Sweetheart

by Chelsea Cain

  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.

  “Okay,” Archie said. “Invite her up.”

  CHAPTER

  31

  Charlene Wood sat with her knees together and crossed her feet at the ankles, facing Archie and Buddy, who now sat side by side on the sofa. Buddy had put on his suit jacket. Two young crewmembers wearing KGW caps had erected a background screen behind them, to disguise the location from the few viewers who might recognize the Arlington Founders Suite.

  “Are you ready?” Charlene asked. She looked thinner than she did on television, and hungrier.

  “Absolutely,” Buddy answered before Archie could open his mouth. Buddy had been caked and powdered and sprayed and now Archie saw him lick his top teeth. It was a trick Buddy had taught him when Archie had taken over leadership of the task force all those years ago, so your lip wouldn’t stick to your teeth when you talked on camera. Archie had thought Buddy had been kidding.

  “We’re going to go live,” Charlene said.

  Archie looked down at his hands. The swelling had gone down a little bit. But his side still throbbed, despite the four Vi-codin and the two more he’d just taken. He wanted to be higher. He needed to look like he was sick. He was sick.

  Now he needed to sell it.

  Charlene turned to the camera, tilted her chin down thoughtfully, and lowered her voice. “Thanks, Jim. I’m here with Mayor Bud Anderson and Gretchen Lowell’s so-called last victim, her former pursuer, Detective Archie Sheridan.” She turned to Archie and reached out and touched him lightly on the knee. “Detective, can you tell us what went through your mind when you heard that the Beauty Killer had escaped?”

  Archie kept his face composed, irrespective of the ludicrous-ness of the question. “I was sick,” Archie said. “I felt concern for the community.” He wanted to do something with his hands, and settled on folding them in his lap. “Gretchen is very dangerous. She should not be approached. It’s important that she be returned— alive—into state custody so we can finish our work identifying her victims.”

  “I just want to reiterate,” Buddy said, “that we are doing everything in our power to apprehend Gretchen Lowell. We will catch her.”

  Charlene reached out and touched Archie’s knee again. Debbie was standing behind her, out of camera range, and Archie thought he saw her roll her eyes.

  “How are your children after yesterday’s trauma?” Charlene asked.

  “They’re well,” Archie said. “Considering. But,” Archie added, and he felt Buddy shift a little beside him, “I’m saddened that this is d
istracting me from my work investigating who is responsible for the murders in Forest Park.” He looked up, directly into the camera. “If anyone out there knows of a blond woman who has been missing for two to three years, please call your local police precinct.”

  Charlene’s eyebrows quirked quizzically at the change of subject, but she was enough of a journalist to at least ask the obvious follow-up. “And the first body?”

  “We’ve identified her,” Archie said. The pain in his side had grown to a fire. “Her name is Molly Palmer.”

  Archie had called Molly’s parents from the bedroom after his shower. Molly’s father had answered the phone. “She’s been dead to us for fifteen years,” he’d said. They had another daughter, the father explained, a lawyer. Very successful. Two kids. A husband in investment banking. It was always smart to have a spare.

  Buddy’s entire posture went rigid. He cleared his throat with a little cough. “To stay on topic,” he said, “I again just want to reassure the public that we are doing everything possible to protect them.”

  Archie lifted his hand to his throbbing side, and pressed it against the cloth of his shirt. His stomach turned. He looked up. The camera was still rolling. Buddy was blathering on. Archie tried to steady himself, to brace himself on the edge of the coffee table, to make it look real. It wasn’t hard. The pain and nausea were there— it was just a matter of surrendering to them. He glanced up at the television camera again, waiting for Buddy to pause, to give the cameraman enough time to react. Finally, Buddy took a breath and Archie slipped forward off the sofa onto his knees.

  “Oh, my God,” Buddy said.

  “Keep filming,” Archie heard Charlene bark.

  Debbie was there in an instant, her hands cupping his face. “Archie?” she said. She laid him on the carpet. “Archie?” she said again. She leaned over him, her face just above his, pinched.

  Archie took her hand in his and squeezed it. “Give it a minute,” he whispered.

  She tilted her head, confused.

  Henry stormed between Archie and the camera. “The interview’s over,” he said.

  Archie heard Charlene say, “Archie Sheridan has collapsed. We’ll update you with more information as soon as we have it. Jim, back to you.” The camera must have stopped filming because then she added, “Fucking shit.”

  “Go,” Henry said. “Now. Everybody out.”

  “Should I call for paramedics?” Buddy asked.

  “No,” Archie said from the carpet. “Fergus.”

  Henry manhandled Charlene Wood and her crew out the door, leaving their backdrop screen where it sat behind the sofa.

  Archie heard the kids’ bedroom door open and a moment later Sara was kneeling beside him. “Daddy?” she said.

  “I’m fine,” Archie said. He lifted his free hand and wiped a tear from Sara’s pink, wet cheek. “I’m fine.”

  Sara looked down and immediately noticed what no one else had. “What’s wrong with your hand, Daddy?”

  Archie pulled himself up into a seated position. Ben was standing at the end of the sofa. “Take your sister back into your room,” Archie told him. Ben held his hand out and Sara glanced once at her father before obediently standing up and following Ben into the suite’s second bedroom.

  “What’s going on?” Debbie asked, her voice flat.

  “Shh,” Archie said. “Please. Everyone. Quiet.”

  “Archie?” Henry said.

  “Just wait,” Archie said.

  He closed his eyes, willing himself to hear the noise.

  And then there it was. His cell phone.

  Gretchen had been watching the news.

  CHAPTER

  32

  Are you all right?” Gretchen asked.

