The Man With the Iron-On Badge (17 page)

I shut off the hose and surveyed the area. I saw footprints and tire tracks in the mud. I didn’t know which tire tracks were mine from yesterday, but I could see where I’d crept from the weeds to the front steps. I could also make out a single, unique tire track that began behind the mobile home and went on down the road.

I followed the tire track behind the motor home. It ended beside a discarded gas can and a bunch of empty bottles and beer cans. Arlo might have used Jolene’s car last night, but he’d fled on a motorcycle. I walked to the front again and surveyed the clearing.

Although I couldn’t remove my footprints from the clearing without creating new ones at the same time, I could make my movements less obvious. I walked all around the clearing again and behind the trees, so by the time I was done, it was impossible to distinguish my footprints, or any particular path I’d taken, from among all the others in the mud. Besides, I planned on ditching my shoes, along with everything else.

Satisfied that I’d done all that I could, I grabbed the bulging trash bag, retrieved my sledgehammer, and crept back to my car, which I’d hoped no one had noticed parked in the weeds. I put my dish gloves in the bag, put the bag in the trunk, and drove off.

Since I had no more leads and no clue where Arlo was, I made a U-turn and headed for Seattle, simply because it was someplace to go. Along the way, I stopped at a drugstore, and washed down a handful of Advils with a half-bottle of Pepto Bismol; then I went to a Footlocker outlet and bought a new pair of sneakers. I stuck my old shoes in the trash bag and removed the yearbook, which I slid under the driver’s seat. I wasn’t ready to look at it yet.

Instead, I found a pay phone and called Carol. I didn’t tell her about the fire or about Jolene’s murder. I also didn’t tell her I was lost, driving around with a trash bag full of incriminating evidence, with no idea where to go or what to do next.

I pretended like I was confident, totally in charge, and just checking in to see if she’d come up with anything.

“I stayed up all night, searching Internet databases for stuff on Arlo Pelz,” Carol said, weary but excited. “I think I got some good information for you.”

She’d found out which prison Arlo had done his time at, the date of his trial, and the names of his public defender, his prosecutor, and the investigating officers. None of that struck me as particularly useful at the moment, but I thanked her anyway. Then she told me she’d discovered one other piece of information. Arlo was born and raised in Deerlick, Washington, just thirty miles north of Spokane, which was where he’d been arrested for his drug activities.

Now I had someplace to go. There was no guarantee that Arlo would go running back home after killing his ex-wife, but it was a place to start. If he wasn’t there, hiding among family and friends, I might at least come up with something that would help me find him.

I thanked her again and told her I’d call when I got settled.

“What is it you’re not telling me?” she asked.

I thought about it, and then said: “I love you.”

It came out stilted, awkward, and forced, but it was such a struggle to say it this time, I didn’t have the energy to dress it up.

“I appreciate the effort that went into saying that,” she said. “But that isn’t what I meant.”

I knew what she meant. She meant the fire. She meant Jolene. I hated her for knowing me so well and, at the same time, if I’d told her I loved her right then, it wouldn’t have come out stilted at all.

Deerlick was so small, it barely merited a dot on the roadmap, and even then, it was the smallest dot you could register with the naked eye. According to the map, the town was clear across the state, almost a straight shot on I-90 and a solid six-hour drive away from Seattle.

But it took me a lot longer. There were a lot of reasons for that. For one thing, I drove slowly because I’d never traveled that stretch of highway before, or any road in central Washington State, and I didn’t want inadvertently to take the wrong fork in the darkness and end up in Peshastin, Wenatchee, Ephrata, Moxee City, or some other strange-sounding place. I also didn’t want any highway patrolmen to notice me.

The other thing that slowed me down was that I got off the Interstate at just about every exit that promised gas, food, or lodging. I got off to find out-of-the-way garbage cans to dump a few items from my Hefty bag of incriminating evidence. Dish gloves in Hyak, a coffee mug in Kachess Lake, a mop-head in Cle Elum, a vacuum bag in Thorp, my old sneakers in Kittitas. I spread bits of Jolene’s trailer across the state as if they were her ashes.

