Heartsick

  Susan’s eyes filled with tears and she turned away. That was the thing. You thought you were emotionally steady, and then your dead father went and had a birthday and your crazy mother went and set a straw doll on fire in his memory.

  “I’ve got to go,” Susan said. “There’s someone I need to meet.”

  CHAPTER 4

  The club was choked with cigarette smoke. Susan’s eyes stung from it. She pulled another cigarette out of a pack on the bar, lit it and took a drag. The music pounded through the floor. It snaked along the walls and up the stools and tunneled its way through Susan’s legs and vibrated the copper surface of the bar. Susan watched the yellow pack of cigarettes jump. It was dark. It was always dark in that club. She liked the way that you could be there and hide in plain sight from the person right next to you. She was good at drinking. But she’d had one drink too many. She considered this. It had probably been the blackberry martini. Or possibly the Pabst. Her mind blurred from the booze and she placed a hand flat on the bar until the sensation passed.

  “I’m going outside for some air,” she said to the man next to her. She yelled it to be heard over the music, but the club’s throbbing baseline sucked the life out of all other sound.

  The front door was on the other side of the dance floor, and as she made her way through the Monday-night DJ crowd, she compensated for the drinking with a too-careful stride, head held high, level, arms extended a few inches from her sides, eyes straight ahead, cigarette burning. No one danced at that club. They just stood around, shoulder-to-shoulder, nodding their heads to the beat. Susan had to touch people to get them to part for her, a shoulder, an upper arm, and they would melt a few inches back so she could pass. She could feel their eyes follow her. Susan knew she attracted attention. It wasn’t that she was pretty exactly. Her look belonged in the 1920s: a wide face with a large forehead that tapered to a small chin, skinny limbs, a rosebud mouth, and a flat chest. Her chin-length hair and very short bangs made her look even more like a deranged flapper. Striking was definitely the word for it. Without the pink hair, she might even have been beautiful. But it distracted from the sweetness of her features, making her look harder. Which was sort of the point.

  She got to the door, squeezed past the bouncer, and felt the crisp fresh air wash over her. The club was in Old Town, which up until recently had been called “Skid Row.” Back when people still called Portland “Stumptown,” there had been a thriving Shanghai business in that part of town, and thousands of loggers and sailors had gone into a bar or brothel, only to wake up in the hold of a boat. These days, Portland’s biggest industries were tourism and high-tech, many of Old Town’s weathered turn-of-the-century brick buildings were being redeveloped as lofts, and you could tour the Shanghai tunnels for twelve dollars.

  Everything changed eventually.

  Susan dropped what was left of the cigarette on the wet cement, ground it under the heel of her boot, leaned up against the brick wall of the club, and closed her eyes.

  “Do you want to smoke a joint?”

  She opened her eyes. “Fuck, Ethan,” she said. “You scared the shit out of me. I didn’t think you heard me in there.”

  Ethan grinned. “I was right behind you.”

  “I was listening to the rain,” Susan said, lifting her chin at the glistening black street. She smiled slowly at Ethan. She had only known him about two hours, and she was beginning to suspect that he was smitten. He was not her usual type. He was in his late twenties, in that particular punk-rock way. He probably wore cords and a hooded sweatshirt every day. He lived with five other guys in a crappy house in a cheap part of town. He’d worked in a record store for eight years, played in three bands, listened to Iggy Pop, the Velvet Underground. He smoked pot and drank beer, but not the cheap stuff. “Do you have a one-hitter?”

  He nodded happily.

  “Let’s walk around the block,” she said, taking his hand, arm swinging, leading him out into the steady spit of Portland rain.

  He loaded the one-hitter as they walked and passed it to her for the virgin drag. She took a hit, feeling the satisfying burn in her lungs before she exhaled. She placed the one-hitter in his mouth and guided him around the corner of the building they were passing. There wasn’t much traffic in that part of town at night. She put her face right in front of his. He was taller, so she was looking up.

  “Do you want a blow job?” she asked gravely.

