The atmosphere in the room was tense and depressing. I was sitting in one of the plastic chairs with all my stuff spread on the table before me, thankful that I had stopped myself from shooting at the very last moment. The cops, pacing impatiently around the room, weren’t even aware they were living a second life. We were all waiting for someone to come and take off my handcuffs—or at least I was. Knowing the situation on this island, it was most likely going to be Peularia Gzundis, and sure enough, she appeared at the door about half an hour later. As soon as she saw me, she rolled her eyes. I had never seen her without Nereidi before.

“I kind of expected it would be you,” she said after stepping inside. “They reported a murder and that the murderer was busted on the crime scene, so I thought, ‘It must be Mellrow. It couldn’t be anyone else!’”

“You know me,” I smiled bitterly. “I’m always looking for a chance to get busted.”

“Yeah, you never miss your chance!” She looked at the cops and briefly waved her hand at me, ordering them to take my cuffs off. They did so. “You’re my bonanza, you know. Ever since you arrived, corpses started raining. It was so boring before that!”

“Well, it’s not exactly raining. This is the first drop,” I protested vaguely. “It’s just a brief summer shower.”

“It’s the second, and I expect more in the next few days,” Gzundis corrected me. “We found a dead body down at the harbor this morning, and I bet it has something to do with the murder here!”

“Really? Who was it?” I asked, surprised.

“A smuggler—he’s not a local man. We don’t know his name yet, but his boat is Mountain Cougar. Isn’t that the same vessel your friends used to pull the trick at Greenspace’s hub?”

“It is, yeah!” I exclaimed, thinking that the poor jerk might have survived the attacks of stingrays and sea eagles, but a much bigger fish had given him more than just a mark now. Cork had obviously started cleaning up already. Then I added, “I call the guy Spit Master because he has this disgusting habit, which he exhibits at every chance.”

“Well, he won’t be doing it anymore! We found him with his eyeballs popping out. I believe he was strangled with a wire,” Peularia informed me. “Pretty exotic, isn’t it?”

“That’s totally Marty’s style,” I said. “The man’s very creative when it comes to murders, although,” I dismally nodded toward the bathroom, “the girl over there is clearly an exception. She’s just been shot.”

The inspector didn’t reply and put on a pair of rubber gloves. Then, she went over to examine the victim. All the while, the cops and I looked awkwardly at each other because none of us knew my current status regarding the crime here. After a few minutes, their boss came back to us.

“Such a pretty girl!” She took off her gloves. “And she died in such an ugly way—drooling like a baby! A positron charge burned a hole in the area of the heart about half an hour ago. She suffered a lot in the few moments before passing away.”

“Half an hour ago? Are you sure about that?” I asked, confused. “It seems to me like at least two hours have passed. The bathroom’s completely dry!”

Gzundis clicked her tongue, obviously unimpressed. I wasn’t an expert, but I thought I knew at least a little bit about these things. Maybe I only thought I did, though.

“That would be if she really took that shower,” the inspector explained smugly. “But we don’t know that yet. We don’t even know if she undressed herself or if the murderer did it to confuse the investigation. Anyway, some moisture is preserved beneath the corpse, which supports your theory to a point, but still, it’s not enough to conclude what exactly happened and when.”

I shrugged, disappointed in myself. It seemed I really wasn’t that good after all!

“I guess now is the time to ask you what you were doing here?” Peularia looked at me as she sat in the other chair.

“The victim called me,” I admitted. “Her name’s Bobby Bjornson. She wanted us to talk.”

“Was she one of the girls you were looking for?”

I nodded. “DuPont’s ex-assistant, yes.”

“And you have no idea what she had in mind?”

“No. She didn’t want to tell it over the phone.”

“Why do you think your friends have started killing each other so suddenly?” The inspector asked me.

“I have no clue at all.” I pursed my lips. “Cork is a very sick bastard, though. He would do such a thing, even just for fun. Now that he and Sharon are close to achieving their goal, I suppose the time for cleaning up has come.”