Before I was even halfway to Deerlick, somewhere around midnight, I’d disposed of everything except the memory of Jolene’s corpse and the yearbook that was stashed under the driver’s seat, both of which I’d managed put out of my mind for a few hours. I’d been so intent on running and covering up, that I’d avoided thinking about the case entirely.

Not about the case. About the suicide. About the murder. About two dead women. About my responsibility for it all.

But alone on that dark road, with no more tasks to complete and several long hours ahead of me before I arrived at the unknown, there was nothing else to think about.

I’d gone my whole life without affecting anyone else’s. I never mattered enough. During the day, I slept in my apartment. During the night, I sat in a guard shack. I didn’t see many people and I know they didn’t see me.

It was fine.

And then I changed that and within days a friend became a lover, a stranger beat me up, a woman killed herself, a building burned down, and a woman got murdered.

Would any of that have happened if I’d just stayed in my shack?

No, probably not.

And then I realized something that should have made me feel sick, that should have made me pull over suddenly to the side of the road, throw open the door of my car, and cough up a layer of stomach lining. But it didn’t, which only proved my realization was the inescapable truth.

I wasn’t sorry

I’d puked my guts out back in Jolene’s mobile home out of terror and revulsion, not guilt. Maybe I knew it even then and just didn’t want to believe it.

Yes, two women were dead.
But I was alive.

Alive in a way I’d never been before.

If I’d stayed in my shack, yeah, Lauren and Jolene might have lived. And the Sno-Inn Motel might still be open for business. And I might not have a bunch of broken ribs and a stomach eaten away by painkillers.

But I would still be dead.

I learned then that living doesn’t come without painful sacrifices, and that they aren’t always your own.

When I got too tired to drive any longer, and I felt the car starting to weave, I pulled over at a rest stop somewhere between Moses Lake and Ritzville.

I didn’t go to sleep right away. I pulled out the yearbook from underneath my seat, turned on my map light, and flipped through the pages.

The first thing that tumbled out was the “Where Are They Now?” newsletter. There was a nice write-up on Lauren that made her sound happy, successful, and very rich. It was an enticing advertisement for easy money to Arlo Pelz.

I flipped through the stiff, glossy pages of the yearbook and found Lauren’s class picture. She had a bright smile, full of hope and enthusiasm, that was in sharp contrast to her eyes, intense even then, hinting at a darkness I didn’t see in any of the other teenagers’ faces. It was a darkness that was still in Lauren’s eyes when she looked at me on the overpass, right before she took a flying leap.

There was nothing in Jolene’s picture that hinted at the disappointments and violence in her future. Her face, like most of the others, radiated nothing but boundless expectation and desire. When she leaped into the air in her cheerleading photos—her arms and legs spread, her face arched up into the sky—the borders of the page could barely contain her from soaring free.

A few pages later, alongside another photo of Jolene in liberating flight, was a picture of Lauren, looking slyly at the camera as she emerged, slick and wet, from the swimming pool. It was the women’s sports page, the page a hundred horny high school boys undoubtedly jerked off to. I would have. It was a page for dreaming, for looking at a picture of a cheerleader or swimmer or runner and thinking as you came in your fist …

She could be mine.

Years later, Arlo Pelz looked at that page and had the same dream.

The next few pages were torn out. I flipped to the index to see what was missing—it was the crew picture of the women’s swim team.

I closed the yearbook, slid it back under my seat, and turned off the map light. I spread out across the big, bench seat, shut my eyes, and worked on some dreams of my own.

I
woke up because I had to piss.

It was still dark outside. The clock on the dash said it was a little after four
A.M.
I sat up slowly, my back stiff, my ribs aching, opened the door, and staggered across the empty parking lot to the restrooms.

The bathroom reeked of stale piss. It probably hadn’t been cleaned in months. I relieved myself at the urinal and trudged back to my car, thinking I might get another hour or two of sleep before hitting the road again.

That wasn’t going to happen.

The driver’s side door of my car was open, and so was my trunk.

“Hey,” I said.

The trunk slammed shut and revealed a man, about six feet tall, wearing a puffy down jacket, flannel shirt, jeans, and a pair of muddy Doc Martens. Seeing the guy scared the shit out of me.

