Let Me Go

by Chelsea Cain

  Ronin stabbed at some eggs with his fork. Without a commander to order him in no uncertain terms to reveal what he knew, he’d hem and haw all day about this. Men like him were incapable of taking responsibility unless someone with more power told them to. Archie had to force the situation. He put his hand on Ronin’s shoulder and gripped it hard. “What did you do?” Archie demanded.

  The room went still and silent.

  Ronin’s shoulder was warm meat under Archie’s palm. Archie could see the veins in Ronin’s biceps rise as they engorged with blood. Ronin’s fist tightened around the fork. Archie had a brief vision of the fork going into his neck. He did not doubt for a moment that Ronin could do it if he wanted to. Archie wondered what it would feel like.

  “You don’t want to do that,” Karim said softly in his British accent.

  In the same instant that Ronin’s shoulder relaxed slightly, Henry went for his weapon. He leveled it, two-handed, at Ronin’s head. “Drop it,” Henry said.

  No one flinched. Jack looked on, detached. Karim was watchful. Apparently someone drawing a gun at breakfast was not all that extraordinary.

  “Drop it,” Karim said, picking up his cup.

  Ronin’s hand opened. The fork stood for half a second, balanced on its tines, and then toppled over onto the plate, splattering fragments of scrambled egg onto the table.

  Archie kept his hand on Ronin’s shoulder, the ribbed black tank top under his fingers. “She’s dead,” Archie said between his teeth. “She was sexually assaulted. Are we going to find your sperm on her?”

  Ronin met Archie’s gaze with his golden eyes. “I guess so.”

  Archie shook his head in disgust. “Where?” he asked.

  Ronin’s mouth turned up in a smile. “In her stomach.”

  Archie let go of Ronin and sat back in his chair. His head was pounding. His hand had left a red print on Ronin’s shoulder. Next to him, Henry holstered his weapon, his face flushed. Jack was still standing behind Karim’s chair with his arms crossed. Karim was sipping his tea. “We’re going to need a DNA sample,” Archie said.

  Henry lifted a small black case out of his pocket, opened it, and pulled out a long Q-tip. “Open up, Romeo,” he said to Ronin. Ronin looked again to Karim, and Karim nodded and Ronin opened his mouth. Henry swabbed the inside of Ronin’s cheek and bagged the Q-tip.

  “When was the last time you saw her?” Archie asked.

  Ronin crossed his arms. “I let her in around nine-thirty. Didn’t see her after that,” he said.

  “So you didn’t see her leave?” Archie said.

  “No,” Ronin said.

  Archie looked over at Jack. “I want to review the footage from your surveillance cameras,” Archie said.

  Jack smiled indulgently, like Archie had suggested that they strip down to their socks and cannonball into the lake. “That’s not going to happen,” Jack said.

  Archie rubbed his hands over his face. He knew there was very little chance of talking Jack into going along with his request, but he had to give it a shot. “I talked to this girl last night. In your house. And today she was found dead on your neighbor’s dock. Whatever else you were up to here last night, it doesn’t concern me.”

  “It sounds like it’s my neighbor you should be interrogating,” Jack said. “A dead girl on his dock? That sounds suspicious. You know, I’ve never trusted that man. He doesn’t pick up after his dog.”

  “She was here,” Archie said. “I need to look at the security footage. See the people she talked to—see if she had any altercations with anyone. For all we know, one of your cameras might have filmed the murder.”

  Jack leaned forward, reached over Karim’s shoulder, and picked a piece of toast off Karim’s plate. The hierarchy of command. Jack took a bite off the corner of the toast and chewed on it a few times. “Get a warrant and we’ll talk,” he said.

  “I don’t suppose you’d consent to allowing us to interview the rest of your staff?” Archie asked. “Maybe check some backgrounds for priors? There was a goon guarding the bottom of the first-floor stairs in the main house that could use a women’s studies class, and I wouldn’t mind asking him about his movements last night.”

  “I think I’ve given you enough time today, Detective,” Jack said.

  Archie stood up and pushed his chair in. “Say hi to Leo for me,” Archie said.

  Jack didn’t blink. “Leo isn’t here.”

