Heartsick

  He has no sense of consequence. It is not him who is there in the basement with Gretchen Lowell. It is someone else. He opens his mouth and she plugs his nose and thrusts the spoon far back into his throat and empties the poison. He swallows. She holds the glass of water to his lips and he gulps as much of it as he can. The burning is overwhelming. He feels it scald his throat and then flame into his gullet, and for a second he is back in his physical self, his nervous system in full panic. He screws up every muscle in his face and bites down on his tongue to keep from vomiting. Then, after a while, it passes and he lies panting on the bed, Gretchen holding his head in her hands.

  “Shh,” she says, soothing him. “You did well.” She smoothes his hair and kisses his forehead several times. Then she reaches into her pocket and pulls out six large white oval pills. “More codeine,” she explains. “You can have as much as you want. From now on.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Susan had spent Saturday writing and now the second story was in and she was taking a celebratory bubble bath. The Great Writer had a radio in his bathroom, but she didn’t like to listen to it when she was in the tub. This was thinking time. Music was too easy a distraction. She had been in the tub for almost a half hour and the water had cooled. Now she turned on the hot-water knob with her toes and let it run until the bath was as hot as she could stand it. Her skin pinkened under the water and she felt her face burn. That was how she liked it, heat the only sensation.

  She jumped when the phone rang. She never took baths without her cell phone and her landline within arm’s reach, but she was relaxed enough that it still surprised her. Now, in an effort to get to the ringing cordless that perched on the edge of the sink, she knocked over her half-full glass of pinot noir. It exploded on the tile floor, sending red wine splattering everywhere.

  “Fuck,” she said aloud as she picked up the phone. She had broken five of the Great Writer’s set of eight wineglasses. Now this was the sixth. Something about the way she moved through the world did not lend itself to the care of fragile objects. She fumbled with the receiver, nearly dropping it in the soapy water as she sank back into the tub.

  “Ian?”

  “No, honey, it’s me.”

  “Oh.” She tried not to sound disappointed. “Hi, Bliss.”

  “I saw your story.”

  Susan sat up in the tub, bringing her knees to her chest. “You did?”

  “Leaf, at the co-op, gave me a copy.”

  Susan’s body hummed with pleasure. She didn’t like to draw her mother’s attention to her work. She didn’t like to admit that it mattered.

  “Listen, sweetie,” Bliss said. “I know you know how to do your job.” She paused. “But don’t you think you might be exploiting these girls?”

  The humming stopped. Susan could feel her teeth clench, the molars grinding into one another, another layer of enamel gone. It was remarkable how her mother always knew exactly the wrong thing to say. “I’ve got to go, Bliss. I’m in the bathtub.”

  “Right now?”

  “Yep.” She splashed some water. “See?”

  “Okay. We’ll talk later.”

  “Sure.” She hung up the phone and leaned back in the tub, letting the hot water fill her ears as she waited for her heartbeat to slow. She and Bliss had been close until the year Susan’s father died, when Bliss had become impossible. Or maybe Susan had become impossible. It was hard to know. They had fought most over the bathtub. Back then, Susan liked to take two or three baths a day. It was the only place she didn’t feel cold.

  Susan smiled to herself. Archie Sheridan. She had to admit that she’d secretly hoped it would be him on the phone. He was right up her alley, after all. Not married, sure. But totally unavailable. Crap. She was a lost cause. At least she knew she was a romantic train wreck. She had been since she was fourteen years old. Self-knowledge counted for something, right? When she climbed out of the tub ten minutes later and gathered up the small pieces of glass that lay scattered on the floor, she was so lost in thought that she stabbed her finger on one of the little shards. She grabbed one of the Great Writer’s white washcloths and secured it around the small wound. While she waited for the blood to stop, she called Archie and checked in on the case. He did not ask her out. By the time she was off the phone, the white washcloth was stained red; another thing she had ruined.

