Heartsick

  Archie reached out and gently put his hand on Jen’s. She looked up. And he saw, in her hard eyes, a fissure, and, behind it, a tiny bit of hope. “I think it’s a really smart guess,” he said. He squeezed her hand. “Thank you.”

  “So her bike is broken,” Claire said when they were back in the car. It was dark and the windows were glassy with rain. “She tries to fix it for a while, then gives up and decides to walk it home. Our guy stops, offers her a ride, or to help fix the bike, and he grabs her.”

  “But that’s a crime of opportunity,” Henry said from the driver’s seat of the unmarked Crown Vic. Henry hated Crown Vics. And yet somehow he always ended up with one. “She fits his profile. You think he just drives around looking for high school girls who look right enough to snatch? That he just got lucky?”

  “He broke the bike,” Archie said quietly from the backseat. He pulled the pillbox out his pocket and absentmindedly rotated it between his thumb and forefinger.

  “He broke the bike,” Henry agreed emphatically, nodding. “Which means he had her picked out. Knew she had the bike. Knew which bike was hers. Maybe even knew it was crappy. That she’d drag the thing home like usual. He’s watching them.”

  “Still leaves us with some missing time,” Claire said. “Next kid left rehearsal at six-thirty. Didn’t see her. The bike rack is right by the door.”

  Archie’s head throbbed. “We’ll do the roadblock again tomorrow. Maybe someone else saw her.” He extracted three pills from the pillbox and put them in his mouth one by one.

  “You okay, boss?” Henry asked, glancing back at Archie in the rearview mirror.

  “Zantac,” Archie lied. “For my stomach.” He leaned his head back on the seat and closed his eyes. If the killer had stalked Kristy, then he’d probably start looking for another girl soon. “You sure the other high schools are secure?” Archie asked, eyes still closed.

  “Fort Knox,” Claire confirmed.

  “Set up surveillance at all four tomorrow,” Archie told them. “Run the plates of every car that goes by Jefferson between five and seven.” He opened his eyes, rubbed his face with an open hand, and leaned forward between the two front seats. “I want to go through the autopsy reports again. And let’s go door-to-door again tonight. Maybe someone’s remembered something.”

  Henry glanced over at him. “We should all get some sleep. We’ve got people working tonight. Smart people. Awake people. I’ll have them call if anything turns up.”

  Archie was too tired to argue. He could do the work back at the apartment. “I’ll go home,” he said. “If you take me by the office so I can pick up the reports.”

  “She’s still out there, right?” Claire said. “It’s not all for nothing? There’s a chance. Right?”

  There was a long silence and then Henry said, “Right.”

  The phone was ringing when Archie got back to the apartment. He had an armload full of police reports and citizen tips he planned to read that night and he stacked them perilously on the hallway table, picked up the cordless, and set his keys on the table next to the charger.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s me.”

  “Hey, Debbie,” Archie said to his ex-wife, grateful for the momentary distraction. He walked through the kitchen, got a beer out of the fridge, and opened it.

  “How was your first day?”

  “Futile,” Archie said. He unclipped his gun from his belt and set it on the coffee table and sat down on the couch in front of it.

  “I saw you on TV. You were very intimidating.”

  “I wore that tie you bought me.”

  “I noticed that.” She paused. “Are you coming to Ben’s thing on Sunday?”

  He swallowed hard. “You know I can’t.”

  He could hear the sigh in her voice. “Because you’ll be with her.”

  They had been through this before. There wasn’t anything left to say. He let the phone slide down his face, his neck, until the base of the receiver rested against his breastbone. He pressed it hard against the bone until it hurt. He could still hear her, muffled and distant, like someone talking underwater.

  “You know how sick that is, right?”

  The vibration of her voice deep inside his chest made him feel better, like there was something alive in there.

  “What do you two talk about?”

  She had asked before. He had never told her, would never tell her. He lifted the phone back to his ear. He could hear her breathing. She said, “I just don’t know how you’re going to get better until you cleanse her from your life.”

  I’m not going to get better, he thought. “I can’t just yet.”

