Heartsick

CHAPTER 8

Portland Mayor Bob “Buddy” Anderson was announcing the new task force at an afternoon press conference at the new offices. This was where Susan was supposed to finally meet her subject. Susan loathed press conferences. They were artificial and on-message and almost never revealed anything that was true in the way that made for good writing. The information relayed was accurate, yes. But never true.

Ian insisted on driving, which was fine with Susan, as her battered Saab was always loaded with the accoutrements of her life-magazines, empty water bottles, discarded jackets, notebooks and pens-dozens of pens. She found that passengers sometimes failed to understand her complete lack of interest in picking up old french fries off the floor, much less dusting the dashboard. Parker, who was actually covering the press conference, and who did not like Ian, based entirely on the fact that Ian had graduated from journalism school in 1986, took a separate vehicle.

It was still raining. The sky was entirely white and the foothills that surrounded the city looked like jagged, milky shadows. As they made their way over the bridge, Susan placed her hand flat on the passenger side window, watching the rivulets of water carve their jagged paths down the glass. So many people moved to Portland for the quality of life and the progressive politics. They bought bicycles and big old wooden houses and espresso makers, and then, after the first dreary winter, they moved back to L.A. But Susan liked the slick of rain, the way that it distorted the view out of every windshield, every window. The way light blurred around brake lights and glowed on the pavement. The scrape of the wipers.

She had to ask it. “This assignment,” she said, still looking out her window, drumming her fingers on the cold, hard glass. “It has nothing to do with your cock, right, lan?”

Ian looked honestly startled. “Jesus! No. No, Susan. Howard asked for you. I just agreed. I would never…” He let that trail off.

“Good,” Susan said. “Because if I ever thought that it was interfering in our professional relationship, the fucking would stop.” She turned and looked at him with her hard green eyes. “You understand that, right?”

He cleared his throat, and his face and neck reddened. “Yes.”

She let her gaze drift back out over the Willamette. “Don’t you love the rain?”

Anne Boyd and Claire Masland sat across from each other in the rectangular break room of the former bank. Claire was the tiniest white woman Anne had ever met. It wasn’t so much that she was short; she was probably five three. It’s just that Claire was so slight and angular that she seemed smaller than she was. But Anne liked Claire. She looked like an adolescent boy, but she was one of the most tenacious cops Anne had ever worked with. Like one of those cute lap dogs that sinks its teeth into someone’s forearm, locks its jaw, and can’t be pried off without tranquilizers. They’d become friends during the Beauty Killer case. The other cops thought it was because they were women. And it was, in a way. They knew something about each other. Despite the black-white thing, the heavy-thin thing, despite it all, they recognized the thing that, as women, made them different enough to lead them into a violent world still dominated by men. They understood what it was to be attracted, in some way, to death.

“You want to go over it again?” Claire asked.

Claire had recounted her particular knowledge of the case with Anne twice already and now sat fidgeting, her gaze resting on the microwave where her lunch was currently heating. She had been at Jefferson, interviewing kids who knew Kristy, and Anne knew that she wanted to get back to the field. Missing persons cases were hard enough. Missing kids made everyone work twice as hard and feel twice as guilty.

“I think I’ve got everything I need from you for now,” Anne said. She stacked the copies of the notes that Claire had brought her next to the ones from Henry and Martin. The notes that cops took at a crime scene were often more copious than the version that made it into their reports, and Anne had learned long ago that the smallest detail could mean the difference between a solid profile and a half-assed guess. “How do you think Archie looked this morning?” Anne asked, keeping her voice casual.

Claire shrugged, her eyes still on the microwave timer. Thin people, Anne noticed, never seemed to stop eating. “Fine,” Claire said. She lifted a hand to her mouth and tore at a bloody cuticle.

“Fine?”

Claire’s gray eyes steeled and her hand fluttered to her lap. “Yes, Anne. Fine. They ask you to keep an eye on him?”

“I’m just concerned about a friend,” Anne said. She examined Claire, the dark circles under her eyes, the bitten cuticles. The stress was already taking its toll.

“Work’s the best thing for him,” Claire said. The microwave dinged and Claire hurried to push her chair back and stand up. “Besides, Henry says he’s okay.”

“Henry loves Archie,” Anne said.

“Exactly. So he’d protect him, right? Besides, they wouldn’t ask him back if he weren’t okay.”

“You know that’s not true.”

“You come in on the red-eye?” Claire asked.

Anne leaned forward. “How does he seem to you?”

Claire thought for a moment, wrinkling her smooth forehead. “His voice sounds different.”

“It’s from the drain cleaner she made him drink. It must have damaged his vocal cords.”

Claire closed her eyes and turned her head. “Jesus Christ.”

Anne hesitated. But she felt that she had to say it. “This new killer. It’s going to get worse, Claire. He’s accelerating. You don’t have a lot of time.”

