Sweetheart

by Chelsea Cain

  Archie touched the scar on his daughter’s head. It was so slight that it barely registered under his thick fingers; nothing like the chasms that marked his own skin. When he ran his hands over the topography of his own scars, he could imagine he was feeling the surface of another planet.

  Archie kissed her on the forehead, the scar under his lips. “Go eat some eggs,” he said. “I’ll be up in a minute.”

  Only when Sara left the room and closed the door behind her did he pull back the blanket all the way and sit on the edge of the bed. He reached up and felt the heart-shaped scar, his heart beating underneath it. He liked the way it felt now, and he let his fingers slide over its surface for a long moment, before he reached for his pants, and the pills in the front pocket.

  He glanced up at the crawl along the bottom of the TV. Two fires had merged.

  Archie showered and shaved. The pills kicked in under the warm rain of the shower and by the time he was done shaving he felt a comfortable Vicodin buzz. The pills created a kind of dull roar in his head that muted the guilt. He thought, sometimes, about giving them up. But only first thing in the morning. Never once he was high.

  He dressed for the day in brown pants and a brown button-down shirt, and then walked out into the kitchen. The kids had finished eating. Henry was standing at the stove, wearing Debbie’s white chefs apron and making scrambled eggs. His head was freshly shaved. He was wearing a different set of clothes from the ones he’d had on last night. He’d planned ahead and brought an overnight bag.

  Henry looked up at Archie and smiled. “You look like a UPS man,” he said.

  Sara ran from Debbie to Archie, slamming her metal lunch box into Archie’s thigh. Ben stayed where he was, next to Debbie.

  Sara looked up at Archie. “I have a spelling test today,” she said.

  “You’re in first grade,” Archie said.

  “Henry was quizzing me,” she said.

  “She can spell better than I can,” Henry said.

  Debbie walked up and put her hand on Sara’s shoulder and kissed Archie on the cheek. “I’ll see you tonight,” she said. “Henry said he’d watch the kids. We can go out. Do something fun.”

  “Sure,” Archie said.

  Debbie nodded and then took Sara by the hand. “Let’s go,” Debbie said. “Ben, kiss your father.”

  Ben trudged forward and Archie bent down so his son could kiss him goodbye.

  “I love you, Daddy,” Sara said. “L-O-V-B.”

  “E,” said Archie.

  And they were gone.

  Archie got a cup of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table. The kids’ dishes still sat there, crusts of bread and egg goop and grease.

  “My gun?” Archie said.

  Henry walked over to one of the high cupboards over the stove and reached up and removed Archie’s gun, and then walked over to the table and laid it in front of Archie. “It’s empty,” he said.

  Archie picked it up and held it for a moment in his hands and then slipped it into the leather holster on his waist.

  “Do you want to talk some more?” Henry asked.

  “Is she in transit?” Archie asked.

  “Yep,” Henry said.

  “Then there’s nothing to talk about,” Archie said. Before Henry could respond, Archie’s cell phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket, snapped it open, and held it to his ear.

  “It’s me,” Archie heard Susan Ward say. “I know who your Jane Doe is.”

  CHAPTER

  18

  The Portland city morgue was in the basement of a beige-colored stucco building in the north part of the city. The walls inside were painted beige. The linoleum was beige. The paper sterile gowns that Susan and Archie had to wear were beige. The room where they did the autopsies was in the basement. All morgues were in the basement. If you believed what you saw on TV. There was a line of steel gurneys, a lot of scales and devilish-looking containers, and four large drains in the floor for hosing down blood at the end of the day. About ten feet up, a bank of frosted windows let in a weird white light and someone had jammed a lot of house-plants up on a ledge below them. Spider plants. Rubber tree plants. Ferns.

  “This place smells like nail polish remover,” Susan said.

  “Are you going to tell me who you think she is?” Archie asked.

  Susan had arranged to meet Archie in the morgue parking lot. He was there, waiting for her, by the time she arrived, fifteen minutes late, which for Susan was early. She didn’t see Henry.

  “I just want to be sure,” she said.

