by Chelsea Cain
Claire threw open the door, relieved to find the room unoccupied. The bathroom was dimly lit, which was probably a blessing. The walls were painted black. A sink in a vanity faced two stalls. Claire scrambled into one of the stalls, and then saw what was in the toilet and backed out and into the other stall. She didn’t have to pee that badly.
Sorry, Claire said silently to her belly, as she set her gun in its holster on the toilet paper dispenser, wiggled her pants down, and then balanced precariously over the toilet seat, determined not to allow her skin to make contact.
When she was done, she got her pants back up—maternity pants were really wonderful, that elastic waist—and pulled her sleeve down to cover her hand before she flushed. You couldn’t be too careful.
She was still reattaching the holster to the elastic waist of her pants when she came out of the stall. There was a naked woman waiting there. Claire averted her eyes reflexively. In the bathroom, the music muffled by the walls, it felt like different rules. Claire secured the holster. The woman hadn’t moved. She was still there, her ass perched on the edge of the counter in front of the sink where Claire needed to wash her hands. Claire lifted her eyes. The woman wasn’t naked. She was wearing glitter, red devil horns, a red G-string, and sky-high pumps. Her body was lithe and toned. A small tattoo of a star peeked out above the matchbook-sized front panel of her G-string. She was either a stripper or someone very committed to pulling off a realistic stripper costume. Claire tugged at the waist of her maternity pants, feeling like a whale.
“All free,” Claire said. She hoped she hadn’t gotten too much pee on the seat.
The stripper still didn’t move. They were the only two people in the bathroom. The other stall was still empty. The stripper hadn’t been waiting to use a toilet, Claire realized. She’d been waiting for her, for Claire. Claire stepped to the sink and reached around the stripper’s hip for the faucet. The stripper shifted slightly to make room for her. She was tall even before the heels. It was like meeting a slutty, naked Amazon. Claire held her hands under the faucet.
“You’re here with him,” the stripper said cautiously. “The cop.”
“I’m a cop, too,” Claire said, a little defensively. People were always surprised by that—like she didn’t look cop-ish enough or something. It made Claire crazy.
The stripper didn’t look surprised. She looked thoughtful.
Claire glanced around for the soap.
“There,” the stripper said, pointing to a small soap dispenser.
Claire squirted the orange gel into her wet hands.
“The bald guy knows Archie,” the stripper said. “Do you?”
Ha! The bald guy. Henry would love that.
“Yeah, I know Archie. He’s my boss.” Claire rinsed her hands in the sink. “Technically,” she said. “I mean, more of a team leader.” She looked up in the mirror at her own reflection and sighed. She didn’t wear makeup when she was working, and she kept her hair short. It had been a strategy early on, to be one of the boys, to not be a distraction. But sometimes she longed for a nice red lipstick. The stripper met Claire’s gaze in the mirror. Her lips were painted crimson and her eyes were expertly outlined with thick kohl eyeliner and affixed with heavy false eyelashes. The lashes looked uncomfortable. Claire reached for a paper towel, trying to figure out how the hell this woman knew Archie Sheridan. “So, how do you know Archie?” Claire asked, unable to help it.
“I heard about that girl they found near the island,” the stripper said.
Claire tried to react casually. She dried her hands and tossed the wet towel into an overflowing trash can. Then she extended a hand. Claire’s nails were unpolished and clipped short; the stripper’s nails were long and the same fire-engine-red as her G-string. “Hi, I’m Claire,” Claire said. “What’s your name?”
The stripper held her hand out and Claire shook it. “Star,” she said. “I’m Star.”
“Okay, Star,” Claire said. Even with her butt leaned against the counter, the stripper towered above her. “Is there anything you want to tell me about the girl we found dead at the lake?”
“The news says you think Gretchen Lowell killed her,” Star said.
Claire was careful how she phrased it. “There’s evidence that Gretchen Lowell was on the island last night,” she said.
Star crossed her arms under her breasts. The glitter on her collarbone looked like gold dust. “I don’t think she did it,” she said.