  The plum trees in front of Gretchen’s old house had bloomed. That was how it happened. One day the plum trees looked dead, skeletal, like something put out in the yard after a fire; the next they were heavy with pale pink blossoms, smug with their own prettiness.

  “You just want to sit here?” the cabdriver asked.

  Archie dropped his cell phone in his pocket and glanced up at the driver. “Just for a while.” The sun shining through the car window was warm, and Archie leaned his temple against the glass, enjoying the heat of it against his skin. The house was vaguely Georgian, a pale yellow plantation at two-thirds scale. The windows were flanked by tall white shutters. A brick walkway led from the sidewalk to a brick staircase and up a sloping hillside to the house. It was a nice house. Archie had always thought so.

  Of course, it had never been Gretchen’s. She’d been telling the truth when she told Archie that she’d leased it for the fall from a family who was spending the season in Italy. She had rented it on-line under a false name, just as she had rented the house in Gresham.

  “You a stalker?” the cabbie asked, eyeing Archie in the rearview mirror.

  “A cop.”

  The cabdriver snorted, as if the two were indistinguishable.

  Archie had spent the morning with Henry, reviewing a mountain of paper comprised of citizen tips. There were thousands: letters, transcripts from the tip hot line, even postcards. It was tedious work and Archie could have delegated it. But it gave him something to do. And there was a chance, a slim chance, that somewhere in all of that paper was the information they needed.

  After six hours, they had gone through almost two thousand tips. And were no closer to finding the After School Strangler.

  “It’s Saturday,” Henry had said. “Go home for a few hours.” And Archie had agreed. He didn’t tell Henry that, as Sunday fast approached, he was having a hard time concentrating on anything but Gretchen.

  But when the cabdriver asked him his address, he found himself giving this one instead.

  So Archie gazed at the house, as if something about it could help him make sense of everything that had happened since that last time he’d walked through its front door.

  A shiny black Audi wagon pulled into the house’s driveway and parked in front of the garage, and a dark-haired woman got out with two dark-haired boys. She walked around the back of the car, opened the hatchback, and handed the older boy a paper bag of groceries and he went inside with the younger boy trailing after him. Then she got another bag of groceries from the back of the wagon, turned, and walked toward the cab.

  “She the one you’re stalking?” the cabbie asked.

  “I’m not stalking anyone,” Archie said. The woman with the groceries was clearly headed directly for them, intent on a conversation. Something like “Why the hell are you idling in front my house?” maybe. He thought about telling the cabbie to drive away, but the woman was descending on them and he didn’t want to rattle her further by pealing out in a cloud of exhaust. So he was sitting in a cab in front of her house. It was a residential street. There were a multitude of explanations. He would just have to pick one. Doing his best to look respectable, he rolled down the window just as she took her last few steps to the taxi. It was all moot.

  “You’re Archie Sheridan,” she said.

  She had recognized him. That left little room to maneuver.

  The woman gave him a concerned smile. She was wearing black leggings and a large black sweatshirt with the sleeves pushed up to the elbows. The sweatshirt had a Sanskrit symbol on it. Yoga clothes. Her curly black hair was swept up in a ponytail. She was in her forties, and wore it well
; the fine lines around her mouth and eyes probably were noticeable only in natural light.

  He nodded. Archie Sheridan. Hopeless. Untethered. At your service.

  She thrust a hand in his direction. Her forearms were lean and strong. “I’m Sarah Rosenberg. Mind giving me a hand with the groceries?”

  He followed her into the kitchen, his arms full of groceries from Whole Foods. He didn’t remember the last time he’d carried an armload of groceries like that; it reminded him of his family, of the pleasures of normalcy. But then there was the house. It looked exactly the same. The entryway, the hallway, the kitchen. Archie felt as if he’d walked into a dream. The older boy, a young teenager, had already started unpacking the bags, and the contents were strewn over a large kitchen island—fresh tulips, leeks, apples, expensive cheese.

