Sweetheart (5 page)

“You think Parker met with the senator again?” Archie asked.

“I don’t know,” Susan said. “Maybe. Maybe the senator decided to comment after all. But there is no way that the two of them being in that car isn’t connected to the Molly Palmer story.”

Archie nodded to himself for a minute and then returned his attention to her. “Thank you,” he said. “This is helpful.”

Susan felt her face grow hot. “You’re welcome.”

Henry knocked on the car window, nearly causing Susan to jump out of her skin. Henry waved his fingers at her and then pointed at Archie and then at his watch. Archie saw him and nodded, a tiny, almost imperceptible gesture. Susan glanced at her own watch. It was almost eight-thirty

“Salem?” she asked. She had watched Archie and Gretchen at one of their weekly sessions. It still haunted her.

Archie rubbed the back of his neck and squinted, like he had a sudden pain. “I don’t go down there anymore,” he said.

Susan was startled. “Really?”

Archie’s face didn’t register any emotion. “We’re taking a break,” he explained. It was the kind of thing you’d say about a trial separation, not a continuing homicide investigation.
We’re taking a break. Seeing other people. Exploring our options.

Gretchen Lowell. The Beauty Killer. The Queen of Evil. Susan had met her only once. Blond. Porcelain skin. She was even more beautiful in person than she was in all the pictures.

Susan had been sixteen when they discovered the Beauty Killer’s first victim, and that’s about how old Gretchen Lowell still made her feel.

There were newspaper stories almost every day back then, most of them written by Quentin Parker. That was how Susan first knew Archie Sheridan, as a photograph in the paper, standing behind a podium at a press conference or standing over some new corpse.

“I haven’t seen her,” Archie said. “Since the After School Strangler case.”

An involuntary shiver raised the hairs on Susan’s arms. She changed the subject. “I heard you got back together with your family,” she said.

Archie smiled and picked at something on the leg of his pants. “We’re working on it,” he said, his voice softening.

Susan smiled. “That’s good. That’s really good.”

They sat for a moment in completely awkward silence. Well, it was completely awkward for Susan. Archie seemed fine with it. But she didn’t like silence. It made her feel as if she might blurt out something she would regret. Or start to cry. Which is exactly what happened.

“Oh, God,” she said, wiping a tear from her cheek and examining it, as horrified as if it were blood.

Archie put his hand on hers. He didn’t say anything. He just waited while she wept.

“I get scared sometimes, when I’m alone,” she said, blubbering. She dug in her purse for an old tissue and blew her nose. “Isn’t that pathetic?”

Archie was perfectly still. He squeezed her hand. “Not at all,” he said quietly.

Susan closed her eyes. Sometimes she wished she could go back three months, before the case that had brought them together. And then she remembered Archie, and all he’d been through, and felt like a jerk.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Parker’s making me feel sorry for myself.”

“It’s okay to be scared, Susan,” Archie said. “You’re going to be okay. There is nothing pathetic about you.”

She smiled at him and nodded a few times. He always called her “Susan.” Never “Sue,” or “Suzy,” or “Suze.” She liked that about him.

“Do you really think the Atomic Turquoise is okay?” she asked.

She could see Archie eye her hair, considering his words carefully. “I like the fact that you have the guts to do it,” he said.

She wiped her cheeks and nose with her palms and forearm and started to get out of the car.

Archie stopped her with a hand on her arm. “I might need your help with something else,” he said. “I’ve got a body I need to identify. I might need to ask a favor. To get some coverage. I’m afraid the story will get lost in all this mess.”

“The girl in the park?” Susan asked.

Archie raised an eyebrow in surprise. “Yeah.”

“Let me know what you need,” Susan said. “I’ll do what I can.”

Walking away, she wondered for a moment if Archie had been playing her a little, wanting her help getting coverage, and if she was being just a little bit manipulated. Then she pushed the thought out of her mind. Archie wasn’t that calculating.

A
rchie watched as Henry maneuvered his large frame into the driver’s seat and started the car. “You get her to cover the park?” Henry asked, glancing in the rearview mirror as Susan made her way back to the assembled pen of reporters.

“Yeah,” Archie said. It had been easy. He felt a little bit bad about that. But he felt worse for their Jane Doe. It was something that Debbie was always accusing him of—feeling more connection to the dead than the living.

