Heartsick

by Chelsea Cain

  “Ten days is a long time.”

  Debbie sat down cross-legged on the carpet and pulled a large wooden puzzle toward her. “They thought he was dead,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “Did you?”

  She took two evenly measured inhalations. Then twisted her face as she said, “Yes.”

  Susan surreptitiously slid the digital recorder an inch closer to Debbie. “Where were you when you heard that he’d been found?”

  Debbie started putting the puzzle together with pieces that lay scattered around her. “I was here,” she said, looking around. “Right here.” She laughed sadly. “In the family room.” Each piece of the puzzle was a different sort of vehicle, and she picked up a fire truck and placed it in the puzzle. “There was a couch. Coffee. So many cops. Claire Masland.” She froze, a puzzle piece still in her hand. “And flowers. People had started leaving flowers. They showed our house on the news. And people came from all over to lay these bouquets in our yard.” She looked up at Susan, her face helpless and distraught and bemused all at the same time. “Stuffed animals. Ribbons. Sad notes.” She glanced down at the puzzle piece still in her hand: a police car. “And flowers. The entire front of the house was just thick with wilting flowers.” Her hand tightened around the puzzle piece and her forehead tensed. “All these fucking condolences scrawled on scrap paper and bereavement cards. ‘Sorry for your loss.’ ‘Our deepest sympathies.’ I remember looking out the front window into this field of funeral arrangements. I could smell them from inside, that stink of rotting foliage.” She laid the police car in the puzzle and lifted her hand away and looked at it. “And I knew that he was dead.”

  She glanced back up at Susan. “They say you’re supposed to feel it, you know? When someone you love that much dies? I felt it. His absence. I knew that it was over. I knew, in my body, that Archie was dead. Then Henry called. They had found him. And he was alive. Everyone cheered. Claire drove me to Emanuel. And I didn’t leave the hospital for five days.”

  “How was he?”

  Debbie took a long breath and seemed to consider the question. “When he woke up? It took us a long time to convince him that he was out of that basement.” She paused. “Sometimes I wonder if we ever did.”

  “Did he talk to you about it?” Susan asked.

  “No,” Debbie said.

  “But you must have an idea of what happened?”

  Debbie’s eyes turned dark and cold. “She killed him. She murdered my husband. I believe that a person knows. I know what I felt.” She looked at Susan meaningfully. “And I know what he returned as.”

  Susan glanced down at the digital recorder. Was it recording? The tiny red light above the microphone gleamed reassuringly. “Why did she do it, do you think?”

  Debbie sat perfectly still for a moment. “I don’t know. But I think that whatever she was trying to do, she succeeded at it. She wouldn’t have ended it until she had. She’s not that type of person.”

  “How long after it all happened did you two separate?” Susan asked.

  “She took him around Thanksgiving. We were separated by spring break.” She looked away from Susan, into the backyard, a tree, a swing set, a hedge. “I know that sounds terrible. He was a mess. Couldn’t sleep. Panic attacks. I’m sorry, do you want more coffee?”

  “What?” Susan looked down at her untouched mug. “No. I’m fine.”

  “Are you sure? It’s no trouble.”

  “I’m good.”

  Debbie nodded a few times to herself and then stood up and carried the puzzle over to a four-shelf bookcase next to the little table and chairs. The bookcase was full of children’s books and board games and wooden puzzles, and she slid the vehicle puzzle in on top of some others. Then she turned to examine the room. Everything was in its place. She let her hands drop to her sides. “He didn’t like to leave the house. Wasn’t comfortable around the kids. He was on all this medication. He would sit for hours not doing anything at all. I was worried that he might do something to hurt himself.”

