Heartsick

  “So, Archie Sheridan,” Dr. Fergus said, opening a blue folder in front of him.

  Susan smiled. “I assume you’ve spoken to him?”

  “Yes. He faxed over a HIPAA waiver.” Fergus touched a piece of paper on his desk. “We can’t be too careful with the privacy issues today. The insurance companies get to know everything about you. But a friend or family member? Not without the proper paperwork.”

  Susan set her digital recorder on the desk, lifting her eyebrows questioningly to Fergus. He nodded. She hit RECORD. “So can I ask you anything, then?” she asked.

  “I am willing to talk to you briefly about the injuries Detective Sheridan sustained in the line of duty in November of 2004.”

  “Go.” Susan flipped open her notebook and smiled encouragingly.

  Fergus traced through information in Sheridan’s file. His tone was brusque and businesslike. “He arrived at the ER via medevac at nine-forty-three P.M. on the thirtieth of November. He was in critical condition. Six fractured ribs, lacerations to the torso, a stab wound to the abdomen, his tox levels were dangerously high. We had to do emergency surgery to repair damage to the esophagus and stomach wall. When we got in there, the esophagus was so damaged, we ended up having to rebuild it with a section of bowel. And, of course, she had removed his spleen.”

  Susan was scribbling along when he got to that last part. She stopped writing and looked up. “His spleen?”

  “Correct. They didn’t release that at the time. She’d done a decent job dividing the blood supply and suturing him up, but there was some minor bleeding we had to go in and clean up.”

  The tip of Susan’s pen remained motionless, pressed against the paper of notebook. “Can you do that? Can you just take someone’s spleen out?”

  “If you’ve done it before,” Fergus said. “It’s a nonessential organ.”

  “What did she”—Susan tapped her pen nervously against the page—“do with it?”

  Fergus exhaled slowly. “I believe that it was sent to the police. Along with his wallet.”

  Susan widened her eyes in disbelief and scribbled a sentence in her notebook. “That’s the most fucked-up thing I’ve ever heard,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Yes,” he said, sitting forward, his professional interest clearly piqued. “It surprised us, too. It is major surgery. He’d gone into septic shock and his organs were failing. If she hadn’t treated him at the site, he would be dead.”

  “I heard that she did CPR on him,” Susan said.

  Fergus examined her for a second. “That’s what the EMTs said. She also used digitalis to stop his heart, and then resuscitated him with lidocaine.”

  Susan simultaneously cringed and craned forward. “Why?”

  “I have no idea. It happened several days before we got to him. That’s about when she dressed the wounds. He was well taken care of.” He paused, catching himself, and ran a hand past his forehead. “You know, from that point on. Clean bandages. Every wound stitched. She’d had him on intravenous fluids, given him blood. But there was nothing she could do at that point about the infection. She didn’t have the proper antibiotics, or the equipment to keep his organs functioning enough for them to work.”

  “Where’d she get the blood?”

  Fergus shrugged and shook his head. “We have no idea. It was O-negative, a universal donor, and it was fresh, but it wasn’t hers. And the man she killed in front of Sheridan was AB.”

  Susan wrote the word blood in her notebook, followed by a question mark. “You said his tox levels were high. What was he on exactly?”

  “Quite a little cocktail.” Fergus glanced down at a page in his file. “Morphine, amphetmines, succinylcholine, bufotenin, benzylpiperazine. And that’s just what was still in his system.”

  Susan was trying to figure out how to spell succinylcholine phonetically. “What would have been the result of all those drugs?”

  “Without knowing the order in which they were given, I have no way of knowing. Varying degrees of insomnia, restlessness, paralysis, hallucinations, and probably quite a nice high.”

  Susan tried to imagine what that would be like. Alone, in pain. So high that your mind isn’t functioning. Completely dependent on the person who is killing you. She examined Fergus. He wasn’t exactly chatty. But she liked him for being protective of Archie. Jesus, someone had to be. She tilted her head and flashed her most radiant tell-me-anything smile. “You like him? Archie?”