Peularia remained pensive for a while without saying anything, and she cast a glance at my stuff on the table.

“Because it’s too weird, you know,” she continued after a few seconds. “The squad car came here, following an anonymous tip about a man who was trying to fit the dismembered body of a young female into the trunk of a Ford Laser GLXi near 27B. It’s an insanely grotesque and overly detailed description, which almost never goes like this in such situations because people are too affected and emotional after witnessing a murder. So when I heard about it, I immediately knew it wasn’t a real crime, but the guy simply wanted us to come around. I just wondered why.”

“A dismembered female body? Really?” I turned my head to look at the cops who arrested me. They were Indians, and they seemed like pretty reasonable fellows. One of them shrugged.

“We had to check it out,” he replied. “We are not supposed to think about how it sounds!”

“Fair point.” I shrugged, too, and looked back at Gzundis. “Who reported it? Was it a man or a woman?”

“I don’t know. They say it was a text message, and we’re tracking down the source account now. It came half an hour ago, which is approximately the time of the murder, so I should ask you: Did someone else know you were coming?”

“No, I don’t think so.” I shook my head thoughtfully. “I specifically checked if I had a tail when driving here. But I received a weird phone call from Sharon right before I came—she’s the other woman. It was unrelated to all this, though. Actually, I don’t even know what it was about.”

“Did you tell her you would come?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then it must have been her who texted the police,” the inspector presumed. “She was just checking on you.”

“You know, I’d rather put my money on her boyfriend.” I disagreed. “It’s all too grotesque, as you said. Only his mind could produce such a horror movie scene to report. Besides, the bastard did exactly the same thing back in Greenland when I found DuPont’s body—he gave the police an anonymous tip while I was still in the house!”

“Well, I don’t know about that.” Gzundis remained skeptical after all. “You can’t completely rule out the possibility that she wanted her associate to be the victim of this setup. Hence, the grotesque description and everything. Maybe she needed to ensure he would never come back to her.”

“But why? Why would she want to frame him?” I was genuinely surprised. I hadn’t looked at it from that angle, but it seemed reasonable enough if you thought about it. Yet, it was unexpected.

“On my way over here,” Peularia explained while glancing at my stuff again, “I stopped for a second where you parked your car. I noticed a fresh dent on your front bumper and tire marks on the asphalt. It looked like you blocked another vehicle before coming down here. Is that correct?”

“I… might have… done that.” I stuttered, looking at her, amazed because of the extraordinary intuition she had just demonstrated to me. It nearly bordered on psychic abilities. “Why?”

“I presumed it might have been the car of the murderer, that’s why. After that, in the bathroom, I noticed a weird oozing from the victim’s wound—not typical for positron guns because these things burn the tissue, and no fluids are supposed to come out of it. It made me think the guy might have stepped on the woman’s body to reach the bathroom skylight, which is not very wise if the woman is naked and dead because you’d leave your shoe print on her skin, and it wouldn’t settle. However, you wouldn’t worry too much if you were in a hurry. So, if I still presume correctly, I’d say that you actually caught the murderer by surprise when you arrived. But here is the problem: no one would really stop and send text messages to the police under these circumstances! And he couldn’t have sent it before because he wouldn’t know when exactly he would finish here. On the other hand, if this Sharon knew her associate was coming—”

The inspector sharply stopped talking, leaving the rest to my imagination. I still looked at her with my mouth open because I had noticed none of these things. Aside from being beautiful, Peularia was apparently a very bright and observant woman, and I suddenly realized I was seeing her as an actual human being for the first time since we met. Until that moment, she had been just a weird lesbian movie character to me.

“But you said the text message was about a dismembered female body being fitted into the trunk of a Ford Laser?” I hesitated. “Doesn’t that mean Sharon was framing me?”

“I said that, yes!” Gzundis smiled. “But is your car unique? Where did you get it from?”

