Heartsick

CHAPTER 30

It was almost 9:00 A.M. by the time Susan awoke with a splitting headache and a stomach-turning wave of nausea. She had finished that entire bottle of pinot on an empty stomach. Why did she do this to herself? She sat up gingerly, and then staggered into the bathroom, where she poured herself a big glass of water, took three ibuprofen, and brushed her teeth. The Band-Aid on her finger had fallen off during the night and she examined the wound, which had scabbed over into an ugly red crescent. She sucked on it for a minute, the blood coppery in her mouth, until the cut was almost undetectable.

Then she wandered naked into the kitchen, where she put on a pot of coffee and sat down on the Great Writer’s blue sofa. It was too early for the light to make it in through her north-facing window, but she could see the blue sky beyond the building across the street. Long shadows loomed dark on the street and sidewalk below. Sunshine, to Susan, had always seemed ominous. She was halfway through her second cup of coffee when the doorbell rang.

Susan wrapped herself in her kimono and answered the door to find Detective Henry Sobol standing outside. His bald head, freshly shaved, gleamed.

“Ms. Ward,” he said. “Do you have a few hours?”

“For what?”

“Archie will explain. He’s downstairs in the car. I couldn’t find a fucking place to park. Your neighborhood is awash with ambling Yuppies.”

“Yes, they’re ferocious. Can you give me a few minutes to change?”

He bowed nobly. “I’ll wait here.”

Susan closed the door and went back into her bedroom to change. She realized that she was grinning. This was good. This meant a break in the case. This meant more material. She pulled on a pair of tight, distressed jeans and a long-sleeved black-and-white-striped shirt that she thought looked French, and ran a hairbrush through her pink hair.

She grabbed a pair of cowboy boots from her closet, snapped up her digital recorder and notebook, stowed the entire bottle of ibuprofen in her purse, and headed for the door.

Henry’s unmarked Crown Victoria was idling in front of Susan’s building, with Archie sitting in the passenger seat, gazing down at some files in his lap. The winter sun looked almost white in the pale, clear sky and the car shone and sparkled in its light. Susan glanced up in dismay as she climbed into the backseat. Another fucking beautiful day.

“Good morning,” she said, slipping on some oversized dark sunglasses. “What’s going on?”

“You wrote Gretchen Lowell,” Archie said matter-of-factly.

“Yep.”

“I asked you not to.”

“I’m a reporter,” Susan reminded him. “I was attempting to gather facts.”

“Well, your letter and your stories have intrigued her and she would like to meet you.”

Susan’s headache vanished. “Honestly?”

“Are you up for it?”

She leaned forward between the two front seats. “Are you kidding? When? Now?”

“That’s where we’re headed.”

“Well, let’s go,” she said. Maybe she would get a book out of this after all.

Archie turned around to face Susan, his face so serious and haggard that it successfully wrung the life out of Susan’s momentarily high spirits. “Gretchen is mental. She’s curious about you, but only in so far as how she can manipulate you. If you come, you’re going to have to follow my lead and restrain yourself.”

Susan forced her face into a professional earnestness. “I am known for my restraint.”

“I’m going to regret this,” Archie said to Henry.

Henry grinned, flipped down a pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses from the peak of his forehead to the bridge of his nose, and pulled away from the curb.

“How did you know where I live, anyway?” Susan asked as they pulled on to the freeway headed south.

“I detected it,” Archie said.

Susan was just glad that Ian hadn’t been there. It’s not like her apartment had all that many places to hide, and if Henry had seen him, he’d certainly have told Archie. Just because Archie knew she was screwing Ian didn’t mean she wanted him to be reminded of it. In fact, she was hoping he’d forget she’d ever said anything. “Well, it’s a good thing I was alone,” she said. “So I could drop everything at a moment’s notice.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw Henry smile.

Archie’s gaze didn’t waver from the file he was reading.

Susan’s face grew hot.

It was an hour’s drive to the prison. She crossed her arms, leaned back, and forced her attention out the window. It didn’t last. “Hey,” she said. “Did you guys know that Portland was almost named Boston? Two founders flipped a coin for it. One of them was from Portland, Maine. The other guy was from Boston. Guess who won.” No one answered. Susan fiddled with the white string fringe around one of the holes in her jeans. “It’s ironic,” she said. “Because Portland is often referred to as the Boston of the West Coast.” Archie was still reading. Why couldn’t she stop talking? She made a promise to herself that she wasn’t going to say another word unless one of them talked to her first.

It was a quiet trip.

The Oregon State Penitentiary was a campus of gristle-colored buildings located just off the freeway behind a wall topped with razor wire. It housed both maximum-and minimum-security inmates, male and female, and had the state’s only death row. Susan had driven by it dozens of times on trips home from college, but she had never had occasion to visit, not that she would have jumped at the chance. Henry parked the car in a space reserved for police vehicles near the entrance of the prison. A middle-aged man in pressed khakis and a golf shirt stood on the steps of one of the main buildings, leaning against the railing, arms folded. He had soft features and a receding hairline and a belly that pressed insistently against his shirt. A cell phone in a jaunty leather case was clipped to the belt of his pants. A lawyer, thought Susan grimly. He stepped forward as Archie, Henry, and Susan climbed out of the car.

