Sweetheart

by Chelsea Cain

  “I’m fine,” she said in a nasal voice, swallowing some warm saliva that had pooled at the back of her throat. She didn’t know if it was Henry’s driving or the carbon monoxide poisoning, but her money was on Henry’s driving.

  They had made good time. There was a caravan of cars coming down the mountain, but with the exception of Forest Service vehicles and fire trucks, very little traffic headed up. She’d seen no evidence of the fire yet.

  Susan saw a green highway sign that read MILLS CROSSING, POPULATION 52, PLEASE DRIVE CAREFULLY, and sat up. “This is it,” she said. Mills Crossing appeared to be a gas station, roadhouse, a few old houses, and an “antiques shop” consisting of old dishes and paperbacks laid out on sheets in the roadhouse parking lot.

  Henry flipped on his turn signal to pull across the highway to get to the gas station, but the line of cars coming down the mountain continued at a solid pace. Finally he put the siren on the hood, hit a button on the dash, and the siren whooped once. The cars immediately parted to let him through.

  “Must be nice,” Susan said.

  “It is,” said Henry.

  He pulled up and parked next to the gas station. Susan counted eight cars waiting to get gas. A single attendant was manning the station’s two pumps. Oregon hadn’t had self-serve gas since the state had passed a statute against it in the 1940s. Back then the state was afraid people would blow themselves up. Now the statute was supposed to protect the environment, jobs, and old people who might succumb to fumes.

  This guy looked like he would have been fine letting the customers risk it.

  Henry and Susan got out of the car and moved between the bumpers of two SUVs to get to the gas pump. The attendant was Susan’s height, and didn’t weigh much more. His skin was tan and tough. He wore a T-shirt that read SPOTTED OWL TASTES LIKE CHICKEN.

  “You Big Charlie?” Henry asked.

  “Yep,” the little man said. He had a toothpick in his mouth and it rotated from one corner of his mouth to the other while he talked. “Cash only,” he said to a man in a VW bus. “Visa machine’s down.” The man in the bus handed Big Charlie a crumpled ten and Big Charlie inserted the nozzle into the bus’s gas tank and hit a lever on the pump. The pump’s dial meter began to rotate slowly. A woman in a Honda Element waiting for gas on the other side of the pump honked her horn. Big Charlie ignored her.

  The traffic coming down Highway 22 was a caravan of Mon-teros, Subaru wagons, and Jeep Wagoneers, punctuated by the odd log truck. Some of the SUVs were hauling speedboats. Some had three or four bikes on the grille. But Susan noticed other cars, too, that were packed for more than a recreational holiday, with Hefty bags and boxes roped to the tops of their roofs.

  Susan surveyed the line of cars, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand.

  Big Charlie took off his baseball cap, dabbed at his forehead with a rag, and put the cap back on. “They’re evacuating,” he said. His gray eyes flicked down to Susan’s burning American Spirit. “Some jackass tossed a cigarette,” he said. “Happens every summer.”

  Susan glanced down at her cigarette and rotated it behind her thigh. “What?” she said, looking between Big Charlie and Henry. “It wasn’t me.”

  The gas attendant jammed his thumb toward a NO SMOKING sign affixed to the gas pump.

  “Sorry,” Susan said. She took one more quick drag and ground the cigarette out in a steel trash can filled with empty soda bottles, urine-soaked diapers, and other crap people stored up in the back of their cars on road trips.

  Henry flipped open his badge and showed it to Big Charlie. “You saw a silver Jaguar?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Big Charlie said. The bus’s tank was full and he pulled the nozzle out, hung it back on the pump, and gave the bus a friendly pat on the windshield as it pulled away. “Nice car. Came through last night. I filled the tank with plus.”

  “You remember who was driving?” Henry asked.

  “A woman. I told the fellow on the phone, I mostly remember the car.”

  “Can I show you a photograph?” Henry asked, holding Gretchen’s mug shot out.

