Sweetheart

  Archie touched his right side, where his persistent cramp had returned. The Vicodin didn’t seem to help.

  He opened his desk drawer, and there was Gretchen. He’d gone back to the log the night before for the book. He’d told himself he didn’t want to litter, didn’t want one of the crime techs to find it, that he wanted the closure of lighting the thing on fire, et cetera. Then why had he brought it to his office, brushed the mud off, and put it in his desk drawer?

  Raul Sanchez poked his head in Archie’s office door, and Archie slammed the drawer shut. Sanchez had foregone his FBI cap and windbreaker for a brown suit and tie. You almost couldn’t tell it was a clip-on. “Meeting with the mayor,” he explained. “They’re already planning a public funeral for Castle down at the Waterfront. Speakers. Tents. The whole enchilada.” He smiled at the enchilada line. “Traffic downtown is gonna be fucked.”

  “I’ll make a note to be out of town,” Archie said. Watching people weep over Castle was a little more than Archie could bear right now.

  “You going to Parker’s service?” Sanchez asked.

  “Yeah,” Archie said. Parker’s funeral was that afternoon. No tents for that one. No crowd control. His family must have moved mountains to make arrangements that fast. Archie thought he knew why.

  Sanchez hesitated, then rubbed the back of his neck. “His blood alcohol was .24.” He looked up meaningfully at Archie, then scratched his bearded chin. “Thought you’d want to know.”

  Archie closed his eyes. “Fuck.” They were getting him in the ground just in time.

  “We’ll wait until after his funeral,” Sanchez said. “Make it public tomorrow.”

  “Thanks,” Archie said.

  Sanchez turned to go.

  “You got my message about why Parker was meeting with Castle?” Archie asked. “Susan Ward’s story?”

  “Crazy shit,” Sanchez said, turning back. He shrugged. “Doesn’t change the blood test, though.”

  Archie sighed and leaned back in his chair, hands folded across his chest. The brass pillbox pressed against his thigh. Gretchen Lowell smiled in his desk drawer. “No,” he said.

  Susan fiddled with the white piping of her brown dress. She had decided against black. It was too funereal. The brown dress was vintage, A-line, cap-sleeved, with white piping and two big white buttons on the chest. She had clipped her turquoise hair at the back of her neck. It seemed too colorful somehow, disrespectful of the occasion.

  There were a fair amount of people in the church, probably a couple hundred. Susan recognized many faces from the paper. The wooden pews were full, and it was standing room only in the back. The rain had passed and sun streamed in through the stained-glass windows, throwing colored trapezoids of light on the wooden floor.

  Parker was at the front of the church, in a glazed ceramic urn.

  Susan was sitting in the third row. She’d arrived early. Susan was almost never early. But she’d arrived an hour before the funeral, and after twenty minutes crying in her car in the parking lot she came inside and got a place up front.

  She saw Derek, sitting in the back with some other city beat reporters. He tried to catch her eye, but she avoided him.

  Then she saw Archie Sheridan come in with his family and sit a few rows behind her across the aisle. He was wearing a black suit and shiny black shoes and sat with his arm around his ex-wife, who was wearing a black sleeveless dress that showed off her lean, tan arms. His son was wearing a gray suit and the little girl was wearing a gray eyelet dress. They looked like a photo spread of what to wear to a funeral.

  Susan looked down at her own ensemble. She looked like she worked at Mr. Steak.

  The Herald’s publisher, Howard Jenkins, gave the eulogy. A few of the older reporters at the paper spoke. There weren’t many left. Most Herald employees over fifty were offered buyout options to retire so the paper could save on pensions.

  Parker was an institution. Parker was a reporter’s reporter. Parker was a muckraker, a local hero, a warrior for the afflicted, a champ, a gem, employee of the fucking year.

  God, it was all such bullshit. Susan got up, squeezed past forty knees, feet, and purses, and walked as fast as she could out the door, into the hallway, down the carpeted stairs, and out of the church.

