Heartsick (32 page)

“How incomprehensibly generous of you,” Archie said.

“I’m a good teacher. For what it’s worth.” He allowed himself a wry smirk. “And it’s not worth much these days.”

“You ever kiss Lee Robinson?” Archie asked.

Reston drew back, his mouth open. “Jesus, no. I barely knew her. I was in tech rehearsal when she disappeared. It’s all been verified.”

Archie nodded to himself. “Okay, then.” He offered Reston a solicitous smile. “Can I get a glass of water?” It was a lazy way to try to get inside, but if Reston said no, it would at least indicate that he had something to hide.

Reston stared at Archie for a moment. “Okay.” He stood up, brushed some muck off his paint-splattered pants, stamped a few times on the front mat, and gestured for Archie to follow him. They walked into the house and Reston led Archie through a small coatroom, then through the living room and dining room and into the kitchen. The thing that struck Archie was the level of organization. No clutter. Everything in its place. Surfaces clean of debris. No dishes in the sink.

“Ever been married?” Archie asked.

Reston pulled a glass down from a cabinet and filled it at the sink. Above the sink hung a framed print of a blond Varga pinup girl. “She left me. Took everything I had,” he said, handing Archie the glass of water.

Archie took a sip. “Girlfriend?”

“Not currently. My last relationship ended suddenly.”

“Did you murder her?”

“Is that supposed to be funny?”

Archie took another sip. “No.” He drained the last of the water and handed the glass to Reston. He immediately rinsed it and put it in the dishwasher. Archie noticed another blond Varga girl hanging on the other side of the kitchen. She was wearing tiny shorts and a tight blouse and stood in impossibly high heels, back arched, flirtatious smile on her red lips.

“You like blondes,” Archie observed.

“For Christ’s sake,” Reston said, running an anxious hand through his hair. “What do you want from me? I’m a teacher. I answered your questions. I’ve already been interviewed by two other cops. I let you in my house.” He looked at Archie plaintively. “Are you going to arrest me?”

“No.”

Reston planted his hands on his hips. “Then leave me the hell alone.”

“Fine,” Archie said, starting back toward the porch.

As he moved through the house, Reston a step behind him, Archie searched for any clue to the truth, any insight into the man. The house was a hundred years old, but it was decorated in a mid-century style. Original light fixtures had been replaced with chrome space-age fixtures that looked as retro as they did futuristic. The dining room set looked like it was made out of thick plastic. On the table, a bouquet of daffodils sprang out of a round red vase. Archie couldn’t tell if the furniture was expensive or if it had all come in a box from Ikea. But he knew enough to know that it was stylish. The living room was less photo-ready. The gold sectional appeared to be a thrift-store find. Its gold cord bottom fringe had detached in places and still hung unmended. A rose-colored corduroy chair and ottoman sat next to a space-age lamp. It was as if someone had offered to help Reston redecorate and then they’d had a falling-out. It was still far nicer than Archie’s squalid rental. The room still had the original built-ins. Archie scanned the shelves. Just a few books, perfectly straight and flush. But Archie knew that spine anywhere. It was
The Last Victim.
It didn’t mean anything. A lot of people had that book.

“Look,” Reston was saying. “Susan was very promiscuous in school. So she may have had a relationship with a teacher. It’s very possible. I’m just saying that it wasn’t me.”

“Okay,” Archie said, distractedly. “It wasn’t you.”

“Where to?” the
cabbie asked when Archie got back in the car.

“Wait here,” Archie said. The cab was non-smoking but reeked of old cigarettes and pine deodorizer. No one ever followed the rules. Archie pulled out his cell phone and called Claire. “I want Reston’s alibis double-checked. And I want surveillance on him,” he said. “And when I say surveillance, I mean I want all entrances covered.” He squinted up at Reston’s charming wisteria-covered house. “I want to know if he even thinks about leaving that house.”

“I’ll send Heil and Flannigan.”

“Good,” Archie said, settling back in the cab’s sticky vinyl seat. “I’ll wait.”

It was dark
by the time Archie made it home. Still no messages. He decided against more coffee and instead drank a beer. Was Susan lying? No. Could she have convinced herself that her story was true? Maybe.

Either way, Gretchen had seen it. He found a sort of solace in the fact that she could see through anybody. It wasn’t that there was something intrinsically weak about him.

He stared at the merry face of Gloria Juarez. Another mystery solved; that was something at least. He touched her forehead and then stepped back from where he had tacked her photograph on his bedroom wall.

There were forty-two photographs on that wall, forty-two murder victims, forty-two families with answers. They stared at him from DMV photos and family snapshots and school pictures. It was a lurid, gruesome spectacle and Archie knew it. He didn’t care. He needed to see them all, to give himself a reason why he went back to that prison week after week. It was that or admit to himself that Gretchen’s draw was something else entirely. Something far more troubling.

Archie’s head throbbed and his body felt heavy and tired. But it was Sunday night and the week would start and girls would go to school, and that meant that their killer would be hunting.

He emptied the pillbox on his dresser and lined the pills up by type. Then he took off his shirt, undershirt, pants, until he was sitting on the edge of the bed naked. There was a big square mirror above the dresser and he could see his reflection from the mid-chest up. The scars that had so long been a brutal pale purple had lightened to a translucent white. He was almost starting to think of them as part of his body. He let his hand find the heart, the raised tissue sensitive beneath his fingertips, sending shivers down his thighs.