  “I love you, Archie. Ben loves you. Sara loves you.”

  He tried to say something. I know. But he wanted to say something more, and he couldn’t, so he didn’t say anything at all.

  “Are you going to come out and see us?”

  “As soon as I can.” They both knew what he meant. He felt the splinters of another headache starting. “There’s this reporter, though,” he continued. “Susan Ward. She’s doing a series about me for the Herald. She’ll probably call you.”

  “What should I tell her?”

  “Tell her you won’t talk to her. And then, later, when she tries again, tell her anything she wants to know.”

  “You want me to tell her the truth?”

  He ran his fingers over the nubby fabric of his cheerless couch and imagined Debbie sitting on their couch, in their house, in his old life. “Yeah.”

  “You want that published in the Herald?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What are you up to, Archie?”

  He took a swig of his beer. “Closure,” he said with a hollow laugh.

  CHAPTER 12

  Gretchen doesn’t let him sleep that first night, so he is already losing track of time. She injects him with some sort of amphetamine and then leaves for hours. Archie’s heart races and he can do nothing but stare at the white ceiling and feel the pulse throb in his neck and his hands shake. The blood has dried on his chest and now itches. He is in excruciating pain every time he inhales, but it’s the itching that is making him crazy. He tries for a while to keep track of time by counting, but his mind drifts and he loses the thread of numbers. Judging by the stink of the corpse on the floor beside him, he has been here for at least twenty-four hours. But more than that, he can’t say. So Archie stares. And blinks. And breathes. And waits.

  He does not hear her come in, but suddenly Gretchen is there, smiling beside him. She caresses his hair, which is wet with sweat. “It’s time for your medicine, darling,” she purrs. With a swift motion, she tears the tape off his mouth.

  She is gentle as she pushes the funnel into his throat, but it still makes him gag. He fights it, jerking his head from side to side, trying to lift himself on his elbows, but she knots her fist in his hair and holds his head firmly in place. “Now, now,” she scolds.

  She has a handful of pills and she drops them down his throat one by one. He gags and tries to spit them out, but she extracts the funnel, presses his jaw shut, and rubs his throat with her hand, forcing him to swallow them like a dog.

  “What are they?” he croaks.

  “You don’t get to talk yet,” she says. She smoothes another piece of tape over his mouth. He is almost thankful. What is there to say?

  “What do you want to do today?” she asks.

  Archie stares at the ceiling, his eyes burning for sleep.

  “Look at me,” she says between clenched teeth.

  He does.

  “What do you want to do today?”

  He raises his eyebrows in an expression of ambivalence.

  “More of the nails?”

  He can’t stop himself from flinching.

  Gretchen beams. He can tell his pain pleases her. “They’re looking for you,” she says in a singsong voice. “But they’re not going to find you.”

  Wherever they are, she is reading the paper, watching the news,
he thinks.

  She puts her face next to his so he can see her smooth ivory skin, her huge pupils. “I want you to think about what we’re going to send them,” she says matter-of-factly. She runs her fingertips lightly along the skin of his arm, his wrist. “Hand, foot, that sort of thing. Something nice to let them know we’re thinking of them. I’m going to let you pick it out.”

  Archie closes his eyes. He is not here. This is not happening. He tries frantically to conjure Debbie’s face on the black canvas of his eyelids. He can see her as she was that last morning. He has already mentally cataloged every item of clothing she was wearing. The thick-cabled green wool sweater. The gray skirt. The long coat that made her look like a Russian soldier. He conjures every freckle on her face. Her tiny diamond earrings. The mole on her neck, just above her breastbone.

  “Look at me,” Gretchen orders.

  He squeezes his eyes shut tighter. Her wedding band. Round knees. The freckles on her pale thigh.

  “Look at me,” she says again, her voice airless.

  Fuck you , he thinks.

  She stabs him just under his left rib cage. He howls and wrenches in pain and his eyes fly open instinctively.

  She holds his head firmly by a fistful of hair and bends over him so that her breasts are inches above his chest and she twists the scalpel farther into his flesh. He gets a flash of her smell—lilacs, sweet sweat, talcum powder—it is a relief from the putrid stench of the corpse.

