Heartsick

CHAPTER 48

Archie was high. He stood at the river’s edge, hands in his pockets, a fine mist of rain settling on his shoulders. One of these days, he was going to get one of those waterproof jackets that everyone kept recommending. It was nearly two o’clock in the morning. But he wasn’t tired. The right dose of Vicodin kept him in a state of perpetual in-between. Not tired, not awake. It wasn’t such a bad state of mind once you got used to it.

Behind him, about fifty feet from the river’s edge, was the downtown branch of the Green Hornet River Patrol office. Rectangular, with brown plastic siding, the building looked like something that had come in a box and been put together in an afternoon. Henry, Claire, Susan, and the others were inside. They were talking to her first; then Archie would be up. He had sneaked out to get some air. The Chris-Craft had been towed to the dock, and Archie watched now as the crime-scene techs set up 1,800-watt lights that lit the exterior of the boat up like a movie set.

Addy Jackson was stable and on her way to Emanuel. The Rohypnol fog was already lifting, and she was conscious, though confused and unable to answer questions yet. Archie hoped that she would be blessed with the drug’s more amnesiac properties.

The press had yet to arrive. They would have heard the police call by then, but Portland was still a small market, and the TV stations worked skeleton shifts at night. Archie imagined them pulling on their news slickers, racing to the scene, prepared to go live with the story for as long as they could wring the drama from it. It would start all over again.

Archie heard the man behind him before he saw him. A few footsteps, and then the silhouette of a fat man appeared in the dark. Archie didn’t even need to turn his head. He recognized the faint smell of liquor and stale cigarettes.

“Quentin Parker,” Archie said.

“Heard you caught yourself another one.”

“You working this?”

“I’ve got a kid with me,” Parker said. “Derek Rogers. Plus, Ian Harper’s on his way.”

“Ah.”

Parker snorted. “You think he’s a twit now. Wait until you meet him.”

The two stood side by side for a long moment, watching the Chris-Craft, the lights, the black river. Finally, Archie spoke. “You never came to see me in the hospital. Everyone else was scrambling to sneak into my room, begging for interviews, sending flowers, impersonating doctors. Not you.”

The big man shrugged. “Never got around to it.”

“It was appreciated,” Archie said.

Parker fumbled for a cigarette, lit it, and took a drag. It was tiny in his hand, the tip glowing orange in the darkness. “You’re going to be famous again.”

Archie looked up at the sky. The moon was a smear of light behind the cloud cover. “I’m thinking of moving to Australia.”

“Watch yourself, Sheridan. Those stories Susan did have stirred things up. The whole ‘tragic hero’ thing goes over well, but pretty soon they’ll want more. The pills. Your weekly sit-downs with Gretchen Lowell. We’ll eat you alive for that shit. The mayor, Henry, they can only do so much to protect you. If the Fourth Estate smells blood, there’s gonna be a bloodbath.”

“Thanks for the advice.”

“Bad call, huh?” Parker said, bringing his fist to his mouth, the cigarette a tiny lantern.

“What?” Archie asked.

“Becoming a cop,” he said, looking at the cigarette in his hand. “Should’ve been an academic.” He ashed the cigarette with a delicate flick of his big wrist. “Taught school somewhere.”

“Too late now,” Archie said.

“Me. I wanted to be a car salesman.” He looked into the distance and smiled. “Oldsmobiles.” He gave Archie a shrug and studied the cigarette. “Got sidetracked as a copy boy. Tenth grade. Nineteen fifty-nine. Never went to college. They used to print the paper right there. In the basement. I used to love the smell of the ink.” He brought the cigarette to his mouth again, took a drag, and exhaled it. “These days? Paper won’t hire someone for an unpaid internship unless they’ve got an Ivy League degree.”

“Times change.”

“How’s our girl?”

Archie looked up at the office. “Pissed.”

“She’s a hell of a kid.”