“No fucking suitcases?” he said angrily, looking right at me.

I suddenly realized just how alone I was. I glanced around and noticed a pickup truck at the far corner of the lot, hidden in the shadows. It must have been his. The infrequent traffic on the Interstate seemed a long way off.

And then I remembered who I was, and where I was going, and why I was in that parking lot. I wasn’t afraid anymore. I was excited.

“Get the hell away from my car,” I said.

“Or what?” He whipped out a switchblade from somewhere inside his jacket and marched toward me, a lopsided grin on his face. “Give me your wallet and your fucking car keys and maybe I’ll let you keep your shriveled little balls.”

I made like I was reaching into my back pocket for my wallet and pulled out my gun. He froze, his eyes wide with shock, and then he forced a smile.

“Well, fuck me,” he said. “I guess this makes us even.”

“Not unless you’ve got a semi-automatic handgun hidden up your ass,” I said. “Then again, you’d have to get to it first.”

Now that I had my gun out, I wasn’t quite sure what to do next. A hundred tough-guy scenes from a thousand TV shows and movies seemed to run through my head at once. And they all made me realize just how important this moment was for me.

“Drop the knife,” I said.

“This is my special knife. I got it in ‘Nam.” He just stood there, smiling, as if I wouldn’t notice he was twenty years too young to have been in Vietnam. “What if I put it in my pocket and I just walk away, no harm done?”

“You could,” I said.

He retracted the blade and his hand started towards his pocket.

“But you’d better ask yourself a question first,” I said. “Do you feel lucky today?”

His smile began to waver and his hand, the one with the knife, stopped before reaching his pocket.

“Well, do you, punk?” I grinned.

I probably sounded more like Bart Simpson than Clint Eastwood, but the props and the atmosphere more than compensated for it. From the way he looked at me, I could tell he’d decided I was crazy. He dropped the knife.

“This was a setup,” he said. “You’re one of those psycho-assholes who goes looking for trouble.”

“What if I am?” I asked, motioning him towards me with my free hand. “Walk this way until I tell you to stop.”

As he came towards me, I moved off to one side, and we made a little circle, until I was near my car and he ended up where I’d been standing before.

“Stop right there and empty all your pockets,” I said, “then pull them out so I can see them.”

“Fuck you.”

“You want to make this hard?” I shrugged and aimed my gun at his groin. “Go ahead, make my day.”

He must have seen something in my eyes, because he quickly held up his hands in submission. “Okay, okay, I’ll empty them.”

He hesitated for a moment, then slowly reached into his jacket. First one wallet, and then another, and then another, hit the ground. Then watches, necklaces, and some car keys. Then he got to his pants; out came some condoms, some loose change, and another wallet, which I figured was his.

I shook my head at him. “You’ve been a bad boy.”

“No worse than you, motherfucker.”

I grinned again. I liked that he thought I was tough. But the truth was, if I didn’t have my fake gun, by now I probably would have given him my car keys, my wallet, and been sobbing for mercy while he butt-fucked me into the pavement.

As much as I was enjoying the moment, I didn’t want to press my luck. If I stayed much longer, I was afraid the guy would see my gun in the right light and realize it was a fake and kill me with his bare hands. Or somebody would drive in, see me with the gun, and think I was the criminal. And if I was really unlucky, that somebody would be a highway patrolman.

“I want you to crawl into the bathroom, then lie face down on the floor with your feet sticking out the door so I can see them.”

“No fucking way I’ll crawl for you or anybody else,” he said. “You’re gonna have to shoot me, asshole.”

I sighed. “Works for me.”

I aimed at his head.

He immediately dropped to his knees and glared at me. I grinned at him.

“A man’s got to know his limitations,” I said. “You can thank me for showing you yours. Start crawling.”

He turned around and began to crawl towards the bathrooms, his butt facing me. “You better hope I never see you again, motherfucker.”

I ran up and kicked him in the stomach, and when he hit the ground on his side, I kicked him twice in the head. He went limp and lolled on his back. I wasn’t sure if he was faking it until I heard his bladder empty against the inside of his pants. I was certain he was unconscious then. No one goes that far to be convincing.