  She let this hang in the air for a minute and then her face started to crumple. She put a hand over her mouth and turned her head and wrapped the other arm around her stomach. Susan stood up, but Debbie shook her head. “I’m fine,” she said. She took another minute and then wiped the tears from under her eyes with her thumb, smiled apologetically at Susan, and walked over to the kitchen. Picked up the French press, pulled the plunger out, and poured the rest of the coffee in the sink. Turned on the faucet. “Three months after Archie was rescued, Henry came to see us,” Debbie continued. “He told Archie that Gretchen Lowell had agreed to give up ten more bodies, people who were still missing, as part of a plea deal. But she said she would only give the locations to Archie. That was her deal breaker. Archie or nobody.” She rinsed the carafe out and opened the dishwasher and laid it on the top shelf. Then she held the plunger under the cold stream of water, head tilted, watching as the water washed away the grounds. “She’s a control freak. I think she liked the idea of having that control over him even from prison. But he didn’t have to do it. Henry said so. Everyone would have understood. But Archie was determined.”

  The plunger was rinsed clean, but Debbie kept washing it, turning it under the water. “He had worked so long on the case that he had to bring closure to the families. Gretchen knew that, I suppose. Knew that he would have to agree. But there was more to it than that. Henry drove him down to Salem to see her about a week later. She kept her promise. Told them exactly where to find this seventeen-year-old girl she’d killed up in Seattle. She said that she would give up more bodies if he came to see her every week, every Sunday. Henry brought him back to the house later that day. And he fell asleep and slept for almost ten hours. No nightmares.” The look she gave Susan was withering. “Slept like a fucking baby. When he woke up, he was the calmest I had seen him since it all started. It was like seeing her had made him feel better. The more he saw her, the more he pulled away from us. I didn’t want him to keep going down there. It was not healthy. So I made him choose. Me or her.” Her choked laugh was humorless. “And he chose her.”

  Susan couldn’t really think of what to say. “I’m sorry.”

  The plunger lay in the sink. Debbie was looking out the window, her eyes glossed with tears. “She sent me flowers. From one of those Internet places. She must have ordered them before she was arrested. A dozen sunflowers.” Her mouth twisted. “‘My condolences on this sad occasion. With warm regards, Gretchen Lowell.’ They came to the house when he was in the hospital. I never told him that. Sunflowers. My favorite flower. I used to be quite the gardener. Now I have it all done by a service. I don’t like flowers anymore.” She smiled stiffly to herself. “I can’t stand the smell.”

  “Do you still talk to him?”

  “Every day over the phone. Ask me how often we see each other.”

  “How often?” Susan asked.

  “Every couple of weeks. Never more than that. Sometimes, when he is with Ben and Sara and me, I think he wants to carve his eyes out.” She glanced at the stuffed animals, the sink, the counter. “I’m not usually this neat,” she said.

  Susan took a long breath. She had to ask. “Why are you telling me all this, Debbie?”

  Debbie frowned thoughtfully. “Because Archie asked me to.”

  When Susan got back in her car the first thing she did was rewind the minitape in her recorder a few seconds and then hit PLAY to make sure that the interview had recorded. Debbie’s voice came on immediately. “Sometimes, when he is with Ben and Sara and me, I think he wants to carve his eyes out.” Thank God , thought Susan. She sat for several minutes, feeling her heart pound in her chest. A father and his small daughter walked hand in hand down the sidewalk past her car. The little girl stopped and her father picked her up and carried her into the house next door to Debbie’s. Susan opened her window and lit a cigarette. This story was for the greater good, right?

  “Right,” she answered aloud. The role of the witness,
she reminded herself. Shared humanity. Right.

  She used her cell phone to check her messages at work. There was a message from Ian relaying the positive buzz around the building about her task force story, and reporting that he was working on getting the 911 audio and would know something next week. Susan stared at the small digital recorder in her hand. The second story was writing itself. But there was no message from Archie’s doctor’s office. He was probably busy saving lives or overbilling Medicaid or something. She opened her notebook and found the number again and dialed it. “Yeah,” she said into the phone. “I want to talk to Doctor Fergus. This is Susan Ward. I’m calling about a patient of his, Archie Sheridan.” She was, after all, on a roll.

  CHAPTER 23

  See something?” Anne asked.

  She watched as Claire Masland stood on the cement walkway of the Eastbank Esplanade overlooking the Willamette, where Dana Stamp had been found. Claire had a Greek fisherman’s cap pulled low over her short hair and she was gazing across the river to the west side of the city, where Waterfront Park formed a band of green around the mélange of new and historic buildings that made up the downtown corridor.

