Heartsick (27 page)

So that was why she had invited him in. A patient who’d been through what he had would prove endlessly interesting to a shrink. “I’m seeing someone,” Archie said. He gazed at the spot on the carpet where he’d fallen, unable to move, everything suddenly, horribly clear. “Every Sunday.”

“Is it helping?”

He considered this. “Her methodology is a little unorthodox,” he said slowly. “But I think that she’d tell you it’s working.”

“I’m glad,” Sarah said.

Archie glanced around the room one last time and then looked at his watch. “I should be going. Thanks for inviting me inside. It was very kind of you.”

“I’ve always loved this room,” Sarah said, looking at the big window. “When the curtains are open, you can see the plum trees.”

“Yeah,” Archie said, and as if they shared an old mutual friend, he added, “Gretchen liked that, too.”

CHAPTER

29

A
rchie knew that
Debbie would call him when she’d seen Susan’s second story. It didn’t matter that it was before 7:00 on Sunday morning. She knew that he’d be up. There was a killer loose and the clock was ticking, and even though there was little he could actually do but wait for something to happen, sleep seemed an admission of defeat. As it was, he was sitting on his couch reading printouts of Lee Robinson’s mash-note E-mails. Nothing like going through the private thoughts of a dead teenager to make you feel like a voyeuristic asshole. He had been up long enough to have already had coffee and two runny eggs, but only to have food in his stomach so he could take some Vicodin. He always allowed himself extra Vicodin on Sundays.

“Have you seen it?” Debbie asked.

Archie leaned back and closed his eyes. “No. Tell me about it.”

“She talks about Gretchen. What she did to you.”

They don’t know half of what she did to me,
thought Archie. “Good. Are there pictures?”

“One of you and one of Gretchen.”

He opened his eyes. There were Vicodin on the table. He lined them up in a little row, like teeth. “Which one of Gretchen?”

“The mug shot.”

Archie knew the one. It was the first time Gretchen had been in the system. She had been picked up for writing a bad check in Salt Lake City in 1992. She was nineteen and her hair was shoulder length and teased, her expression startled, her face gaunt. Archie allowed himself a smirk. “Good. She hates that picture. She’ll be pissed. Anything else?” He picked up a pill and rolled it between his fingers.

“Susan Ward hints at sordid details to come of your much-speculated-upon captivity.”

“Good.” He put the Vicodin in his mouth, letting the bitter chalky taste sit on his tongue for a moment before washing it down with a sip of tepid black coffee.

“You’re using her.” Debbie’s voice was low and Archie could almost feel the heat of it against his neck. “It’s not fair of you.”

“I’m using me. She’s just a vehicle.”

“What about the kids?”

The effects of the opiates made his skull feel soft, like a baby’s. He reached up and touched the back of his head, feeling his hair beneath his fingers. Ben had fallen from the changing table when he was ten months old and cracked his skull. They had spent the whole night in the emergency room. No, Archie remembered, correcting himself, Debbie had spent the whole night. He had left the hospital early in the morning. There had been a call. They had found another Beauty Killer body. Just one of dozens of times he’d left Debbie for Gretchen. He could remember every one of the crime scenes. Every detail. But he couldn’t remember how long Ben had been in the hospital. Or where exactly the fracture was.

“Are you there?” he heard Debbie’s disembodied voice ask from the receiver. “Say something, Archie.”

“Read it to them. It will help them understand.”

“It will scare the crap out of them.” She paused. “You sound really high.”

His head felt like warm water and cotton and blood. “I’m fine.” He picked up another Vicodin, rubbed it between his fingers.

“It’s Sunday. You don’t want to be high when you see her.”

He smiled at the pill. “She likes it when I’m high.”

The truth. He regretted it as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

The line was heavy with silence, and Archie could feel Debbie let him go just a little more. “I’m going to hang up now,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” he said. But she was already gone.

When the phone
rang a few minutes later, Archie thought it was Debbie calling back, and he picked the phone up on the first ring. But it wasn’t Debbie.

“This is Ken, down in Salem. I’ve got a message for you. From Gretchen Lowell.”

Bombs away,
thought Archie.

CHAPTER

30

I
t was almost
9:00
A
.
M
. by the time Susan awoke with a splitting headache and a stomach-turning wave of nausea. She had finished that entire bottle of pinot on an empty stomach. Why did she do this to herself? She sat up gingerly, and then staggered into the bathroom, where she poured herself a big glass of water, took three ibuprofen, and brushed her teeth. The Band-Aid on her finger had fallen off during the night and she examined the wound, which had scabbed over into an ugly red crescent. She sucked on it for a minute, the blood coppery in her mouth, until the cut was almost undetectable.

