Heartsick (12 page)

“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

F
red 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.

The truth was that he usually turned back at that log, but sometimes, every once in a while, he decided to go farther, to the point where the beach went around a bend and he could see the lighthouse up ahead. Today, when he stood up, reveling in his stoned, naked body, Fred knew that it was one of those days.

He usually walked on the inner beach, where the sand was finer and more pleasant on bare feet, but when he went on the longer route, he often walked closer to the water on the clay beds, where he had once found an arrowhead and hoped to again. Visibility wasn’t bad. The fog had been dense when he started out, but all that was left now was a thick ridge of white that hovered over the river. The cold clay was slippery and the beach was rank, as it sometimes was. Dead fish washed up occasionally and rotted. Seaweed clumped and putrefied, infested with bugs. Birds eviscerated crabs and then left the carcasses to decompose.

Fred was walking along the clay, face pursed in absolute concentration, reddened eyes scanning the ground, studiously ignoring the mounting stench, when he found Kristy Mathers. He saw the bottom of her foot first, half-submerged in the clay, and followed the foot to her leg and torso. He would have believed it sooner if he hadn’t fantasized so many times about coming across a dead body on that beach. It just always seemed to him a probable event, somehow. Now, looking at the pale, almost unrecognizable figure at his feet, a horrible new feeling washed over him: sobriety. Fred Doud had never felt so naked.

Heart pounding, and suddenly thoroughly chilled, he turned and looked down the beach, where he had come from and then up toward the lighthouse. The isolation he had just minutes before been enjoying now filled him with terror. He had to get help. He had to get back to his truck. He started running.

CHAPTER

15

H
enry, Archie, and
Susan drove to Cleveland High in an unmarked police car, Henry behind the wheel, Archie in the passenger seat, and Susan furiously scribbling notes in the back. They parked on the street in front of the three-story tan-brick school and got out of the car. Henry waved at a couple of cops who sat in a patrol car directly in front of the school. One of them waved back.

The day had changed. The clammy morning fog had given way to a clear blue sky and tiny blazing sun. The temperature was in the mid-fifties. In this bright mid-morning light, Cleveland High looked grand and picture-perfect. Whereas Jefferson looked institutional, Cleveland had a sort of architectural elegance, replete with pillars, arched front doors, and a sliver of front lawn. But it still made Susan think of prison.

“We’re going this way.”

Susan glanced up. Archie and Henry were several steps down the sidewalk, and Archie was looking over his shoulder at her. She was still standing facing the school, lost in her own memories.

“Sorry,” she said. “I went here.”

Archie raised his eyebrows. “You went to Cleveland?”

“Ten years ago. Yeah.” She caught up with them. “I’m still recovering.”

“Not a prom queen?” asked Henry.

“Hardly,” said Susan. She had been a troubled teenager, hysterical 15 percent of the time. She didn’t know how parents did it. “Do you have kids?” she asked Henry.

“One,” Henry said. “He grew up with his mom. In Alaska.”

“Is that where you’re from?”

“Nah,” he said. “I just ended up there.”

Archie grinned. “It was the seventies. Back when he had a truck camper. And hair.”

Susan laughed and scribbled a sentence in her notebook. Henry’s jolly face grew serious. “No,” he said, looking between Susan and Archie. “My life is off the record. Period.”

Susan closed the notebook.

“Henry doesn’t want to be interviewed,” Archie said.

“I get that,” Susan said.

They continued walking, turning the corner along the side of the school. Susan could see in the large windows, replaced with new glass since she had been a student, where kids sat staring, in various states of repose, at the front of the room. God, she had loathed high school. “Lee Robinson hated it here, didn’t she?”

“Why do you say that?” asked Archie peering up at the school.

“I saw her school picture. I remember what it was like being that girl.”

“That’s the door,” said Henry, pointing toward the metal fire doors on the side of the building. “Band rehearsal was on the first floor. She came out through there.”

Archie stood with his hands on his hips, looking at the door. Susan could make out a gun in a leather holster clipped to the waist of his pants. He gazed up at the school and spun slowly around on his heels, absorbing every detail. Then he nodded. “Okay.”

Henry led them down the sidewalk. “She walked this way.” Susan followed Archie, who was following Henry. They walked in silence. Susan stepped around a puddle that glittered in the light. It had been weeks since the sun had been out. Under the usual cloud cover, the world looked tamped down, flatteringly lit. Without it, every color sparkled. The conifers were a darker, richer green; the bright leaf buds on the plum trees were verdant, promising spring and roses and riverfront festivals. Even the gray sidewalk, buckling in places from the gnarled roots of trees planted a hundred years ago, looked somehow more vivid.

Susan stepped around another puddle and squinted up at the sky. Sun in March in Portland, Oregon, was almost unheard of. It was supposed to be gloomy and overcast. It was supposed to rain.

When they came to a spot halfway down the fifth block, Henry stopped.

“This is it,” he said. “This is where the dogs lost the scent.”

“So she got into a car?” asked Susan.

“Probably,” said Henry. “Or on a bicycle. Or a motorcycle. Or she flagged down a bus. Or the rain washed her scent away. Or maybe the dogs just weren’t tracking well that day.”