  “Where is he?” Archie asked.

  Jack shrugged. “Call him. Leave a message. If he wants to talk to you, I’m sure he’ll return it.”

  “Can I take a piece of toast to go?” Archie asked, surveying the food on the table.

  Jack sighed. “Help yourself,” he said.

  “Want one?” Archie asked Henry.

  Henry squinted at him. “No, thanks,” he said.

  There was a paper napkin dispenser on the table next to the bowl of eggs. The paper napkins were for the help—Archie would have bet money that they used cloth napkins in the big house. He pulled a paper napkin out and picked up a piece of toast and spread some peanut butter on it. As he reached to put the knife back in the peanut butter jar, his elbow caught the edge of Karim’s teacup.

  The teacup tipped over, rolled off its saucer, and then came to a stop, spilling its entire contents.

  Karim jumped back, swearing in Hindi, as hot tea poured over the side of the table onto his lap. His chair clattered, upended, on the kitchen floor and Karim stood pulling at his trousers to keep the scalding liquid off his legs.

  Archie handed Karim the dispenser of paper napkins. “Sorry,” he said.

  Jack didn’t come to Karim’s aid as he frantically dabbed at his slacks with napkin after napkin. He didn’t move. His eyes were on Archie. “You should go now,” Jack said.

  Archie leaned toward Karim. “If you need a shower,” he said, “I suggest the second-floor guest bathroom in the main house.” Archie gave Jack a wink. “Just be sure to lock it.”

  Archie felt Henry’s hand close around his arm.

  “Let’s go,” Henry said firmly.

  “Sure,” Archie said. But first he turned back to Jack. “One thing,” he said.

  Jack raised his eyebrows, waiting.

  Archie was struck with a sudden urge to take a swing at him, but he felt Henry’s hand tighten on his arm again and he let it pass. “Stay away from Susan Ward,” Archie said.

  Jack arched an eyebrow and smirked. “Funny,” he said. “I think that little stunt bothered you more than it did my son.”

  “We’ll be in touch,” Henry said quickly.

  Archie tossed his piece of toast back onto the table and then let Henry steer him out of the kitchen.

  Archie and Henry didn’t speak again until they were off the island, on the other side of the bridge, through the gates, and beyond the reach of the surveillance cameras. Only at that point did Archie retrieve the folded napkin out of his jacket pocket and hold it out to Henry.

  “What?” Henry asked, touching his chin. “Do I have something on my face?”

  Archie opened the napkin, revealing the silver teaspoon he’d swiped off the table after he’d spilled the tea. “Karim’s teaspoon,” Archie said. “Have his DNA checked, too.”

  CHAPTER

  28

  When Susan woke up, the light outside the window had faded and dark shadows crept across the wood floor. She listened for a minute. The house was quiet. Susan’s laptop was beside her on the bed, and she reached over and touched the keyboard to wake it up. The screen came to life, the Word document she’d been writing still open. The clock on the screen read 6:13 P.M. She blinked groggily, and realized that she had slept most of the afternoon away.

  She didn’t even feel that rested. She had a faint headache and the pimple on her forehead hurt. She turned on her bedside light, sat up, wrenched off her sneakers, tossed them toward her closet, and then struggled out of her sweaty tights. She had peeled off all her clothes, and was walking naked across the ro
om to retrieve the old kimono she used as a robe, when she noticed the puddle of green velvet on the floor—the cape she’d worn on her last date with Leo. It was right where Susan had left it after she’d thrown it off in frustration. Susan picked up the cape, gave it a shake, and carefully draped it around a hanger. Then she slipped on the kimono and went across the hall into the bathroom to run a bath. She sat on the toilet seat while she poured some eucalyptus bath salts into the water, and then lit as many candles along the lip of the tub as she could without standing up. The bright scent of eucalyptus filled the room. She watched the bathtub fill, steam rising, clouding the bathroom window and beading the medicine cabinet mirror with sweat. When the water was knee-high, Susan dropped the kimono on the floor and stepped into the tub.

