Sweetheart (7 page)

Archie sat on the damp ground, just yards from where a girl had been murdered. The weather had changed—the sunny day gone, replaced with a sad drizzle. The park smelled like death. Rotting logs, fallen branches, spoiled blackberries. Archie brushed some dirt off his pants and closed his eyes.

This is where it had all begun. Archie and Henry had responded to a call about a dead woman in the upper park. She was just a kid. Scalped. Burned. Badly mutilated. That was thirteen years ago. The Beauty Killer’s first victim. Archie’s first homicide.

Archie glanced down at the paperback next to him in the dirt. Gretchen looked back at him. He didn’t know why he had brought it, why he hadn’t left it in the car, why he hadn’t thrown it in the nearest gas station Dumpster. He knew one thing: This Jacob Firebaugh kid was going to get an earful.

There was a sudden rustling behind him on the hillside. Ferns bending under feet, earth sliding, vines snapping. Archie jerked back to alertness, opened his eyes, and in an instant found the gun on his hip, resting his hand lightly on the leather holster. He turned around and found a kid standing a few feet above him on the hillside.

The kid was maybe twelve, still panting from his trip down the hill, the ferns vibrating behind him. He was delicate looking, with pale skin and dark hair and a mouth full of glittery braces. He wore an Oregon Ducks T-shirt and a pair of knee-length shorts heavy with pockets and snaps, and his calves were straight and tiny, birdlike. He was carrying an old Peanuts metal lunch box. “Are you a detective?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Archie said, pulling his hand away from his gun.

The kid sat down next to Archie, folding his legs Indian style, the lunch box on his lap.

Archie picked up the copy
of The Last Victim
and moved it to his other side, away from the kid. “Can I help you?” Archie asked.

“I’m okay,” the kid said.

Archie tilted his head at the crime tape that surrounded them. “This is sort of a crime scene.”

“I know,” the kid said.

The two sat in silence for a moment, watching the stream gurgle by down below.

“Do you have kids?” the kid asked finally.

“Two,” Archie answered. “Six and eight.”

The kid nodded, satisfied. “I want to show you something.”

Archie looked at the boy. He was lonely. Looking for attention. Archie didn’t have time to indulge him. But there was something in his eyes, a seriousness that was enough to make Archie agree. What the hell. He’d look at the fort or whatever the hell the kid had, and then he’d go home to his family.

Archie stood.

“Don’t forget your book,” the kid said, pointing at
The Last Victim.

Archie looked down at Gretchen’s face, the pink background, the gold embossed lettering. “Right,” he said, stooping over and picking it up.

The boy scrambled a few feet up the hill. Archie took a few careful steps up the muddy embankment after him, remembering the patrol cop who’d lost his footing. But the kid grew anxious and extended an impatient arm. Archie tucked the book into his waistband and took the kid’s hand, and the kid led him up the hill, back to the main path, and started walking west, farther into the woods. The rain had picked up and was an insistent patter on the canopy of leaves overhead. The cuffs of Archie’s pants were black with mud and his palms were covered with dirt from trying to leverage himself up the hillside. The light was fading quickly. The kid walked at a forty-degree angle, driven with purpose, his feet moving double time. Archie had to work to keep up with him. Then the kid came to a stop and looked at Archie and then up another hillside.

“Seriously?” said Archie.

The kid took a few steps up the hill and reached back for Archie. Archie took his hand again and the kid led him up the hillside. They were about halfway up when Archie felt a dull ache pound below his right rib cage. He winced, and his foot slipped in the mud, and he slid to his knees, grinding dirt into the calves of his pants. It took him a minute to catch a breath before he let the kid help pull him upright and they started climbing again. Archie tried to breathe into the pain. It wasn’t a cramp. It wasn’t that sharp. It was a flatter pain, more diffuse. At first Archie thought it was the book, tucked into his waistband, digging into his gut, but when he slid the book to the left, the pain stayed on the right. Still, he took the book out of his waistband and pinched it under his armpit, and focused on the kid, his mud-soaked green sneakers always a few feet up ahead, and in a few minutes the strange ache subsided. At the top the hillside leveled off. It was crowded with trees. The kid looked up at Archie. “I collect nests,” he said.