  The old stone church had a courtyard that overlooked the park blocks. A few tables, fluttering with pink paper tablecloths, had been set up for the postfuneral reception. There was a large silver urn of coffee and a glass bowl of fruit punch. Several plates of deviled eggs sat spoiling in the sun. And bottles of Wild Turkey were lined up five deep. Susan smiled.

  On the other side of the street, in the park, people streamed by, walking. Lunchtime traffic clogged the street. Susan’s hands were shaking.

  Archie Sheridan appeared at the door she’d just fled through. “You okay?” he asked quietly.

  Susan turned her head, embarrassed, and dug through her purse. “I just needed a cigarette,” she said, coming up with the yellow pack.

  Archie walked down the stone steps and leaned against the church wall next to her while she found her lighter.

  “Parker was legally drunk when he drove off the bridge,” he said. “They’re making it public tomorrow.”

  Susan held the lighter to the end of her cigarette. The flame licked and jumped, then flattened as she inhaled. It was bound to come up, but she was still sorry that it had. “Parker was always legally drunk,” she said. “You know that.” She dropped the lighter back into her purse. “He was an alcoholic.”

  Archie put his hands in his pockets and stared at the cobblestones. “His blood alcohol was .24, Susan.”

  Organ music started in the church. “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Susan hadn’t even known Parker was religious.

  She shook her head. This was insane. They couldn’t blame this on Parker. It was Castle. He was the predator, the asshole, the perv; Parker was a victim. “What about Castle?” she asked. “He could have still grabbed the wheel.”

  “Castle’s tox screen came back clean,” Archie said. “There’s no lab test for suicidal impulses.”

  The organ music swelled as the side church door opened. A few people wandered down the stairs into the courtyard. Then a few more. Susan watched as they walked over to the deviled eggs and began eating them, seemingly without concern about salmonella. A sixtyish woman came up to Archie and he kissed her on the cheek.

  “Margery,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

  It was Parker’s wife. Susan had never met her, but she’d seen her in the church, along with her two thirtysomething daughters, and put it together. Parker had said that his daughters looked like his wife, and he was right. They were all thick-haired women with long necks and erect posture and large eyes that darted back and forth behind heavy bangs. Margery’s hair was silver, her daughters’ brown.

  Margery wiped a smear of deviled egg off her mouth. “It was nice of you to come,” she said to Archie. She hugged him, first lifting her thick braid and putting it back behind a shoulder. Then she smiled at Susan. She had pale blue eyes, like Parker’s, and her pale skin paired with her silver hair made her look almost albino.

  “You’re Susan,” she said.

  “How did you know?” Susan asked. She reached up and touched her turquoise hair. “Oh, right.”

  “Quentin thought the world of you.”

  Susan felt her eyes burn. “I liked him, too,” she said. She slid a look at Archie, wanting him to signal to her that he would protect Parker’s memory, protect his family from the implication that Parker was at fault.

  But Archie was looking past them both to where Debbie stood with the two children near the exit of the courtyard.

  “I’ve got to go,” he said.

  “Working a case?” Margery asked.

  “It’s my daughter’s birthday,” Archie said.

  CHAPTER

  14

  The cardboard pirate hats came flat, so Archie had to fold them into shape and then fit them
on each of the heads of the ten first-grade girls, securing them with elastic bands under their chins. There were Mardi Gras beads and Jolly Roger flags and chocolate wrapped up to look like gold coins. The girls mostly forwent the black plastic eye patches. Where Sara got it in her head to have a pirate-themed birthday party, Archie had no idea.

  The girls were having a very complicated pretend sword fight in the living room with, apparently, the sofa standing in for a ship. Debbie was plying the parents with wine in the kitchen. Ben had sequestered himself in his room. Archie was on kid patrol, and stood with his arms folded, leaning against the doorway, watching the girl pirates go to war with the pillows.

  Sara whispered something in another pirate’s ear and then came running over, slamming against his thighs. “Daddy,” she said breathlessly. “We need you to be a bad pirate.”

  Archie knelt down so that he was her height. “I presume that you are all good pirates?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “And I’m supposed to fight you?” he asked.