“Why do you say that?” Claire asked.
Star hesitated. Then she leaned toward Claire slightly. Her lashes fluttered. She was probably having a hard time holding them up, Claire guessed.
“She wasn’t the only dangerous person out there that night,” Star said.
Something was dawning on Claire. “Were you at that party, Star?”
Star’s lashes fluttered some more and she shrugged and looked at the floor. “I’m just saying, if someone else, someone at that house, if one of them did it, got rough, I just wouldn’t be surprised.”
“We searched it today,” Claire said. “The crime scene had been cleaned up by the grounds crew.”
Star looked back at Claire, the intensity of her gaze palpable. “Did you search all of it?” she asked.
“All of the island?” Claire asked, puzzled. “Yes.” She was missing something, and she didn’t like it when she missed things.
Star’s eyes were still on Claire. “Do you know how it got its name?” she asked.
Claire didn’t even know it had a name besides Jack Reynolds’s island, though now that she thought of it, it probably did.
“I’ve gotta go,” Star said. “I’m on in a minute and I still have to ice my nipples.”
Star didn’t have a watch—Claire wasn’t sure how she knew she was on in a minute—but she seemed certain. Star checked her makeup in the mirror and then stepped back from the sink and drew herself to her full height so that Claire was staring at her nipples, which were the size of raspberries, and looked like they didn’t need any icing at all.
“Tell Archie Sheridan we’re even,” Star said, adjusting her devil horns. Then she unlocked the bathroom door and sashayed out, a red line indented on her ass from where she had perched it against the counter.
Claire was already digging her phone out of her pocket. She needed to find out what Jack Reynolds’s island was called, and she knew just the person who’d have that sort of useless trivia floating around in her brain. The fact that it was the middle of the night made Claire only hesitate for a second before dialing. Susan wouldn’t mind. Susan loved to be part of the action.
* * *
Henry had taken Claire’s chair and now sat watching Leo across the table, trying to block out the electronic disco crap that was pounding through all the speakers. The bottle in front of Leo was almost empty. Henry watched as Leo poured the remainder into his glass and drank. Whatever sorrows he had, he was trying hard to drown them. Henry knew that Leo had to act the part, but this was getting dangerous. He leaned forward and put his hand on Leo’s arm. “I think you’ve had enough,” he said. Leo gave him a glassy-eyed smile and Henry shouted it again, to be sure Leo had heard him over the music.
Leo pulled his arm away, lifted his glass to his mouth, and drank.
Henry sat back and crossed his arms. He didn’t know what he’d been thinking, coming here. Leo was no help at all. Henry looked around for Claire. Why did women take so long in the bathroom? What did they do in there, exactly?
Henry reached across the table, took the glass out of Leo’s hand, and slugged back the contents. He was doing him a favor, really. Leo was staring forlornly at his now-empty hand and Henry returned the glass to Leo’s palm. The music made the table vibrate. “There’s nothing you can tell me about Lisa Watson or Gretchen Lowell?” Henry asked, shouting. “No information?”
Leo studied his empty glass for a moment. Then he lifted a finger and one of the servers who’d ignored Henry’s every effort to order a glass of water imm
ediately materialized with another bottle of whiskey. Leo poured some whiskey into his glass, sloshing some onto the table, which seemed a real shame to Henry—it was good whiskey.
“You’re drunk,” Henry said. Leo didn’t respond. His attention was on the stage, where a change in music indicated that a new show had started. Henry turned his head to look, and recognized the stripper with devil horns from the other night. A cheer went up when she walked on, a popular act, apparently. She put a hand around the pole and took flight around it, her brown hair lifting behind her as a version of “Frankie and Johnny” started up. It was Johnny Cash, off of The Fabulous Johnny Cash. Henry had it on vinyl.
