Heartsick

CHAPTER 22

Debbie Sheridan lived in a stucco ranch-style house in Hillsboro, a few minutes off the highway. Susan had lived in Portland most of her life, and she could count on both hands the number of times she had been to Hillsboro. It was a suburb Susan drove through on the way to the coast; she didn’t think of it as a destination. Just being in the suburbs made Susan nervous. Debbie Sheridan’s house was typical for its neighborhood. The lawn was green and well groomed, with the sharp edges and dearth of weeds that screamed professional maintenance. There was a box hedge, a Japanese maple tree, some blue spruce, and several beds of ornamental grasses. A two-car garage was attached to the house. It was the picture of domestic bliss, and a home in which Susan could not even conceive of ever living.

She locked her car, walked to the medieval-looking front door, and rang the bell.

Debbie Sheridan opened the door and thrust out a hand in greeting. Susan took it. Debbie was not what Susan had imagined. In her late thirties, she had stylish very short dark hair and a trim, athletic body. She was wearing black leggings and a T-shirt and sneakers. She was attractive and chic and not at all suburban-looking. Susan followed her into the house. It was filled with art. Large abstract oil paintings on stretched canvas lined the white walls. The floors were layered with Oriental rugs. Books were stacked on every flat surface. It was all very cosmopolitan. Very world traveler. And very much not what Susan had expected.

“I like your art,” Susan commented. She always felt a little uneasy around women who were more sophisticated than she was.

“Thanks,” said Debbie amiably. “I’m a designer out at Nike. This is what I do when I want to feel like an artist again.”

It was only then that Susan noticed the “D. Sheridan” scrawled in the corners of the canvases. “They’re amazing.”

“They keep me busy. Sometimes I think my kids are more talented.”

Debbie led Susan down a hallway, past framed black-and-white photographs of two attractive dark-haired children. Some of the photographs featured just the children; some were of Archie and Debbie and the children. They all looked deliriously happy and delighted with one another.

They reached a bright modern kitchen with French doors that overlooked a backyard with a big English cottage garden. “Do you want some coffee?” Debbie asked.

“Sure,” Susan said, accepting a cup Debbie poured from a French press and then taking a seat on one of the tall chairs at the kitchen bar. She noticed a completed New York Times crossword sitting out on the counter.

Debbie continued to stand.

There was a family room on the other side of the bar. It also had French doors that opened out onto the garden. Judging by the drafting table and wall of tacked-up sketches, Debbie used the room as a home office. But the floor was strewn with toys. Debbie noticed Susan looking at the sketches and smiled sheepishly. “I’m designing a yoga shoe,” she explained.

“Aren’t you supposed to do yoga barefoot?”

Debbie grinned. “Let’s just say that it’s an untapped market.”

“Is that what you design mostly? Shoes?”

“Not the structural stuff. I just take what the lab guys give me and try to make it look pretty. I read your story today. It was interesting. Well written.”

“Thanks,” Susan said, embarrassed. “It was just laying the groundwork. I want to go a little deeper in the next few. Do you want to sit down?”

Debbie put a tentative hand on a chair but then hesitated and removed it. She looked in the family room. At the toys on the carpet. “I should pick up after the kids,” she said. She walked behind Susan around the bar into the family room and bent over to pick up a stuffed gorilla. “So what do you want to know?” she asked.

Susan produced a small digital recorder from her purse. “Do you mind if I record this? It’s easier than having to take notes.”

“Go ahead,” said Debbie. She continued with her task, plucking up a stuffed cat, a rabbit, a panda.

“So,” Susan said. Dive right in. Full speed ahead. “It must have been hard.”

Debbie stood up, her arms teeming with plush animals, and sighed. “When he was missing? Yes.” She walked over to a small red table with two child-size red chairs and began placing the stuffed animals on top of it one by one. “He called me, you know, right before he went in to see her. Then he didn’t come home.” She paused and looked at the gorilla still in her arms. It was the size of a baby. She spoke carefully. “I thought it was traffic at first. It’s close to Nike out here, but the commute on Twenty-six can be murder. I called his cell phone about a hundred times, but he wasn’t picking up.” She looked up at Susan and forced a smile. “This was not entirely unusual. I thought they might have found another body. But then…” She paused and took a breath that caught for a moment in her throat. “Finally, I called Henry. Henry went to her house. They found Archie’s car out front, but the house was empty. That’s when it all started to fall apart.” She looked at the gorilla for another moment and then slowly placed it on the table, positioning it snugly between the panda and the cat. “They didn’t know what had happened, of course. That it had anything to do with Gretchen Lowell. But they were able to piece it together.” Her voice grew tight. “But they couldn’t find him.”

“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.