Sweetheart (14 page)

Archie punched a number into his phone. When Henry answered he said, “I’ll be late coming in this morning. I’m going to show Susan the boxes from Parker.”

They were at Archie’s house. Susan had been there once before, to interview Debbie Sheridan for Susan’s profile on Archie and the Beauty Killer Task Force. Susan watched as Archie stood on the stoop. He held his keys in his palm for a moment, looking at them like they were something sad and precious before slipping them into the lock and pushing in the front door.

The house still smelled slightly of breakfast. Salt and grease. Eggs. Susan imagined the whole Sheridan family gathered around the kitchen table, clogging their arteries together and staring at one another adoringly. Once, when Susan was ten, Bliss had decided to start making breakfast. She spent the weekend baking homemade granola and fed it to Susan every morning that week. It had been a month before Susan had had a normal bowel movement.

“It’s this way,” Archie said, walking down a carpeted hallway.

“What is?” Susan asked.

“My office,” Archie said.

She followed him into a large room. There was a desk, bookshelves jammed with books, an old TV, framed pictures and commendations on the walls, bulletin boards layered with papers, and a sofa bed still made up from the night before. She tried not to visibly react to the sofa bed. So, Archie Sheridan wasn’t sleeping with his wife. Or ex-wife. Or whatever. It wasn’t any of her business. Really.

He didn’t offer any sort of explanation. He didn’t even seem to notice. He walked over to the closet and carefully folded the accordion doors open. And he pulled a chain that turned on a light.

Inside, tacked on the back wall of the closet, were dozens of photographs. Some were snapshots. Some were morgue photos. They were all Beauty Killer victims.

“Jesus Christ,” she said.

He didn’t say anything. He just bent down and lugged out a big cardboard file box. And then another. And another. The boxes were made out of heavy-duty white cardboard and had cardboard lids and oval cutouts on the sides so you could carry them. On the end of each box someone had written, in red Sharpie, “Beauty Killer.” Susan knew the cramped scrawl. It was Quentin Parker’s.

“These are his notes,” Archie said matter-of-factly, setting the third box on top of the second with a thud.

“How did you get them?” Susan asked.

Archie sat down behind his desk, picked up a pen, and began to rotate it between his fingers. “He lent them to me.”

“Why?”

“He interviewed a lot of people. I asked if I could see the transcripts.” He threw the pen up in the air and caught it. “To help with the identification project.”

Susan glanced at the boxes and then back at Archie. “He gave you his notes?”

“He lent them to me,” Archie said. “And now I’m lending them to you.”

Susan walked up to the stack of boxes and ran her hand across the top one’s lid. Parker’s notes. Almost thirteen years of research about the Beauty Killer case. Susan felt a smile spread across her face and then caught herself. God, she was such an asshole. Parker was dead, and she was picking over his corpse. She was no better than Ian or the rest of them. But she didn’t take her hand off the box. “Parker once spent a month in jail because he refused to identify a drug dealer he’d profiled.”

“I know,” Archie said. His voice was so quiet she could barely hear him. “This was different. Gretchen had been arrested.” He laid the pen at the base of a small frame propped up on the desk. Susan couldn’t see the picture, but imagined his family, gathered around a Christmas tree, or lined up in front of a rustic fence. “I wanted her to admit she’d killed Heather Gerber,” Archie continued. “The girl in the park, thirteen years ago. She refused. No one gave a shit about Heather.” He adjusted the frame, repositioning the angle slightly. “Except for Parker.”

“And you,” Susan said softly.

Archie scratched his forehead, right above one eyebrow. He was still looking at the frame. “Gretchen had excised Heather’s brain through her nose, using a crochet hook.” He sounded tired, his voice affectless. “You couldn’t tell. Her head looked like the only thing Gretchen hadn’t mutilated. The ME called me late at night and I went down to the morgue and he lifted off her skullcap and inside, where her brain was supposed to be, it was just mush.” He scratched his eyebrow again. “It looked like cake batter,” he said.