Archie stopped to try to brush some slimy vegetation off his increasingly damp pants. “Great,” he said.

“I found one here a few weeks ago.” The kid tapped the ground with the tip of his sneaker. “Right here.”

“Neat,” said Archie.

“There’s something wrong with it,” the kid said.

“With the nest?” Archie said.

The kid gave Archie a grave look and then sat down cross-legged again, set the lunch box on his lap and opened it. Inside was a bird’s nest. The kid lifted it carefully out of the lunch box and handed it up to Archie.

Archie took it. The sun set a little further and it felt suddenly very cold in the park. “You found this right here,” he said quietly. “This spot.”

The kid nodded gravely. “There’s something wrong with it, right?”

“Yeah,” said Archie. He got his cell phone out and called Henry, his arm still tight around the book.

“It’s me,” he said. “I’m at Forest Park. Get Search and Rescue out here. And a cadaver dog. I think we’ve got another corpse.”

Woven into the nest, among the twigs and vines that had been gathered off the forest floor, were several hundred strands of long blond hair.

When Archie looked up again, the kid was gone.

S
usan thought about going home and changing into park clothes: hiking boots, a slicker, maybe a pair of lederhosen. But she didn’t want to look like she was trying too hard. So she just wore her hooded sweatshirt over her black dress. She was wearing flip-flops, but she had a pair of sneakers in the trunk she kept for just such occasions. She only had to ruin one pair of expensive boots at a crime scene to learn that lesson. Now her trunk was full of reporter supplies: a change of shoes, a waterproof jacket, notebooks, water, a sun hat, batteries for her recorder, emergency tampons. You never knew where you might end up and for how long.

Traffic was bad. It had started to rain and the storm drains were overflowing and water pooled at every corner. Traffic was always bad when it rained during the summer. Even though it rained nine months out of the year, Portlanders were always unsettled when it rained out of season.

Bliss found it charming, but then Bliss didn’t drive. It made Susan want to murder someone.

It took forty minutes to get across the river and up to Northwest. Susan listened to people call in on a talk radio show to share their fond memories of the senator. But it just made her livid, so she switched the station to alternative rock. She’d given up on that, too, by the time she pulled her old Saab into the parking lot next to an undercover cop car and three patrol units. She pulled the hood of her sweatshirt over her turquoise hair and got out of the car.

There was a uniformed cop sitting in one of the patrol cars. He was wearing a rain slicker, sitting in the driver’s seat with the dome light on and writing on a clipboard. Susan knocked on his window.

He looked up. His slicker was wet and he looked unhappy to be there. He rolled down the window half an inch.

“Archie Sheridan?” she asked.

He pointed at the trailhead, and beyond it, the dark woods. And then rolled the window back up.

“Thanks,” Susan said. She thought about asking to borrow his flashlight, but he didn’t seem to be in that great a mood.

She changed into her sneakers, put her hands into the pockets of her sweatshirt, and started walking. The ground on either side of the cement path to the trailhead was already a field of mud. It glistened under the park lights. When she reached the edge of the dark woods, she thought about going back to her car, going home, going to bed, but then she thought of Parker and how far he would go to get a story, and she hunched her shoulders and headed into the darkness.

The overcast sky held enough light that the trees were shadowed and every branch looked like a bent, angry arm. Susan couldn’t help but think of Gretchen Lowell as she walked down the gravel path, the mud sucking at her feet. Gretchen had dumped at least two bodies in these woods. Is that what this was about? Another Beauty Killer victim? Susan dug her hands deeper into her pockets and picked up the pace.

She’d walked about a quarter mile when she found them. She could see the flashlights up ahead, the long white beams refracting off the cedar trunks. Cops, bless their hearts, were always easy to spot.

They were also hard to sneak up on, and she was still thirty feet away when one of the flashlight beams paused and then swung around and landed on her face. She blinked into the light. “I’m looking for Detective Sheridan,” she announced.

A large shadow appeared behind the light and she heard Henry Sobol say, “Oh, for fuck’s sake, it’s you.”

The flashlight dropped.

Susan wiggled her fingers at Henry. “Hi,” she said.

