Heartsick (33 page)

“So you wanted to be a pediatrician so you could hang out with other pediatricians?” Susan asked.

Anne laughed and her bracelets jingled. “Basically.” She leaned her head back on the headrest and looked thoughtfully at Susan. “The first day of my pediatrics rotation, I diagnosed a kid with lymphoma. Stage four. She was seven years old. Completely adorable. One of those kids with old souls, you know? I was devastated, and by devastated, I mean crying-in-the-bathroom devastated.” Anne was quiet for a minute, lost in thought. Susan could hear her soda fizzing. Then she shrugged. “So I decided to go into psychiatry. My husband’s people are in Virginia. He got a job there and I needed one and Quantico was looking to train some women in the dark arts. Turned out I wasn’t bad at it.”

“Profiling seems like a weird field to end up in if you wanted to get away from death.”

“Not death,” she said. She licked her thumb and ran it over a tiny stain of soda spray on her black slacks. “Pity.” She glanced out the window. A kid flew by on a skateboard. She turned back to Susan. “The victims we deal with are already dead. We do what we do to prevent other deaths. We catch killers. And I don’t feel sorry for them.”

Susan thought of Gretchen Lowell. “What makes a person do this sort of thing?”

“There was this study of prisoners serving time for B and E. They asked them all the same question: ‘Would you rather run into a dog or a person with a gun?’ You know what the majority of them said?” She spun the soda can slowly in her palm. “The person with a gun. The dog won’t hesitate. The dog will rip your throat out. Every time. Eight times out of ten, you can wrestle the gun right out of the person’s hands or just walk away. Know why?”

“Because it’s hard to shoot someone.”

Anne’s black eyes were electric. “Exactly. And that’s broken in our guy. I don’t think he works for the school district. I hope he does. Because if he does, we’ll catch him. If he doesn’t, I don’t know.”

“But how does it get broken?”

She made a small toasting motion with the can. “Nature, nurture. A combination. Take your pick.”

Susan hooked her clasped hands over her knee and leaned in even closer. “But someone can break it for you, right? Like Gretchen Lowell did. How did she do that? How did she get people to kill for her?”

“She’s a master manipulator. Psychopaths very often are. She chose particularly vulnerable men.”

“And she tortured them?”

“No,” Anne said. “Much more foolproof. She used sex.”

Claire suddenly appeared at the car door. Her cheeks were scarlet. “The fucker took another girl last night.”

CHAPTER

35

A
ddy Jackson’s family
lived in a two-story adobe house on a terraced hill on the corner of a busy street in Southeast Portland. The house was painted pink and had a red tile roof and it looked as out of place surrounded by its Craftsman neighbors as it now did surrounded by police cars. Susan noticed a shiny black helicopter with the Channel 12 news logo on the side already circling overhead.

Claire took the cement steps that jackknifed up the hillside to the house two at a time, followed by Anne and finally Susan. It was already getting too warm for the trench coat, but Susan kept it on so she could have her notebook at the ready in one of the coat’s deep pockets. She felt sick to her stomach at the notion of walking into a budding family tragedy and she didn’t want to make herself feel worse by walking around clutching a reporter’s notebook that screamed hello-I’m-with-the-media-I’m-here-to-exploit-you. I am a serious journalist, she told herself in an effort to mollify her growing unease. A. Serious. Journalist.

The house was full of cops. Susan saw Archie was in the living room on one knee in front of a stricken couple who sat holding hands on a small sofa. They looked at him as if he were the only person in the world, as if he could save them. Susan remembered seeing her mother look at Susan’s father’s oncologist with that very same expression. But the case was terminal then, too.

She looked away. The room was beautiful, full of mission-style furniture and stained glass and jewel-toned Deco velvet. Someone had meticulously stripped and refinished the wood molding, which curved around built-in shelf nooks and over arched doors. When she looked back at Archie, he said something to the parents, touching the mother lightly on the arm, and stood up and walked over to the entryway.

“She was gone this morning,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “Last they saw her was last night around ten. The bedroom window’s broken. Parents didn’t hear anything. Their bedroom is upstairs. Nothing missing but the girl. The crime-scene investigators are in there now.”

He looked better than the day before, Susan noticed, more alert. That was a good sign. Then she remembered what Debbie had said about how he would sleep so well when he got home from seeing Gretchen.

“How’d he know which room was hers?” asked Claire.

A cop wearing a crime-scene-investigation jacket walked by and Archie stepped out of the way to let him pass. “Curtains were open. She was in there doing homework last night with the lights on. Maybe he was watching. Or maybe he knows her.”

“We sure it’s our guy?” Anne asked, her face hard. “This doesn’t fit.”

Archie motioned for them to follow him into the dining room, where he removed a framed photograph from the wall, returned, and handed it to Anne. It was a photograph of a teenage girl with brown hair and wide-set eyes.

“Jesus,” Claire said under her breath.

“Why would he change his MO?” mused Anne.

“I was hoping you could tell me,” said Archie.

“Too much security at the schools,” Anne guessed. “He’s worried he won’t be able to get to his victims. Maybe he followed her home. But this seems really risky. He’s panicking. In the big picture, it’s good news. It means he’s getting less careful. We’re closer.”