  Archie waved a hand at Henry, and Henry immediately snapped open his cell phone to get a trace on the incoming call.

  Archie’s heart banged in his chest, and he had to struggle to keep his voice conversational. “Worried about me?” he asked.

  “You looked swollen, darling,” she said. “It’s the edema. Your liver’s shutting down.”

  He glanced down at his free hand. The palm was scarlet; the flesh of his fingers tight with fluid. He closed his fist and hid it under his armpit. “I want to see you.”

  He could hear her breathing. Her long, light breaths only made his breathing seem more strangled. “Soon,” she said.

  “Then you’re still in the area?” Archie asked, glancing up at Henry to make sure he had heard.

  She took another breath, exhaled. “I want to be close to you.”

  “Where are you?” Archie asked.

  “Where are you?”

  Henry looked at Archie and shook his head. Archie knew what that meant. Gretchen was on a prepaid cell phone. Untraceable. She would hang up and go about her merry business and there was nothing they could do to stop her. “Gretchen,” Archie said. “Don’t kill anyone else, okay?”

  “Does it hurt?” she asked.

  Archie’s hand found its way to his flank, the dull burning pain behind his ribs. “Yeah.”

  He could almost hear her smile through the phone. “Good.”

  The line went dead and Archie sat with the phone in his hand, only then realizing that he had been gripping it so tightly that his fingers ached. He set the phone down on the table and forced his cramped fingers straight. He hadn’t worn a wedding ring in almost two years, but his hand still looked naked without it.

  Henry, who had been pacing with his hands threaded behind his neck, stopped and slammed a fist into the baby-shit wall. The sound of his flesh hitting the plaster caused everyone in the room to turn. “Shit,” Henry said, withdrawing his hand and shaking it. A hairline crack in the plaster marked the impact.

  Buddy sat on the arm of the chair. “No one knows about the calls.” He looked back and forth at each of them. “It doesn’t leave this room.”

  Debbie, who had been sitting on the sofa, her hands balled in her lap, stood and walked into the kids’ bedroom without a word.

  Archie had so much to say to her, to explain, but it would have to wait.

  The door to the suite was flung open and Archie and Henry turned. Susan Ward stood in the doorway. She was wearing all black and her turquoise hair glowed like the top of a flame against her flushed, angry face. “You gave an interview to Charlene-fucking-Wood?”

  CHAPTER

  33

  When did you ID the Jane Doe?” Buddy asked softly.

  Susan looked livid. “That was my scoop. I was the one who identified her. It was my story.” She looked at Archie sitting on the floor, then at Henry holding his hand and the spider crack on the wall beside him. “What’s going on?” she asked.

  Archie pulled himself up and sat down on the sofa where Debbie had been. The cushion was still warm. “I needed it on TV,” he said to Susan.

  “Are you sure it was her?” Buddy asked Archie.

  Susan’s mouth opened. “You knew?” she said, her eyes narrowing at Buddy. “You knew about Castle and Molly?”

  He shrugged defensively. “I’d heard the same rumors that everyone else had over the years.”

  “But you knew her name,” Archie said softly.

  “It was an affair,” Buddy said to Archie. “Jesus, don’t be so self-righteous. All the time you and Debbie have been together, you’ve never thought about fucking around?”

  The adrenaline of Gretchen’s call was lifting, and Archie felt sick again, stomach acid rising in his throat.

  “She was fourteen,” Susan said.

  Buddy’s face colored. “I thought she was older than that,” he said. “Eighteen.”

  A phone started to ring. For a split second Archie thought it might be Gretchen again, but the ring was wrong. He leaned his head back on the sofa and closed his eyes. His head hurt. His side throbbed. His skin felt like it was crawling with ants. “Susan ID’d her. We matched dental records. It’s her.” He glanced back at the second bedroom, where Debbie and the kids were. The d
oor was still closed. He looked back at the others.

  The phone was still ringing.

  “Is someone going to get that?” Archie said wearily.

  “It’ll wait,” Buddy said, tapping the leather phone holster on his belt. He stood. “This is a political shit storm, my friends,” he said. “If the affair gets out.”

  “It’s not an ‘affair’ if the girl is fourteen and the man is fifty,” Susan said. “It’s statutory rape.”

  Archie sighed. Did he have to spell it out? “It’s more than that, Buddy,” Archie said. It was a motive for murder.

  Susan took a tiny step forward into the room. Her voice was just above a whisper. “You think Castle killed Molly?”

  Henry, who had been holding his injured knuckles to his mouth, lowered his hand. “Jesus,” he said.

  “No,” Buddy said. “I worked for the man. He wasn’t capable of murder.”

  Susan bit her lip. “He was capable of fucking a fourteen-year-old and covering it up for fifteen years,” she said.

  “This is your fault,” Buddy said, shoving a manicured finger in Susan’s face. “If you’d let the thing rest—” He caught himself, clenched his hand and withdrew it. “Anyway, the story isn’t out yet.” He nodded to himself a couple of times. “If we’re lucky, no one will connect Molly Palmer to the senator.”

  “She was his kids’ babysitter,” Susan pointed out. “Besides, I’m standing right here.” She waved. “Hello. Journalist.”

  Buddy waved his hand in the air, like he was swatting away a bee. “It will still take the press a few days.” He turned to Susan. “Until then, embargo it.”

  Susan’s face scrunched up in offense. “You can’t tell me to embargo a story.”

  “I already did. You think it was the Herald’s idea to not run the thing after the senator died?”

  “That’s censorship.” Susan looked helplessly at Archie. “That’s government censorship.”