Sweetheart (26 page)

Derek’s voice was doubtful. “So you want me to call and ask all the gas stations along 22 if they’ve seen Gretchen Lowell?”

“No,” Susan said. “Not Lowell. The car. That’s what they’ll remember. Ask them if they’ve seen a silver Jag.”

“There’s a fire up there,” Derek said. “They’re evacuating people. You think she’s psycho enough to hide in the path of it?”

“Psycho like a fox,” Susan said.

Derek wasn’t convinced. “These calls will take hours,” he said.

Susan pulled her pigtails out, dug her hairbrush out of her purse, and started brushing her hair. “I know,” she said.

“Are you brushing your hair?” Derek asked.

“One more favor?” she asked. Something Archie had said before he’d walked away in the alley had been gnawing at her.

Derek sighed. “What?”

“Can you check the
Herald’s
database for any couples who might have gone missing about two years ago? They were in their twenties.”

“What does this have to do with Sheridan and Gretchen Lowell?” Derek asked.

“Nothing,” Susan said.

“Do you realize the competition we have for this story? It’s national.” Derek lowered his voice. “Ian will shit if he finds out you’re working on something else.”

“I think it might have something to do with Parker,” Susan said.

There was a short pause. “It will take a few minutes,” Derek said. “I’ll call you back.”

Susan had opened the driver’s window and was smoking a cigarette to get the taste of hazelnut-flavored coffee out of her mouth when Derek called back.

“There was a story,” he said. “September 2005. Stuart Davis and his girlfriend, Annabelle Nixon. They lived together. Disappeared. They found their car parked on Twenty-third. No trace of them since. The story had some legs because he was a junior aide in Senator Castle’s office.”

“Zebra,” Susan whispered.

“Huh?” Derek said.

The press conference was minutes away. Susan got out of the car and dropped the cigarette on the street. “E-mail me everything we have,” she said.

It was all coming back to Senator Castle. Susan searched her mind for any clue from her investigation into the Molly Palmer story, anyone who acted suspiciously. She had interviewed a hundred people over the last few months. And frankly, they had all acted suspiciously. But there had been one kid in particular, a high school kid who knew one of Castle’s sons. Maybe it was time to pay him another visit.

A
rchie sat on the end of Gretchen’s bed, his feet on the floor. The mattress was firm, the gray satin duvet slick beneath his hands. The master suite’s vaulted ceilings made the room feel huge and off-kilter. The sideways perspective made Archie feel a swoon of vertigo.

Gretchen undressed. She did it uneventfully, as if this were something they did often together, as if they had always been lovers. Her clothes neatly folded on a chair by the closet, she turned back and faced him, naked.

Archie felt all the blood in his body rush south. She was bruised. Hematomas from her attack shadowed her ribs and stomach, her left clavicle was raw and swollen. And still she was lovely. Prison, if nothing else, created time for an excellent workout regimen, and Gretchen was toned and slim. But you didn’t get that kind of face and body without the perfect mix of genetics. The DNA that had played a role in making her a monster had also made her a beauty. Without the mix that had granted her that perfect profile, who knows? She might have been another kind of person, a good person.

The ceiling fan rotated overhead, throwing shadows on the ceiling, her face, the carpet. Shapes shifted on the periphery of Archie’s vision.

Gretchen padded over to where Archie sat, and took his face in her hands and lifted his chin so he was looking up at her. Their knees touched. He gripped the satin, slippery in his fingers.

She lowered her chin, and looked up flirtatiously. “Shall I hurt you?” she asked.

“No,” Archie said.

She tilted her head and smiled. “Do you want to hurt me?”

Archie sighed. “No.”

“What do you want?” she asked.

He lifted his hands from the bed and put one on each of her hips. The light in the room was low but he could see goose bumps rise on her flesh from his touch. “Redemption,” he said. “Barring that, distraction.”

“Distraction I might be able to help you with,” Gretchen said. She leaned in and kissed him lightly on the cheek, his face still cupped in her hands. “You know,” she said, “I am capable of human emotion.”

He wanted to believe her. He wanted to believe that there was something real between them, some fucked-up twisted connection.

He pulled her to him and she moved her hands behind his neck and they kissed again. Her naked body in his arms was almost too much for Archie to bear.

He cleared his throat. “You taste sweet,” he said.

“It’s not me,” she said. “It’s you. Your system’s not cleaning out toxins like it should.”

“Undress me,” he said.

He held up one wrist and she unbuttoned the cuff. Then he held up the other wrist and she unbuttoned that cuff. Then she went to work on the eight buttons that connected the front flaps. She did it by touch, never losing eye contact with him, just sliding her fingers down the vertical band of buttons until she found the next one. When the shirt was open, she slid it off his shoulders and held it for a moment before letting it drop to the carpet.

Her eyes still leveled at him, she reached toward his groin and freed the undershirt from under his waistband. He held up his arms and she lifted it off his torso and then dropped it on top of the dress shirt.

Her eyes immediately went to his chest. He could see them move over his scars, tracing the damage she had done to him. His flesh was a minefield. Even nurses had to steel themselves the first time they saw him. Not Gretchen. Her face shone with appreciation. She looked at it like it was a Picasso.

“Which is your favorite?” she asked, referring to the scars.