Archie pulled his seat belt over his chest and fastened it.

“No questions?” Henry asked. “She just agreed?” He twisted around in his seat to get another look at Susan, who was easy to spot, her turquoise hair like the head of a match. “What did you do? Hypnotize her?”

It was hot in the car and Archie fiddled with the air conditioner. “You ever hear anything about the senator screwing his kids’ babysitter?” he asked.

“Heard something like that,” Henry said. “Didn’t know she was his babysitter.”

Archie winced. The air conditioner choked to life and some small bit of crud caught in the vent rattled and snapped. “Ever think about looking into it?” Archie asked. He slammed the heel of his palm into the dash near the vent and the rattling stopped.

“Thought she was sixteen,” Henry said. The light was on the hood and Henry flipped it on, put one arm behind Archie’s seat, and began to back up.

That was the cutoff for statutory rape. Sixteen and over, you could consent; under sixteen, you couldn’t. It was one of those laws that depended a lot on context.

“Fourteen,” Archie said. The context on this one wasn’t very forgiving. “Castle was fifty-two at the time. Susan told me the
Herald’s
got a tell-all,” he added. “An exclusive interview with the woman.”

“No crime in it,” Henry said. His eyes were still focused behind them as he slowly directed the car in a perfectly executed Y-turn. Henry had driver’s licenses from seventeen states. He’d moved every year before he became a cop. Just to see more, he’d told Archie once when they were drunk. Archie had never lived anywhere but Oregon. But then, he had only one ex-wife. Henry had five.

“The statute of limitations back then was three years,” Henry continued. “You could stretch it to six if your vic was especially adorable.” A bored-looking uniformed cop lifted a piece of crime tape to let them drive out of the cordoned area on the bridge. “Now you get six years after the kid tells someone or turns eighteen. Whichever comes first.”

There was a steel travel cup of coffee on the dash, and it started to slide forward as Henry sped up. Archie reached for it and took a sip of the lukewarm coffee. Castle had a law degree. He’d probably popped a bottle of champagne the day he hit the three-year mark. “Lady Justice appears to not be Castle’s primary fear,” Archie said. The AC started rattling again and Archie hit the dash with the heel of his hand again. The rattling stopped.

“Yeah,” Henry said with a wry chuckle. “Back when I worked in D.C., they used to call it the ‘Three Dees’: disgraced, disbarred, and divorced. Bad press. That’s what really scares these motherfuckers.”

“By ‘motherfuckers’ you mean politicians?” Archie asked, taking another sip of the lukewarm coffee.

“Yep,” Henry said.

“And what were you doing in D.C.?” Archie asked.

“I was working for a motherfucker,” Henry said. “Shaved my muttonchops and everything. Then I saw the invoices the public housing contractors were turning in. Ten thousand bucks per urinal.” He shook his head slowly at the thought of it. “That was after I stopped teaching inner-city high school kids and before I became a bush pilot.”

“When was the motorcycle trip across South America?” Archie asked.

“After I left Alaska,” Henry said. “Char and I had just broken up. You know, I spent a month with a native tribe when my bike broke down in the mountains. They had this leaf there—if you chewed it, you saw an image of your future.”

“What did you see?” Archie asked.

“A white horse, a kid holding a bird, and a big-titted woman with a sword.”

Archie blinked silently at Henry for a moment. “So obviously you thought, ‘I’ll become a cop.’”

Henry smiled broadly, his mustache turning up at the corners. “It seemed like a clear omen.”

Archie just shook his head. Closing the Fremont Bridge had fucked rush hour. I-5 north, 405, even the surface streets had come to a halt. Once they got through the roadblock at the end of the bridge, Henry put the siren on so they could ride the shoulder of the freeway. Technically, they weren’t supposed to use the sirens in nonemergency situations. Henry considered traffic jams an emergency.

“So you think Castle decided to take the plunge?” Henry said. “Grabbed the wheel. Murder-suicide?”

“Maybe,” Archie said.

“You gonna tell the Feds?” Henry asked.

Archie considered it. “We’ll wait and see what the crime scene techs come up with,” he said. “If it wasn’t intentional, no point stepping on Susan’s story.”