  “I don’t like to be ignored,” she says in a voice just above a whisper. “Understand?”

  He nods, straining against her hand.

  “Good.” She pulls the scalpel out and drops it on the instrument tray.

  CHAPTER 13

  Susan pulled into one of the freshly designated visitor parking spots at the task force offices. She was a half hour early. Susan was never early. She didn’t even like people who were early. But she had woken up at sunrise with that burning hum in her stomach she got when she was about to write a really good story. Ian had already left by then. If he’d woken Susan up to say goodbye, she didn’t remember it.

  A fog had settled on the city overnight, and the air was heavy and wet. The chilly humidity soaked into everything, so that even the inside of Susan’s car felt like it might mildew as she sat there.

  To pass the time now, she opened her phone, punched in a number, and left a message on the voice mail she knew by heart. “Hi, Ethan. It’s Susan Ward. From the alley.” From the alley? Christ. “I mean the Herald. I was wondering if you’d had a chance to talk to Molly about me. I really think her story deserves to be heard. Anyway, give me call. Okay?” Ian had said not to pursue the story. That it was a time waster. But she had some time to kill, so why not do some background? Background wasn’t really pursuit. Really.

  She waited in the car for a few more minutes, smoking a cigarette and watching people go in and out of the building. Susan was usually a social smoker. She smoked when she was out. When she drank. And sometimes when she was nervous. She hated being nervous. She flung the cigarette out the car window and watched the tiny explosion of sparks as it hit the pavement. Then she checked her appearance in the rearview mirror. She was dressed entirely in black, with her pink hair pulled back into a low ponytail. Jesus, she thought, I look like a punk-rock ninja. There was nothing to be done. She bit the bullet and went inside.

  They had worked all night on transforming the bank into a working squad room. The boxes that yesterday had sat half-unpacked were now flattened and stacked by the door, waiting to be hauled away. The desks sat in pairs, facing each other, each equipped with a computer and black flat-screen monitor. No wonder the public education budget was short. Enlarged school photographs of each of the girls, as well as dozens of snapshots, were pinned to a wall-size bulletin board. Several city maps hung beside them, peppered with colorful pushpins. A copier was noisily spitting out paper. Coffee cups and water bottles sat on desks. Susan could smell coffee brewing. She counted seven detectives, all on the phone. A female uniformed officer sitting at a long desk immediately inside the door looked up at Susan.

  “I’m here to see Archie Sheridan,” Susan said. “Susan Ward. I have an appointment.” She pulled her press pass out of her purse and let it dangle from its lanyard a few inches above the desk.

  The officer glanced at the press pass, picked up her phone, dialed an extension, and announced Susan’s arrival. “You can go back,” she said, already returning to her computer monitor.

  Susan made her way through the bank to Archie’s office. This time, the white venetian blinds were open and she could see him sitting at his desk reading some papers. The door was ajar and she knocked lightly on it, feeling a slight flutter of nerves in her stomach.

  “Good morning,” he said, standing up.

  She went in and took the hand he offered. “Good morning. Sorry I’m early.”

  His eyebrows quirked up. “Are you?”

  “About thirty minutes.”

  He shrugged slightly and just stood there. Susan counted four empty coffee cups on his desk.

  Oh God. He was waiting for her to sit down first. Right. She scrambled into one of the burgundy vinyl armchairs that faced his desk.

  He sat down. The office was small, just big enough for a large cherry-veneer desk with a built-in bookcase behind it and two armchairs in front of it. A small window overlooked the street, where cars sped by at a regular clip. He was wearing the same corduroy jacket from the day before, but today his button-down shirt was blue. She felt like she should be asking for a loan. “So how do we do this?”

  Archie placed his hands in front of him on the desk, palms down. “You tell me.” His expression was friendly, welcoming.

  “Well,” Susan said slowly. “I’ll need access. To you.”

  He nodded. “As long it doesn’t get in the way of me doing my job, sure.”

