Heartsick

  “Who are you people?” she asked. “And where is my daughter?”

  CHAPTER 45

  You killed those girls,” Susan said into the darkness.

  Reston’s voice was strangled with sadness. “I’m sorry.”

  Susan’s breath felt like the loudest thing in the world to her. Like tiny atom bombs. She willed herself to slow the intake of oxygen, to relax, to make him think that she was not afraid. She had to convince him that she was strong. That she could control the situation. “You’re sorry? Paul, you’re sick. You need help. I can help you.”

  “You shouldn’t have left me,” he said, slipping something over her head, around her neck. She could feel the smooth leather strap of it against the skin below her hairline at the base of her scalp, and then in the front, above her clavicle, something cold and hard—a belt buckle. The purple ligature marks around Kristy Mathers’s neck flashed in her mind and she frantically reached up to get her bound hands under the belt, but it snapped tight around her throat. She gasped and grappled with it, but Reston pushed her hands down and pulled the belt tighter. Her head throbbed and filled with fire. He pulled her down so hard that her kneecaps hitting the floor made a crack like an ax hitting wood. She was spinning untethered in space, and then all of sudden she was still. All of her senses slammed to life, and at that moment her eyes adjusted just a bit to the darkness. She could see him in front of her. Not a person, but a dark shape, the shadow of a person. She could feel his thumb on her mouth, tracing her lips. His thumb was ice. Her lips were shaking.

  “You have a beautiful mouth,” he said.

  Susan’s mind was clarifying, ordering information. Kidnapped. Boat. Paul. Killer. And now: Addy. “Paul,” Susan rasped. “Where’s Addy?”

  She felt him hesitate for a moment; then he stepped back and the strap loosened. The lights came on. Susan recoiled and reflexively closed her eyes, overcome by the sudden brightness. When she forced them open again a moment later, Reston was back in front of her and he held a gun pointed at her forehead. Susan steeled herself against a sudden wave of nausea, swallowing the sickly warm saliva that rose in her throat.

  She had been right. They were on a boat. In some sort of sleeping quarters. The walls and low ceiling of the room were white. It was a cramped space, only five feet wide at most. Cubbies and drawers filled one wall. Built into the opposite wall was a sturdy wooden bunk bed. On the top bunk, above where Susan herself only moments ago had lain, was Addy Jackson.

  She was semiconscious and naked except for a pair of pink underpants, and her forearms and ankles were bound with duct tape. Her eyes were slits, her mouth was wet with saliva, her hair matted with sweat. She stirred and scratched at her tear-stained cheek with her bound hands. And then Susan recognized her. Lee. Dana. Kristy. Addy. The brown hair. The pretty features. She knew then with devastating clarity that it was about her, that it had always been about her. And she knew that he would kill them. Both of them. There was no question now. She looked at Addy, who appeared unfocused and unaware of her surroundings, and she envied her.

  “It’s your fault,” Paul explained, running his hand along the back of Susan’s neck. “You shouldn’t have been such a cunt to me.”

  It was then that Susan made a silent pledge: She was not going to die. No way. Not at the hands of her fucking drama teacher.

  CHAPTER 46

  The manager of the River Haven marina did not live on a boat; she lived in a manufactured home up the hill from the boats. The temperature had dropped ten degrees and night had officially fallen. Archie could taste the river, like tinfoil in his mouth, as he waited on the stoop of the flat tan house with the word OFFICE burned onto a piece of polished driftwood that had been nailed onto the siding. His nose itched. Answer the fucking door, he thought.

  Henry and Claire stood beside him. Behind them were three unmarked police cars. He had ordered the patrol cars and SWAT vehicles to park up on the old highway, out of sight. He craned his head to look down at the marina, where several dozen boats bobbed in gloomy silence.

  A dog barked and the door opened. An older woman emerged, and Archie caught a flash of bouncing fur before she managed to push the dog behind her and close the door. She now stood, on the stoop, between the closed interior door and an aluminum screen door that she kept protectively between herself and the detectives. Archie lifted his badge up and showed it to her.

