Sweetheart (18 page)

Bliss leaned toward the clerk. “My given name was Pitt,” she explained.

The clerk glanced down at Bliss’s Indian tunic pants, red rubber Crocs, and the breasts that hung free underneath her vomit-stained
QUESTION EVERYTHING
T-shirt.

“They’ll be staying on the sixth floor,” Henry continued.

The man’s face was frozen in a half-desperate, half-welcoming expression. “Yes, sir. Good afternoon, ma’am. Right this way.”

“I’m twenty-eight,” Susan said. “And I’m single. So you don’t have to call me ‘ma’am.’”

“Yes, well.” His forehead creased as he pushed the button for the elevator. “You’ll be ‘ma’am’ while you’re with us.”

Susan narrowed her eyes at Henry.

T
he pain in Archie’s flank had become so constant he could almost block it out, like the ticking of a clock. Almost. Then he would breathe and the pain would bloom into a sharp ache and he had to steady himself to keep from wincing. So he took more pills. It was ironic, he knew, that the very chemicals causing his pain were the only thing that gave him any respite from it.

They had been given a two-bedroom suite. It was painted baby-shit yellow. Squash, Debbie had called it. She was with the kids now, getting them to sleep in the twin beds of their new baby-shit bedroom. She was scared. And more than that, Archie knew, she was furious.

“Do you want to watch TV?” Claire asked. She had come directly from the hospital and had been sitting there for over an hour, pretending to look interested in a coffee table book on Portland’s bridges that she had found in the room.

“You don’t have to stay here,” Archie said.

“I’m your security detail,” Claire said.

Three dead bodies in the park. Gretchen on the loose. And his people were busy minding him, instead of out there doing their jobs. “There’s a uni in the hall,” Archie said.

Claire turned another page of the book. “I am more ferocious than he. Did you know that the Hawthorne Bridge was built in 1910?”

There was a knock and Claire leaped up to get the door.

“It’s me,” they both heard Henry’s voice say. Claire opened the door and Henry walked in pulling a large suitcase. He rolled the suitcase against the wall and rubbed his shoulder.

“Did you get everything?” Archie asked. He and Henry both knew he meant the pills.

“I packed a few sets of clothes for the kids, for you, and for Debbie. We can drive one of you by in the next few days for more. Toiletries,” Henry added, “are in the outside pouch.”

“Susan?” Archie asked.

“Just got her settled,” Henry said. “Along with the mother.” He rubbed his shoulder some more. “It took five trips to get all their crap upstairs.”

“What’s the latest?” Archie asked.

Henry leaned against the baby-shit wall and crossed his arms. “Manhunt of the century. Five agencies. Us. State cops. FBI. Coast Guard. National Guard.”

“Who’s coordinating the Feds?” Archie asked.

“Sanchez.” There were some take-out boxes of half-eaten Thai food on the coffee table. “Pad kee mao?” Henry asked Claire.

“With tofu,” Claire said.

“You know I like chicken,” Henry said.

“I was ordering for me,” Claire said.

“I’m not saying I won’t eat it,” Henry said. He picked up a box of noodles and a pair of used chopsticks to shovel in a few mouthfuls. “Sanchez will be by later,” he said, chewing. “He’s getting things set up in the field. Her picture’s all over the media. The whole world knows what she looks like. We’re going to catch her.”

“What about the heart?” Archie asked. He couldn’t rid himself of the image of the severed heart in those bloody lunch boxes.

Henry wiped some grease off his mustache with his hand. “They think it’s male,” he said.

Claire glanced up from the book. “How do they know?”

“It had a tiny penis,” Henry said.

No one laughed.

“I’m just trying to lighten the mood,” Henry said.

Archie saw Claire shoot Henry a look.

Henry looked at the floor and took another bite of food. This time he swallowed it before he spoke. “How are the kids?” he asked Archie.

It was a question Archie couldn’t answer. The kids had clung to Debbie all afternoon. Sara wouldn’t even go into the bathroom without her. But they had barely spoken to him.

Archie cleared his throat. “I need to get back to work,” he said. “Susan ID’d our first Jane Doe from the park as Molly Palmer.”

Henry leaned forward, chopsticks poised over the paper takeout box. “Jesus Christ.”

“Yeah,” Archie said, closing his eyes and rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Keep it quiet for now.”

“Who’s Molly Palmer?” Claire asked.

There was another knock at the door, three hesitant, evenly spaced raps. “Officer Bennett, sir,” a voice said.

Henry reached over and opened the door, and Officer Bennett’s head appeared. He wasn’t as dirty as he’d been after he’d slid down the ravine at the Molly Palmer crime scene, but he still had that startled, anxious expression. He looked at Archie. “Susan Ward wants to see you, sir.”

“Consider her announced,” Archie said.

Susan walked into Archie’s room. Her turquoise hair was wet and combed straight back and tucked behind her ears, making her look much younger. She was wearing sweatpants and a University of Oregon sweatshirt and lugging a large box.

“Are you and your mom okay?” asked Archie.

Susan didn’t answer. She just carried the box over and set it on the coffee table in front of Archie.

“What’s that?” Archie asked.

“All my notes and tapes on Castle,” Susan said. “Someone killed him. Someone killed him and Parker. And Molly. And probably that blond woman in the park.” She looked around the room at the three cops. “Find out who.”