  He smiled that sort of dumb smile that guys get when they cannot believe their good luck. “Uh, sure.”

  Susan smiled back. She had given her first blow job at fourteen. She’d had a good teacher. “Really?” She tilted her head in an exaggerated expression of surprise. “That’s funny. Since you haven’t been taking my calls.”

  “What?”

  Their noses were almost touching. “I’ve left you eleven messages, Ethan. About Molly Palmer.”

  His smile vanished and a coin slot–shaped furrow appeared between his eyebrows. “Excuse me?”

  “She was your college girlfriend, right? Did she ever tell you about her relationship with the senator?”

  Ethan tried to back up, realized he was against a wall, and instead shifted awkwardly before settling on crossing him arms. “Who are you?”

  “There’ve been rumors for years that the senator fucked his kids’ teenage baby-sitter,” Susan said. She stayed in front of him, not giving up ground; she was so close that she could see the saliva pooling in his slightly open mouth. “Is that true, Ethan? She ever mention anything?”

  “I swear to God,” Ethan said, stressing every syllable, looking everywhere but at Susan, “I don’t know anything about it.”

  The phone rang. Susan didn’t move. “Is that you or me?” she asked.

  “I don’t have a cell phone,” Ethan stammered.

  She arched an eyebrow. “Must be me,” she said, shrugging. She reached into her purse, pulled out her cell phone, and answered it.

  “Hello?”

  “I’ve got a job for you.”

  She turned away from Ethan. Took a couple of steps. “Ian? Is that you? It’s after midnight.”

  “It’s important.” There was a pause. “You know those missing girls?”

  “Yeah?”

  “There’s another one. The mayor had an emergency meeting tonight. They’re reconvening the Beauty Killer Task Force. Clay and I are down here now. I think this is big, Susan. We want you to write it.”

  Susan glanced over at Ethan. He was staring at the one-hitter in his hand, looking sort of dazed.

  “Cops and serial killers?” she said.

  “The mayor is going to let us have a press person on the ground in the task force. They don’t want another repeat of the Beauty Killer thing. Can you come down early tomorrow—say six—just to talk about it?”

  Susan checked her watch. “Six in the morning?”

  “Yep.”

  She looked over at Ethan again. “I’m kind of working on something else,” she whispered to Ian.

  “Whatever it is, this is more important. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

  Her head was foggy from the liquor. They would talk about it in the morning. “Okay,” she agreed. She snapped the phone shut and bit her lip. Then she turned back to Ethan. It had taken her months to track him down. She didn’t even know if he still kept in touch with Molly. But it was all she had. “Here’s the thing,” she said to him. “The media’s ignored the rumors long enough. And now I’m going to find out what happened. And I’m going to write about it.” She made eye contact with him and held it, wanting him to see her face, to see past the pink hair, to see how serious she was. “Tell Molly that. Tell her that I’ll keep her safe. And that I’m interested in the truth. Tell her that when she’s ready to talk about what happened, I’ll listen.” The rain had progressed from a spit to a halfhearted drizzle. She pressed a business card into his hand. “My name is Susan Ward. I’m with the Herald.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Th
e lobby of the Oregon Herald didn’t open until 7:30 A .M ., so Susan had to use the loading-dock entrance at the south side of the building. She was running on four hours’ sleep. She’d spent an hour on-line that morning, trying to get up to speed on the latest missing girl, forsaking a shower, so her hair still smelled vaguely of cigarettes and beer. She’d tied it back and dressed simply in black pants and a black long-sleeved shirt. Then threw on some canary sneakers. No point being completely boring.

  She flashed her press pass at the night security guard, a plump African-American kid who had finally made it through The Two Towers and had just started reading The Return of the King. “How’s the book?” she asked.

  He shrugged and buzzed her into the basement with barely a glance. There were three elevators in the Herald building. Only one of them ever worked at one time. She took it to the fifth floor.