“A car rental company!” I almost cried while remembering that the vehicle behind which I stopped was actually another Ford.

“The tree shadows preserved the tire marks on the asphalt well from the rain,” Peularia continued the explanation, a bit self-satisfied again, “but new models have silicone tires, and they wouldn’t leave such marks. However, rental agencies are full of old Fords like yours, which would. And since car thefts are pretty rare here, and it’s doubtful that the murderer would use his own car, it’s not too hard to come to this conclusion.”

I didn’t answer and just stared at her. In my mind, I was recreating the scene, too, returning over and over again to the moment when I heard a car engine outside for the first time. Gzundis was totally right! When I knocked on the door, Marty Cork was probably in the bungalow, and he slipped through the bathroom window when I entered. In this situation, he wouldn’t have the time to text the police. Sharon did that. She was the one pulling all the strings here. Oh, I was so stupid! I was a complete idiot! The bitch was trying to get rid of me and her puppet with one shot. That’s why she called me!

While I kept recalling the events from a while ago, Peularia took her cell phone out and quickly arranged for a forensic team to come to the place. She also asked for an ambulance to transfer the dead body to the morgue and for a cleaning service. The last thing actually surprised me because the cops in Greenland wouldn’t have cared about such a thing—they would’ve let the beach concessionaire deal with it. However, here, everybody was very mindful of tourism-related stuff because it was their primary source of income. After she finished with the calls, she came back to me.

“Speaking of corpses,” she said, smiling rather weirdly, “I forgot to tell you I have exciting news for you. Do you want to hear it now?”

I looked at her, alarmed and unsure whether I wanted it. The word “exciting” bothered me a lot because I didn’t know if I could handle any more exciting things that evening.

“Oh, don’t worry! It’s just the results of the autopsies in Greenland.” She laughed when she saw my face. “They backed up your story about the murders, and now you’re free of charges. DuPont was the first victim—he was killed between ten and eleven in the morning. He was strangled with a wire, but then his head was smashed with the wrench—probably to set you up. Shortly after, the gardener’s head was smashed, too. They think it happened because he was a witness. The other two victims were killed about two hours later, which was almost two hours before you entered the house. The bodyguard was shot in the back on the stairs, and the housemaid was strangled just like DuPont.”

“But why were the man’s pants pulled down?” I suddenly remembered the weird circumstances of the guard’s death.

The inspector shrugged, obviously puzzled by my question. “How could I possibly know that? Autopsies usually don’t reveal motives, do they? Maybe the victim did it before he died because he thought it would scare the perpetrator,” Gzundis joked about it, “or maybe the perpetrator had something in mind but overestimated our intellect, and his original idea was ruined. In any case, the murderer acted out a lot on that crime scene!”

“He did, didn’t he? That’s how it is with a man like Cork!” I remarked. “What about the gardener? Did he come out of the coma?”

Peularia shook her head. “I have no idea. There is something else, however. At around one p.m., a car from the catering firm serving DuPont’s house for the past few months accidentally ran into a black Corvic two blocks from the mansion. There was an argument, and the driver of the Corvic rolled down his window for a moment to curse his opponents. Video footage from the neighboring house caught that perfectly.”

“Seriously? He did that? What a complete idiot!” I exclaimed, hardly believing it.

“You know, I wouldn’t want to be too boring,” the inspector suddenly stood up, “but I’d like to point your attention to the fact that you can definitely go back to Greenland now. You’ll probably face some minor charges for breaking your international travel ban, but that’s nothing compared to the risk you take staying here. You must understand that people like Sengupta and Chavez won’t leave you alone!”

“Well, I guess it’s not that simple after all.” I looked at her with a sad smile. “You forget the Chinese still want me, and besides, things are already kind of personal between these guys and me.”

“Personal? What are you talking about? You’re just as stupid as most men are!” Gzundis shook her head, disappointed. “You suffer from too much testosterone in your bloodstream, and you’ll eventually die because of it!”