Archie thought she was kidding. “I’d be afraid I’d hurt one of their feelings if I said.”

“I like the heart,” said Gretchen. She touched the heart scar, running her fingers over its curves. “It’s one of the best I’ve ever done. It’s not easy to cut smoothly into chest muscle.” She leaned her face in close to his clavicle. He thought that she was going in for a closer examination of her work, but instead she touched the scar with her tongue.

The sudden warm wet pressure on the tender tissue made him jump.

She pulled her head away and looked up at him and he threaded a hand behind her blond head and pushed her face back to his flesh and she put her tongue back on the scar. Her hair was soft and slick in his fist; he could feel the heat of her tongue ripple through his body. He leaned back on the bed and she straddled him, and then slowly, deliciously, traced the scar with her mouth.

Then she moved her tongue down the vertical scar from the spleenectomy over his tensed lower stomach to his belt, which she began to unbuckle.

His erection throbbed, wanting release. His head hurt. His body ached. But he wasn’t as conflicted as he thought he would be. He’d felt guilty every time he’d fantasized about her, guiltier than he’d ever felt during their affair. He had paid emotionally for every imaginary fuck. But not this time.

“I want you on top,” he said. “So I can see you.”

She had the belt off and was pulling down his pants and underwear in a swift, practiced motion.

“I’ll be the last woman you ever made love to,” she said as she pushed him inside her. It took his breath away and he closed his eyes for a moment, lost in the sensation of her body, focusing on not coming instantly like a teenager. Then he let himself look up at her, hips rocked forward, head back slightly, her face relaxed with pleasure. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He put his hands on her slender hips and pulled her forward so he could push himself deeper into her.

“It’s not love,” he said.

S
usan fidgeted all through the press conference. It was a madhouse. They had set up a podium in the parking lot outside the bank. Both Henry and Claire spoke. Claire had powdered sugar on her chin the whole time. They’d gone over all they were doing to find Archie. Pleaded for citizen tips. They were treating it as a kidnapping. No one mentioned the fact that Archie had gotten into the car. Or that he had thrown his ammo and phone battery out the window. You could tell by the questions that half of the reporters there thought he was dead already. It was all a charade and everyone knew it. They couldn’t find her. Not until she wanted them to.

Susan had been late so didn’t get one of the metal folding chairs that had been set up in front of the podium. Instead she stood in the back, shifting her weight from one foot to the next, biding time.

When the press conference ended, Susan ran to catch up to Henry as he walked back toward the bank.

She caught up with him just as he reached the door. “I need you to come with me to Cleveland High School so we can convince the school to let us talk to a kid named Justin Johnson,” she said.

“Who the fuck is Justin Johnson?” Henry asked.

“He came up as part of my investigation into Castle,” Susan said. “He was a good friend of one of Castle’s kids. He knows something about the senator’s relationship with Molly. But someone got to him. He said that he’d been told not to talk to me. Maybe whoever shut him up had something to do with shutting Molly up.”

Henry stopped and turned back toward her. “So you want me to use my badge to intimidate some teachers into letting you harass a minor without his parents’ consent or legal representation?”

“Yes,” she said.

“You know that school just got out?” he said.

“He’s in summer school,” she said.

Henry rubbed his bloodshot eyes with one hand. “What does this have to do with helping me find Archie?”

“It has to do with his case,” Susan said. She tried to sound convincing. “With the park murders. He wanted me to finish it.”

“I’m sort of busy right now, Susan. What with the whole ‘escaped serial killer and kidnapped best friend’ thing.”

“You can wait for a call as well with me as you can here,” Susan said. “Or you can help Archie.” She leaned close to Henry to prevent anyone else from hearing. “He told me to. He has a plan. You said it. Then maybe this is part of it. Maybe if we follow up on the park case, it will help lead us to him.”

Henry gave his head a defiant shake. “That is such bullshit.”

“Before he left,” Susan said in a hushed tone, “he told me that I would always remember my first corpse in the park. That’s what he said. My first cigarette. First kiss. And my first corpse in the park. What?” Susan said. “You think he meant metaphorically? He wanted me to look into the park murders. And they all seem to be connected to Castle.”

Henry stood with his hand on the door, working his jaw, staring at Susan.

She was pretty sure he didn’t like her. But she needed his help and she had a weird feeling that Archie would want her to ask him for it.

“Why didn’t you mention this before?” he asked.

“Because I don’t know if I’m right,” Susan said. “But there’s nothing else, so what the fuck, right?”

Henry worked his jaw a little more. “I do get a kick out of strong-arming teenagers,” he said finally.

Susan grinned, relieved. “It’s fun, isn’t?”

Cleveland High was quiet, only a few cars in the parking lot. The marquee out front still said
CONGRATULATIONS, GRADUATES.

Henry drove, parking in a visitor spot in the lot across the street from the big brick school, and they got out of the car.

“So you’re going to tell them it’s an emergency, right?” Susan said. She imagined bursting into the administration office, Henry throwing down his badge. “That we need to talk to him immediately. That it involves a case.”

She looked up. About ten yards ahead, a handsome blond kid with a backpack was just getting out of his orange BMW. His shaggy surfer hair was tied in a tiny ponytail and his cargo shorts hung low on his hips. She stopped cold.