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 helped 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.”