“Can I have a piece of gum?” Susan asked. She was in a back room in the patrol office with Henry and Claire. There was a desk in the room, and a task chair. The walls were covered with nautical charts. The desk was stacked with black binders with the city seal on them, and white and pink pieces of paper that appeared to be various forms and reports, boxes checked, explanations filled in, stamped, certified, signed. It was a man’s office. Color photographs of him hung on the walls in cheap diploma frames. Fishing. Standing around with other men in green uniforms. Formal Sears portraits with the family. He had a mustache and an exuberant expression. In some of the more recent pictures, he had a beard. To the left of the desk was a four-shelf metal bookcase, stacked with books about marine law and Oregon history. On top of the bookcase was a jar of fat pink bubblegum.

“Sure.” Claire plucked a piece of gum from the jar and handed it to Susan.

Susan unwrapped it and put it in her mouth. Her hands were still sore from the tape, and her wrists were raw. The gum was sugary and hard. “It’s stale,” Susan declared sadly.

“Just a few more questions,” Claire said. “Before your mother breaks down the door.”

“My mom’s here?” Susan asked, surprised.

“Outside,” Henry said. “They practically had to put her in a half-nelson to keep her out of here while we wrapped up.”

Bliss was there. Bliss had come and was waiting for her. It was something a mother would do. Susan imagined the cops having to deal with her. Bliss was probably bossing everyone around, threatening to go to the Citizen’s Police Action Committee. Susan smiled happily.

“What?” said Claire.

“Nothing,” Susan said. “Go ahead.” They had been going over the same questions for almost an hour. Susan felt that she had recounted, minute by minute, every interaction she’d had with Paul Reston since she was fourteen years old. She had told them how he had manipulated Addy. Now she didn’t want to think about him anymore. Her head throbbed. The EMTs had used butterfly bandages to tape the cut on her forehead shut, but she was going to have a hell of a black eye in the morning. She wanted a cigarette. And a bath. And she wanted her mother.

Claire was leaning against one wall, Henry against the other. “You’re sure he didn’t mention any other girls, girls we might not know about?” Claire asked.

“I’m sure,” Susan said.

“And you didn’t save any letters that he sent?”

There had been hundreds of them. She had tossed them in the bonfire on her dead father’s birthday while she was still in college. “I got rid of them all. Years ago.”

Claire gave Susan a careful appraisal. “And you’re okay? You don’t need to go to the hospital?”

Susan touched her neck, where an ugly red mark had formed. It stung, but it would heal. “I’ll be fine.”

There was a knock at the door and Henry opened it and Archie Sheridan walked in.

“Maybe we can wrap this up in the morning?” he asked. “Let Susan go home and get some sleep?”

“Sure,” Henry said. He glanced at his watch and turned to Claire. “You still up for heading back to McCallum’s?”

“For what?” Archie asked.

“He wants to see if he can find that goddamn cat,” Claire said. She made a face at Archie. “He’s such a softy.”

“What?” said Henry as he and Claire left the office. “I like cats.”

Archie’s hair and clothes glistened with condensation. He looked like something that had been left in the yard overnight and now was covered with dew. Susan wanted to leap into his arms. “You’re all wet,” she observed.

“It’s raining,” Archie said.

“Thank God,” Susan muttered. And then she started to cry. She felt Archie kneel down next to her and put his arm around her and pull her into his wet corduroy blazer. She let herself sob. Not because she wanted to, but because she couldn’t stop it. Her whole body shook, gasping for air. She hid her face. Archie smelled like rain. His sweater scratched her cheek, but she didn’t care. After a few minutes, she looked up and saw that Henry and Claire were gone.

“Feel better?” Archie asked softly.

Susan held her hands out in front of her and watched them quaver. “No.”

“Afraid?” he asked.

Susan considered this. “The expression ‘scared shitless’ comes to mind.”

Archie looked her in the eyes. “It’ll pass,” he said.

She examined his face, his eyes full of kindness, his pupils tiny. That had been quite a performance on the boat. If it had been a performance. “What are you afraid of, Archie?” she asked.

He slid her an amused, suspicious glance. “Is this for your story?”

“Yes.” She looked at him for a minute and then laughed. “But we can go off the record if you want.”

He was thoughtful and then his face grew dark and he seemed to shake some prickly idea from his head. “I think I’m done being a subject for a while,” he said.