I
t was two in the morning and Henry and Claire had finally gone home. The Arlington during the day was quiet. The Arlington at night was cryptlike. Archie was going through the contents of Susan’s box. There were discs with digital recordings of interviews that Susan had had with Molly Palmer, people who’d known her as a teenager, and a variety of people connected to the case, including the senator’s former and current staffers, and even the mayor. Susan’s story was going to be big. And a lot of people knew it was in the works.

Archie listened to one of the recordings on his laptop while he leafed through the twelve reporter’s notebooks that Susan had included in the box. Her scribble was almost illegible, and punctuated with random notes on that night’s take-out order or band names she wanted to remember.

Then he saw a name, underlined, and followed by a question mark. John Bannon?

That was a name from the past.

What did Susan know about John Bannon? And what did John Bannon know about Molly Palmer?

The bedroom door opened and Debbie came out, wearing an Arlington Club robe. She walked over and sat on the arm of the sofa next to Archie. “You going to come to bed?” she asked.

“Soon,” Archie said.

Archie saw Debbie notice his cell phone, sitting within immediate reach on the coffee table. Her face darkened.

“Expecting a call?” she asked.

The truth was that Archie had been glancing at the phone every few minutes, willing Gretchen to call again. “Maybe,” he said.

Debbie leaned forward and held down the phone’s off button until the light went out. “Let the bitch leave a message,” she said, tossing the phone on the cushion beside him. Then she turned to Archie and touched his face gently with her hand. It smelled like shea butter. “You need to get some rest,” she said.

Archie nodded. “Okay,” he said. He put his hand on the curve of her hip and kissed her lightly, but long, on the mouth. As he did he reached behind him, found the phone, and turned it back on. As she led him into the bedroom, he glanced back, finding reassurance in the phone’s green light blinking in the darkness.

Archie awoke to Debbie’s voice and her hand on his bare shoulder. They had slept together naked side by side in the same bed. It had felt good to fall asleep next to her, her breath a steady heartbeat in his ear. It had felt almost normal. Except that they hadn’t touched, both careful to keep their arms at their sides as they slept, lest they accidentally brush against the other.

“Buddy’s here,” she said.

Archie struggled to surface from his grogginess. The sun streamed through the wooden blinds and striped the baby-shit walls with light. “What time is it?” he asked.

“After nine.”

“Jesus.” Archie hadn’t slept in past eight since Ben was born. He tried to remember dreams, but recovered only darkness. Still, he did not feel rested. Debbie was dressed, wearing a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved white T-shirt that must have been in the suitcase Henry had packed. She looked fresh and awake, her freckles a fine dust on her unmade-up face.

“I’ll be out in a minute,” Archie said.

Debbie left the room and Archie sat up and put his feet on the floor. His right side throbbed with each breath and he held it as he stood up to walk to the bathroom. As he made his way gingerly across the carpeted floor he felt a numbing sensation in his hands. He lifted them to look and found the fingers swollen, his nail beds white. He unzipped the outside flap of the suitcase and pulled out a grocery bag full of prescription bottles and dug through them until he found Vicodin and a diuretic. The Vicodin would help the pain, the diuretic would eliminate the swelling. He took four Vicodin and two of the diuretics. He had cut back to two Vicodin first thing in the morning. But his restraint was seeming less necessary.

He took off his watch, noticing the red indentation it left on his swollen wrist, and stepped into the shower. He woke up a couple of times a week with an erection that betrayed his dreams about Gretchen, but not today. Today he was merely exhausted. After the shower he brushed his teeth and shaved and then got dressed in yesterday’s pants and a shirt from the suitcase Henry had packed. It was one of those Teflon dress shirts that didn’t wrinkle. Debbie had bought him five of them in varying earth tones. When he pulled it on, he looked almost put together. If you could get past the death-warmed-over thing.

“Anything?” Archie asked immediately, as he entered the suite’s living room. Buddy sat on the couch next to Debbie. Henry sat in an adjacent armchair. He could hear the sounds of cartoons coming from Ben and Sara’s room. A TV in the living room showed a silent split-screen image, Gretchen on one side, him on the other. Then his children’s school filled the screen, with the headline
BEAUTY KILLER TERROR
.

“Not yet,” Henry said.

Buddy sat forward a little on the couch. His brown suit jacket was folded immaculately and placed carefully over the couch back beside him. “The public is worried about you. They want to see that you’re okay.”

Archie had never gotten used to that, the idea that the public wanted anything from him. “You want me to issue a statement?” he asked.

“I want you to go on TV,” Buddy said.

Archie saw both Debbie and Henry tense. “TV,” Archie said.

“I’ve got Charlene Wood downstairs. She just needs ten minutes. I think it would buy us some comfort in the marketplace.” Buddy had always talked like a politician. Even when he’d been Archie’s boss on the task force. It was like he’d just glanced up from reading Plato’s
Republic.

Archie glanced at his cell phone lying silent on the coffee table next to a room service tray with a pot of coffee on it. He leaned forward, trying to ignore the pain under his ribs, and poured himself a cup of lukewarm coffee. The heavy white mug felt clumsy and strange in his swollen hand, but no one seemed to notice.

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Debbie said.

Archie took a sip of the coffee. It was bitter in his mouth, or maybe that was the Vicodin. He did not want to be on TV. He did not want to indulge what were surely Buddy’s reelection instincts. He did not want to piss off his ex-wife.

On the other hand, if he played it right, he might be able to force Gretchen to show her hand.