  “I know who you are,” she said, eyes level. “I’ve seen you on TV.” She took off her glasses. Her hair was dyed chestnut and tied in a loose knot at the base of her neck and she was wearing a turtleneck tucked into blue jeans. She was holding a paperback thriller, the place where she’d been reading marked with one thumb. The glasses left a sore-looking red impression on the bridge of her nose. “You’re that cop who was kidnapped by Gretchen Lowell.”

  Gretchen’s name sent a stab of electrical current down Archie’s arms. His fist tightened around the pillbox in his pocket. “I need to know which boats Dan McCallum has moored here.”

  She looked away and rattled the handle of the screen door a little. “Dan’s boat burned down.”

  “Is there another one?”

  She hesitated.

  “It’s important,” Archie said.

  “I let him keep it here, even though it’s not registered. He’s a good tenant.”

  “It’s okay,” Archie assured her. “You’re not in trouble. Where is it?”

  She studied Archie for a moment, and then she came out from behind the screen door and pointed down to the docks below. “Slip twenty-eight. Down there. Second boat from the end, on the left.”

  “You can do what you want to me,” Susan said. “But you have to let Addy go.”

  Reston’s face was all shadow and light. The corners of his mouth twitched. “I can’t.”

  It took everything Susan had to keep her face composed. “You’re going to kill her?”

  “I have to.”

  Susan felt the small room close in on her. Even if she were unbound, she wouldn’t be able to get around him, get to the door, get out of the boat. And then what? Swim? The porthole above where Addy lay was the size of a dinner plate. There was no way out. “And me?”

  “Look at her.” Reston reached out tentatively and touched the girl’s hip, letting his finger trace the deep curve down to her slender waist and over the bones of her ribs. Outside, water lapped at the hull. The boat rocked, uneven skittish bumps and rolls. “Isn’t she beautiful?” Reston asked.

  Susan couldn’t understand how he had done it. “They said they were watching you. They said you didn’t leave your house.”

  “I didn’t kidnap her, Suzy,” he said softly. “She came to me.” He closed his eyes. “I told her we could be together. I told her to break her bedroom window from the outside. I told her what bus to take to get out here. I told her to wait on the boat until I got done with school.” His eyes fluttered open and he gazed at Susan with a hatred she had never seen before. The boat rocked and the door to the room rattled in its hinges. “She did exactly what I told her to do.”

  “You’re crazy,” Susan said.

  He smiled to himself as he ogled the semiconscious girl. “Rohypnol. I got it on the Internet.”

  Susan was disgusted that she’d ever let him touch her. She saw every encounter, every fumble; the images ticked through her brain, a sad slide show of her sad adolescence. She had wanted so badly to be in control. She had convinced everyone she was. The truth was more pathetic.

  His breathing became more rapid and his face flushed with his arousal. He was touching Addy’s breast now. He circled her small pink nipple with his thumb. She stirred. “I only want them so badly because they remind me of you.”

  Susan told herself to be strong, to get out of this. “That’s self-justifying bullshit. You’ve always had a hard-on for teenage girls.”

  “No,” he said, his voice cracking. “No. You made me into this. I never lusted after students. Not until you. You did this to me.” H
e slid his hand from Addy’s breast back down over her ribs, her waist and her hip, and then down along the waistband of her underpants.

  “Don’t do that,” Susan said, turning her head, unable to look. “Please.”

  “Did I mean anything to you?”

  Susan squeezed her eyes shut. “Of course.”

  “I think about that day after school all the time. How you were standing, what you were wearing, what we said. You made me that tape, remember?” He touched her face, and she jerked away and felt the belt tighten, gagging her again, forcing her to remain still, afraid to move. Don’t cry, she told herself. Just don’t fucking cry.

  “Your favorite songs,” he said, and she felt his lips brush against her cheek and it made her want to vomit. “I still have it. There was a Violent Femmes song, ‘Add It Up,’ with the line ‘Why can’t I get just one kiss?’ You handed it to me and you said, ‘This is who I am.’ You gave yourself to me.” He kissed her again, dragging his bottom lip up the side of her face, leaving a path of wet saliva. “You had handwritten all of the titles of the songs. They were so carefully lettered. It must have taken you hours.”