  “No,” Claire said. “Just smelling the river. Sewage has a special aroma, doesn’t it?”

  Anne had asked Claire to take her to the sites where they had found the bodies. It was something that she had picked up from Archie when they worked the Beauty Killer case. Walk the scene of the crime. They had been to Ross Island and Sauvie Island and now it was late morning and Anne’s boots were wet and her feet were cold and it looked like it might rain. She sighed and pulled her leather coat tighter around her torso. A jogger ran past, not giving the two women a second glance. Below them, two enormous dirty seagulls paddled in circles in the muddy brown water.

  “What do these sites have in common?” Anne mused aloud.

  Claire sighed. “They’re all on the Willamette, Anne. He’s got a boat. We know that.”

  “It’s not convenient. Ross Island. The Esplanade. Sauvie Island. He’s working his way north. But why? Killers dispose of bodies in places they feel safe. Ross Island and Sauvie Island may be off the beaten path at night, but this place isn’t.” She squinted behind her at the freeway overpass that squeezed above the Esplanade and up at the old-fashioned streetlights that illuminated the Esplanade at night. The sound of the traffic was deafening.

  “You can’t see the riverbank from here,” Claire said. “If he was on a small boat, he would have been obscured from anyone walking by. So no one on this side could see him dump the body. And he’d be too far away for anyone to make out what he was doing from the other side.”

  “But why risk it?” Anne asked. “If you’ve got a boat. Why not dump the body somewhere safe like the other two locations?”

  Claire shrugged. “He wanted her to be found sooner than Lee Robinson?”

  “Maybe. It just doesn’t make sense. This guy’s an organized killer. Maybe the first site is random, but after that, there’d be some method to it. Disposing of a body out in the open like this? It’s risky. You don’t do it unless you’re familiar enough with the area that you think you can get away with it. There’s some kind of method to it.” One of the seagulls suddenly squawked and flew off toward the Steel Bridge. The other one stared up at Anne with its beady little eyes.

  “How long do we have, do you think?” Claire asked.

  “Before he takes another girl? A week. Two if we’re lucky.” Anne buttoned her coat, feeling a sudden chill. “Could be sooner.”

  Archie had read Susan’s article the moment he got up. It wasn’t a bad article. It evoked a certain outsider’s perspective of the investigation. The photo was good. But despite what he had told her over the phone, it was not what he had needed. Justin Johnson? That was interesting. He’d been busted, as a thirteen-year-old, for selling pot to an undercover cop. A pound of pot. And had gotten off on probation, which was interesting in and of itself. So they had checked him out. But his alibi was rock-solid, so the note concerned Archie less than the person who had left it. Someone was trying to manipulate Susan’s story or the investigation. Someone with access to the kid’s juvie record. Archie made a call and asked a patrol to make a few extra passes past Susan’s place for the next couple of nights. It was probably overreacting, but it made him feel better. Now he sat at his desk in the task force offices, surrounded by photographs of murdered girls, barely aware of the bustle around him. His team was exhausted and growing demoralized. There were no new leads. Kent had been fired for lying about his record on his application and, according to the cops tailing him, had spent the last twenty-four hours playing his guitar. The Jefferson checkpoint had turned up nothing else. They had been unable to find any out-of-state rapes that fit their MO, and so far none of the Sauvie Island condoms had matched the DNA of anyone on CODUS. The phone on his desk rang. He glanced at the caller ID and saw that it was Debbie.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Your biographer just left. Thought you’d want to know.”

  “Did you tell her how fucked up I am?”

  “I did.”

  “Good.”

  “I’ll talk to you tonight.”

  “Yes.”

  Archie hung up the phone. He had taken six Vicodin and he had an unsteady buoyant sensation in his arms and at the back of his head. It was the first wave of codeine that was the best. It made all of the hard edges soften. When he was a patrol cop, he’d dealt with a lot of junkies. They were always breaking into cars to steal coins or whatever crap had been left on the backseat—books, old clothes, bottles that could be turned in for a deposit refund. They’d break a window and risk arrest for thirty-five cents. One of the first things cops learned was that junkies had their own system of reason. They would risk enormous consequences for even a slim chance of a fix. This made them unpredictable. Archie had never understood the mind-set. But he thought he was getting closer.