Then she wandered naked into the kitchen, where she put on a pot of coffee and sat down on the Great Writer’s blue sofa. It was too early for the light to make it in through her north-facing window, but she could see the blue sky beyond the building across the street. Long shadows loomed dark on the street and sidewalk below. Sunshine, to Susan, had always seemed ominous. She was halfway through her second cup of coffee when the doorbell rang.

Susan wrapped herself in her kimono and answered the door to find Detective Henry Sobol standing outside. His bald head, freshly shaved, gleamed.

“Ms. Ward,” he said. “Do you have a few hours?”

“For what?”

“Archie will explain. He’s downstairs in the car. I couldn’t find a fucking place to park. Your neighborhood is awash with ambling Yuppies.”

“Yes, they’re ferocious. Can you give me a few minutes to change?”

He bowed nobly. “I’ll wait here.”

Susan closed the door and went back into her bedroom to change. She realized that she was grinning. This was good. This meant a break in the case. This meant more material. She pulled on a pair of tight, distressed jeans and a long-sleeved black-and-white-striped shirt that she thought looked French, and ran a hairbrush through her pink hair.

She grabbed a pair of cowboy boots from her closet, snapped up her digital recorder and notebook, stowed the entire bottle of ibuprofen in her purse, and headed for the door.

Henry’s unmarked Crown
Victoria was idling in front of Susan’s building, with Archie sitting in the passenger seat, gazing down at some files in his lap. The winter sun looked almost white in the pale, clear sky and the car shone and sparkled in its light. Susan glanced up in dismay as she climbed into the backseat. Another fucking beautiful day.

“Good morning,” she said, slipping on some oversized dark sunglasses. “What’s going on?”

“You wrote Gretchen Lowell,” Archie said matter-of-factly.

“Yep.”

“I asked you not to.”

“I’m a reporter,” Susan reminded him. “I was attempting to gather facts.”

“Well, your letter and your stories have intrigued her and she would like to meet you.”

Susan’s headache vanished. “Honestly?”

“Are you up for it?”

She leaned forward between the two front seats. “Are you kidding? When? Now?”

“That’s where we’re headed.”

“Well, let’s go,” she said. Maybe she would get a book out of this after all.

Archie turned around to face Susan, his face so serious and haggard that it successfully wrung the life out of Susan’s momentarily high spirits. “Gretchen is mental. She’s curious about you, but only in so far as how she can manipulate you. If you come, you’re going to have to follow my lead and restrain yourself.”

Susan forced her face into a professional earnestness. “I am known for my restraint.”

“I’m going to regret this,” Archie said to Henry.

Henry grinned, flipped down a pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses from the peak of his forehead to the bridge of his nose, and pulled away from the curb.

“How did you know where I live, anyway?” Susan asked as they pulled on to the freeway headed south.

“I detected it,” Archie said.

Susan was just glad that Ian hadn’t been there. It’s not like her apartment had all that many places to hide, and if Henry had seen him, he’d certainly have told Archie. Just because Archie knew she was screwing Ian didn’t mean she wanted him to be reminded of it. In fact, she was hoping he’d forget she’d ever said anything. “Well, it’s a good thing I was alone,” she said. “So I could drop everything at a moment’s notice.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw Henry smile.

Archie’s gaze didn’t waver from the file he was reading.

Susan’s face grew hot.

It was an hour’s drive to the prison. She crossed her arms, leaned back, and forced her attention out the window. It didn’t last. “Hey,” she said. “Did you guys know that Portland was almost named Boston? Two founders flipped a coin for it. One of them was from Portland, Maine. The other guy was from Boston. Guess who won.” No one answered. Susan fiddled with the white string fringe around one of the holes in her jeans. “It’s ironic,” she said. “Because Portland is often referred to as the Boston of the West Coast.” Archie was still reading. Why couldn’t she stop talking? She made a promise to herself that she wasn’t going to say another word unless one of them talked to her first.

It was a quiet trip.

The Oregon State
Penitentiary was a campus of gristle-colored buildings located just off the freeway behind a wall topped with razor wire. It housed both maximum-and minimum-security inmates, male and female, and had the state’s only death row. Susan had driven by it dozens of times on trips home from college, but she had never had occasion to visit, not that she would have jumped at the chance. Henry parked the car in a space reserved for police vehicles near the entrance of the prison. A middle-aged man in pressed khakis and a golf shirt stood on the steps of one of the main buildings, leaning against the railing, arms folded. He had soft features and a receding hairline and a belly that pressed insistently against his shirt. A cell phone in a jaunty leather case was clipped to the belt of his pants. A lawyer, thought Susan grimly. He stepped forward as Archie, Henry, and Susan climbed out of the car.

“How is she today?” Archie asked him.

“Pissy,” the lawyer said. His nose was running and he dabbed at it with a white cloth hankie. “Same as every Sunday. That the reporter?”