He settled back on the bed and let his memory of her smell wash over him. Lilacs. Her breath against his face. Her touch. His hand found its way lower. He had resisted this for a long time. Until he and Debbie had separated. And then he was alone. And he could think only of Gretchen. Every time he closed his eyes, there she would be, this ghostly presence, wanting him, so beautiful that it took his breath away. Until one day, finally, he gave in, and in his mind he pulled her to him, onto him. He knew it was wrong. That he was sick. That he needed help. But he was beyond help. So what did it matter? It wasn’t real.

The pills grinned at him from the dresser. There weren’t enough to kill him. But he had enough in the bathroom. He liked to think about that sometimes at night. It was cold comfort.

CHAPTER

34

S
usan had ground
her teeth all night. She could tell the moment she woke up, because she could barely move her jaw, barely open her mouth, and her teeth felt like she’d spent the night chewing gravel. She held a heating pad against her face until she felt her sore muscles loosen and the pain in her face subside. But the heat left her face looking raw and sunburned.

It was only just getting light outside, and the forecast in the paper was a row of smiling yellow suns on squares of blue sky. Sure enough, a glance beyond the loft’s wall of glass revealed fragments of clear blue behind the Pearl District’s skyline of brick, glass, stone, and steel. Susan was unimpressed. People didn’t appreciate rain until it was gone.

She sat on her bed and watched the pedestrians struggle by with their paper coffee cups down below. She should have been working. The next story was due tomorrow. But the digital recorder that Archie had recovered for her still sat on her bedside table, and she had yet to listen to the recording of her encounter with Gretchen Lowell. The thought of it made her a little sick to her stomach.

Claire rang the doorbell at exactly 8:00
A
.
M
. Next to her was Anne Boyd.

Despite the unseasonably warm forecast, Susan was wearing what she thought of as her TV-cop clothes: black pants, a crisp black button-down shirt, and an honest-to-God tan trench coat. She didn’t care if it was going to be sixty-five degrees; she was wearing that coat. Claire was dressed, per usual, as if she had just come down off the mountain, and Anne was wearing a zebra-print blouse, black pants, and leopard-print boots, and she had about a dozen gold bracelets squeezed on each wrist. “I love your boots,” Susan said.

“I know,” Anne said. “They’re fabulous.”

“Yeah,” said Claire with a sigh. “You two are going to get along fine.” She introduced Anne and Susan and the three women headed downstairs to where Claire’s city-issued Chevy Caprice was parked.

The plan was to check on the security at the city’s ten public high schools. Many parents were keeping their daughters at home; all kids were encouraged not to walk to or from school, or if they did, to have a buddy. The whole city was on edge. The anticipation was so palpable that it felt to Susan as if people were actually willing another girl to be taken so that they could watch it on the news. A good kidnapping and murder made for excellent televised entertainment as long as it didn’t preempt anything more interesting.

They drove to Roosevelt High first. Claire had a paper cup of coffee from the coffee place next door to Susan’s building, and the nutty aroma filled the car, making Susan’s mouth water. She got her notebook out and set it on her lap. She hated riding in the back. It reminded her of being a child. She unlocked her seat belt so she could lean forward between the seats, the better to ask questions.

“Uh, uh, uh,” Claire chided. “Seat belt.”

Susan sat back with a heavy sigh and resnapped the belt in place. The front seats were light blue cloth, but the backseat was dark blue vinyl. Easier to clean up if someone you were transporting started vomiting. “So this guy,” she said to Anne. “You think he’s a nut job, or what?”

“My professional opinion?” Anne said, looking out the window. “I think he may have an issue or two.”

“He’s going to kill another girl?” Susan asked.

Anne leaned around to look at Susan, her expression skeptical. “Why would he stop?”

Roosevelt was a large brick school with white pillars, a half acre of green lawn, and a steeple. It looked a bit like Monticello. Three patrol cars were out front.

“They should have called this one Jefferson,” Susan joked.

Claire rolled her eyes. “I’m going to go check on things,” she announced. “You guys want to wait here?”

Susan, seeing an opportunity for some one-on-one time with Anne, jumped at the opportunity. “Sure,” she said. She unclasped her seat belt and leaned forward between the front seats so that she was inches away from Anne.

Claire got out of the car and walked over to one of the patrol cars.

“So you think that he works at one of the schools?” Susan asked Anne.

Anne extracted a diet Coke from her large purse and opened it. A tiny spray of sticky brown liquid shot out in a two-inch diameter. “I don’t know.” She gave Susan a look. “And don’t start with me about the diet Coke. I know. I just have one a day. To kick-start my morning.”

“I think that warm diet Coke is delicious,” Susan lied. She pushed ahead. “So do you like profiling?”

“Yeah.” Anne smiled and took a sip of the Coke. “I’m good at it most of the time. And every workday is different.”

“How did you get into it?”

“I went to med school. I wanted to be a pediatrician. I thought they were so cool. They were always the nicest docs at the hospital. No ego. Weren’t in it for the money.”