  Fergus pursed his lips. “I’m not sure Archie has friends anymore. But if he did, I think he’d count me among them.”

  “What do you think of me doing this? Writing this story? Writing about what happened to him?”

  Fergus leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. The mountain sparkled in the sunlight behind him. After a while, you probably stopped noticing it. “I tried to talk him out of it.”

  “How’d he react?” she asked.

  “I was unable to sway him,” Fergus said.

  “But you’re not being entirely open with me, either?”

  “He never said I had to tell you everything. He is my patient. And I will choose his well-being over your newspaper story. Regardless of what he thinks he wants. We had a lot of press crawling all over this hospital in the weeks after Archie was found. My staff referred them all to the hospital PR department. Do you know why?”

  Wait, Susan thought, I know this one! “Because reporters are vultures who will print anything without a passing thought to its relevance, significance, or veracity?”

  “Yes.” Fergus glanced at his five-hundred-dollar watch. “If you want to know more, you can ask your subject. I’ve got to go. I’m a doctor. I’ve got patients. I’ve got to see about treating them. The hospital gets testy if I don’t at least make an effort.”

  “Sure,” Susan said quickly. “Just a few more questions. Is Detective Sheridan still on any medication?”

  Fergus looked her in the eye. “Nothing that would interfere with his ability to do his job.”

  “Great. And just so I understand, you’re saying that Gretchen Lowell tortured Sheridan, killed him, and then resuscitated him and took care of him for a few days before calling nine one one?”

  “That’s what I’m saying,” Fergus said.

  “And Sheridan confirms this?” Susan asked.

  Fergus leaned farther back in his chair and interlaced his fingers over his chest. “He doesn’t really talk about what happened to him. He claims not to remember much.”

  “You don’t believe him?”

  Fergus looked deliberately at her. “It’s bullshit. And I’ve told him that to his face.”

  “What’s your favorite movie?” Susan asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  Susan smiled pleasantly, like it wasn’t a strange question. “Your favorite movie.”

  The poor doctor seemed a little bewildered. “I don’t really have time to see movies,” he said finally. “I ski.”

  “At least you didn’t make something up,” Susan said with a satisfied nod. People lied all the time about movies. Susan told people that her favorite movie was Annie Hall, and she’d never even seen it. “Thanks for your time, Doctor.”

  “It’s been a pleasure,” Fergus said with a sigh.

  CHAPTER 24

  It was 3:30 and Susan found herself once again at Cleveland High School. She hadn’t attended school this regularly when she was enrolled. Her plan had been to ambush Justin at his car, but now that she stood in the parking lot, the orange Beemer was nowhere in sight. Great. She sure as hell couldn’t pretend to be his mom in person. Plus, she didn’t want to go inside. She didn’t want to run into any more of her old teachers. And she certainly didn’t want to get lectured by that janitor again.

  So now what? She had a lot she wanted to ask JAY2, like what exactly he’d done to get himself a record and why she should care and, most important, why someone else would think she should care and who that someone might be.

  And now she couldn?
??t find him.

  The kids were all dressed like it was summer—T-shirts, shorts, miniskirts, sandals. The sun was bright and even the biggest puddles had dried up, but it was only fifty degrees. Most of the trees were bare. The kids streamed around Susan to their cars, clutching enormous book bags and backpacks.

  Then she saw a kid who looked like Justin. Same surfer haircut, similar clothes, same age. He was walking toward a Ford Bronco, punching a text message into a phone. Remembering the tribe mentality of high school, she took a chance that kids who look alike are usually friends.

  “Do you know where I can find Justin Johnson?” she asked, trying not to look weird or dangerous.

  He frowned. “J.J.’s gone,” he said.

  “Gone?”

  “They took him out of sixth period. His grandpa died or something. He was going right to the airport to fly down to Palm Springs.”

  “When’s he going to be back?” Susan asked.