  The bathroom had a new door. Bliss had bought it at the ReBuilding Center, a house parts salvage yard, and painted it to look like the old one. Susan’s mother had tried to match the paint, but it had ended up the wrong color blue. Susan still saw Ryan Motley’s hand reaching through the splintered wood, feeling for the doorknob, the fear on Pearl’s face. The bathroom had been Susan’s idea—she had led Pearl there, a step ahead of the intruder. Until that night, the bathroom had always been Susan’s sanctuary.

  Susan closed her eyes and sank back in the water. Her face felt hot. She let the water envelop her, until just her chin was above the waterline and the hair spray from the night before leached away, forming a dirty film on the surface. When she came up her skin was the color of coral. She poured a quarter-sized dollop of Dr. Bronner’s peppermint all-purpose liquid soap into her palm and washed her hair. Susan’s mother bought Dr. Bronner’s in a two-gallon jug and meted it out into containers throughout the house. They used it for everything—to brush their teeth, wash their hair, do dishes, wash their hands; Bliss even dabbed a little behind each ear in the morning as some sort of aromatherapy.

  Susan finished scrubbing her scalp clean and then leaned back under the water and ran her hands through her hair. When she sat up the bathwater was blanketed with peppermint soapsuds. Susan lathered up her legs with more Bronner’s, shaved them without cutting herself once, and then leaned her head on the back of the tub and closed her eyes. Her stomach growled. It was the peppermint. It made her hungry. Susan inspected her hands. They were pale and pruned. She stood up, grabbed a towel, and stepped out of the tub.

  She stood on the bath mat as she dried off and the tub drained noisily behind her. The bathroom floor was fir, and a hundred years of water stains had left the area around the tub so blackened with water damage that Susan was sure that one day the floor was going to give way and that heavy claw-foot tub was going to end up in the kitchen. She just hoped she wasn’t in it when it happened.

  Once Susan had slipped the kimono back on and combed out her wet hair, she wiped up some water on the floor with the towel. Then she walked the length of the tub, humming a Jefferson Starship song, and blew out each candle. The candles were still emitting thin snakes of smoke as she headed across the hall back to her bedroom, starving, and already thinking about the caramel apples downstairs. She flipped on her bedroom light, went to her dresser, and dug a pair of red wool socks out of the sock drawer, and then sat down on the bed to pull them on. As she did, she noticed that something was strange about her computer.

  The screen was still lit up. She could see the blue glow emanating from it.

  It should have been asleep. She had it set so that if she went four minutes without typing, the screen would go dark.

  Susan sighed. Great. It must be frozen. A computer glitch—that was just what she needed. Naturally she hadn’t backed anything up in ages.

  She reached for the computer and turned it to face her, and groaned as she saw the screen.

  Shit. The document she’d been working on had been deleted.

  The file that she had left open had been filled with writing. The page that was up now was just a single sentence. Her computer had eaten everything else. Her entire account of the evening before had vanished. The fact that it hadn’t been for a story, that there was no editor waiting for it, that Susan had written it all down just for the sake of it—that somehow made it worse. She wanted to pick the laptop up and hurl it across the room. What had happened? She tapped a key on the keyboard. The cursor blinked obediently. There was no frozen rainbow ball. The computer appeared to be working just fine. What the…?

  Susan read the sentence on her screen, bile rising in her throat. Seven words. They made her go cold all the way to the bone.

  Hello, pigeon. Did Archie like his birthday present?

  Susan leapt up and backed away from the bed like she’d been burned. Her heart was pounding in her ears. Pigeon. Gretchen had been the only person who’d ever called Susan that. Susan glanced around frantically. Gretchen had been here—in Susan’s bedroom. She’d typed that sentence on Susan’s computer. Susan forced herself to turn, openmouthed and terrified, inspecting every shadow. But she was alone. Her darting eyes confirmed it. The closet was open and empty. There was no room for anyone to hide under the futon.

  Gretchen wasn’t in her room. Dread gripped Susan by the stomach as her eyes turned to her laptop. Gretchen was in her computer.

  Susan stared at the laptop. She could see the patches at the bottom of the keyboard where her palms had worn away the metallic surface. The computer keys were coated with her oily grime. The screen was smudged with her fingerprints. Each sticker and decal had been carefully chosen and applied. Susan knew every scratch and speck on that computer like she knew the freckles and scars on her own flesh.