  Big Charlie tipped his head up so he could see the picture under the bill of his cap. “Might have been her.” He glanced up at Susan. “Might have been you. What’d she do?”

  “She’s Gretchen Lowell,” Susan said.

  Big Charlie greeted this with a blank stare.

  “The Beauty Killer,” Susan said.

  The woman in the Honda Element honked her horn again. Big Charlie didn’t flinch. And didn’t rush. “I’m more of a John Wayne Gacy man myself,” he said. He squinted at Susan. “You should put some ice on that.”

  CHAPTER

  60

  It was easier than he thought it would be. Maybe it was because his body was used to it. Maybe it was because his mind was ready to let go. He’d taken two bottles of pills now. He’d done it methodically. Three pills at a time. Washing each mouthful down with three swallows of Scotch. You got into a rhythm after a while. And he’d grown to like the taste of the Scotch. The heat of it filled him like bathwater. He wished he’d appreciated it more while he was alive. The thought made him smile. He probably couldn’t have afforded Scotch this good on his salary anyway.

  “Please,” Gretchen said. “Stop.”

  The remaining pills were on the counter. Archie arranged them into a little wagon train. Then lifted them, one by one. When he’d taken all the pills, he turned back to Gretchen.

  She stood frozen, staring at him, her lips parted, her head slightly tilted. Her eyes were large, the whites pink from crying. She looked distraught, like a child who didn’t understand why she was being punished. Her desperation almost made him feel sorry for her.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Commitment issues.”

  “Uncuff me,” she said.

  He shook his head.

  Her entire face was red now, tears streaming down both cheeks. “I’ll tell them everything.”

  “No you won’t,” Archie said. “I don’t know why.” He rubbed his eyes, which were feeling heavier by the minute. “But you won’t.”

  “I’ll tell them everything,” Gretchen said, louder. “It will ruin your career, your marriage, your family, your legacy. Free me.”

  “You can’t be free,” Archie said simply. “You’ll hurt people.”

  “I won’t. I have control over it. I do.”

  Archie walked over to Gretchen. She straightened hopefully, pushing her hair behind her ears and wiping the smeared makeup from under her eyes. He pulled the folded piece of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, and held it out to her along with a pen.

  Her eyebrows furrowed.

  “It’s a confession stating that you killed Heather Gerber,” Archie said. “Sign it.”

  She took the paper and pen, sat back down, and, using the floor as a writing pad, signed the paper and held it up for him. He took it and the pen and walked back toward the bar.

  “The key,” she said, rattling the handcuffs. “The fire,” she reminded him.

  “No,” Archie said.

  “This isn’t what’s supposed to happen.”

  Archie fumbled around behind the bar until he found another bottle of Scotch, then came around and sank to the floor, his back against the bar. He opened the bottle and lifted it to his mouth. Not much longer.

  His heart was beating too slowly again. He unbuttoned his shirt and placed his hand on his chest to see if he could feel the rhythm under his skin.

  “You’ll have to make a new deal. Give them something more. Or they’ll make sure you get the needle. . .”

  “Bring me my purse,” she said.

  A pleasant darkness surrounded him. The air felt inky. Under the scar she had carved on him, his heart fought to pump. “I feel strange,” he said. It slurred a little in his mouth.

  Fifteen feet away from him Gretchen slumped to the floor, her arm dangling above her, cuffed to the banister. He could feel it, even here, even like this. That’s how strong his desi
re for her was.

  He tried to stand up and slumped to his knees, overcome by a wave of vertigo. She reached her free arm toward him, stretching her fingers in the air. And he crawled to her, first on his hands and knees, then, as his skin got cold and his muscles failed, he dragged himself to her on his elbows.

  He collapsed when he reached her and she took his head in her lap.

  “You fucking moron,” she said.

  “I know,” said Archie.

  CHAPTER

  61

  Gretchen Lowell crosses her legs and leans forward on the striped chair.