  The Herald was located in downtown Portland. It was a beautiful downtown, full of grand buildings that dated back to when Portland was the largest shipping port in the Northwest. The streets were tree-lined and bicycle-friendly, there were plenty of parks, and public art on every block. Office workers on break lounged next to homeless people playing chess in Pioneer Square, street musicians serenaded shoppers, and, Portland being Portland, there was almost always somebody protesting something. In the midst of all this elegance and bustle was the Herald building, an eight-story brick and sandstone behemoth that the good citizenry of Portland thought was unsightly back when it was built in 1920 and had thought was unsightly ever since. Any interior charm had been gutted during an ill-conceived renovation in the 1970s, which must have been the worst decade in which to renovate anything. Gray industrial carpeting, white walls, low-paneled ceilings, fluorescent lights. Except for the framed Herald stories that lined the halls and the unusually cluttered desks of the employees, it could have been an insurance agency. When she had thought about working in a newspaper office, she had imagined bustling chaos and color and fast-talking colleagues. The Herald was soundless and formal. If you sneezed, everybody turned to look.

  The paper was independent, meaning that it was one of the few major dailies in the country that wasn’t part of a corporate chain. A family of timber barons had owned it since the 1960s, having purchased the paper from another family of timber barons. The timber barons had brought in a new publisher, a former public-relations executive from New York named Howard Jenkins, to run the place a few years before, and since then the paper had won three Pulitzers. It was a good thing, Susan figured, because, newsprint aside, there wasn’t a lot of money in being a timber baron anymore.

  The fifth floor was so quiet that Susan could hear the water-cooler buzzing. She scanned the main room, where rows of low-walled pens housed the Herald’s news and features staff. A few of the copyeditors sat hunched over their desks, blinking sadly at computer screens. Susan spotted Nedda Carson, the assistant news editor, walking down the hallway with her usual large travel mug of chai in hand.

  “They’re in there,” Nedda said, jerking her head toward one of the small meeting rooms.

  “Thanks,” Susan said. She could see Ian Harper through the glass panel next to the door. He had been one of Jenkins’s first hires, away from the New York Times, and he was one of the paper’s star editors. She walked over and knocked once on the glass. He looked up and waved her in. The room was small and painted white, with a conference table, four chairs, and a poster encouraging Herald employees to recycle. Ian was perched on the back of one of the chairs. He always perched like that. Susan thought it was because the elevation made him feel powerful. But maybe it was just more comfortable. News editor Clay Lo sat across the table from Ian, his doughy head in one hand, glasses askew. For a minute, Susan thought he was asleep.

  “Jesus,” Susan said. “Tell me you haven’t been here all night.”

  “We had an editorial meeting at five,” Ian said. He flung his hand at a chair. “Have a seat.” Ian was wearing black jeans, black Converse sneakers, and a black blazer over a faded T-shirt with a picture of John Lennon in front of the Statue of Liberty on it. Most of Ian’s T-shirts were intended to communicate that he was from New York.

  Clay looked up and nodded at her, eyes bleary. A cup of coffee from the commissary downstairs sat in front of him. It was the last dregs from the air pot. Susan could see the grounds around the lip of the Styrofoam cup.

  She sat down, pulled her reporter’s notebook and a pen out of her purse, set them on the table, and said, “What’s up?”

  Ian sighed and touched the sides of his head. It was a gesture intended to indicate thoughtfulness, but Susan knew Ian did it to check that his hair was still tucked back into his neat, short ponytail. “Kristy Mathers,” Ian said, smoothing his temples with his hands. “Fifteen. Lives with her dad. He’s a cabdriver. Didn’t know she was missing until he got home last night. She was last seen heading home from school.”

  Susan knew all this from the morning news. “Jefferson High,” she said.

  “Yeah,” Ian said. He picked up a Herald mug that sat in front of him, held it for a minute, and then set it back on the table without taking a sip. “Three girls. Three high schools. They’re adding a police detail at each school for security.”

  “Are they sure she didn’t just go to meet a boyfriend or head to a sale at Hot Topic or something?” Susan asked.

  Ian shook his head. “She was supposed to baby-sit for a neighbor. Never showed. Didn’t call. They’re taking it pretty seriously. What do you know about the Beauty Killer Task Force?”