  The kid shrugged. “I’m supposed to get his homework for a week. McCallum was pissed. Said he was faking. That his grandpa had already died freshman year. Threatened to put him back in detention.” He examined Susan and seemed to come to some affirming conclusion. “You looking for product?”

  “Yes,” Susan said. “And I’ve lost J.J.’s number. Can you give it to me?”

  Archie sat across the table from Dan McCallum. He had the arson squad’s report in front of him. McCallum was a small man with a lot of thick brown hair and a walruslike mustache that hadn’t been fashionable since before McCallum was born. His arms and legs seemed too short for his thick torso and his hands were small and square. He wore his button-down shirt tucked into his brown pants, which were held up with a wide leather belt. The belt buckle was a brass cougar head. They were sitting in the vault-cum-interview room at the bank task force offices. Claire Masland leaned against the two-foot-thick door, arms crossed. McCallum was grading papers. His fingers had writing calluses on them. You hardly ever saw that anymore, thought Archie.

  “Can I interrupt a minute?” Archie asked.

  McCallum didn’t look up. His eyebrows looked like second and third mustaches. “I’ve got a hundred and three physics tests to have graded by tomorrow. I’ve been a teacher for fifteen years. I get paid forty-two thousand dollars a year, not including benefits. That’s five less than I got paid last year. Want to know why?”

  “Why, Dan?”

  “Because the state cut the school budget by fifteen percent and they couldn’t find enough janitors and school nurses to fire.” McCallum laid his red pen carefully across his stack of tests and looked up at Archie. The eyebrows lifted. “Do you have kids, Detective?”

  Archie flinched. “Two.”

  “Send them to private school.”

  “What happened to your boat, Dan?”

  McCallum picked up the pen again and wrote a “B-” on one of the papers and circled it. “There was a marina fire. Three boats burned, including mine. But I assume you know that.”

  “Actually, it seems that the fire started on your boat.” This got McCallum’s attention. “Burn patterns indicate that your boat was the origin. And that the fire was started with an accelerant. Gasoline, specifically.”

  “Someone burned down my boat?”

  “Someone burned down your boat, Dan.”

  One enormous eyebrow started to twitch. McCallum tightened his hairy hand around his red pen. “Look,” he said, his voice rising an octave. “I told the detectives where I was when those girls disappeared. I had nothing to do with it. I’ll give you a DNA sample if you want. I don’t teach biology because I don’t like to dissect frogs. Whoever you’re looking for, it’s not me. I don’t know why someone would burn down my boat. But it has nothing to do with those girls.”

  Archie stood and leaned over the table, resting on his fists, so that he towered over the teacher. “The thing is,” Archie said. “The fire started in the cabin, Dan. Which makes us think someone had a key. Because why break into a boat to start a fire? Why not just splash some gas on the deck and start the fire there?”

  McCallum’s face darkened a shade and he glanced from Archie to Claire in mounting desperation. “I don’t know. But if that fire started in the cabin, then someone broke into the boat. I don’t know why. But they did.”

  “When was the last time you were on the boat?” Archie asked.

  “A week ago Monday. I took it out for the first time this season. Just down the Willamette a few miles.”

  “Anything been disturbed?”

  “No,” McCallum said. “It was all the way I left it. As far as I could tell.”

  “Who knows you have a boat?” Archie asked.

  “Well, I’ve had the boat for nine years. Multiply that times a hundred students a year. That’s nine hundred Cleveland grads alone. Look. I’m not the most popular teacher. I’m tough.” He held up a handful of student papers as if to prove the point. “I didn’t give out a single A in my advanced physics class last semester. Maybe one of the kids got his nose out of joint. Decided to punish me. I loved that boat. They all know that. If someone wanted to hurt me, they might go after it.”

  Archie scrutinized McCallum, who seemed to be growing sweatier with each passing minute. Archie didn’t like him. But he’d learned long ago that not liking someone didn’t mean that the someone was lying. “Okay, Dan. You can leave. We’ll take the DNA sample. Claire will tell you where to go.”