  The body was under a black plastic tarp, the kind of thing you might throw over an outdoor woodpile. A morgue technician had just wheeled it in. Under her sterile beige smock, the technician was wearing corduroys and clogs and a turtleneck and wool socks, even though it was summer. It was probably always cold down there. Archie nodded at the technician and she unzipped the bag and folded down the thick plastic sheeting.

  The dead woman didn’t have a face anymore. Archie had warned Susan about that, but she still wasn’t prepared. The woman’s mandible was slack, so her lipless teeth were slightly agape, her darkened tongue like bruised fruit. The clotted blood remaining on her cheekbones and in her eye sockets looked like grape jelly How medical examiners ever managed to eat, Susan didn’t know.

  She looked down and realized that her hand was clenching Archie’s wrist. Her heart was racing and she felt a sort of heaviness in her throat. But she forced herself to keep looking. For something. Some clue. Something familiar.

  And then she saw it.

  “Oh, God,” she said.

  She felt Archie’s wrist pull free and then his hand fold around hers, their fingers interlocking.

  He said, “Tell me.”

  Susan wasn’t crying. Not really. They were just tears. They slid down her cheeks and onto her mother’s free-trade Peruvian black knit sweater. Her neck felt cold where the tears left salty trails. She shivered. This wasn’t her fault, she told herself. Parker. The senator. None of it. It was a story. She was a reporter. There was a public right to know.

  “It’s Molly Palmer,” she said.

  CHAPTER

  19

  Archie stared down at the corpse on the slab in front of him. “You’re telling me that this is your source on the Castle story?” he said. “That the woman we found dead the night before Castle went off a bridge was the same woman who was about to publicly disgrace him?”

  Susan nodded.

  Archie looked at the corpse’s Halloween skeleton face, her marbled, bloated skin. “How can you tell?” he asked.

  Susan reached up and pulled at a piece of turquoise hair. “I finally got ahold of her roommate last night. She said that Molly had taken off, left a note and just left. But first she dyed her hair. She was working as a stripper. And blondes make more tips. But she was giving it up.” She let go of the piece of hair, but it remained twisted where she’d wound it around her finger. “So she dyed her hair red. It’s called Cinnamon Glow. Her roommate found the box in the bathroom trash.”

  Victim identification based on hair color. Archie could imagine that meeting with the DA. Vidal Sassoon as an expert witness. “You won’t be offended if I double-check with dental records?” he said. It was crazy. A hunch. Based on hair dye. But he could follow it up. Archie pulled his cell phone out and called Lorenzo Rob-bins. He got his voice mail and left a message detailing what he knew about Molly Palmer. She’d gone to high school in Portland. Chances were someone had X-rays on file. “When was the last time you spoke with her?” Archie asked Susan gently.

  Susan shook her head. “I couldn’t get ahold of her. But she was like that sometimes. I knew she was nervous about the story coming out.” She pulled at the sleeves of her sweater. “She was blond. You said the woman in the park had red hair. Molly was blond.”

  “Did Molly use drugs?” They wouldn’t have the tox screens for six weeks, but it was looking like an OD.

  “Yeah,” Susan said.
/>   So she had red hair. She was missing. And she was a user. “Heroin?” Archie asked.

  “She didn’t do this to herself,” Susan said, her voice wavering. “Parker wasn’t drunk.” She laughed sadly. “Parker was always drunk. But he was never that drunk. Never drunk enough to steer off a fucking bridge.” Her hands were entirely lost in the sleeves of her sweater now, her arms crossed. “Molly didn’t take bad heroin. She was an addict. She would have had a source, someone trustworthy.” Susan looked at Archie, her algae-green eyes large. “Someone killed her, Archie. Castle was humiliated. He must have gotten Molly to come down here to meet with him, and given her poison dope or something, and then he took Parker with him off that bridge.”

  Fuck. This was all he needed. “I need to see all of your notes on the Castle story,” Archie said. “I need everything you have.”

  Susan flinched and shook her head. “I can’t do that. I can’t just turn over my notes to the police.” She looked at the dead woman, head still shaking, fists in her sleeves. “Parker never would have done that.”