“Yeah, but aren’t we all gonna die sooner or later? By the way, can I get my stuff back?” I nodded toward the table.

She glanced there and shrugged. “Sure, go ahead! I can’t let you take the gun, however. I realize it’s like a death sentence for you now, but you have no permit, and I can’t turn a blind eye even if I sympathize with you in this situation.”

I said I understood and slowly started gathering my belongings. The weapon wasn’t mine anyway, so it didn’t matter. I didn’t tell Peularia it was Marty’s gun because she would’ve been mad at me, and she believed I had bought it on the black market. Plus, I had already erased all fingerprints there and replaced them with mine, so it wouldn’t be helpful as evidence, either. The inspector watched me silently as I put my belt on, and meanwhile, I couldn’t help but think about her. She was such a strange woman! I had actually begun to like her.

“Well, that’s really odd.” Half a minute later, I heard her voice behind my back again. “I wanted to ask you, why are you carrying iodine crystals with you?”

“What?” I turned around, surprised.

“Why the iodine crystal?”

I followed her look to see what she meant. She was talking about the piece of rock I took from Sengupta’s yacht. It was still on the table with my other stuff, but I had completely forgotten about it.

“Is this iodine?” I knitted my eyebrows, puzzled.

“Didn’t you know what you had in your pockets? Incidentally, you should be careful with it. It might irritate your skin and could even burn it.”

Peularia’s phone unexpectedly rang. She gave me a nod to go on and picked up. I looked back at the table. With resumed interest, I asked myself what this mineral was doing on Sengupta’s boat. Since Sharon obviously worked with him now, was it possible that the stuff in their containers was iodine, too? Unfortunately, even so, I still couldn’t figure out the purpose behind all this. Probably, the market price of iodine wasn’t much different from ammonia, and it made no sense for Marty to switch the containers. I played with the crystal for a few seconds but didn’t come to any reasonable conclusion in the end. It was just a piece of rock as far as I was concerned.

Soon, everything except the gun was back in my pockets, and I turned around for one final look at the bathroom. The door was still open, and the doorway framed Bobby’s naked legs in a heinous way, which made me shudder. Even though she had fooled me so much, the little mantis and I had a few good moments, too, and I felt I would have done anything to save her if only I could. I actually wanted to see her again and “release” the tension between us, but unfortunately, I had arrived too late—she was never to return home now. Since I didn’t want to remember her like that, I went outside to refresh myself.

Meanwhile, the rain and wind had stopped, but the air was still cool and invigorating. It reminded me of Greenland’s early summer. I extracted the crystal from my pocket and kneeled to wash it in a puddle near the shrubs. Then I put it close to my nose. Now that Peularia had said it was iodine, it really seemed to smell like it—at least, I imagined so. I wondered again why Marty and Sharon needed it. I made to throw it away, but then I changed my mind despite Gzundis’ warning because I didn’t feel anything wrong and still didn’t know its role in my case.

After about a quarter of an hour, the forensic team finally arrived, and when they finished their work half an hour later, they put Bobby’s body in a black plastic bag. Then they took it out. Gzundis made a few more phone calls, and she gestured to me that I was free to go. Weirdly enough, she never said anything about writing witness reports, being available for further questioning, and so on. The situation on this island was completely different from our routine in Greenland. The police inspectors here just gave orders, and no one dared to oppose their decisions. Inspectors in my motherland have no such power. Up there, we have strict procedures, an omnipresent bureaucracy, and tons of paperwork instead.

I slowly climbed the concrete stairs toward the road when they started cleaning the bungalow. At my car, I kneeled to look at the marks on the asphalt. Peularia was absolutely right about every little detail! My Ford had the mentioned dent on the front bumper, and the other vehicle had apparently tried to push mine back. I stood up and went inside the car, still thoughtful, and I had just turned on the ignition key when my cell phone rang. I briefly looked at it and promptly reached out to stop the engine. “Unknown caller ID” was flashing on the screen again.