  “So, how do we do this?” Archie asks. He feels out of place in Gretchen’s house. He agreed to the individual sessions she offered mostly to be polite. He didn’t expect them to be in her home. It feels vaguely inappropriate.

  Her blue eyes widen. “You’ve never been in therapy before?” she says.

  He has only known Gretchen Lowell a few weeks, since she appeared at the task force offices to offer her help in catching the Beauty Killer. She makes him feel self-conscious. He’d sat in his car outside for ten minutes working up the nerve to come in. “Just the group session you led,” he says.

  She smiles. She is wearing a skirt and she threads her fingers and hooks them around one knee, and the skirt exposes an inch of her thigh. “Well, it’s easy,” she says. “You tell me what’s on your mind. And we talk about it.”

  Archie shifts uncomfortably in his chair, his gun pressing into his hip. He does have something on his mind. Something he hasn’t even told Henry about. “I’m thinking about asking for a transfer,” he says. “I’d like to spend more time with my family.” It feels good to finally say it. It gives it power. Like he might actually do it this time. He looks up at Gretchen. She’s a woman. He expects her to encourage him to choose his kids over his work. It’s one of the reasons he’s come.

  But she doesn’t.

  “Is it hard on your marriage?” she asks. “Working so much?”

  Archie considers this. He knows the answer. He’s just not sure how much he wants to disclose. “My wife would like to see me in a different job,” he says.

  Gretchen leans forward a little more, and her skirt inches up another notch. “But you’re so good at what you do,” she says.

  Archie laughs. “I have one job. To catch the Beauty Killer. Which I haven’t done.”

  “I think you’re close,” she says. She reaches out and puts a hand on the armrest of Archie’s chair. She doesn’t touch him. Just the chair. “Don’t give up now,” she says. “You need to stay focused on the case.”

  Archie shakes his head. “I need to be home more,” he says. “I don’t want to end up being one of those people who miss their kids’ birthdays.” He’d already missed too much of their growing up. It was easy to justify working late when you could convince yourself that lives depended on it.

  “How long have you and your wife been together?” Gretchen asks.

  “Since college,” he says.

  “How many women have you slept with?” Gretchen asks.

  Archie feels his face flush. He looks out the window, at a stand of cherry trees planted in the yard. “Just her,” he says.

  “Really?”

  He clears his throat. “I had a girlfriend in high school who wanted to wait until she was married. I respected that. Then I met Debbie in college. And that was it.”

  “And you never cheated on her?” Gretchen asks.

  “No.”

  “That’s unusual,” Gretchen says.

  “Is it?” Archie asks.

  “To have been with only one person your whole life?”

  Archie shrugs. “I love her.”

  “Is the sex good?” Gretchen asks.

  Archie feels hot. He reaches up and rubs the back of his neck. The only sound in the room is the ticking of Gretchen’s grandfather clock. “I feel really strange talking about this with you,” he says.

  Gretchen nods sympathetically. “In order for this to work,” she says, “you have to be honest with me.”

  “Yes,” Archie says, looking away. “The sex is good.”

  “How do you know?” Gretchen asks.

  Archie smiles. Touché. “I know,” he says.

  Gretchen touches the chair again. “It’s okay to fantasize about other people,” she says. “It’s not cheating.” Gretchen’s hand rests on the arm of Archie’s chair. Her fingers are slender, alabaster, boneless. Her nails are manicured. “You are attracted to other women,” she says.

  Archie splays his fingers out helplessly. “I’m male,” he says.

  “Are you attracted to me?” she asks. She pauses, just long enough for him to sputter awkwardly, then sits back and smiles at him. “It’s an academic question. It’s useful to know from a therapeutic point of view.”

  Archie searches for something he can say, something true, but not too true. His mouth is suddenly very dry. The clock continues to tick. He settles on “I think you’re very beautiful.”

  Her face lights up and she laughs. It’s a pleasant laugh, a shared joke. “I’ve made you uncomfortable,” she says.

  “Yes,” he says.

  “I only ask about your sex life because sex is an excellent stress reliever. And I know you’ve been under significant stress.”