She nodded, and in that moment she realized that Archie had never told her anything, never let her see anything, that he didn’t want her to know. It didn’t matter. He could have his secrets. She was done with hers. “He said that I was his person,” she told him. “He said that we all have people in the world we belong to. Connect with. And that I was his. He said that there was no denying it.”

Archie laid his hand on her arm. “He was wrong.”

She rested her fist on Archie’s chest. “Well, anyway,” she said, “this is going to sound dorky, but thanks for saving my life.”

“It doesn’t sound dorky at all.”

She leaned forward and kissed him. It was a light kiss on the lips. He didn’t move. He didn’t reciprocate, but he didn’t pull away, either. When she opened her eyes, he smiled at her gently.

“You’ve got to get over that,” he said. “The older men in authority thing.”

She made a face. “Right. I’ll get right on that.”

Susan walked out of the office into the foyer of the patrol office. She saw her mother before her mother saw her. Bliss’s red lipstick was faded and she looked small in her big leopard-print coat. Quentin Parker, Derek the Square, and Ian Harper were huddled a few yards away from her, and Bliss stood by herself against the wall. Ian saw Susan and smiled, but Susan barely gave him a glance as she went straight to her mother. Bliss looked up and burst into tears and wrapped her arms around Susan. She reeked of menthols and wet old fur and pressed against Susan like they might merge into one person. Susan was aware of her colleagues watching, but she was only slightly mortified.

“They told me about Reston,” Bliss said in a shaky whisper. “I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Susan said. She peeled her mother off of her and kissed her on the cheek. “I think it’s going to be okay now.”

She squinted past them through a bank of rain-splattered windows and for a second she thought it was daylight, until she realized that the lights were from the TV cameras. She was news and they all wanted a shot of her for the local morning shows. She was definitely going to have to do something different with her hair. Maybe dye it blue.

“Hey,” Susan said to her mother. “Can I bum a cigarette?”

Bliss’s brow furrowed. “You’ll get lung cancer,” she said.

Susan fixed her steely gaze on her mother. “Give me a cigarette, Bliss.”

Bliss dug a pack of menthols out of her enormous purse and held one out toward Susan. Then withdrew it when Susan reached for it. “Call me Mom,” she said.

“Give me a cigarette.” Susan paused and scrunched her face up with effort. “Mom.”

“Now try Mother dearest.”

“Give me the fucking cigarette.”

Bliss laughed and handed Susan the cigarette and then pressed a plastic lighter into her hands.

Parker stepped forward. “We need to talk,” he said to Susan. “And only partially because I want to scoop the assholes waiting outside.”

“I’ll give you the facts,” Susan said. “But I’m filing a harrowing personal account in the morning.”

There was Ian. He was wearing a Yankees sweatshirt and jeans, clearly pulled on after a middle-of-the-night phone call, and all she could think was, You went to sleep when you knew I was missing? You asshole.

But he looked at her like nothing had changed. Like she hadn’t changed. Well, she hadn’t changed. But she planned to. She put the cigarette in her mouth, lit it, and handed the lighter back to her mother. She only vaguely noticed that her hand was still trembling.

She took a drag off the cigarette, putting a lot of elbow in it, like she had seen in old French movies, and she appraised him-arrogant, condescending, professorial. And she saw in Ian every boss, every teacher she’d ever slept with. Yeah. It was probably time to consider therapy. She wondered idly if the paper’s health-insurance policy covered it. This probably wasn’t the time to ask. “Once this whole thing is done,” she said to Ian, “I want to work on the Molly Palmer story. Full-time.”

“It’s career suicide,” Ian protested. Then, in a final attempt at dissuasion, he added, “It’s tabloid journalism.”

“Hey,” Bliss said. “My daughter-”

“Mom,” Susan warned, and Bliss was silent. Susan was composed, indomitable. “Molly was a teenager, Ian. I want to find out what happened. I want to get her side of the story.”

Ian sighed and rocked back on his heels. He opened his mouth as if to argue, then seemed to think better of it and threw his hands in the air. The smoke from Susan’s cigarette was getting in his eyes. She didn’t move it. “You won’t get her to talk,” he said. “She hasn’t talked to anyone. But if you want to try…” He let that trail off.