“You don’t need to worry. She’s dead.” I hissed into the microphone while picking up. There was no video stream available.

“What?” I heard Sharon’s surprised voice.

“Bjornson’s dead! That’s what you wanted to know, isn’t it?”

“What the hell are you talking about, Mellrow?” She snapped with her usual tone of disdain. “I told you I would call again. I have a proposal for you!”

“And I told you not to worry about it! So why don’t you just fuck off?”

She remained silent for a few seconds but didn’t hang up. She was probably considering her next move. After that, she spoke again. “You think I have something to do with this? Really?”

“I don’t need to think, you unscrupulous bitch. I know it!”

“You only think you know it! But that doesn’t make it true. You often make that mistake!” Sharon continued, devoted to her style. “Bobby was irrelevant to me; she was harmless. It’s Marty. He’s acting off his own bat!”

“And you think I’d believe you just because you say so?” I laughed.

“I don’t care if you’d believe me or not. It’s the truth! But anyway, that’s not why I’m calling. I wanna offer you a deal, as I mentioned,” she insisted, but this time, she paused before throwing it in my face. “It’s one hundred grand and the head of Marty. What do you say about that?”

I said nothing. I only thought, “Phew! One hundred grand is a pension. This woman really sticks at nothing when she’s offering things!”

Of course, I had no intention of falling for it again. There was a ninety-nine percent chance it was a trap, and besides, I knew I wouldn’t get the money in the end. Her call only proved Gzundis’ assumption was correct and that she really wanted to get rid of the jerk she used to hang with.

“What the hell happened with you two?” I asked her instead. “Your boyfriend ditched you because you decided to play around with your new Indian toy?”

She didn’t react to my comment. She remained calm, even when I laughed disparagingly. Maybe she had rehearsed the scene or just didn’t care—I had no idea what it was.

“The bastard went too far, and he’s way over the line now.” I heard her explain calmly. “I suspect he actually likes killing.”

“Ha, ha!” I cried out a bit too loudly. “Welcome aboard, dear! It took you a really long time to realize that. But it’s a little late now to feel sorry, isn’t it? You’ll have to deal with him alone because I’m neither a murderer nor your boy for wetwork.”

“You’re being stupid!” Sharon said coldly. “ You’re acting like a virgin; you both want it and are afraid of it! But you’re wrong about me. I’m not asking you to kill him—just to bring the police. That’s all.”

I remained silent because her suggestion caught me off guard. I didn’t expect her to put up with anything less than murder.

“And if you agree to do me a little favor, you’ll go home with a load of money and a clear conscience. I know you value these things very much!” She added cynically after that.

“Uh-huh. A little favor.” I muttered spitefully. The bitch was starting it now!

This time, it was Sharon who remained silent for a moment, obviously thinking about how to present her proposal to me in a more appealing way. Then she spoke again.

“Back in Greenland, I gave you a camera, remember?” She started cautiously. “You snapped some lousy pictures of the meeting in the Red Dragon with it.”

“You mean the camera you sent your ex-boyfriend to steal from me just an hour after that?” I asked although I knew very well what she was talking about.

“Let’s not go into insignificant details or pick at each other right now,” Sharon rebuked me. “You were working for Bobby at the time, and you didn’t tell me. I just had to protect what was mine. Anyway, the little bitch snitched that camera before she came here, and now I want it back.”

“Didn’t you just say I did a lousy job with it? Why do you need a bunch of crappy photos for?” I sneered.

“Leave that to me; I have my reasons. You give me what I want, and you’ll have Marty and your reward. Then you can go home and live your weird little life happily.”

I smiled because I knew her reasons for wanting this. Suddenly, all the events of that night swirled into my mind again, and everything took its proper place. The bitch needed the camera because it contained a picture of her. It also had a few shots of Marty when he stole my car in front of the Chinese restaurant. The film from the other camera, which I still had on the backseat of my Ford in Greenland, was useless to them. That’s why Cork tried to strangle me with its strap. This one was dangerous, however, and now they both needed it to keep each other on a short leash.