  Archie looked at his watch. It was almost nine A.M. To get to Lawford, they would probably transport Gretchen up I-5, then cut over on 84 East. That meant that they’d come through Portland. He could feel Gretchen. Nearer. “Did you drive?” he asked Susan.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “Can you give me a lift?” Archie asked. “I want to show you something.”

  Susan didn’t move.

  “Trust me, Susan.”

  Susan was quiet for a minute. Archie could hear water moving in a pipe overhead, like someone upstairs had flushed a toilet or hosed down a fresh corpse for autopsy. Then Susan unfolded her arms and pushed the sleeves up to her elbows. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  Archie punched a number into his phone. When Henry answered he said, “I’ll be late coming in this morning. I’m going to show Susan the boxes from Parker.”

  They were at Archie’s house. Susan had been there once before, to interview Debbie Sheridan for Susan’s profile on Archie and the Beauty Killer Task Force. Susan watched as Archie stood on the stoop. He held his keys in his palm for a moment, looking at them like they were something sad and precious before slipping them into the lock and pushing in the front door.

  The house still smelled slightly of breakfast. Salt and grease. Eggs. Susan imagined the whole Sheridan family gathered around the kitchen table, clogging their arteries together and staring at one another adoringly. Once, when Susan was ten, Bliss had decided to start making breakfast. She spent the weekend baking homemade granola and fed it to Susan every morning that week. It had been a month before Susan had had a normal bowel movement.

  “It’s this way,” Archie said, walking down a carpeted hallway.

  “What is?” Susan asked.

  “My office,” Archie said.

  She followed him into a large room. There was a desk, bookshelves jammed with books, an old TV, framed pictures and commendations on the walls, bulletin boards layered with papers, and a sofa bed still made up from the night before. She tried not to visibly react to the sofa bed. So, Archie Sheridan wasn’t sleeping with his wife. Or ex-wife. Or whatever. It wasn’t any of her business. Really.

  He didn’t offer any sort of explanation. He didn’t even seem to notice. He walked over to the closet and carefully folded the accordion doors open. And he pulled a chain that turned on a light.

  Inside, tacked on the back wall of the closet, were dozens of photographs. Some were snapshots. Some were morgue photos. They were all Beauty Killer victims.

  “Jesus Christ,” she said.

  He didn’t say anything. He just bent down and lugged out a big cardboard file box. And then another. And another. The boxes were made out of heavy-duty white cardboard and had cardboard lids and oval cutouts on the sides so you could carry them. On the end of each box someone had written, in red Sharpie, “Beauty Killer.” Susan knew the cramped scrawl. It was Quentin Parker’s.

  “These are his notes,” Archie said matter-of-factly, setting the third box on top of the second with a thud.

  “How did you get them?” Susan asked.

  Archie sat down behind his desk, picked up a pen, and began to rotate it between his fingers. “He lent them to me.”

  “Why?”

  “He interviewed a lot of people. I asked if I could see the transcripts.” He threw the pen up in the air and caught it. “To help with the identification project.”

  Susan glanced at the boxes and then back at Archie. “He gave you his notes?”

  “He lent them to me,” Archie said. “And now I’m lending them to you.”

  Susan walked up to the stack of boxes and ran her hand across the top one’s lid. Parker’s notes. Almost thirteen years of research about the Beauty Killer case. Susan felt a smile spread across her face and then caught herself. God, she was such an asshole. Parker was dead, and she was picking over his corpse. She was no better than Ian or the rest of them. But she didn’t take her hand off the box. “Parker once spent a month in jail because he refused to identify a drug dealer he’d profiled.”

  “I know,” Archie said. His voice was so quiet she could barely hear him. “This was different. Gretchen had been arrested.” He laid the pen at the base of a small frame propped up on the desk. Susan couldn’t see the picture, but imagined his family, gathered around a Christmas tree, or lined up in front of a rustic fence. “I wanted her to admit she’d killed Heather Gerber,” Archie continued. “The girl in the park, thirteen years ago. She refused. No one gave a shit about Heather.” He adjusted the frame, repositioning the angle slightly. “Except for Parker.”