  Sara leaned forward with a concerned expression and whispered: “Do you know how to be a pirate?”

  Archie stood and picked up a large rubber pirate knife that was displayed on the snack table and he put it in his mouth and said, “Arrrr,” and charged the sofa. The little girls screamed and scattered and then swarmed around him giggling.

  Then he heard Debbie’s voice say: “Henry’s here.”

  He looked up, still laughing, and saw Henry standing with Debbie in the doorway. “You’re late,” Archie said, smiling. Then he noticed that his friend hadn’t taken off his shoulder holster. Henry knew the rules about guns in the house. So that could only mean one thing. “And you’re not staying.”

  Sara saw Henry, too, and sprang from the sofa and ran over to him, wrapping her arms around his waist. “Henry!” she cried, delighted. Henry hugged her back and produced a small, poorly wrapped gift from his pocket and gave it to her. “I just wanted to drop this by,” he said. “Happy birthday.”

  She beamed and wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him and then scampered back to the sofa-ship.

  Henry raised his eyebrows at Archie. “Can we talk?” he said.

  Archie could tell from the heaviness of Henry’s gaze that it was bad news. He had been happy for a minute, he thought. That was his mistake.

  He handed the rubber sword to Sara and disentwined himself from the girls. They immediately fell behind him and began organizing a plank-walking.

  Debbie stood in the doorway, next to Henry, arms crossed. As Archie walked over to him he felt the pain below his ribs start to throb.

  “What’s going on?” Archie asked.

  Henry hesitated. “There’s been an incident at the prison.”

  The pain was gone. Archie straightened up an iota. “Is she okay?”

  Henry leaned forward and lowered his voice, so Archie had to strain to hear him above the girls’ giggling. “She’s in the infirmary. She was assaulted. It’s bad, Archie. We’ve got a real situation.”

  Archie was suddenly aware then of Debbie standing beside them. She was perfectly still for a long moment and then, slowly, she reached her hand out and touched Henry’s arm. “Don’t,” she said to Henry. “Don’t do this. Not today.”

  Henry sighed and shook his head. “It was a guard,” he explained. “We need her to tell us which one. She’ll only talk to Archie.”

  “No,” Debbie said. She turned to Archie. “It’s your daughter’s birthday party. Henry can handle it.”

  Archie took her hands in his and looked her in the eyes, the mother of his children, and he tried to explain: “She’s my responsibility.”

  Debbie closed her eyes. And then let her hands fall away from his and turned to the girls. She clapped her hands.

  “Who wants cake?” she asked.

  The Oregon State Pen was a compound of fat-colored buildings sequestered behind a stucco-coated brick wall topped with razor wire. The prison was an hour south of Portland, in Salem, surrounded by twenty-two acres of green fields just off the highway. It housed both male and female inmates and was the state’s only maximum-security prison. Archie and Henry had spent so much time there since Gretchen’s capture that they knew every hallway, every guard.

  The infirmary, a long, windowless room about forty feet by thirty, was in the center of the main building. The concrete walls were painted gray and the floor was a splatter-patterned linoleum. It was bare-bones. There were no pictures on the walls to make you feel better. The room had four beds, each with its own privacy curtain. The faint odor of sweat and blood and defecation permeated everything.

  A prison nurse, dressed in scrubs, sat behind the nose-high desk near the door. He glanced up, saw their prison-issue ID badges, and glanced back down at the chart he was reading. Archie walked past to the back of the room, where he could see a guard. Gretchen always traveled with a guard.

  He was not prepared for what he saw when he came around the curtain. Gretchen was restrained in the bed, her wrists and ankles secured with leather cuffs. Her head was turned to the side, and her eyes were closed. She was wearing a hospital gown and Archie could see deep bruises on both of her slender arms. Hematomas. The skin swollen, darkened with broken blood vessels. They had found her in her room like that. Curled up on the floor. A rape kit had been positive for semen. It made Archie sick to think about it.

  “Give us a minute,” Henry said to the guard.

  The guard shook his head slowly. “I’m supposed to stay with her.”