  “I don’t like having sex with Debbie after a crime scene,” Archie says. “I can’t get the images out of my mind. It feels wrong.”

  “The images stay with you?” Gretchen asks.

  Archie lifts a hand to his forehead, as if he might be able to wipe the images away manually. “Yeah.”

  He feels the full weight of her attention. “Any one more than the others?” she asks.

  “Heather Gerber,” he says. “The first victim we found. In the park. She wasn’t the worst, in terms of the torture. But her face. Her eyes were open. And she looked at me. That sounds crazy, doesn’t it?”

  “Do the images keep you up at night?”

  His phone vibrates in his pocket. He pulls it out and flips it open. It’s a text from Henry. Another tip. “Fuck,” he says before he can catch himself. He looks up at Gretchen, suddenly self-conscious about his language. “Excuse me,” he says. “It’s Henry. I have to go.”

  He stands up, adjusting the gun on his hip. She stands, too, and walks over and puts her hand on his arm, just above his elbow.

  “I want to see you again,” she says. “I think I can help.”

  She smells like lilacs.

  Archie doesn’t move. He doesn’t want to surrender the pressure of her touch. He feels a strange connection to the place, to her. It’s ridiculous. He barely knows her. She’s beautiful and she’s paying attention to him and he’s responding like a seventeen-year-old.

  He decides not to set up another appointment right away. He’ll wait a few days. So he doesn’t seem too desperate.

  The ticking stops. He looks up at the grandfather clock. It’s silent, the hands frozen at 3:30.

  He clears his throat. “Your clock just stopped,” he tells her.

  She drops her hand from his arm and looks back at the clock. “That’s funny,” she says.

  He takes a step to leave and she turns after him, her form back-lit from the light coming in the window, a vision of loveliness. There was nothing wrong in noticing that, Archie tells himself. It was just an observation.

  “If you’re having trouble sleeping,” she says, “I can give you a sample of something that might help.”

  He smiles. Maybe he won’t wait a few days to make that next appointment. Maybe he’ll call back later today. Just to hear her voice. “Thanks,” he says. “But I don’t like to take pills.”

  CHAPTER

  62

  Henry ran the siren for a while, but it didn’t help—there was nowhere to pull over. They were stuck in traffic. The highway carved down the mountain, hundred-foot-tall Doug firs a hedge on either side. You could barely see the sky sometimes. The passing lanes were only occasional, and then only for the bri
efest interludes. Henry would flip on the siren again and gun it past thirteen cars. But they were still inching down the mountain at a glacial pace. The upside was that they were going so slow that Susan wasn’t carsick anymore. Big Charlie had given her some ice from the ice machine for her face, and she was feeling pretty good.

  “Take your feet off the dashboard,” Henry said.

  “Sorry,” Susan said, tucking her bare feet under her. She hoped Henry couldn’t see the toe prints she’d left on his windshield. “I still don’t know why I can’t look for her.”

  “I’ve put a bulletin out for Highway 20, Highway 22, and for eastern Oregon. You heard the guy. It might have been her. It might not have.”

  “How can a police car not have air-conditioning?” she asked. She’d bought a bottle of water at the gas station and had slowly been peeling off the label ever since. Now she tore another minuscule shred and rolled it between her fingers.

  “It’s broken,” Henry said.

  Susan turned to look in the backseat to see if there was a magazine she could fan herself with or something. Her backseat was filled with magazines. But Henry’s was empty. Except for a cardboard box. She recognized the handwriting on the side.

  “Those are my Castle notes,” Susan said.

  “Yeah,” Henry said. “I kind of borrowed them.”

  “I lent them to Archie,” Susan said. She twisted around so she could open the box. “You better not have gotten them out of order.”

  “I haven’t touched them,” Henry said.

  Susan pulled the top notebook out with one hand, using the other to keep the plastic bag of ice on her face. “Did you write on this?” she asked. The notebook was flipped open and a name was circled. John Bannon.