Bliss didn’t drive, and Susan’s car was back in the Pearl District. “I don’t suppose you have money for a cab?” Susan asked her mother.

Bliss frowned. “I don’t carry money,” she said.

“Your purse,” Parker said to Susan, extracting her small black purse from the pocket of his coat and handing it to her. “They found it in Reston ’s car.”

“I’ll drive you both home when you’re ready.” It was Derek the Square. He hadn’t had time to blow-dry his hair, and it protruded straight out from his skull like grass.

“I’m going to need you to file the story, kid,” Parker said. “Get it up on-line before we get scooped. You go home early, don’t expect to see your byline.”

Derek shrugged, throwing a glance at Susan. “There’ll be other stories.”

“I need a new mentee,” Parker said to Ian. “This one isn’t working out.” But Susan could tell he didn’t mean it.

“What do you drive?” Susan asked Derek. “Let me guess. A Jetta? No. A Taurus?”

Derek dangled a ring of keys from his fingers. “An old Mercedes,” he said. “It runs on biodiesel.”

Susan tried to ignore the slow grin she could see spreading on Bliss’s face.

“First, I’ll need to go to my apartment for my laptop,” Susan told Derek as she took a drag off her cigarette. “Then I want to go home. To Bliss’s.” Derek’s eyebrows shot up. “My mom’s house,” Susan explained quickly, digging through her purse for her cell phone. “She lives in Southeast.” She looked at her phone screen. She had eighteen new messages.

“Bliss?” Derek said.

Bliss held out a hand. “How do you do,” she said.

Susan was going to say something clever, but she got distracted by her voice mail. The first message was from Molly Palmer.

Anne shrugged on her long leather coat. She wasn’t needed. But she always liked witnessing the wrap-up. It gave her a sense of closure. She dug for her car keys as she exited the patrol office. The damp Northwest weather had officially returned. Anne didn’t know how the natives stood it. It just made her feel like the entire world was rotting away around her.

“Good job today.” It was Archie, standing in the drizzle just outside the door.

Anne smiled. “You want a lift?” she asked. “I’m headed back to the Heathman. I can drop you.”

“No. I’ve got a cab coming.”

Anne looked inside, where Claire and Henry were conferring with the crime-scene techies. “Someone here will drive you.”

Archie shrugged. “I’ve got to make a stop.”

“At this time of night?” Anne asked. She had an idea where he was going. She had gone to see Gretchen Lowell herself, in those first few days when Archie lay in a medically induced coma. Anne’s bad profile had stung, and she’d thought she might learn something from the Beauty Killer. But Gretchen had refused to talk. She’d sat mutely for an hour in her cell while Anne peppered her with questions. And then Anne had gotten up to leave, and Gretchen had finally spoken. One sentence: “Is he still alive?”

“You heading back tomorrow, or are you going to stick around for all of the congratulatory press conferences?” Archie asked.

Anne let him change the subject. “I’m on the red-eye.” You couldn’t force it, she knew, until he was ready for help. But it hurt her to see him suffer, and it hurt her more to not be able to do anything for him. “So I’m around during the day,” she said. She was going to skip the press conferences. There were two pairs of size fourteen sneakers at the Nike outlet with her sons’ names on them. But she added, just in case, “If you want to talk.”

Archie fingered something in his coat pocket and looked at his shoes. “I need to talk to someone.”

“But not to me,” Anne guessed.

Archie glanced up and smiled at her. He looked exhausted to Anne, and she wondered if she looked similarly worn.

“Have a nice flight,” he said warmly. “It was good to see you.”

Anne took a small step toward him. “Anything that happened. While you were with Gretchen. Anything you felt or did. You can’t judge it. It was an extreme situation. She constructed an extreme situation. To push you.”

He looked away, into the night. “I gave up everything I loved in that basement,” Archie explained. His voice was low, controlled. “My children. My wife. My work. My life. I was going to die. In her arms. And I was all right with that. Because she would be there.” He looked right at Anne. “Taking care of me.”

“She’s a psychopath.”

A yellow cab pulled into the small parking lot behind the office. “Yeah,” Archie said, taking a step toward it. “But she’s my psychopath.”