Claire turned and moved to the microwave. “I spent last night with Kristy’s family,” she said. “Her father. Her grandmother. Her aunts.” She opened the microwave and extracted a withered burrito on a paper plate. “And the whole time, I wasn’t thinking about her. I was focused on the next girl. The girl safe in her bed, who is going to disappear. Who is going to be raped. Who is going to be murdered.” She poked at her burrito sadly with a white plastic fork. A plastic tine snapped off and stuck in the tortilla skin. Claire shook her head, disgusted. “The microwave in here is a piece of shit,” she said.

It was drizzling , so they had set up the podium and bouquet of microphones under the ATM portico. By the time Susan and Ian arrived, the press were already in position, perched politely on gray steel folding chairs. Press in Portland, Oregon, meant the Herald, three weeklies, a half dozen neighborhood papers, an NPR affiliate, a community radio station, four commercial radio stations, the Associated Press stringer, and four local TV news teams. Because of the scope and theater of the case, several additional TV and print reporters had come down from Seattle. Their news vans were just a little slicker than the Portland crews’.

The mayor, looking grim and presidential, was vociferously pledging a quick resolution to the case, employing a rotation of repetitive hand gestures to reinforce his earnestness. “We are committed to putting every available resource into the apprehension of the monster who has been preying on young girls in our city. I urge the citizens to take precautions but not to panic. In reconvening the Beauty Killer Task Force, I have great faith that we will have a resolution to this madness.”

Susan opened her notebook and wrote one word: campaigning. She closed the notebook and looked up-and that’s when she saw Archie Sheridan. He was standing behind the mayor, leaning against the cement-block wall of the bank, his hands in his jacket pockets. He was not watching the mayor. He was watching them-the press. Looking from one person to the next, appraising each of them. No expression. Just watching. He looked thinner than in the photographs, she noted. And his dark hair was longer. But he did not look damaged or crazy or deranged. He just looked like someone waiting for something to happen. A passenger on a subway platform, looking for the telltale light in the darkness. She felt an electrical jolt and realized that he was looking at her. They locked eyes for a moment, and she felt something pass between them. He gave her a quick lopsided smile. She smiled back. He went back to scanning the audience. His body remained perfectly still.

“And on that note, I’d like to introduce my good friend Detective Archie Sheridan,” the mayor announced. Archie looked up, mildly startled, recovered, and walked to the podium. He took his hands out of his pockets and rested them lightly on the surface of the podium. He adjusted a microphone. He ran his hand through his hair.

“Can I answer any questions?” he asked.

Kristy Mathers had been missing for almost twenty-one hours. Archie had spent the day interviewing the people who had seen her last at Jefferson, her friends, her teachers, her parents. He’d walked the route she would have taken home. He’d met with the crime-scene team that had searched the area the night before and found nothing. He’d approved flyers to distribute at the schools and in the neighborhoods around the schools. He’d met with the chief of police and the mayor. He’d conferred with Highway Patrols in Washington and Idaho and California, conducted a conference call with both the American and Canadian border patrol, consulted with the private security firm brought in to secure the city’s high schools, and he’d personally gone through the four hundred-plus tips that had already been called in to the hot line. And there was still a lot more he could be doing that would be more productive than appearing at a press conference.

But he was determined to make the best of it.

He had led hundreds of press conferences in his tenure as lead detective on the Beauty Killer Task Force, but this was the first since Gretchen. He surveyed the anxious faces in the audience. Many had changed in two years, but there were familiar ones, too. He searched the crowd for the person who would ask him the question he wanted, the one he needed for the sound bite on the evening news. Their hands strained to be highest, their faces pinched with determination. He willed his stomach to unclench and called on a young Asian woman who sat in the front row with a notebook poised.

“Detective, do you think you’re mentally and physically fit to run the After School Strangler Task Force?” she asked.

“The After School Strangler?”

“That’s what the Herald is calling the killer on their Web site.”

Archie winced. “Right.” That didn’t take long. “I’ve never felt better,” he lied.

“Do you have any lasting physical effects from your captivity?”

“Some stomach problems. Probably on par with the mayor’s ulcer.” There were some appreciative smiles in the audience.

He chose another hand. “Do you think that the DA should have sought the death penalty for Gretchen Lowell?”

Archie sighed and went on autopilot. “The plea bargain stipulated that she take responsibility for all the people she killed, not just the eleven we had enough evidence to take her to court on. Her victims’ families deserve some closure.” He tried to look relaxed. In control. “How about we talk about the current case? One serial killer at a time, ladies and gentleman.”

He called on Quentin Parker. “Do you think that Kristy Mathers is still alive?”

“We remain hopeful that she is, yes.”

Another hand. “How many detectives will you have on the task force?”

“Full-time? Nine investigators, plus support staff. Seven of them worked on the Beauty Killer Task Force. In addition, we will work closely with other agencies, and pull in other personnel as needed.”