“He’s over there,” Henry said, swinging his flashlight around to illuminate Archie, who sat on a fallen log just off the trail. Henry twisted his mouth wryly. “We’re waiting for a bird expert,” he said.

“Ornithologist,” Archie called.

Susan could practically hear Henry rolling his eyes. “Whatever,” he said.

She walked over to where Archie sat. He had a flashlight at his feet, shining off into the woods, so she could make out enough of him to see that he was soaking wet and covered in mud.

“Did you trip?” she asked.

“Do you know anything about birds?” he asked.

She put her hands on her hips. “Is that why you asked me out here?”

He picked up the flashlight and shone it in a bird’s nest that he was holding on his lap. “It’s human hair,” he said. “Blond. There’s another body.”

Susan leaned over and looked into the nest. She was confused. “You found a nest?”

“A kid gave it to me. He found it up the hill.”

“A kid?” Susan said, looking around at the dark woods.

Henry walked up behind her. “He’s gone,” he explained.

“He disappeared,” Archie said.

“The kid?” Susan said.

Archie looked up at Henry. “You call Search and Rescue yet?”

“Based on hair in a nest?” Henry shone his flashlight down Archie’s mud-and-debris-covered body. “Are you okay?” he asked, lowering his voice. “Debbie called me, you know. After you stomped out in a cloud of self-pity.”

“It was more a fit of pique,” Archie said.

“She’s worried about you,” Henry said.

“You two should start a club.” Archie stood. “I don’t want to wait anymore.” He called over the three uniformed cops who were standing with their flashlights. “I’m going to want shoulder-to-shoulder teams with flashlights. Take your time. We’re looking for a female corpse.”

“Archie,” Henry said.

Archie shone his flashlight straight up the muddy hillside. “We’re going up there,” he said. “That’s where the kid found the nest. So that’s where we should start.”

“Wait,” Henry said.

“I’m done waiting,” Archie said.

“No,” Henry said. “Wait.” He swung his flashlight around behind them and illuminated the face of a man.

Susan gasped.

All the cops turned and looked at her.

“Sorry,” she said.

The man smiled. He was bearded and bespectacled and wore a hooded rain slicker. “Did someone call an ornithologist?” he said.

Archie waved his hand. “Here.”

The man stepped forward. “I’m Ken Monroe. We spoke on the phone.”

Archie took his hand and shook it. “Thanks for coming,” Archie said.

“Sure.” He grinned excitedly. “We don’t usually get emergency calls.”

I bet, thought Susan.

“What can you tell me about this?” Archie asked, shining his flashlight in the nest again.

Susan elbowed in as they all gathered around the nest.

Monroe lowered his head so he was only inches from the nest, and examined it carefully. Then he asked, “Where’d you find it?”

Archie gestured with his head up the hillside. “Up there,” he said.

“It’s a song sparrow nest,” Monroe said.

Susan got out her notebook and wrote that down. “You can tell the kind of bird just by looking at the nest?” she asked. Nests all looked the same to her.

Monroe nodded. “Yeah, sure,” he said. “See how it’s shaped? Like a cup? You can see the rough outer layer of dead grasses and weed stems.” He touched the exterior of the nest. “Some rootlets and bark shreds. If you look here, you can see it’s lined with finer grasses and hair.”

“I’m interested in the hair,” Archie said.

“Some birds use it to pad their nests. It’s uncommon, but not unheard of.”

“So, like what?” Henry asked. “They get it from barber Dump-sters?”

Monroe frowned. “Dumpsters? Not likely. You said the nest was found here?”

“Up the hill,” Archie said.

“Well, the hair came from nearby. Birds don’t travel far for nesting material. Most nests get made in a couple of days. There’s no advantage to flying long distances.” Monroe looked up the hill. “No, this hair came from the woods. I’d say, within three hundred yards of here.”

Susan felt goose bumps rise on her arms.

“Any idea how old the nest is?” Archie asked.

“No more than a year or two.”

“How can you tell?” Henry said.

“Because nests disintegrate,” Monroe explained. “If they didn’t, we’d be standing on like a hundred of them right now.”

“So all we have to do is search three hundred yards in every direction,” Archie said.

Henry groaned. “That’s a football field.”

“Maybe we should call Search and Rescue,” Archie said.