  “This is Detective Sheridan,” Sarah said.

  The boy took the groceries from Archie’s hands.

  “My son Noah,” Sarah said.

  The boy nodded at Archie. “Some of my brother’s friends won’t come over here anymore,” he said. “They’re afraid of her or something. Like she’s still here. Like she’s going to get them.”

  “I’m sorry,” Archie said.

  He felt Gretchen everywhere around him, as if she were there next to him, her breath on his neck. The room she had used as an office was through the kitchen, on the other side of the entryway. Archie realized that he was squeezing the pillbox in his pocket, and he forced himself to release the tension in his hand.

  “It looks pretty much the same,” Sarah was saying as she loaded food into a large steel fridge. “The police said that it happened in my office, right? She had moved a few things around, but it’s mostly how it was the last time you were here.” She looked at Archie meaningfully. “Feel free, if you want to take a look.”

  “Yeah,” Archie said before he even realized it. “I’d like that.”

  She motioned with her head that he could go alone. Archie was grateful for that. He left Sarah and Noah in the kitchen and walked to the room where Gretchen Lowell had drugged him.

  The heavy green velvet curtains were closed, but the sun streamed like a knife through a gap where they didn’t quite meet. Archie turned on the chandelier and put two pills in his mouth and swallowed them.

  The carpet was different. They had changed the carpet. Maybe the crime lab had cut the coffee stain out; maybe too many cops had tracked in too much mud; maybe they had just redecorated. The big wooden desk was on the other side of the room, against the wall, rather than in front of the windows, where Gretchen had placed it. Other than that, it was the same: library bookshelves stacked two deep with books, the grandfather clock with its motionless hands still pointing at 3:30, the striped overstuffed chairs. He sunk into the chair he had sat in that day with Gretchen. He could remember everything now. The black long-sleeved dress she had been wearing, the cashmere cardigan the color of butter. He had admired her legs when she had sat down. A harmless observation and an obvious one. He was male, after all, and she was beautiful; he could be forgiven for noticing that.

  “I’ve seen you out there a few times.” It was Sarah, standing in the doorway.

  “I’m sorry,” Archie said. “It’s just that this place, your house, it’s the last place I remember feeling all right.”

  “You’ve been through a terrible ordeal,” Sarah said. “Are you seeing anyone?”

  Archie closed his eyes and leaned his head on the back of the chair. “Oh God,” he said smiling. “You’re a psychiatrist.”

  “A psychologist, actually,” she said with a shrug. “I also teach up at Lewis & Clark. That’s how Gretchen Lowell found us. We’d posted the house through a faculty board. But I still have a practice.” She paused. “If you’re interested, I would love to have you as a patient.”

  So that was why she had invited him in. A patient who’d been through what he had would prove endlessly interesting to a shrink. “I’m seeing someone,” Archie said. He gazed at the spot on the carpet where he’d fallen, unable to move, everything suddenly, horribly clear. “Every Sunday.”

  “Is it helping?”

  He considered this. “Her methodology is a little unorthodox,” he said slowly. “But I think that she’d tell you it’s working.”

  “I’m glad,” Sarah said.

  Archie glanced around the room one last time and then looked at his watch. “I should be going. Thanks for inviting me inside. It was very kind of you.”

  “I’ve always loved this room,” Sarah said, looking at the big window. “When the curtains are open, you can see the plum trees.”

  “Yeah,” Archie said, and as if they shared an old mutual friend, he added, “Gretchen liked that, too.”

  CHAPTER 29

  Archie knew that Debbie would call him when she’d seen Susan’s second story. It didn’t matter that it was before 7:00 on Sunday morning. She knew that he’d be up. There was a killer loose and the clock was ticking, and even though there was little he could actually do but wait for something to happen, sleep seemed an admission of defeat. As it was, he was sitting on his couch reading printouts of Lee Robinson’s mash-note E-mails. Nothing like going through the private thoughts of a dead teenager to make you feel like a voyeuristic asshole. He had been up long enough to have already had coffee and two runny eggs, but only to have food in his stomach so he could take some Vicodin. He always allowed himself extra Vicodin on Sundays.