“That was your first homicide, right?” Susan sat on the edge of the desk and leaned forward over it so she could lay her hand on the inside of Archie’s wrist. It was a crazy thing to do. Completely inappropriate. But she felt a sudden urge to reach out. She wanted to connect. She could feel his pulse in her palm.

For a moment, neither of them moved. And then he turned his hand and took her hand in his. She felt her heart quicken and a girlish itch to giggle so strong that she was almost afraid to look at him. It was awkward enough being in his private space, where he slept. But she forced herself to glance up and found him gazing at her so tenderly, that for a second she thought he might actually lean forward to kiss her. Instead he said, “I need to see all of your notes on the Castle story.”

She laughed. She couldn’t help it. Her eyes stung with tears. Her face burned.

“Archie,” she said.

“Susan,” he said. He tightened his hand around hers. “You don’t want to get involved with me.” As if to prove his point, he reached out and turned the frame on his desk. The picture he looked at on his desk every day wasn’t of his family. There was no Christmas tree, no rustic fence. It was a school photograph of a teenage girl. Susan recognized her. She’d seen her image enough times. She was the Beauty Killer’s first victim. Heather Gerber.

“Your Castle notes?” Archie said.

Susan caught sight of something out the window and froze.

“What?” Archie asked.

There were cops in the yard. There were two windows in the room and the beige curtains were half closed, but Susan could see, quite clearly, that there were cops in the yard. There were patrol cars on the street, their lights on, sirens off. The cops were moving toward the house. Archie turned in his chair to see what she was staring at and then stood.

“What’s going on?” she asked him.

The doorbell rang. Not rang. It was more like someone had leaned on it, so it went off again and again, a frantic, persistent chime, followed by the sounds of someone’s fist on the door.

Archie reached into his pocket for his phone, which Susan realized was ringing. He held it to his ear as he strode across the room toward the hall. Susan was still perched on the desk.

“Don’t move,” he said.

“Don’t worry,” Susan said.

She heard the front door open and heavy footsteps rush into the house. She looked out the windows again, and there was a uniformed cop, standing right behind the glass. He waved. Susan turned back toward the door just as Henry turned the corner into the room, his face beet red, his phone to his ear, his gun in his hand. He was followed by four uniformed cops.

“What the fuck?” said Archie.

Henry’s face had a sheen of sweat on it. He didn’t put away his gun. “Gretchen Lowell escaped about thirty minutes ago,” he said. “She was last seen about ten miles from here.”

Archie coughed once and then he leaned over and vomited on the cream carpet.

C
heck the house,” Henry barked. “The yard. Everywhere.” Archie could hear the sound of people moving through the house. Doors opening. Rooms being cleared. This wasn’t happening. The sour taste of vomit in his mouth made his stomach turn again. She knew where he lived. They’d shown the house on the news enough goddamn times during his captivity. She could find him. God, he should have stayed away. He felt a hand on his shoulder. The touch sent a current down his arms and he jumped, startled, and opened his eyes. It was Claire. Archie didn’t even know when she had come in.

Her expression was calm, in control, but her eyes darted, taking in every detail in the room. He saw her register the sofa bed, Parker’s Beauty Killer boxes, the macabre collage of Gretchen’s victims in the closet. She had her service weapon in her hand, a nine millimeter, with double action. It was a big, accurate gun and Claire pointed it at the carpet, but her arm was extended, elbow slightly bent, so if she had to, she could fire in an instant. “We’ll find her,” she said.

Archie turned away. Susan appeared at the door with a towel from the hall bathroom. She walked over, her face pink, knelt, and started to sponge up the vomit from the carpet.

“Leave it,” Archie said. “It doesn’t matter.”