  She squeezed her eyes tighter, until they felt like fists. “It was for rehearsal, Paul. I volunteered to make a tape for rehearsal. For the warm-up.”

  “It was that day in my classroom. After school. When we first kissed.”

  She could smell his sweat, sweet and acrid in the small space. “No.”

  “I listened to the tape on my way home and I couldn’t believe it—how much alike we were.” She felt his wet lips on her mouth and fought to turn her head but couldn’t. The black canvas of her eyelids was filled with stars. “I listened to the words of the songs, and I knew what you were trying to tell me,” he said, his lips dancing on hers. “I knew that it was wrong for us to be together.”

  He pulled away and she could feel the belt loosen, but she was still afraid to open her eyes, afraid of what she might see. “I was married. I was your teacher. But you were so mature for your age, so wise beyond your years. I wrote you a letter. I should never have done it, should never have put my feelings into words. But I took a chance. I gave it to you in class the next day and told you to read it after school, and you did.” He made a halting sighing sound that turned into something like a sob.

  “And you came to me after the cast party. And we made love.” He grabbed her head in his hands then and she felt his lips on her mouth, his tongue pushing against her sealed lips. The belt tightened. “Open your mouth.”

  Susan flung open her eyes and stared up at him, enraged. “That’s not how it happened, Paul,” she said. Finally saying it. Finally telling the truth. “I got drunk,” she spat at him. “I got drunk for the first time at the cast party after a stupid school play and you offered me a ride home and you fucked me in your car.” She leaned her head sadly against the bunk. “I was a kid. My dad had just died. I let it go on. I didn’t know any better. And you were my favorite teacher.”

  CHAPTER 47

  The Kevlar vest forced Archie to breathe differently. The Velcro straps were snug and the weight of the thing constricted his chest, causing his ribs to throb and making every movement of his torso a mental victory. He tried to inhale air deeply, visualizing the oxygen moving through his windpipe down into his lungs, feeding his heart. It gave him something to think about as he and Henry and Claire made their slow way along the cement drive that zigzagged down the hillside to the boats below. An old silver Passat was parked at the bottom of the hill. Reston’s car. They walked at a casual pace, their vests under their civilian clothes, guns tucked away, but their bodies were tense, and anyone who happened to see them would be an idiot not to be alarmed. But there wasn’t anyone. Just the boats.

  They reached the dock. It stretched into the river in a T shape, with boats on either side. The security lights that lined the gangways provided a lazy white glow that bounced off the black water and made everything look especially sharp. It was the cooler air, Archie supposed. It made everything look harder. He couldn’t see the damage from the fire—the boats were long gone, but a faint smell of charcoal lingered. He unsnapped the safety strap on his holster and let the smooth metal of his .38 press against the skin of his palm.

  The numbers of the slips ran even on one side, odd on the other. Archie knew the boat wouldn’t be there even before they got to number twenty-eight. He just wasn’t that lucky.

  “Fuck,” said Archie as they stood in front of the empty slip.

  “What does that mean?” Claire asked.

  “It means they’ve gone sailing,” said Archie.

  “Boating,” Henry said. “It’s a powerboat. You say boating.”

  “Fuck,” Archie said again.

  Archie was standing on the deck of a twenty-eight-foot twin-screw hardtop cabin cruiser. He didn’t like boats. But he knew what kind of boat this one was because one of the River Patrol deputies had told him. The county River Patrol Unit wore green uniforms, painted their boats emerald, and called themselves “the Green Hornets.” Their winter staff consisted of one lieutenant, one sergeant, eight deputies, and a full-time mechanic. Within a half hour of Archie’s call, every one of them had reported for duty.

  Within forty-five minutes, five Green Hornet boats were in the water, and two police helicopters and a Coast Guard helicopter were in the air looking for the Chris-Craft. “It’s a boat,” one of the pilots had told Archie confidently. “It’s on a river. We’ll find it.” And they did. An hour later, one of the pilots had radioed to say that he had spotted a Chris-Craft anchored just off the channel on the Columbia side of Sauvie Island.