  “Have you seen it?” Debbie asked.

  Archie leaned back and closed his eyes. “No. Tell me about it.”

  “She talks about Gretchen. What she did to you.”

  They don’t know half of what she did to me, thought Archie. “Good. Are there pictures?”

  “One of you and one of Gretchen.”

  He opened his eyes. There were Vicodin on the table. He lined them up in a little row, like teeth. “Which one of Gretchen?”

  “The mug shot.”

  Archie knew the one. It was the first time Gretchen had been in the system. She had been picked up for writing a bad check in Salt Lake City in 1992. She was nineteen and her hair was shoulder length and teased, her expression startled, her face gaunt. Archie allowed himself a smirk. “Good. She hates that picture. She’ll be pissed. Anything else?” He picked up a pill and rolled it between his fingers.

  “Susan Ward hints at sordid details to come of your much-speculated-upon captivity.”

  “Good.” He put the Vicodin in his mouth, letting the bitter chalky taste sit on his tongue for a moment before washing it down with a sip of tepid black coffee.

  “You’re using her.” Debbie’s voice was low and Archie could almost feel the heat of it against his neck. “It’s not fair of you.”

  “I’m using me. She’s just a vehicle.”

  “What about the kids?”

  The effects of the opiates made his skull feel soft, like a baby’s. He reached up and touched the back of his head, feeling his hair beneath his fingers. Ben had fallen from the changing table when he was ten months old and cracked his skull. They had spent the whole night in the emergency room. No, Archie remembered, correcting himself, Debbie had spent the whole night. He had left the hospital early in the morning. There had been a call. They had found another Beauty Killer body. Just one of dozens of times he’d left Debbie for Gretchen. He could remember every one of the crime scenes. Every detail. But he couldn’t remember how long Ben had been in the hospital. Or where exactly the fracture was.

  “Are you there?” he heard Debbie’s disembodied voice ask from the receiver. “Say something, Archie.”

  “Read it to them. It will help them understand.”

  “It will scare the crap out of them.” She paused. “You sound really high.”

  His head felt like warm water and cotton and blood. “I’m fine.” He picked up another Vicodin, rubbed it between his fingers.

  “It’s Sunday. You don’t want to be high when you see her.”

  He smiled at the pill.
“She likes it when I’m high.”

  The truth. He regretted it as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

  The line was heavy with silence, and Archie could feel Debbie let him go just a little more. “I’m going to hang up now,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. But she was already gone.

  When the phone rang a few minutes later, Archie thought it was Debbie calling back, and he picked the phone up on the first ring. But it wasn’t Debbie.

  “This is Ken, down in Salem. I’ve got a message for you. From Gretchen Lowell.”

  Bombs away, thought Archie.

  CHAPTER 30

  It was almost 9:00 A .M . by the time Susan awoke with a splitting headache and a stomach-turning wave of nausea. She had finished that entire bottle of pinot on an empty stomach. Why did she do this to herself? She sat up gingerly, and then staggered into the bathroom, where she poured herself a big glass of water, took three ibuprofen, and brushed her teeth. The Band-Aid on her finger had fallen off during the night and she examined the wound, which had scabbed over into an ugly red crescent. She sucked on it for a minute, the blood coppery in her mouth, until the cut was almost undetectable.

  Then she wandered naked into the kitchen, where she put on a pot of coffee and sat down on the Great Writer’s blue sofa. It was too early for the light to make it in through her north-facing window, but she could see the blue sky beyond the building across the street. Long shadows loomed dark on the street and sidewalk below. Sunshine, to Susan, had always seemed ominous. She was halfway through her second cup of coffee when the doorbell rang.