Joe bought chili dogs and Cokes from a street vendor and he and Arvo sat on a low wall to eat. Arvo realized it was mid-afternoon and he hadn’t eaten lunch yet. First, he showed Joe a photocopy of that morning’s letter:
My Darling Little Star,
I hope you had a good Christmas at Home with your Folks. I think that Family must be important to you in a way it never has been to me. Or maybe it has been TOO important to me. Strange things have happened in my Family and one day you will know all about it. But we must make a new start with our own Kids and all. I hope that your Family will be my Family too one day soon.
Though you were far away in Body, I felt that we were together in Spirit. I surround myself with your Image. I stand against my wall and I project your Image onto my Skin. I feel the warmth of the Light brush over me and I think it is you gently caressing me. But you were so far from my Arms and I saw you kiss him. I watched him put his Arms around you. I couldn’t bear it. You know what I can do, you have seen the Fruits of my Labors. All for you. For Love of you. Now you’re just a little bit freer than you were before Christmas. One of the Ties that binds you to Them has been cut. Accept my offering in the spirit of love and devotion with which it was intended. I will come for you soon then we will both be free to breathe beyond the Mirrors of the Sea forever.
Joe frowned and handed the letter back. “Weird,” he said. “Know what he means?”
“At first I didn’t,” said Arvo, folding the letter and putting it back in his pocket, “but this morning I checked the Good Cop, Bad Cop tapes for the time Sarah Broughton was away in England. There was a show on Christmas Eve where the Jack Marillo character kissed Sarah. It was just a friendly kiss, really — you know, a peck on the cheek. She was upset about a kid she was trying to help who got shot in a drive-by, so he gave her a hug and a kiss. I think that might have been what set him off.”
“What else did you find out from the actress?”
Arvo took a bite of his chili dog and told Joe about the heart drawn in the sand by John Heimar’s body. He also handed him a copy of the Christmas card and letter Sarah had found the morning she left for England.
“Shit,” said Joe after he’d read the other letter. “Two letters, two hearts, two confessions. Wouldn’t stand up in court, but it’s good enough for me. Why didn’t she tell us this before?”
Arvo shrugged. “Scared. Thought it would all just go away.”
“She’s been withholding evidence.”
“True. But she’s also been playing denial. She didn’t want to believe it was happening. Couldn’t believe it. Wouldn’t admit it to herself. Not until Marillo’s murder.”
“And now?”
“Oh, now she knows. Now she feels guilty. Thinks she might have been able to save him if she’d acted sooner.”
“Some hope.” Joe paused to take a mouthful of chili dog, then said, “Why are you defending her all of a sudden?”
“I’m not. I talked to her, that’s all. I think she’s scared enough to tell the truth.”
“Sure she’s not working that old Hollywood charm on you?”
An image of Sarah Broughton’s nakedness flashed through Arvo’s memory again: particularly the butterfly tattoo on her left shoulder, a beautiful, professional job done in red, blue and green, about three inches across. Somehow, seeing that tattoo had changed her again in his eyes; it added yet another dimension to what was already an enigma. But charm?
“Fuck you,” he said.
Joe laughed. “Yeah. Methinks this gentleman doth protest too much. But I’d rather be me than you when the Chief finds out.” He took another bite of his hot dog. Chili sauce dribbled from the corner of his mouth and onto his jacket. He swore and dabbed at it with a napkin.
“What do you mean?”
“We’ve got the links we were after now,” Joe said. “The heart. Both scenes. The letters. There’ll be no sitting on this. Just wait till the media get hold of it.”
“Christ, you’re right,” said Arvo. “Any rookie reporter should be able to put two and two together.”
“True,” said Joe. “But it’s my bet they’ll be busting their asses on the gay angle, if you’ll forgive the pun. And look on the bright side, man. This is a major case now.”
“That doesn’t seem a particularly bright side to me,” Arvo said. “What it means is we’ve got a major political case. We’ve got the Chief and the DA’s office falling all over one another to get an arrest on this. We won’t even be able to take a crap without somebody looking over our shoulders to make sure we’re doing it right.”
“What I’m saying is we’ve got unlimited resources now. Manpower. We’ve got people looking into every nook and cranny of Marillo’s and Heimar’s lives, see if they intersected anywhere, plus we get a rush on all forensic evidence. It ain’t all bad.”
Arvo was silent for a moment. Maybe Joe was right. Anything they wanted, they’d just have to ask. But Arvo was right, too; whatever they did, they’d have to do it under scrutiny. “This guy’s smart, Joe,” he said. “He might be crazy, but he’s smart. He’s not going to be easy to stop unless he starts getting careless. He’s very patient and very careful. Whoever planted Heimar’s body must have watched Sarah Broughton for days or weeks to get the timing just right. He had to know how far the tide would be in or out, what time she would pass the spot where he left the body. If he drew that heart for her to see, he didn’t want it washed away before she got there.”
“He probably waited a long time outside Marillo’s house, too,” said Joe. “There’s no way he could have known where Marillo was, or even if he was coming back that night. Shit, it was Christmas Day. Normal people spend it with their families or close friends.”
Sure, Arvo thought, remembering his own solo Christmas celebration. “I don’t think Christmas means a hell of a lot to the guy we’re looking for,” he said. “You read the letter. He’s very confused about family.”
“I guess so, if he could spend all Christmas Day hiding in the woods waiting for Marillo.”
Arvo nodded. “He’s a loner. Fits the profile. He’s also either very brave or very foolish. He put that letter I just showed you in the mailbox at Sarah’s beach house last night.”
“She was there?”
“Yeah. From the airport. I told Stu it seemed like the best environment to talk to her, where she’d feel most comfortable, be most likely to open up.”
“What about protection?”
“I was there, too.”
Joe raised an eyebrow and his eyes twinkled with humor. “All night?”
“Don’t say a word, Joe,” Arvo told him. “Not a word.”
“Who, me?”
“Nothing happened.”
“Sure it didn’t, Arvo.”
“The bastard slashed my tires.”
“Jealous?”
“That would be my guess.”
“Then you’d better be careful.”
“That thought had occurred to me. Anything else on the Marillo killing?”
Joe threw away his chili-dog wrapper and lit a cigarette. “Found some footprints in the ground back of the house — cheap Korean sneakers — but that’s all. Mostly dead ends, nothing but dead ends. And believe me, we’ve been pushing it. There’s plenty of pressure from above.” He pointed with his thumb toward the sixth floor of Parker Center, where the Chief had his office.