch. He paused for a moment as his mind suddenly went blank. It was as if he couldn’t think or move. Little did the detective know, he was standing in the precise spot as the man he was trying to locate with the same radiating glow silhouetting his body from the entryway light. The only difference, however, was that he faced the opposite way that Roger had faced earlier in the evening.

  The sound of Det. Cleveland’s footsteps changed tone as he moved onto the older hardwood floors. Roger had remodeled the kitchen last year with new flooring and the entryway still had the original wood from the house’s construction some ten years ago. The detective, however, had no way of knowing this, and if he somehow found Roger hiding upstairs, the reason his footsteps sounded differently would probably be the last question he would ask.

  Det. Cleveland looked up the stairway before ascending. He always looked and assessed before he did anything, even just walking up stairs. The hallway was dark, but the light from the master bedroom immediately drew his attention. He pondered whether the front-line officers had left the light illu
minated or whether it had been the owner of the house before his great escape.

  Det. Cleveland stood at the doorway to the master bedroom. He took in the queen-sized bed in the center with nightstands on each side. He moved into the room. Immediately, the smell of alcohol tickled his nose. Det. Cleveland looked on top of the counters, but nothing that would have emitted the smell revealed itself. Checking the next probable location, he looked at the base of the bed, moving the flowing skirt on each side. Then he found the culprit—a bottle of “Jack Daniel’s Old Tennessee Whiskey.” Det. Cleveland put the bottle on the nightstand and looked at the side of the bed next to him. The covers were slightly imprinted on one side and near the pillow, just enough for the detective to confirm that a body had recently rested on top of the bed. He assumed the officers did not tamper with the light and the signs therefore suggested that Mr. Belkin, the owner, had used alcohol as a downer to induce sleep. Then, he had exercised the side of the bed as his resting place closest to the bottle. Det. Cleveland conjectured that when the patrolmen had startled him awake from the front door, Roger Belkin fled through the path of least resistance, the back door. Det. Cleveland made note of this in his notepad, trying to put a timeline and sequence to the man’s actions.

  The bathroom behind him begged inspection. Although Det. Cleveland was anxious to check out the backyard for clues, he knew he had to exhaust the immediate area to look for a smoking gun. He walked into the dark bathroom, flipping the light switch. He caressed the towel hanging over the shower door. Toiletries lined the back of the clean toilet and sink. The lipstick case caught the detective’s eyes as he gravitated toward the seemingly innocuous object. He wondered whether this was, in fact, the lipstick used by the unconscious Jane Doe lying in Southern General Hospital. As he looked at the woman’s make-up, his eyes shifted to the mirror in front of him. He paused, staring at his cool mug peering back at him. He looked at his dark eyebrows and green eyes. The man staring back appeared in-control and collected, but there was a slight wrinkle on his skin under his left eye. Det. Cleveland did not notice it before, but something about the concentrated lighting brought out all of the reflection’s flaws. Even though the wrinkle was subtle, it made Det. Cleveland question the man staring at him. He suddenly felt older and no longer impenetrable. The wrinkle signified a chink in his armor and made him think about death. There must have been something about this mirror, he finally concluded, something that made him see things he had never seen before. He thought about Roger Belkin standing in the same spot and wondered how many answers to his questions the all-seeing mirror had concealed.

  Det. Cleveland turned and left the confines of the bathroom. He flipped the switch, leaving the small space in darkness. He moved toward the master bedroom door as his steps created a filtered “clump” on the carpet. As he turned off the light switch, he hesitated with his hand still resting on the plastic toggle. His mind thought about any other clues he may have missed. As his brain calculated, his gut told him there was something else in the room, something that he had overlooked. Det. Cleveland flipped the switch back on. He gave the room another once over, and then it became clear. He galloped toward the pictures on the nightstand. A photograph behind a phone burned into his view. He grabbed it and saw a man smiling with a bubbly woman in his arms. He took a moment to assess the female, and then realized the animated woman was the same lifeless body alone in Nurse Ann’s care.

  “Jane Doe!” he exclaimed.

  He was baffled by how an attractive and vivacious woman who radiated from a piece of glossy paper could transform into an inanimate object with a grim future. He studied the good-looking man holding the woman. The man looked content and blissful as he embraced her. Det. Cleveland took a moment to put himself in the shoes of the photographer. The couple stood in front of the gigantic Hoover Dam, proud to share the moment together. A pair of birds soared in the blue sky above them. Then, Det. Cleveland shifted his eyes toward the bottom of the picture and saw written, “Roger and his Dynamite Lois.”

  Det. Cleveland grabbed the picture frame. He received the burning answer to his question of Jane Doe’s identity. She was Lois Belkin, wife to Roger Belkin of One Thirty Three Dietrich Road. He thought about Roger, a family man who lived in a perfect house in a perfect neighborhood, and wondered where this seemingly perfect man was at this moment. He wished he could tell him where his wife was and how to see her, but he could not do that at the moment. Det. Cleveland set the picture down and headed out of the room, eager to get this newly acquired information to those who needed it.

  Chapter 13