  Archie relayed the location to SWAT. Reston would have noticed the 10,000-megawatt police helicopter searchlight as it slid past. He’d either anchor up and try to flee, in which case the helicopter would track him, or he’d hunker down. It was a hostage situation, and Archie didn’t want to take any chances. But it would take SWAT time to get there, and the Green Hornet cabin cruiser wasn’t far, and, after all, didn’t they need to confirm that it was the right Chris-Craft? Didn’t want to send a SWAT team to burst into the wrong boat and ruin a family fishing holiday. So Archie instructed the three deputies on the Hornet boat with Henry, Claire, Anne, and him to circle around the island and see if they could get close.

  And there she was. The running lights were off, but her cabin lights were on. Rick, a deputy about Archie’s age, with short-cropped hair and a salt-and-pepper beard, aimed a searchlight mounted on the deck of the cruiser at the Chris-Craft. The helicopter circled in the black sky above.

  “That’s your girl,” he hollered over the engine.

  “I’ve got SWAT and a hostage negotiator on the way,” Archie hollered back.

  “There’s not a lot of time,” Anne cautioned Archie. Her braids were whipping in her face and she held them back with one leather-gloved hand. “He’s going to want to end this.”

  “How close can you get to him?” Archie asked Rick.

  “Close enough to board.”

  “Do it.”

  Henry, Claire, and Archie had their guns drawn as the Hornets slowed the engine to a crawl and they made their way next to the Chris-Craft. Two of the men secured lines around the patrol cruiser’s cleats and stood at the starboard side of the boat. When the cruiser got close, Rick shut off her engines, and they drifted the last few feet to the Chris-Craft. When they were close enough, the two other deputies grabbed her railing and secured their lines to her cleats.

  The two boats bobbed and knocked together. No one spoke. It was cold on the water and Archie brought his cupped hands to his mouth, blew warm air on them and then flexed them a few times to keep the blood flowing. His cheeks burned from the wind that blew over the river. There was no movement on the Chris-Craft. Archie scanned the river. No other lights on the water.

  “I’m going aboard,” he announced.

  He handed his gun to Henry, butt-first.

  Henry wrapped his fist around the gun but placed h
is other hand firmly over Archie’s so the gun was locked between them. He leaned forward, his big face pinched. “You going in there because you think it’s the smart thing to do,” he whispered to Archie, “or because you’ve been feeling sorry for yourself?”

  Archie looked his friend in the eye. You can’t save me, Archie thought. “Don’t come in unless you hear a shot. I’ll try to signal you if I think SWAT needs to take him out.”

  “Take a vest,” Henry said.

  The vest. Archie had taken it off when they first got on the boat. It seemed counterintuitive to wear something heavy when you were supposed to be wearing something buoyant. He pulled his hand away, leaving his gun in Henry’s fist. “Hurts my ribs,” he said, and he turned and heaved himself over the railing of the cruiser and onto the old Chris-Craft before anyone could stop him. The rubber soles of his shoes stuck to the fiberglass deck of the boat and he managed to scurry, knees bent, hunched, a few yards to the door of the cabin.

  “Reston!” he shouted. “It’s Detective Archie Sheridan. I’m going to open the hatch so we can talk, okay?” He didn’t wait for an answer. What was he going to do if Reston said no? Just keep moving. Keep talking. Keep him off guard. Archie fumbled with the latch; it was unlocked. He swung the square wooden hatch open. A sign on the doorjamb warned: WATCH YOUR STEP.

  Archie could make out part of the interior of the wooden cabin—a small corner galley and a dinette. But no Reston. No Susan. No Addy Jackson. “I’m unarmed. I’m going to come in so we can talk, okay?” He waited that time. Nothing. That was a bad sign. Maybe they were all already dead. He took a deep breath, bracing himself for any coming scenes of carnage. He wasn’t sure he could take that. “I’m coming in.”

  He squeezed in through the hatch and lowered himself down the four steps that led straight into the main cabin.