Susan leaned back on her heels and looked through the entryway into the living room, where the parents still sat, motionless on the sofa, another detective perched across from them on an ottoman, notebook in hand.

“What school did she go to?” Claire asked.

Archie jerked his head toward Susan. “Her alma mater.”

“Cleveland?” Susan said, stomach dropping. She knew then, in a horrible rush of certainly, that Archie had confronted Paul. Of course he had. “You don’t think—”

“It wasn’t Reston,” Archie told her. “He was under surveillance from six on. Didn’t leave the house.”

Susan’s jaw ached again. Archie had put Paul under surveillance, made him a suspect, based on her dramatic performance at the prison. She mentally kicked herself for opening her big mouth. She shouldn’t have let Gretchen get to her. She should never have even taken the story. Now there was no stopping what she had set in motion. “You’re watching Paul? Based on what I told you yesterday?”

“He fits the profile better than anyone right now. Except for his unerring ability to have an alibi at the time of the crimes.” Archie turned to Claire. “Check in with our tail on Evan Kent. Then call Cleveland. Find out if anyone showed up today covered in blood and wearing a ski mask.” He smiled wanly. “Or, you know, anything out of the ordinary.”

Claire nodded, pulled her cell phone off her belt, and walked outside to make the calls.

Susan stole another look at Archie. “You went to see him,” she said.

Archie snapped his pen shut and dropped it in his coat pocket. “Of course,” he said. “What did you think I’d do?”

“What did he say?”

“He denied it.”

Susan felt her face flush. “Good,” she said, her voice faltering just a little. “He’s protecting himself. That’s good.” And then: “I told you he’d deny it.”

“That’s what you told me,” said Archie.

Claire reappeared. “Kent’s at home. But Dan McCallum didn’t show today at Cleveland.” She glanced from face to face. “What?”

Archie looked at his watch. “How late is he?” he asked.

“Mr. McCallum?” Susan said. “There’s no way.”

Claire ignored her. “His first class started ten minutes ago. He didn’t call in sick, just didn’t show up. The school called his house and no one’s answering.”

“I think that might be suspicious,” Archie said.

CHAPTER

36

A
rchie knocked on
the door of McCallum’s 1950s bungalow hard enough that he thought his knuckles might split. It was a diminutive one-story tan-brick house set in the middle of an expansive and obsessively tended yard. A row of rosebushes, just returning after being cut back for winter, lined the paved walkway to the wide cement stoop at the front of the house. The door, in a lonely splash of personality, was painted a glossy red. A doorbell that looked like it had not been operational since shortly after the house was built was taped over with a weathered piece of electrician’s tape. Monday’s
Oregon Herald,
untouched in its plastic sleeve, still lay in front of the door. “Dan?” Archie called. He knocked again. The door had a large glass window, but it was curtained and Archie couldn’t see more than a sliver of the interior of the house. He motioned with two fingers for the Hardy Boys to go around to the back door. Henry stood on the steps. Claire stood beside Archie. Susan, attired in a yellow vest with the words
RIDE ALONG
emblazoned in black on the back, had wedged herself next to Claire. Archie gestured for Susan to stand back, which she did. Then he drew his gun and knocked again. “Dan, it’s the police. Open up.” Nothing.

He tried the door. It was locked. A gray tabby appeared on the porch and snaked her way between Archie’s legs. “Hello, beautiful,” he said. Then he noticed the faint trail of paw prints she’d left behind. He knelt down and looked at the prints, pale red against the glossy mud green paint of the stoop.

“It’s blood,” he said to Claire. “You want to get it?”

He stood up and stepped back as Claire shielded her face with her elbow and gave the door window a hard whack with the handle of her gun. The window splintered and broke into five pieces, which slid from the framing and fell to the inside floor in an explosion of shattered glass. The moment the glass was broken, the stench of death hit them. They all recognized it. Archie reached inside and unlocked the door. He swung the door open and raised his gun.

He carried a Smith & Wesson .38 Special. He preferred a revolver to an automatic. They were reliable and didn’t require as much upkeep. Archie didn’t like guns. He’d never had to fire his off range. And he didn’t want to spend half his waking hours at the kitchen table cleaning his service weapon. But a .38 wasn’t as powerful as a 9-mm, and Archie found his loyalty suddenly wavering.

“Dan,” he called out. “This is the police. Are you in here? We’re coming in.” Nothing.

The front door opened into a living room, which led into a kitchen. Archie could see paw prints straying diagonally across the linoleum. He turned to Susan. “Stay here,” he said in his most commanding voice. Then he nodded to Claire and Henry. “You ready?” They both nodded back.

He moved inside.

Archie loved this part. Even all his pills couldn’t compete with a natural surge of adrenaline and endorphins. His body felt alive with energy. His heart rate and breathing increased; his muscles tightened. He was never more alert. He moved through the house, taking in every detail. Bookcases filled the far side of the living room. The shelves were stacked with books as well as other objects—old coffee cups and papers and what looked like mail that had been tucked in any available cranny. Four easy chairs in varying shades of green and pedigrees sat around a square coffee table, which was layered with newspapers. Framed line drawings of tall ships hung on one wall, one on top of the next. Archie moved through the hallway, his back against the wall, with Claire following so close behind that he could hear her breathing. Henry followed behind Claire. Archie called out again, “Dan? It’s the police.” Nothing.