But Susan kept pressing the gray towel into the carpet. Her hands were shaking. “It’s okay,” she said. He saw her glance around, taking in all the guns, the frantic energy of the cops in the room. She pushed the towel harder into the carpet. “It’s okay,” she said again, barely audible.

“Susan,” Archie said, louder. “Leave it.”

She looked up at him, lifted her hands from the towel, and nodded.

“Debbie and the kids?” Archie asked Henry.

“I’ve got units on their way to pick them up now,” Henry said.

Archie nodded, his heart starting to slow. “What happened?”

“We have no fucking idea,” Henry said, his face reddening, hand behind his neck. “They stopped to gas up just south of 205. She was practically hog-tied. There were two sheriff’s deputies traveling with her. A clerk noticed that the truck hadn’t moved from the pump, and went to check on it. He found a female sheriff’s deputy dead. Gretchen and the male deputy were gone.”

Archie shook his head. He had no doubt that she had convinced that male deputy to help her. That he was now dead. Even with the shit beaten out of her, Gretchen was dangerous. If she was even as hurt as she’d seemed. “Fuck,” Archie said.

She had planned the whole fucking thing. They were fools. They were all the biggest fucking saps in the whole fucking universe. He sat on the edge of his desk and slowly, softly, he started to laugh.

“This is funny?” Henry said, not amused.

“She had it planned,” Archie explained. “She wanted to be transferred. Don’t you get it? The assault at the prison. She wasn’t playing me.” He pointed a finger at Henry, Henry who would do anything for him, who would transfer a prisoner, end the identification project, if he thought Archie was coming unhinged. “She was playing
you.”

Henry squinted at him and Archie saw a flicker of realization in his friend’s eyes.

Henry ran an angry hand over his bald head. “She knew how you’d react,” he said. “And she knew what I’d do.”

“Of course she did,” Archie said.

“Enough,” Claire said. “We need to get you into protection.”

But Archie didn’t move. “How did she kill her? The sheriff’s deputy? She doesn’t usually kill people quickly. How did she do it?”

Claire glanced at Henry. “She cut her throat,” Claire said.

“She had a knife?” Archie asked.

“We don’t know,” Henry said.

Susan stood up from where she had been sitting on the carpet. Her hands had stopped shaking and she pulled at a piece of turquoise hair. “I don’t mean to be mercenary,” she said. “But has this been released to the media?”

“We’re keeping it quiet for now,” Henry said. “The mayor’s afraid of a panic.”

“She’s going to kill someone,” Archie said. He looked from Henry to Claire, trying to make them understand. “She likes to kill people. She hasn’t gotten to kill someone, slowly, the way she likes, in almost three years. We’ve got to warn people.”

Claire looked at her watch. “We need to go,” she said to Henry.

“No,” Archie said, shaking his head, staying firmly planted on the desk. “She needs to be able to find me.”

“That’s actually the opposite of what needs to happen,” Claire said.

“Do you want to catch her?” Archie asked.

“She’s probably on her way out of the country by now,” Henry said.

Archie’s phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and looked at it. The caller ID read
UNKNOWN CALLER.
“No,” Archie said, “she’s not.”

“Hello?” he said into the phone.

Gretchen’s voice purred back, “Hello, darling.”

The relief swept over him like a wave, washing away the anxiety, the nausea, the fear. He slid off the front of the desk to the floor. His fingers were cold around the phone, but his body felt hot, the back of his neck suddenly wet with sweat. Then he realized, he wasn’t afraid of her.

He was afraid of never seeing her again.

“It’s good to hear from you,” he said.

A
rchie tried to shut out everyone in the room, to focus only on the telephone pressed against the side of his face, only on Gretchen. He was aware of Claire’s hand on his shoulder. He could see Susan Ward open her notebook and place a pen against it. He could see Henry on his phone, ordering a trace on the cell. They would need two minutes to trace the call, if she was calling from a landline and they didn’t have to get cell carriers involved. Archie looked at his watch and started counting.