Ultimate Thriller Box Set (108 page)

She stood there, looking at me. I really wished I had some clothes on.

“This isn’t about doing the job,” Carol said. “It’s about your curiosity.”

“That’s not true,” I argued, feeling very exposed. I stepped behind the kitchen counter for some cover. “Maybe I can help her.”

I was more exposed than I thought. I quickly corrected myself. “Maybe I can help both of them.”

If she caught my slip, she didn’t mention it.

“Harvey, you’ve done a good job. It could be the start of something. Of a lot of things. Don’t screw it up now.”

Carol turned around and went back to bed. I stood there for a moment, thinking about our conversation, weighing what she’d said. I also thought about what Spenser, Elvis Cole, Travis McGee, and Joe Mannix might say.

I knew what I had to do. I really didn’t have any other choice.

***

I was parked down the street from the Bel Vista Estates gate by seven thirty the next morning.

I couldn’t park in my usual spot, because Sergeant Victor Banos was sure to notice my car when he arrived to take over from Stanley Gertz, the old guy who handles my shift on my night off.

Even so, I could see who came and went from where I was, and had plenty of time to duck down under my dash when Cyril Parkus left at eight twenty and drove right past me.

I knew that Carol was right, but she just didn’t get it. She wasn’t immersed in the case the way I was. I couldn’t go back to sitting in my shack, watching Cyril and Lauren Parkus come and go, without knowing the truth.

I didn’t care whether it was my business or not.

And I was certain that most private eyes, at least most fictional ones, would agree with me on this, with the possible exception of Jim Rockford, who never did anything unless he was paid to or was forced into it at gunpoint.

So I sat there, waiting for something to happen.

As the hours passed, I found myself enjoying the wait, just sitting there watching the gate. There was something about being a private eye that gave even the simplest things in life more intensity. Even doing nothing suddenly had a thrilling edge to it.

It was certainly different from the experience of sitting in the shack and doing nothing.

I thought about going back to Swift Rent-A-Car and trying to talk the lady behind the counter into giving me more on Arlo Pelz. I felt I handled myself well last time, and that maybe we connected in some way towards the end.

Then again, there might be something in the computer about what happened to Arlo’s car, and if I walked in asking more questions, she might just call the cops on me.

I really had to find myself a big, brutal sidekick who wouldn’t care about ethics, morality, or the law, and would be glad to do all the dangerous or tricky stuff that I didn’t want to. I could send him to talk to her. He’d just walk in, stick his gun in the woman’s face, and leave with a complete printout of the information I wanted.

I imagined him. A huge, bald, Asian guy with a dragon tattoo on his face. His name would be Drago. We’d engage in lots of witty, tough-guy repartee. We’d share a manly code of honor. He’d pick up my uniform at the dry cleaners’.

Around eleven, Lauren sped through the gate in her Range Rover. I started the car and really had to floor it to keep up with her, inadvertently letting a couple cars slip in between us. She was in a hurry to go somewhere, and I had a feeling it wasn’t to get a cup of coffee.

I was excited. I had a hunch that my extra, added surveillance was going to have an immediate payoff. And then I was excited simply because I’d had a hunch. Before I became a private eye, I never had hunches.

Lauren raced down the hill towards the freeway. I wondered whether we’d be heading down to LA or up to Santa Barbara. I wondered if we’d be seeing Arlo Pelz again and if I’d have an opportunity to ambush him. When she passed the onramp, I knew we were going south.

But she suddenly came to a screeching stop in the middle of the freeway overpass, causing a domino-like chain reaction in the lane behind her. Everyone slammed on his brakes to avoid rear-ending the car in front of him. I was so busy trying not to become a Kia stain on the truck in front of me, I didn’t even see Lauren get out of her car.

When I saw her again, she was already standing on the rail above the freeway.

She turned her head and looked right at me, her eyes blazing with the intensity of spotlights, exposing me and everything I ever thought or felt.

And then, before I could even blink, Lauren faced straight ahead and dove gracefully into the traffic below.