  Susan felt goose bumps rise on her arms at the very mention of the infamous serial killer. She looked from Ian to Clay and then back to Ian. “What does the Beauty Killer have to do with this?” she asked.

  “What do you know about the task force?” Ian asked again.

  “Gretchen Lowell killed a whole bunch of people,” Susan said. “The Beauty Killer Task Force spent ten years trying to catch her. Then she kidnapped the lead detective on the task force. That was over two years ago. Everyone thought he was dead. I was home for Thanksgiving from grad school when it happened. She turned herself in. Just like that. He almost died. She went to jail. I went back to grad school.” She turned to Clay. “They keep attaching murders to her, though, right? I think they got her to give up something like twenty more victims in the first year after she was arrested. Every month or two, she cops to a new one. She was one of our great psychopaths.” She chuckled nervously. “Great, as in scary, brutal, and cunning, not super-duper.”

  Clay folded his hands on the table and looked at Susan meaningfully. “We gave the cops a bit of a hard time.”

  Susan nodded. “I remember. They got loads of negative press. There was a lot of frustration and fear. Some very catty op-eds. But in the end, they were heroes. There was that book, right? And like a thousand human-interest stories about Archie Sheridan, hero cop.”

  “He’s back,” Ian said.

  Susan leaned forward. “Shut up. I thought he was on medical leave.”

  “He was. They talked him into coming back to lead the new task force. The mayor thinks he can catch this guy.”

  “Like he caught Gretchen Lowell?”

  “Without the ‘almost dying’ part, yeah.”

  “Or the op-eds?” Susan asked.

  “That’s where you come in,” Ian said. “There was no access last time around. They think that if they let us in on the process, we’ll be less inclined to point and snicker. So they’re letting us profile Sheridan.”

  “Why me?” she asked skeptically.

  Ian shrugged. “They asked for you specifically. You weren’t here the last time around. And you’re a writer. The M.F.A. makes them less anxious than a J-school degree.” He touched the sides of his head again, this time finding a tiny stray hair and gliding it back into place. “They don’t want a reporter. They don’t want digging. They want human interest. Also, you went to Cleveland High.”

  “Ten years ago,” Susan pointed out.
r />   “It’s where the first girl disappeared,” Ian said. “It’s color. Plus, you’re a terrific feature writer. You do great at the series stuff. You’ve got a knack for it. Jenkins is convinced this is our ticket to another Pulitzer.”

  “I write quirky essays about burn victims and rescued pets.”

  “You’ve been wanting to do something serious,” Ian said.

  Should she tell them? Susan tapped her pen against the notebook for a minute and then laid the pen carefully down on the table. “I’ve sort of been looking into the whole Senator Castle thing.”

  It was like she had started masturbating right there on the table. There was a moment of complete stillness. Then Clay slowly sat up. He glanced at Ian, who sat on the back of his chair, hands on his knees, back straight. “Those are rumors,” Ian said. “That’s all. Molly Palmer had a lot of psychological problems. There’s nothing there. It’s a smear campaign. Trust me. It’s not worth your time. And it’s not your beat.”

  “She was fourteen,” Susan said.

  Ian picked up his mug but didn’t take a sip. “Have you talked to her?”

  Susan sank an inch in her chair. “I can’t find her.”

  Ian gave a vindicated little snort and put the mug back on the table. “And that’s because she doesn’t want to be found. She was in and out of juvie. In and out of rehab. You think I didn’t look into this the moment I got to town? She’s disturbed. She was in high school and she lied to a few friends and the lie snowballed. Period.” He frowned. “So do you want the serial killer task force dream story, or should I give it to Derek?”

  Susan winced. Derek Rogers had been hired at the same time she was, and he was being groomed to cover crime. She crossed her arms and considered the rather appealing possibility of not having to write another story about a police dog. But she had hesitations. This was important. It was life-and-death. And while she would never admit it to anyone in that room, she took that very seriously. She wanted the story. She just didn’t want to be the one to fuck it up.