  And Gretchen had found a way inside it.

  Susan inched forward in her socked feet, peering at the tiny black eye of the camera lens installed above the laptop’s screen. She clutched her robe closed. You could take over someone’s computer remotely if you loaded the right malware. Susan had done a story about that once. You could even use the computer’s own camera to spy on someone.

  A trickle of bathwater dripped down the back of Susan’s neck. Her MacBook was her life. She wrote everything on it—every story, every half-assed attempt at a novel, every e-mail, every personal thought she’d ever cared enough about to write down. Now she approached it grimacing, arm outstretched, like the computer was something alive, something dangerous, something infected. When she got close enough, she stretched her trembling hand across the bed and slammed the laptop closed. The Apple logo on the back glowed white for a few seconds and then went dark.

  CHAPTER

  29

  It didn’t take long to find the yearbook photo. Lake Oswego High had uploaded the last ten years’ worth of yearbooks into a digital archive on their Web site. All Archie needed was a password and there she was. The Clackamas County ME’s age estimate had been right on the money. The victim had been twenty-two. The senior photograph—jauntily posed with a tennis racket under one arm—was four years old. Her hair was cut bluntly at her chin, her face was fuller, and her skin was Photoshopped to a dewy plastic sheen, but even on the screen of Henry’s phone, Archie still recognized her from their encounter outside Jack Reynolds’s first-floor half bath.

  Her name was Lisa Katherine Watson and she had been voted “most likely to marry a millionaire.”

  Lisa Watson’s parents lived in a hundred-year-old house on a quiet street in the old part of Lake Oswego where the streets didn’t have sidewalks and the houses all had gardens.

  The same photograph Archie and Henry had seen online was framed on the mantel in the living room. Other photographs were displayed as well: Lisa Watson as a small child with a tennis racket, several of Lisa Watson as a young teenager with a tennis racket, Lisa Watson as an older teenager with a tennis racket. There were no photographs of her parents or any other sibling.

  “She was nationally ranked,” Peter Watson said. “Before she started partying.” He was tall and lean and moved gingerly, like an athlete whose joints had paid the price.

  Archie nodded. He dreaded this part, the
families. Sometimes he felt like the angel of death swooping in to destroy lives. He had to remind himself that he was only the messenger.

  “Can I get either of you a glass of water?” Lynn Watson asked hesitantly. She looked like her daughter—the slight overbite and pug nose, her face nearly as pale as a corpse. Archie thought of Lisa Watson on that dock, the ligature marks across her abdomen. She had not died peacefully. But her mother did not want to know that.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Henry said, glancing at Archie. “Thank you.”

  This was what you did. If the family offered you water, you drank it. It helped sometimes to do something, to have a task. There was a delicate balance to family notification. At first, it was important to be clear, to avoid misunderstandings, hope. Your daughter was found dead. It appears to be a homicide. But once that devastating reality had been established, once it sank in, you did everything you could to avoid referring to the deceased as a body. “She’s at the morgue,” Archie had told the Watsons after delivering the brutal news, “she’ll be released to you as soon as possible.”

  You tried to be gentle. You tried not to make any sudden movements. You avoided using the past tense. “Is there anyone you can think of who might want to hurt Lisa?” Archie asked her father.

  Peter Watson winced, and his forehead creased. He had aged ten years since they’d walked through the door. “She didn’t have a boyfriend, if that’s what you mean,” he said.

  “An ex-boyfriend?” Henry asked. “Anyone she might have run into at the party?”

  Watson sank onto the arm of a wingback chair. Its sunflower yellow upholstery seemed inappropriately cheerful, considering. Most of the furniture in the room was the same aggressive shade of yellow as the chair. Embroidered yellow throw cushions on the sofa matched the formal drapes that hung over the windows. The walls were the color of ballpark mustard. Archie wondered if they would redecorate now.

  “Honestly, I don’t know,” Watson said with a defeated sigh. “We didn’t even know she was going to that party. She hasn’t had a boyfriend since high school. More like”—he looked pained and his eyes drifted to the floor—“encounters.”