The mayor took an almost unperceivable step toward the podium. Archie tensed. He still hadn’t gotten the question he wanted. He scanned the audience. Come on. One of you ask it. It’s obvious. It’s the one you’re all thinking. I need one of you to ask it. His eyes came to rest on Susan Ward. She had wasted no time getting started on the story. Ambition-that was a good sign. Archie had picked her out of the crowd right away. There was something in the way she was watching him. And the pink hair. Henry had mentioned something about that. Archie had thought he was kidding. Susan was glancing around at the other reporters, too. She looked at him. He raised an eyebrow. She hesitated, then raised her hand.

He called on her.

“How will you go about catching the killer?” she asked.

He cleared his throat and looked right into the television cameras. “We will canvass every neighborhood. We will interview every witness. We will explore every possible connection to the killer these girls might have had. We will use every scientific method available to us to uncover clues to the killer’s identity.” He leaned forward, exuding, he hoped, confidence and authority. “We will catch you.” He stepped back from the podium and waited a beat. “Thank you.”

The press conference ended and Ian led Susan into the task force offices. The press in attendance had rushed off to write their stories and edit their videos. Susan saw immediately why they had chosen to have the press conference outside. The office was in chaos. Half-unpacked boxes were everywhere. The bank transaction counter had been removed and what was left was a large open space with a few offices in the back and what Susan presumed was the old vault. The furniture was bank furniture-dingy mauve couches with oak armrests, cherry-laminate desks with shiny brass hardware, plastic floor mats, and cloth task chairs. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. The industrial carpet was gray, with a worn footpath to and along the now-missing counter. The walls were painted a funereal pale rose. Detectives and support staff unpacked boxes, nailed large dry erase boards to the walls, plugged in computers, and transformed the space into a police station. Susan wondered how much time they were losing setting up shop that might be used to find Kristy Mathers before she was murdered. Their faces were pinched; there was no small talk.

The mayor finished the soliloquy he was performing for a group of aides and Ian stepped in to introduce Susan.

“Mayor, this is Susan Ward, the writer who will be doing the piece on the task force,” Ian said. Susan noticed that he used the word writer and not reporter.

The mayor’s eyes widened at Susan’s appearance, but he smiled and shook her hand firmly, placing his other hand on her upper arm. He was tall, with painstakingly sculpted, prematurely silver hair, and the kind of hands that are always warm. His fingernails were buffed to a bright sheen and he wore a gray suit that was just as luminous. Susan thought he looked like Robert Young in Father Knows Best, a TV show she loathed only because her own life had always seemed so tawdry in comparison. She made a mental bet with herself that he would be a senator within five years. Assuming he was rich enough.

“It’s a pleasure,” he said, his eyes positively brimming with paternal amiability. “I’ve heard great things about you. I’m looking forward to reading the series.”

Susan felt a strange self-consciousness wash over her. She didn’t like it. “Thank you, sir,” she said.

“I want to introduce you to Archie Sheridan,” the mayor said. “You know, I served on the Beauty Killer Task Force with him. Years ago. Before I was even chief. I was actually the first detective to lead the task force. Archie didn’t have the seniority then. It was his first case. I was something of a hotshot in the department, so they put me in charge. I lasted three years. Hell of a thing. No one I’d rather work with than Archie Sheridan. There is no one out there I’d trust more with my daughter’s life.” He waited a moment, and when Susan didn’t open her notebook, he added, “You can write that down.”

“You don’t have a daughter,” Susan said.

The mayor cleared his throat. “Figure of speech. Have you had a chance to look around?” He led her farther into the bowels of the bank, his hand settled firmly just above the small of her back. “As you can see, we’re still setting up office equipment. When we’re done, we’ll have a working squad: interrogation room, conference room, state-of-the-art computer system, et cetera.” They reached an office with a large glass panel that overlooked the main room. The white venetian blinds were closed. “This is the old bank manager’s office,” the mayor explained. “But it appears our current bank manager isn’t here.” He turned to a small dark-haired woman walking past with a badge clipped to the waist of her jeans. She was eating a half a burrito wrapped in a paper towel and her lips were stained with hot sauce. “Detective Masland? Where’s Sheridan?”

She was caught mid-bite, and they had to wait while she finished chewing and swallowed. “The school. Just left. He went over there to conduct some interviews and get the checkpoint set up. I’m heading over there now.”

A trace of agitation crossed the mayor’s face. “I’m sorry,” he said to Susan. “I told him I wanted him to meet you.”

“I realize that he’s busy,” Susan said. “But eventually, I will have to meet him. I can’t profile him without talking to him.”

“Come by tomorrow morning at nine A.M. I’ll make sure he’s here.”

I bet you will, thought Susan.

Ian and Susan drove back to the paper in silence. When they pulled into the parking garage, Ian swallowed hard. “Can I come over tonight?”

Susan pulled at a wisp of pale pink hair. “Where’s your wife?” she asked.

He looked at his hands, still gripping the steering wheel. “Up in Seattle.”

Susan hesitated. “Make it late,” she said. She felt a twinge of guilt, bit her lip, and opened the car door. “You’ll find that stomaching the whole adultery thing is easier if we don’t spend too much time together.”