  McCallum stood and gathered up all of his students’ papers and stuffed them into a scratched soft leather briefcase. Claire opened the door. “Wait for me in the hall for a minute, will you, Dan?” she said. He nodded and shuffled out.

  Claire turned to Archie. “We don’t have any DNA to compare his to,” she said.

  “He doesn’t know that,” said Archie. “Take a swab and let’s make sure we’ve got a car on him from the time he leaves school at the end of the day until he’s home in bed.”

  “It was a boat fire, Archie.”

  “It’s all we’ve got.”

  Susan sat in her car in the parking lot and dialed Justin Johnson’s cell phone number.

  “Yo,” he answered.

  She launched right into her rehearsed explanation. “Hi, J.J. My name’s Susan Ward. We met in the Cleveland parking lot. My car was booted, remember?”

  There was a long pause. “I’m not supposed to talk to you,” he said. And he hung up.

  Susan sat looking at the cell phone in her hand.

  What the hell was going on?

  CHAPTER 25

  Susan had changed her outfit three times before heading to Archie Sheridan’s apartment. Now she stood face-to-face with him in his doorway, wishing that she’d gone with another look entirely. But he’d seen her, and now it was too late to go back to the car. “Hi,” she said. “Thanks for letting me come over.” It was just after eight o’clock. Archie was still wearing what Susan presumed were his work clothes—sturdy brown leather shoes, wide-wale dark green corduroys, and a pale blue button-down over a T-shirt, unbuttoned at the neck. Susan glanced down at her own ensemble of black jeans, an old Aerosmith T-shirt worn over a long john shirt, and motorcycle boots; her pink hair pulled up in pigtails. The look had worked well when she had interviewed Metal-lica backstage at the Coliseum, but for this it was all wrong. She should have gone with something more intellectual. A sweater, maybe.

  Archie opened the door wide and stepped aside so she could enter his apartment. It was true, what she had said to him on the phone: She needed the interview. Her story was due the next day and she had a lot of questions for Archie Sheridan. But she also wanted to see where he lived. Who he was. She tried not to let her face fall when she saw the empty environment he lived in. No books. Nothing on the walls. No family photographs or knickknacks picked up on vacation or CDs or old magazines waiting to be recycled. Judging from the sad-looking brown couch and corduroy recliner, it looked like the place had come furnished. No personality. At all. What kind of divorced father didn’t
display photographs of his children?

  “How long have you lived here?” she asked hopefully.

  “Almost two years,” he said. “Sorry. Not much material, I know.”

  “Tell me you have a television.”

  He laughed. “It’s in the bedroom.”

  I bet you don’t have cable, Susan thought. She made a show of glancing around the room. “Where do you keep your stuff? You must have useless crap. Everyone has useless crap.”

  “Most of my useless crap is at Debbie’s.” He gestured gallantly to the couch. “Have a seat. Are you allowed to drink during interviews?”

  “Oh, I’m allowed to drink,” Susan assured him. The coffee table, she noticed, was covered with police files. All gathered up and stacked in two neat piles. She wondered if Archie was one of those people who was naturally neat, or whether he just overcompensated. She sat on the couch and reached into her purse and pulled out a dog-eared copy of The Last Victim. She set it next to the files on the coffee table.

  “I only have beer,” Archie called from the kitchen.

  She hadn’t bought The Last Victim when it came out, but she’d leafed through it. The trashy true-crime account of Archie Sheridan’s kidnapping had been on all the supermarket paperback racks back then. Gretchen Lowell was on the cover. If beauty sold books, then beautiful serial killers made best-seller lists.

  He handed her a bottle of mid-range microbrew and sat in the recliner. She watched as his eyes flicked down to the book. And away. “My God,” Susan teased. “An aesthetic choice. Careful. You might accidentally give someone some insight into your personality.”

  “Sorry. I also like wine. And liquor. I just happen to only have beer. And no, I don’t have a favorite brand. I just get whatever’s on sale that isn’t swill.”