Frankie and Johnny were sweethearts
Lordy how they did love
They swore to be true to each other
As true as the stars above
He was her man
He wouldn’t do her wrong
The stripper lifted one long leg and stretched it up along the pole until she was in a standing split. Then she leaned back into a backbend. Her breasts stayed perfectly upright, her nipples pointing skyward. You had to admire the athleticism. Johnny Cash! Wait until he told Archie about this. The stripper opened her knees and bent over. Henry felt a warm buzzing in his nuts. He shifted his position a little, and glanced around for Claire. The buzzing continued. His phone. Of course. He pulled the phone out of his front pocket and glanced at it wearily. The caller ID said it was coming from the morgue. Henry pushed his chair back from the table and stood up, lifting the phone to his ear. “Yeah?” he shouted, one eye still on the stage.
I ain’t gonna tell you no story
I ain’t gonna tell you no lie
Johnny left here ’bout an hour ago
With a gal named Nellie Bly
A voice mumbled something on the other end of the phone. Henry put his finger in his other ear. “What?” he said loudly.
“It’s Robbins,” Robbins yelled. “Where are you?”
The stripper winked at Henry.
She said, “He’s my man. But he’s doin’ me wrong”
“Give me a minute,” Henry shouted into the phone. He opened his wallet, glanced around for Claire, and then laid a twenty-dollar bill on the edge of the stage.
She’s taking her man to the graveyard
But she ain’t gonna bring him back
She shot her man
Because he was doin’ her wrong
“Henry?” Robbins shouted.
Henry turned and headed for the door. He still didn’t see Claire. The bar was shoulder-to-shoulder with half-aroused costumed yahoos, but Henry didn’t have time for niceties. He straight-armed through the horde and nearly flattened a blue guy in a diaper who tried to force a Jell-O shot into Henry’s hand.
This story has no moral
This story has no end
This story goes to show
That you can’t put your trust in men
Henry cleared the bouncer and stepped outside, immediately feeling his blood pressure go down twenty points as the fresh air washed over him. The relative silence was deafening. He lifted the phone back to his ear. “Okay, go ahead,” he said, walking into the parking lot.
“I thought you guys were champing at the bit for the Watson autopsy.”
Henry stopped walking. “What?”
“Archie called,” Robbins said, a note of impatience in his voice. “Said you guys wanted the Watson results. So I, being a dedicated public servant, decided to stay and do the autopsy despite the fact that it means working well past midnight. Then I call your partner, and what’s he doing? He’s asleep. And you’re apparently at a party.”
The back of Henry’s neck itched vaguely. “What do you mean, Archie was asleep?” Henry asked.
“I tried him first,” Robbins said. “He didn’t pick up.”
“Archie always picks up,” Henry said. He checked his watch. It was just after one A.M.
“Well, maybe he took a sleeping pill or something,” Robbins said. There was a pause. “I saw the news. The guy probably has a lot on his mind.”
Henry was pacing now, his bad leg starting to throb. “Archie doesn’t take sleeping pills.”
“You’re going to want to hear what I found,” Robbins said.
Henry stopped moving. He had to get ahold of himself. He cleared his throat. Then he said, “Go ahead.”
“Her killer put something inside her,” Robbins said. “A playing card. It was rolled up and pushed up into her vagina, almost to her cervix.”
“A playing card?”
“A suicide jack,” Robbins said. “I went to a conference in Hawaii last spring. A colleague of mine from Miami told a story about a similar case. He said he was aware of four other cases. Young women. Sexually assaulted. Tortured. All found with cards inside them. I didn’t find semen. I did manage to pull some skin from under her fingernails and I sent it to the DNA lab with a rush request. But I’m telling you, Gretchen Lowell didn’t do this.”
A serial killer. Henry rubbed his forehead. Another serial killer. In any other instance, Henry would have questions for Robbins, follow-up. But not right now. Right now his head was somewhere else entirely. “Okay,” Henry said.