  The Hardy Boys appeared at his office door, forcing Archie to clear his mind and put on his cop face. Both were all jittery excitement. Heil took a few tentative steps toward Archie. Archie had pegged him for the talker. He was right. “We checked the list of school staffers you gave us yesterday and one sort of stood out,” Heil announced.

  “Kent?” Archie asked automatically. There was something about the custodian that made him wary.

  “McCallum, the physics teacher at Cleveland. Turns out his boat isn’t where it’s supposed to be.”

  “Where is it?”

  “It burned down yesterday in that marina fire near Sauvie Island.”

  Archie raised his eyebrows.

  “Yeah,” said Heil. “We thought that might be a clue.”

  Emanuel Hospital was one of two trauma centers for the region and it was where Archie Sheridan had been medevaced after they got him out of Gretchen Lowell’s basement. It was the hospital favored by the city’s EMTs and it was rumored that many wore T-shirts printed with the words TAKE ME TO EMANUEL , just in case they threw a blood clot. The main structure had been built in 1915, but several additions had left the original stone building almost entirely obscured by glass and steel. It was also the hospital where Susan’s father had died of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma the week before she got her braces off. She parked in the visitors’ garage and made her way to the medical office building where Archie’s doctor had agreed to meet her. When she took the elevator up to the fourth floor, she was careful to press the elevator button with her elbow rather than her finger. Sick people germs. You couldn’t be too careful.

  Dr. Fergus made her wait for thirty-five minutes. It wasn’t a bad waiting room. There was a view of the West Hills, Mount Hood, the meandering Willamette. But it smelled like every waiting room Susan remembered from her father’s appointments. Like carnations and iodine. It was the soap they used to cover up the smell of people dying.

  A pile of InStyle magazines were fanned out seductively on an end table, but Susan resisted the impulse to waste time and instead sp
ent twenty minutes writing and then rewriting an intro to the next story in her notebook. Then she checked her messages. None. She speed-dialed Ethan Poole. Voice mail.

  “Ethan,” she said. “It’s moi. Just calling to see if you’ve had a chance to talk to Molly Palmer yet. I’m starting to take this personally.” She noticed that the receptionist was giving her a very dirty look and pointing to a sign that had a picture of a cell phone with a line through it. “Call me,” she said. Then she hung up and dropped the phone in her purse.

  A Herald was laid out on a coffee table over a pile of U.S. News & World Reports. Susan had just pulled the front section from underneath the Metro section and put it on top, so her story would be properly displayed for anyone interested, when Fergus appeared with a shrug of apology and a moist handshake and ushered her back past the examining rooms to his office. He was in his mid-fifties and wore his graying hair in a bristle cut, like some sort of Texas high school football coach, and he walked quickly, at an eighty-degree angle, stethoscope swinging, his shoulders slumped and his fists in his white coat pockets. Susan had to hurry to keep pace.

  His office was carefully appointed in classy baby boomer–style and overlooked the downtown skyline on the west side and the battered industrial buildings of the east side, with the wide brown river curving in between. On a clear day, you could see three mountains from Portland: Mount Hood, Mount Saint Helens and Mount Adams. But when people talked about “the mountain,” they meant Hood, and it was Hood that was visible out of Fergus’s window, a perk that was not to be underestimated. Still white with snow, it looked to Susan like a shark’s tooth tearing into the blue sky. But then, she’d never been much of a skier.

  An expensive handmade Oriental rug lay over the industrial carpet; a wall of bookshelves housed medical texts, but also contemporary fiction and books about Eastern religions; and a large black-and-white photograph of Fergus leaning against a Harley-Davidson hung on one wall, dwarfing the requisite medical degrees that hung beside it. At least he had his priorities straight. Susan noticed an expensive radio on his bookshelf, and bet that it was tuned to classic rock.