  Henry tilted his head at Gretchen’s prone body. “She’s tied to a bed, Andy. Give us a minute.”

  The guard glanced at Gretchen’s prone, bruised body. “I’ll wait by the door, if you need anything,” he said.

  Archie moved around the bed to an aluminum chair and sat down. Gretchen didn’t stir. He reached out and wrapped his hand around hers. Her hand felt cool and delicate.

  Her eyelids fluttered open and she smiled when she saw him. “So this is what it takes to get your attention?” she said weakly. An IV morphine drip was taped to her arm and her cadence was slow and careful.

  “Who did this to you?” Archie asked softly.

  Her blue eyes moved to Henry. Archie knew she wanted Henry out of the room, but he wasn’t about to ask him. He knew Henry wouldn’t go.

  “Tell me who did this,” Archie said again.

  She raised an eyebrow. “That would be a breach of prison etiquette.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Henry said.

  Archie shot Henry a look. “Let me worry about that,” he said to Gretchen.

  “Are you concerned about me?” she asked, appraising him. “That’s sweet, darling. But your job isn’t to protect me.” She lowered her voice to a faux conspiratorial tone. “It’s to protect people from me.”

  “Don’t misunderstand my interest,” Archie said. “You’re a ward of the state. I’m an employee of the state. Until we’ve located everyone you’ve murdered, your well-being is in the state’s interest.”

  “So romantic,” she said with a sigh. She turned her head toward Henry. She had made an art out of ignoring him. She had never responded to anything he’d said, and had carried on whole conversations with Archie as if Henry weren’t even present. “Tell me something, darling,” she said, looking at Henry but talking to Archie. “Can you feel that your spleen is gone? Does it hurt?”

  “Not anymore,” Archie answered.

  “I think about that,” Gretchen said dreamily. “Having my hands inside you. You were so warm and sticky. I can still smell you, your blood. Do you remember?”

  Archie ran a hand over his face. “I lost consciousness,” he reminded her quietly.

  She smiled. “I regret that. I wanted to keep you awake. I wanted you to remember. I’m the only one who’s ever been that far inside you.”

  “You and the team of trauma surgeons at Emanuel.”

  “Yes.” She laughed and the effort caused her to wince in pain.
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  “They told me that he broke four of your ribs,” Archie said. His own ribs still ached sometimes, where Gretchen had driven a nail through his rib cage.

  “Every time I breathe, I think of you.”

  “Tell me who it was,” he said.

  “You’ve moved back in with her, haven’t you?”

  The question caught Archie by surprise. Debbie often talked about Gretchen as if she were his mistress. But to Archie it sometimes felt like the other way around. As if, by moving back in with his ex-wife, he was cheating on Gretchen.

  That was probably worthy of bringing up in therapy.

  Gretchen was waiting for him to answer. Her beautiful eyes shimmered. She looked hurt. It was all an act, of course. Everything Gretchen did was an act.

  “Yes,” Archie said.

  She slid him a slow, wicked look and whispered: “But you still haven’t fucked her.”

  Archie stopped breathing.

  “That’s it,” Henry said.

  Archie heard the door to the infirmary open and male voices and the smack of footsteps against the linoleum.

  “Archie,” Henry warned.

  Archie saw the same thing Henry did—his and Gretchen’s hands intertwined. But he still couldn’t move. He saw Gretchen smile sweetly at Henry. It was a smile Archie knew. It meant, Fuck you. And still Archie didn’t move.

  Henry’s voice was a harsh whisper: “Goddamn it, Archie.”

  It was like a switch had been thrown. Archie snapped his hand back and pushed the chair back a foot, threading his fingers behind his neck just as the warden and two guards entered.

  “Gentlemen,” the warden said. “I’ve got something you should see.”

  Henry waited until Archie and the others had cleared the curtain on their way out of the room. Then he lifted himself off the wall he had been leaning against and took a step toward the bed.

  “It’s funny,” he said to Gretchen. “How he beat the shit out of you. And somehow didn’t touch your face.”