“Okay?” Robbins repeated incredulously. “How about, ‘Excellent work, thanks for staying—’”
Henry hung up. He punched in Archie’s number. “Pick up,” he muttered to himself, “pick up, goddamn you.” It rang and rang. Then went to voice mail. Henry’s mouth was dry. He hung up and immediately called the dispatcher and asked to be patched through to the patrol car assigned to Archie’s security detail. He had to consciously relax his fist around the phone—worried he’d snap it in two. He wanted Archie to be drunk, high, passed out on the couch, in the shower, ignoring the phone, fast asleep, anything. But this felt wrong. This felt very wrong. The dispatcher came back after a minute. Her voice was tense. “We’re not getting a response,” she said.
Henry closed his eyes, anger flooding his body, expanding his chest, filling him. Goddamn her. The psycho bitch had done it again. “Send backup there,” Henry spat into the phone. “Now.”
The front door to the club swung open and Claire came jogging out, holding up her phone, face stricken. “There you are,” she said, out of breath. “I can’t get ahold of Susan. The patrol detail at her mother’s house said they’d been told she was spending the night at Archie’s.”
“Told?” Henry sputtered. “Told by fucking whom?”
“Apparently the chief got a text from Susan’s phone,” Claire said, walking past him toward the car. “He relayed the message to her protection detail and to her mother. Everyone was so busy, no one thought to question it.”
Henry jammed his phone in his pocket and ran after Claire. A string of expletives were at the tip of his tongue, but he reminded himself of the baby and gritted his teeth instead. Claire climbed into the passenger side of the car, as Henry got behind the wheel.
“That fucking cunt,” Claire said. “If she fucking hurts them, I swear to fuck I’ll fucking shoot her my-goddamn-self.”
CHAPTER
38
Susan sat in a circle of light, arms wrapped tightly around her knees. Beyond the perimeter of the light, there was only darkness. It was like being in a tiny vessel submerged in a deep, black vastness. She studied the dark, trying to make out images, but her brain played tricks on her, presenting connections and then taking them away. She could not see how big the room she was in was; she could not see the door she had come through, or the ceiling above her, or the walls on any side. She had a terrible, consuming feeling that there was something very bad in the darkness behind her. She didn’t turn around to look. The darkness was her ally. It would protect her from seeing its secrets. She studied her hands in the lantern light, her palms raw from rubbing them against her pant legs. She was not here. She was somewhere else. She was in an airplane crossing over the polar ice cap at night. She was on a tiny submarine in the Mariana Trench.
But
the cold concrete floor radiated through the seat of her pants and the thin soles of her shoes reminding her exactly where she was.
She held her palms over the Coleman, and pretended it was a campfire.
* * *
It had taken Susan twenty minutes to find the lantern. When Gretchen had closed the door behind Susan, she had found herself in complete darkness—thick and dangerous and absolute. She kept her back against the door, eyes aching, straining to see, both hands frantically working the doorknob. That’s when Susan heard the first nail. She knew the sound, the head of a hammer driving a heavy nail into wood; then the sudden muted resonance as the nail cleared the wood and continued into concrete. Gretchen was sealing her inside.
Susan didn’t pound on the door, didn’t scream out for help.
She knew there wasn’t any point.
She had to help herself.
Gretchen had said there’d be a lantern.
The hammer hit another nail.
Susan stepped away from the door, and into the black. It felt like falling. The smell of urine and dirt made her stomach turn. She stumbled forward, groping blindly, until she tripped and fell to her knees, and her hands landed on something padded. She ran her fingers over it, a broad swath of damp woven polyester. In addition to urine and dirt, Susan could now detect a hint of mildew. She felt around the object’s edge—it was as wide as the distance between her armpit and fingertips, and three times as long. Susan sat up, momentary distracted from her plight by her successful detective skills. It was a mattress. Just a few inches thick. The sort of thing they used at summer camps, or psych wards. Susan felt a hard knot in her throat as she swallowed. How long did Gretchen expect to keep her here?
The hammer striking another nail brought her mind back to the moment.
She scrambled to her feet and dived again into the darkness, getting to a crumbling concrete wall, feeling for another door, a light switch, anything—finding nothing, and then turning back and zigzagging in a new direction.
