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.