Chelsea Cain - Heartsick

“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 hadbeen 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.”