  “You don’t have a problem with that? Me following you around while you’re trying to work?”

  “No.”

  “And I’ll want to talk to people around you.” She examined his face. It remained relaxed, unconcerned. “Your ex-wife, for instance.”

  He didn’t flinch. “Fine. I don’t know if she’ll talk to you, but you’re welcome to ask her.”

  “And Gretchen Lowell.”

  His face constricted just a little. He opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. “Gretchen doesn’t talk to reporters.”

  “I can be very persuasive.”

  He traced an imaginary circle on the desk with his palm. “She’s in the state pen. Maximum security. She can only see her lawyers, cops, and family. And she doesn’t have any family. And you’re not a cop.”

  “We could exchange letters. Like in the olden days.”

  He leaned back slowly in his chair and appraised her. “No.”

  “No?” Susan said.

  “You can shadow me. You can talk to Debbie and the people I work with. I will talk to you about the so-called After School Strangler case. I will talk to you about the Beauty Killer case. You can interview my doctor if you want to. But not Gretchen Lowell. She’s still the subject of a police investigation and asking her questions would be a distraction. It’s a deal breaker.”

  “Excuse me, Detective. But what makes you think that, if I did write her, you’d even find out about it?”

  He smiled patiently. “Trust me. I’d find out.”

  She stared at him. It was not the fact that he didn’t want her talking to Gretchen Lowell that bothered her. He had been through some sort of hell. Of course he didn’t want his tormentor interviewed for some stupid newspaper story. What bothered Susan was a growing certainty that this profile was a bad idea for Archie Sheridan. That he had things to hide, and that she was going to find them out. He should not have agreed to any of this. And if she realized that, then she was pretty sure that smart Archie Sheridan did, too. So why was he letting her do it?

  “Any other deal breakers?” she asked.

  “One.?
??

  Here we go. “Shoot.”

  “Sundays off.”

  “Is that when you have your kids?”

  Archie glanced over her shoulder, out the window. “No.”

  “Church?”

  Nothing.

  “Golf?” Susan guessed. “Taxidermy club?”

  “One day of privacy,” he said firmly, focusing back on her, his hands now gripped in his lap. “You get the other six.”

  She nodded a couple of times. She could write this series, and she could write it well. Who was she kidding? She could write it brilliantly. The story was hers. The reasons why could work themselves out later. “Okay,” she agreed. “Where do we start?”

  “The beginning,” he answered. “Cleveland High School. Lee Robinson.” He picked up the phone on his desk and dialed an extension. “You ready?” he said into the phone. He hung up and looked at Susan.

  “Detective Sobol will be joining us.”

  Susan tried to mask her dismay. She had hoped to have Archie Sheridan to herself, all the better to pick his brain. “He was your partner, right? On the first Beauty Killer murder?”

  Before Archie could answer, Henry appeared at the door to Archie’s office, stretching his ill-fitting leather coat over his broad shoulders. He thrust a big hand at Susan. “Henry Sobol,” he said. Just a big teddy bear.

  She shook it, trying to match his grip. “Susan Ward. Oregon Herald. I’m doing a story on—”

  “You’re early,” said Henry.

  CHAPTER 14

  Fred Doud smoked a bowl on the beach. He was hunkered next to a large bark-stripped log that had washed ashore the winter before. Not that his discretion mattered. He hadn’t seen anyone along the mile stretch of beach he’d just walked. He usually came out in the afternoon, but he had a court date later that day. He took one more extended drag off the small glass pipe and then put it back into its leather satchel. He tied the satchel shut, his long, bony fingers fumbling a little in the cold, and hung it back around his neck. He surveyed the skin of his arms, his thighs, belly, knees. It was bright pink, but he didn’t feel cold anymore. He liked winters on the beach. There were plenty of people the rest of the year, but during the winter, he was often the only one. He lived with some college buddies a few miles away on the island, so it was an easy drive. Per beach rules, he wore a robe from the parking area, down the path carved through the blackberry bushes. Then, once he was on the beach, he let the robe drop off his bony shoulders and stepped away from it, au naturel. He never felt freer.