Ultimate Thriller Box Set - Crouch Blake (лучшие книги без регистрации txt) 📗

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.