  “And you,” Susan said softly.

  Archie scratched his forehead, right above one eyebrow. He was still looking at the frame. “Gretchen had excised Heather’s brain through her nose, using a crochet hook.” He sounded tired, his voice affectless. “You couldn’t tell. Her head looked like the only thing Gretchen hadn’t mutilated. The ME called me late at night and I went down to the morgue and he lifted off her skullcap and inside, where her brain was supposed to be, it was just mush.” He scratched his eyebrow again. “It looked like cake batter,” he said.

  “That was your first homicide, right?” Susan sat on the edge of the desk and leaned forward over it so she could lay her hand on the inside of Archie’s wrist. It was a crazy thing to do. Completely inappropriate. But she felt a sudden urge to reach out. She wanted to connect. She could feel his pulse in her palm.

  For a moment, neither of them moved. And then he turned his hand and took her hand in his. She felt her heart quicken and a girlish itch to giggle so strong that she was almost afraid to look at him. It was awkward enough being in his private space, where he slept. But she forced herself to glance up and found him gazing at her so tenderly, that for a second she thought he might actually lean forward to kiss her. Instead he said, “I need to see all of your notes on the Castle story.”

  She laughed. She couldn’t help it. Her eyes stung with tears. Her face burned.

  “Archie,” she said.

  “Susan,” he said. He tightened his hand around hers. “You don’t want to get involved with me.” As if to prove his point, he reached out and turned the frame on his desk. The picture he looked at on his desk every day wasn’t of his family. There was no Christmas tree, no rustic fence. It was a school photograph of a teenage girl. Susan recognized her. She’d seen her image enough times. She was the Beauty Killer’s first victim. Heather Gerber.

  “Your Castle notes?” Archie said.

  Susan caught sight of something out the window and froze.

  “What?” Archie asked.

  There were cops in the yard. There were two windows in the room and the beige curtains were half closed, but Susan could see, quite clearly, that there were cops in the yard. There were patrol cars on the street, their lights on, sirens off. The cops were moving toward the house. Archie turned in his chair to see what she was staring at and then stoo
d.

  “What’s going on?” she asked him.

  The doorbell rang. Not rang. It was more like someone had leaned on it, so it went off again and again, a frantic, persistent chime, followed by the sounds of someone’s fist on the door.

  Archie reached into his pocket for his phone, which Susan realized was ringing. He held it to his ear as he strode across the room toward the hall. Susan was still perched on the desk.

  “Don’t move,” he said.

  “Don’t worry,” Susan said.

  She heard the front door open and heavy footsteps rush into the house. She looked out the windows again, and there was a uniformed cop, standing right behind the glass. He waved. Susan turned back toward the door just as Henry turned the corner into the room, his face beet red, his phone to his ear, his gun in his hand. He was followed by four uniformed cops.

  “What the fuck?” said Archie.

  Henry’s face had a sheen of sweat on it. He didn’t put away his gun. “Gretchen Lowell escaped about thirty minutes ago,” he said. “She was last seen about ten miles from here.”

  Archie coughed once and then he leaned over and vomited on the cream carpet.

  CHAPTER

  20

  Check the house,” Henry barked. “The yard. Everywhere.” Archie could hear the sound of people moving through the house. Doors opening. Rooms being cleared. This wasn’t happening. The sour taste of vomit in his mouth made his stomach turn again. She knew where he lived. They’d shown the house on the news enough goddamn times during his captivity. She could find him. God, he should have stayed away. He felt a hand on his shoulder. The touch sent a current down his arms and he jumped, startled, and opened his eyes. It was Claire. Archie didn’t even know when she had come in.

  Her expression was calm, in control, but her eyes darted, taking in every detail in the room. He saw her register the sofa bed, Parker’s Beauty Killer boxes, the macabre collage of Gretchen’s victims in the closet. She had her service weapon in her hand, a nine millimeter, with double action. It was a big, accurate gun and Claire pointed it at the carpet, but her arm was extended, elbow slightly bent, so if she had to, she could fire in an instant. “We’ll find her,” she said.