“Oh, you’re really so stupid, you guys! You are such unbearable jerks!” I laughed when I grasped the situation. “Why did you keep it anyway? I would have destroyed the film immediately if I were you!”

“Don’t be a dick!” Sharon snapped at me. “I don’t need your advice. Just tell me your decision!”

“Where do you think it is now?”

“It’s in the motel—in Bobby’s room.”

“Clap!” I thought. “Here it goes. The trap is set now.”

“No, it’s not there.” I couldn’t resist teasing her a bit. “I got it!”

She thought about it for a moment but didn’t buy my bluff.

“I don’t think it’s true. If it were, you would’ve started this conversation very differently. Besides, my offer still stands. Give me that camera if you really have it, and I’ll pay you a hundred grand!”

“No, I’d rather give it to the police!” I smiled again because the more I thought about the situation, the more convinced I was that Sharon actually held the wrench when I snapped a picture of her before we had sex in the backseat of the Hondsu—the same wrench Cork used to kill Menelaus later. She was just extracting it from the glove box to give to me because she needed my fingerprints there.

“Think about it!” Sharon tried to convince me. “Nobody wins if Marty lays his hands on this camera. But if you beat him to it, you could choose between taking my money or going to the police. It’s a win-win for you! However, we’ll lose the chance if you hesitate too long.”

I smirked. It was “we” now. We were a team! The bitch was relentless; she thought she could have it all.

“You know, Marty is a fairly simple guy. If he gets the camera, he’ll most probably want to blackmail you.” I speculated. “So why don’t you just buy him with the money you’re offering me? Why are you so sure I’ll choose you instead of the police?”

“That’s exactly why I’m offering you one hundred grand, you moron,” she tried to make me see her point. “So that you think twice before choosing the police! And if you choose me, I’ll know you’ll stick to your decision, which is not necessarily true about Marty. So, what do you say?”

I shook my head, even though she couldn’t see it. It was all bullshit, of course. I was pretty sure there was no camera in Bobby’s room. I had looked everywhere very well.

“I’d say what I’ve told you a couple of times already: you can shove your proposals up your beautiful ass because I don’t care about them. This camera’s not my problem anymore, and if you want it so badly, just go get it yourself.”

“Is this your final decision?” She wanted to know.

“It is.”

“Okay then. If you don’t do it, he’ll get it!”

She hung up.

I slowly put the phone down and looked out the windshield, thinking. Raindrops were still falling from the trees, and the glass was wet. Then, all of a sudden, I felt I was screwed up. Even though I had no intention of going to the motel, the seed of suspicion was planted in my mind now, and it would keep eating me. Sharon knew very well what she was doing when she called. The money was just icing, and it meant nothing. The camera was her true bait!

Shivering unpleasantly, I recalled the events at the Red Dragon once more. I wasn’t supposed to go there before Marty—that’s why Sharon had been so specific about the timeline. However, I followed Bobby’s instructions, and thus I surprised the bastard. So he had no option but to go to my place and wait for me because if I, by any chance, managed to escape with the camera and the shots it contained, I could go to Menelaus, and he would learn about his chauffeur and ex. The situation was too risky! And now, after Bobby had made her unfortunate decision to steal the camera from them, things had become dangerous again, and they were ready to kill each other for these pictures.

“Oh, you stupid jerks!” I exclaimed loudly, still not believing what they had done. Since they were so obsessed with manipulating each other, they allowed the device to become a ticking bomb. And the biggest irony was that if they had given me a regular digital camera instead of an analog device with celluloid film, they would have been able to erase the problematic shots and use the rest without any of the complications they faced now. They were real dumbasses!

©2016 S.T. Fargo
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(www.stfargo.com)