“How is she today?” Archie asked him.

“Pissy,” the lawyer said. His nose was running and he dabbed at it with a white cloth hankie. “Same as every Sunday. That the reporter?”

“Yep.”

He thrust a germy hand out to Susan, who shook it despite that. He had a firm, precise handshake, like someone who intended to make good use out of it. “Darrow Miller. Assistant DA.”

“Darrow?” she repeated, amused.

“Yeah,” he said without affect. “My brother’s name is Scopes. And that’s the last crack we’ll be making.”

Susan struggled to keep up as the group moved at a quick pace through the main building, taking corners and climbing stairs with the ease of people who had traveled the wide hallways so often that they had become a body memory. The group encountered two security checkpoints. At the first, a guard checked their identification, logged their names, and stamped their hands. Henry and Archie surrendered their side arms, and moved past the guards without a break in their conversation. A male guard stopped Susan, who was still a few steps behind. The guard was small and wiry, and he stood with his fists on his hips, like an action figure.

“Did you not read your pamphlet?” he asked her with the slow enunciation of someone talking to a child. He was shorter than Susan was, so he had to look up.

Susan bristled.

“It’s okay, Ron,” Archie interjected, turning back. “She’s with me.”

The little guard chewed his cheek for a moment, slid a look at Archie, and then nodded and stepped back against the wall. “Nobody reads their pamphlet,” he mumbled.

“What did I do?” Susan asked when they were moving again.

“They don’t like visitors to wear denim,” Archie explained. “The prisoners wear prison blues, and it might lead to confusion.”

“But certainly their denim is not as chicly torn as mine?”

“You’d be surprised,” he said, smiling. “The trannies are very creative.”

They came to a metal detector. Again the men moved through without incident. Susan, however, was motioned to wait by a rotund female guard. “You wearing a bra?” the guard asked.

Susan blushed. “Excuse me?”

The guard stared at Susan, bored. “No underwire bras-they set off the metal detector.”

Was it Susan’s imagination, or was everyone suddenly staring at her chest? “Oh. No. I’m a lacy camisole girl. I have a really hard time finding bras that fit right. Small cup size, broad shoulders. You know.” Susan smiled amiably. The guard’s breasts were enormous. Like melons. She probably had all sorts of problems finding bras, too.

The guard stared at Susan another moment and then widened her eyes and sighed. “Are you wearing an underwire bra?” she asked again.

“No.”

“Then go through the damn metal detector already.”

“Here we are,” Archie said. He opened an unmarked gray metal door and Susan walked in, followed by Henry and the lawyer. It was a cement-walled observation room, with an impressive plate of one-way glass that looked into another room. It was just like on TV. Susan was charmed. The room was small, with a low ceiling and a long metal folding table jammed next to the window, leaving a space a little wider than an airplane aisle in which to maneuver. A young Hispanic man sat on a stool at the table, facing a computer monitor and a TV with a closed-circuit feed from a camera mounted on the ceiling of the room. He had a meal from Taco Bell spread out carefully in front of him. Bleached napkins stacked. Hot sauce packets lined up. One taco half-eaten, another in queue. The food filled the compact room with the smell of refried beans and cheap hot sauce.

“That’s Rico,” Archie said.

Rico grinned at Susan. “I’m the sidekick,” he said.

“I thought Henry was the sidekick,” Susan said.

“No, man,” Rico said. “He’s the partner. I’m the sidekick.”

Archie’s smile was weak. “Wait here,” he told Susan. “I’ll be back for you in a minute.” He turned around and walked out the door.

“Meet the Queen of Evil,” Rico said to Susan, lifting his chin toward the room on the other side of the glass.

Susan approached the glass and got her first good look at Gretchen Lowell. There she sat. The picture of poise, incongruous in denim pants and a denim shirt with the word INMATE printed on the back. Susan had seen her picture, of course. The media had loved running photographs of Gretchen Lowell because she was beautiful. And a serial killer. A perfect combination. And aren’t all stunning women capable of murder? the pictures seemed to ask. But Susan could see now that she was even more gorgeous in person. Her eyes were large and pale blue and her features were perfectly symmetrical, wide cheekbones, a long, sculpted nose, a heart-shaped face that ended in a dainty chin. Her flesh was bloodless. Her hair, which had been very blond at the time of her arrest, was now a darker shade of blond and was combed back into a high ponytail, showing off her long, aristocratic neck. She was not pretty. That was not the word for it. Pretty implied something girlish. Gretchen Lowell was beautiful in a very grown-up way, in a sophisticated, confident way. It was more than beauty; it was the power of beauty. She radiated it. Susan was spellbound.

Susan watched through the glass, riveted, as Archie entered the room, head down, file under his arm. He turned to close the steel door behind him and stood for a moment facing the closed door, as if gathering himself. Then he took a breath, straightened, and turned toward the woman at the table. His face was engaging and pleasant, a man meeting an old friend for some coffee. “Hello, Gretchen,” he said.