Chapter Eleven

I never saw what happened next. But I heard it. The scraping and sliding and tearing and mashing of metal, glass, and flesh, and the moment afterward of unnatural stillness, when even time seemed shocked into immobility and silence, a stillness shattered by screams everywhere and the blur of people abandoning their cars, running down to the freeway to help the injured and the dead and to see the mess that one human being can make.

I backed up, made a screeching U-turn, and drove away. I didn’t want to be any part of it.

But I already was.

Lauren told me as much with that look. She said: I know you’re there. I know what you’ve seen. Now watch this, asshole.

Or maybe that wasn’t what she said. Maybe she was asking me a question: Why did you do this to me?

I didn’t know where to go or what to do. I just drove aimlessly. I wasn’t aware of the traffic, of the stoplights, or even the car itself. I was fleeing.

All I saw was that horrible moment again and again, on an endless-replay loop in my mind. And the more I thought about it, the more frightened I became, the more my stomach churned and ached and seized up.

I finally stopped the car and puked in the street, my broken ribs raging with pain with each deep, choking heave. When I was done, I leaned back against my car, clutching my sides, my whole body shaking, tears streaming down my checks.

And once again, I saw her head turning around slowly, her eyes intense, her lips curled in a tiny grimace.

She was looking for me. She wanted to be sure I was watching, that I would never forget.

And then Lauren was gone. Off the edge, taking me with her.

***

It was on the radio within the hour. I was somewhere out near Fillmore, driving aimlessly through the endless farmland, when I heard it.

They said a woman leaped to her death from a freeway overpass in Camarillo, causing a seventeen-car pile-up and injuring half a dozen people, two of them seriously.

Police had found her abandoned Range Rover and were withholding her identity until notification of next-of-kin.

Authorities said a full autopsy would be conducted to see if drugs or alcohol played a role in the horrific tragedy, but based on numerous witness accounts, they believed no foul play was involved.

They were calling it a suicide.

There was no mention of her looking at anybody first, or of the guy in the Kia Sephia who sped away from the scene.

No one was chasing me except my conscience, and that’s how it would stay.

I knew that Cyril Parkus wouldn’t tell them about her strange behavior, or that he’d hired a security guard to follow her around, or that somebody named Arlo Pelz was blackmailing her. I knew that despite the shock, the sorrow, and the disbelief, he would protect himself and her secret.

I had nothing to fear. And yet, I was terrified. Of what, I’m not sure. Maybe it was simply the knowledge that my presence alone could kill, that without even meeting someone, just by watching her, I could provoke death and injury.

That may have been why I was afraid, but it wasn’t why I felt guilty.

I didn’t really have a reason to be. I knew it wasn’t my idea to follow her. I knew I wasn’t the one blackmailing her and that I didn’t push her off that overpass. I knew I had nothing to do with the secret that haunted her.

But I still felt guilty.

Because I was there.

Because she wanted me to.

***

Fillmore was a Hollywood-perfect recreation of a small town from the ‘30s, only with cars from the ‘90s filling the diagonal parking spaces.

Actually, the town had always looked like this, until it was decimated by the 1994 earthquake. They quickly rebuilt the Main Street, faithfully restoring everything to the way it had been.

But it wasn’t really Fillmore any more, no matter how much they thought it was.

They had to know it, too; otherwise, why put historical placards on every building, detailing its history and rebirth?

It made the whole town feel like a museum exhibit. Because it was. An authentic recreation of a genuine California farming town.

Even so, walking down Main Street past the hardware store and pool hall and ice cream parlor was like stepping into an idealized, make-believe world, one more innocent and safe than the one we live in.

I don’t know how I ended up there, but it was the perfect place for me to be. It didn’t matter if Fillmore was real any more or not. In fact, it was probably better that it wasn’t.

For the rest of the day, and into the night, I walked up and down the three blocks of Main Street, stopping to admire each and every window display. I sat in the park and fed the birds. I walked along the train tracks and had a slice of homemade pie at the diner.