Henry grinned, and slipped on his aviator sunglasses.

“What?” Archie asked.

“You’re nice to her because she likes you,” he said.

“I’m nice to her because I’m nice,” Archie said. “And she likes me because I’m old—”

“A geriatric forty,” objected Henry, who was ten years older than that.

“Old,” repeated Archie. He added: “Powerful.”

“Bossy,” countered Henry.

Archie tried, “Commanding?”

Henry nodded in compromise. They were through downtown now, on the Marquim Bridge, headed back to the eastside. Traffic was better. The sun was out. And Mount Hood and Mount St. Helens loomed on the horizon. Archie always thought they looked strange in the summer, their massive rocky structures oddly naked.

“Not to mention,” Archie said, “fucked up and unavailable.” He rolled down the window and dumped the rest of the coffee out the window.

“Well,” said Henry. “How could she resist?”

A
rchie stood inside his front door. He’d spent the rest of his Sunday morning at the office filling out reports. Castle wasn’t his case, but he’d been on the scene, and that meant paperwork. Henry had finally insisted on driving him home.

He could hear Buddy Holly blasting through the house. The air was heavy with the smell of a freshly baked cake, and he heard his son giggling in the kitchen. A lifetime ago, that sound would have made him smile; now it only made him stop, his hand wrapped tight around the pillbox in his pocket.

Two and a half years ago he had stood outside of Gretchen Lowell’s house. He often thought about that night, reimagining the sequence of events, telling himself to turn around, to walk away, to get back in his car and drive straight home to his family. If he hadn’t gone inside that night, everything would be different.

But he had gone inside. And Gretchen had been waiting.

He stood just inside the door for another minute and then finally called: “I’m home.”

Debbie’s voice called back: “We’re in the kitchen.”

Archie took his briefcase into his office, still stalling. He didn’t like to leave it out where the kids might get into it. No one should have to look at photographs like the ones he had to look at. His office was one of the extra bedrooms on the far end of the hall. A square, carpeted room with a desk, a fake Eames chair, and a sofa that folded out for the overflow visitors who never seemed to come. On the surface, the office looked innocuous enough. Shelves of forensic pathology books and crime references, a few commendations framed on the wall, a computer, three file cabinets teeming with reports and notes. There was a large closet with an accordion-style birch door. Inside on the back wall was a collage of photographs of every Beauty Killer victim that Archie had closed. Sometimes he would open the door, turn on the closet light, and just sit and look at them. Forty-two faces. Men. Women. Children. He knew every detail of each photograph. They were burned into his consciousness.

He sat down at his desk and unclipped his holster from his waistband, pulled his weapon out, and emptied the bullets into his hand. They were never as heavy as he thought they should be. He unlocked his desk drawer with a key from his key ring, and set the bullets in a cubby. Then he unlocked another drawer, laid the gun and holster in it, and locked it. This was their agreement when Ben was born. No loaded guns in the house. Even Henry had to lock his gun up when he came for dinner.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw a small face in the doorway. When he looked, it was gone.

“Sara?” he said.

She poked her head around again. “They’re making me a cake for my birthday. I’m not supposed to look.” She grinned and clapped her hands together. “For tomorrow,” she said. She spun around in a little circle, danced in place for a moment, and then ran over to Archie, her dark braids swinging. Sara ran everywhere. She set a chubby hand on Archie’s. “Did you have fun today?” she asked.

Archie hesitated, trying not to let his face betray his mental state. “I was at work. Work isn’t always fun.”

She gazed up at him, eyes bright, cheeks glowing. “When I’m seven, will I get to meet her?”

“Who?” Archie asked.

“Gretchen Lowell.”

It took the breath out of him. Like a fist to the chest. His hand went up to the scar reflexively, like you might cover an old injury in the path of a blow. He could barely speak. “Where did you hear that name, sweetie?” he asked finally.

Sara, sensing his uneasiness, took a tiny step back. “Jacob Firebaugh gave Ben a book about you.”

Archie’s heart pounded in his chest. “What book?” He knew what book.
The Last Victim.
It was a trashy tale of Gretchen’s escapades and Archie’s suffering at her hands. He knew that they’d see it eventually. But he thought he had time.