“Good morning, darling.” She tilted her head and smiled. The sudden animation made her features sparkle even more. It was not a fake beauty-queen smile. It was a genuine expression of warmth and pleasure. Or, Susan reconsidered, she was really, really good at the fake beauty-queen smile. Gretchen lifted her hands from her lap to the surface of the table and Susan could see that they were manacled. Susan craned her head and noticed that Gretchen’s feet were shackled, too. Gretchen’s large blue eyes widened playfully. “Did you bring me anything?” she asked Archie.

“I’ll bring her in here in a minute,” Archie said, and Susan realized with a shudder that they were talking about her.

Archie walked toward the table and very carefully opened the folder he carried and fanned out five eight-by-ten photographs in front of Gretchen.

“Which one is she?” he asked.

Gretchen held his gaze, her face still a careful facade of congeniality. Then, with barely a downward flicker of her eyes, she reached out and placed her hand flat on one of the photographs.

“There,” she said. Her smile widened. “Can we play now?”

“I’ll be right back,” Archie said.

He returned to the observation room and held up the photograph that Gretchen had picked. The image was of a Latina girl, maybe twenty, with short black hair and a silly grin. She had her arm around someone who had been cut out of the photograph, and she was flashing a peace sign. “It’s her,” he said simply.

“Who?” asked Susan.

Rico spun around on his stool. “Gloria Juarez. Nineteen. College kid. She disappeared in Utah in 1995. Gretchen gave us her name this morning. She said she’d tell us where to find her body if we brought you down to meet her.”

Susan was startled. “Why me?”

“Because of me,” Archie answered. He blinked slowly and ran a hand through his dark hair and stared at the ceiling for a moment before continuing. “She hasn’t given up a body in almost six months. I thought that a profile in the Herald would shake her up a bit. She gets jealous easily. I thought that if she knew I was getting close to a reporter, close enough to talk about things, she would react by giving me”-he paused, as if considering his words carefully-“a token of her affection.”

Susan looked around the little room. They all were staring at her. Waiting to see what she would do. “A body?”

“Yeah. She hasn’t talked to anyone but me in the last year.” He shrugged helplessly. “It didn’t even occur to me that she’d actually ask to see you.”

She had been manipulated. Susan felt a prickly self-consciousness wash over her. Archie had used her. She took a step back, moving away from him. She had trusted him. And he had taken advantage of her. It was a weirdly familiar sensation. No one said anything. She reached up and pulled at her hair, knotting it around a finger until it burned. Darrow, the lawyer, rubbed the back of his ruddy neck and sneezed. Rico looked at his lunch. Henry leaned against the wall, arms crossed, waiting for some sort of cue from Archie. They all knew. That just made it worse.

Susan looked through the glass at Gretchen. Gretchen was looking at the table. A picture of comportment. Genetically superior. Why did she have to be so perfect-looking? “That’s why you agreed to the profile?” Susan asked Archie, keeping her voice level as best she could. “You thought it would make her tell you where more bodies were?”

Archie took a step forward toward Susan. “The more she thinks I’m sharing with you, the more she’ll want to reinforce her control, and the more bodies she’ll give me.” His gaze flickered through the glass at Gretchen and held. Then back at Susan. “She’s mentioned your stories. She reads your work. That’s why I chose you.” Underneath heavy lids, his eyes were full of apology and determination, and something else. It was something in his expression, something a half a second off. That’s when it hit Susan. Jesus Christ, she thought, he’s high.

“Help me,” he said.

He was high on pills. She could see him see her register it. They were prescription pills. He was in pain. But he didn’t offer any explanations. He laughed. “Fuck,” he said, rubbing his eyes with one hand. He leaned his forehead against the glass and he looked at Gretchen Lowell. No one said a word. Susan thought she could hear someone’s watch ticking. The lawyer blew his nose. Finally, Archie turned his head back toward Susan. “I should never have brought you here. I’m sorry.”

Susan lifted her chin toward the window. “What does she want with me?” she asked.

Archie looked at Susan. He ran a hand over his mouth, through his hair. “She wants to size you up. See what you know.”

“About you.”

He nodded a few times. “Yup.”

“What do you want me to tell her?”

He looked her in the eye. “The truth. She has a marvelous bullshit detector. But if you go in there, she will fuck with you. She’s not a nice person. And she will not like you.”

Susan tried to smile. “I’m charming.”

Archie’s craggy face was dead serious. “She will feel threatened by you and she will be mean to you. You need to understand that.”

Susan put her palm on the glass, so that Gretchen Lowell’s head rested in the crux between her thumb and forefinger. “Can I write about it?”

“I can’t stop you.”

“True.”

“But no pens,” Archie said definitively.

“Why?”

He looked in through the glass at Gretchen. Susan could see his eyes travel over her, her neck, her arms, her hands. It reminded her of the way someone might linger over a lover. “Because I don’t want her using it to stab you in the throat,” he said.