I found a way to escape. I went to a place that didn’t really exist. Where even the kids playing in the park looked like re-creations. I was half-tempted to see if they had historical placards around their necks.

I didn’t think about Lauren Parkus.

I didn’t think about myself.

I just went numb.

And then, when the clock tower above City Hall chimed at eleven p.m., I snapped out of it. It was time to return to the real world.

But I was going back a different man.

I became a re-creation of myself. I looked like Harvey Mapes once looked, but like Fillmore, something had been lost.

I got in my car and drove back through the orchards and up through the hills and down into Camarillo again.

***

I went to work.

I didn’t know what else to do or where else to go. I just sat there and stared out into the night.

Around two a.m. the coyote showed up, stepping cautiously into the circle of light cast by the streetlamp. We looked at each other for a long moment, and then the telephone rang, startling us both.

The coyote ran away. I answered the phone.

“Front gate,” I replied.

“I saw you this morning.”

It was Cyril Parkus’ voice.

It sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a deep, dark pit.

“You were parked on the side of the road,” he said. “You tried to hide from me, but I knew you were there. Your windows were fogged up.”

Maybe he should have been a detective. He could have saved me a lot of pain.

“If you knew,” I asked, “why didn’t you do something about it?”

There was a long silence. I didn’t say anything, I just held the phone, listening to him breathe. His voice, when he finally spoke again, was almost a whisper.

“What did you see?”

“I saw her standing on the rail,” I replied. “Lauren looked at me, and then she dove off as casually as if she were taking a swim.”

“What did she want from you?”

“She wanted to make sure I was looking.”

I was surprised by my own answer. It was simpler than the other explanations I’d run through my head. I wondered when I’d settled on this one.

“No, Harvey, she wanted to be sure that I was.”

And then he hung up. I kept the phone to my ear.

I said, “Good night, Mr. Parkus.” And then I hung up, too.

***

It took me fifteen minutes to walk up the steep hill to Cyril Parkus’ house. I suppose a man in better shape would have made it in five, but I had to stop and rest a few times and clutch my sides in pain. I wasn’t being a very good patient. I wasn’t being much of a security guard, either.

I’d left the guard shack empty and the gate closed, but I knew from experience there was rarely anybody coming or going at two fifteen a.m. on a weeknight. I wasn’t too worried.

We’re also not supposed to enter the community, even though we guard it. Don’t ask me why. So, to get in without ending up on the surveillance tape, I climbed over the gate at a spot where I know the camera’s view is obstructed by an overgrown tree.

As I trudged up the steep hill, which would have been a chore for me even without the broken ribs, I tried to distract myself from the pain by looking at all the big houses I was theoretically protecting, with their detached garages and red-tile roofs and dramatic, outdoor lighting. It was as if the exterior of each house was decoratively pre-lit in case the cover photographer from Architectural Digest just happened to drive by, or maybe a busload of tourists, neither of which was likely to happen with the gate out front and my constant vigilance.

Well, almost constant.

All the lights were on inside and out at the Parkus house, and I heard the burbling of at least three different fountains as I walked across the cobblestones of the motor court.

The front door was almost entirely glass, so I could see straight through the circular, marble entry area into the huge, two-story living room, its floor-to-ceiling windows affording a commanding view of the entire valley.

But the view was lost on Cyril Parkus, who was sitting on the floor, staring blankly into the whiskey bottle between his legs. He was still dressed in his business suit, leaning against a wrought-iron and glass coffee table.

I knocked on the door. He looked over and didn’t seem too surprised to see me.

He motioned me inside. I opened the door and went in. The house smelled like a rose garden, but there wasn’t a single flower in sight.

“Come to check up on me?” Parkus asked.

“You didn’t sound too good.”

“Afraid I was gonna stick a gun in my mouth?”

I shrugged. There was alot of antique furniture and maritime oil paintings, but the room was dominated by an old, rotting, wooden sign above the fireplace. The faded, peeling paint read: Big Rock Lake Resort. It couldn’t have been worth much, and didn’t fit in with the rest of the décor, so I figured its value was sentimental.