Chelsea Cain - Heartsick

He does not hear her come in, but suddenly Gretchen is there, smiling beside him. She caresses his hair, which is wet with sweat. “It’s time for your medicine, darling,” she purrs. With a swift motion, she tears the tape off his mouth.

She is gentle as she pushes the funnel into his throat, but it still makes him gag. He fights it, jerking his head from side to side, trying to lift himself on his elbows, but she knots her fist in his hair and holds his head firmly in place. “Now, now,” she scolds.

She has a handful of pills and she drops them down his throat one by one. He gags and tries to spit them out, but she extracts the funnel, presses his jaw shut, and rubs his throat with her hand, forcing him to swallow them like a dog.

“What are they?” he croaks.

“You don’t get to talk yet,” she says. She smoothes another piece of tape over his mouth. He is almost thankful. What is there to say?

“What do you want to do today?” she asks.

Archie stares at the ceiling, his eyes burning for sleep.

“Look at me,” she says between clenched teeth.

He does.

“What do you want to do today?”

He raises his eyebrows in an expression of ambivalence.

“More of the nails?”

He can’t stop himself from flinching.

Gretchen beams. He can tell his pain pleases her. “They’re looking for you,” she says in a singsong voice. “But they’re not going to find you.”

Wherever they are, she is reading the paper, watching the news, he thinks.

She puts her face next to his so he can see her smooth ivory skin, her huge pupils. “I want you to think about what we’re going to send them,” she says matter-of-factly. She runs her fingertips lightly along the skin of his arm, his wrist. “Hand, foot, that sort of thing. Something nice to let them know we’re thinking of them. I’m going to let you pick it out.”

Archie closes his eyes. He is not here. This is not happening. He tries frantically to conjure Debbie’s face on the black canvas of his eyelids. He can see her as she was that last morning. He has already mentally cataloged every item of clothing she was wearing. The thick-cabled green wool sweater. The gray skirt. The long coat that made her look like a Russian soldier. He conjures every freckle on her face. Her tiny diamond earrings. The mole on her neck, just above her breastbone.

“Look at me,” Gretchen orders.

He squeezes his eyes shut tighter. Her wedding band. Round knees. The freckles on her pale thigh.

“Look at me,” she says again, her voice airless.

Fuck you , he thinks.

She stabs him just under his left rib cage. He howls and wrenches in pain and his eyes fly open instinctively.

She holds his head firmly by a fistful of hair and bends over him so that her breasts are inches above his chest and she twists the scalpel farther into his flesh. He gets a flash of her smell-lilacs, sweet sweat, talcum powder-it is a relief from the putrid stench of the corpse.

“I don’t like to be ignored,” she says in a voice just above a whisper. “Understand?”

He nods, straining against her hand.

“Good.” She pulls the scalpel out and drops it on the instrument tray.

S usan pulled intoone of the freshly designated visitor parking spots at the task force offices. She was a half hour early. Susan was never early. She didn’t even like people who were early. But she had woken up at sunrise with that burning hum in her stomach she got when she was about to write a really good story. Ian had already left by then. If he’d woken Susan up to say goodbye, she didn’t remember it.

A fog had settled on the city overnight, and the air was heavy and wet. The chilly humidity soaked into everything, so that even the inside of Susan’s car felt like it might mildew as she sat there.

To pass the time now, she opened her phone, punched in a number, and left a message on the voice mail she knew by heart. “Hi, Ethan. It’s Susan Ward. From the alley.” From the alley? Christ. “I mean the Herald. I was wondering if you’d had a chance to talk to Molly about me. I really think her story deserves to be heard. Anyway, give me call. Okay?” Ian had said not to pursue the story. That it was a time waster. But she had some time to kill, so why not do some background? Background wasn’t really pursuit. Really.

She waited in the car for a few more minutes, smoking a cigarette and watching people go in and out of the building. Susan was usually a social smoker. She smoked when she was out. When she drank. And sometimes when she was nervous. She hated being nervous. She flung the cigarette out the car window and watched the tiny explosion of sparks as it hit the pavement. Then she checked her appearance in the rearview mirror. She was dressed entirely in black, with her pink hair pulled back into a low ponytail. Jesus, she thought , I look like a punk-rock ninja. There was nothing to be done. She bit the bullet and went inside.

They had worked all night on transforming the bank into a working squad room. The boxes that yesterday had sat half-unpacked were now flattened and stacked by the door, waiting to be hauled away. The desks sat in pairs, facing each other, each equipped with a computer and black flat-screen monitor. No wonder the public education budget was short. Enlarged school photographs of each of the girls, as well as dozens of snapshots, were pinned to a wall-size bulletin board. Several city maps hung beside them, peppered with colorful pushpins. A copier was noisily spitting out paper. Coffee cups and water bottles sat on desks. Susan could smell coffee brewing. She counted seven detectives, all on the phone. A female uniformed officer sitting at a long desk immediately inside the door looked up at Susan.

“I’m here to see Archie Sheridan,” Susan said. “Susan Ward. I have an appointment.” She pulled her press pass out of her purse and let it dangle from its lanyard a few inches above the desk.

The officer glanced at the press pass, picked up her phone, dialed an extension, and announced Susan’s arrival. “You can go back,” she said, already returning to her computer monitor.

Susan made her way through the bank to Archie’s office. This time, the white venetian blinds were open and she could see him sitting at his desk reading some papers. The door was ajar and she knocked lightly on it, feeling a slight flutter of nerves in her stomach.

“Good morning,” he said, standing up.

She went in and took the hand he offered. “Good morning. Sorry I’m early.”

His eyebrows quirked up. “Are you?”

“About thirty minutes.”

He shrugged slightly and just stood there. Susan counted four empty coffee cups on his desk.

Oh God. He was waiting for her to sit down first. Right. She scrambled into one of the burgundy vinyl armchairs that faced his desk.

He sat down. The office was small, just big enough for a large cherry-veneer desk with a built-in bookcase behind it and two armchairs in front of it. A small window overlooked the street, where cars sped by at a regular clip. He was wearing the same corduroy jacket from the day before, but today his button-down shirt was blue. She felt like she should be asking for a loan. “So how do we do this?”

Archie placed his hands in front of him on the desk, palms down. “You tell me.” His expression was friendly, welcoming.

“Well,” Susan said slowly. “I’ll need access. To you.”

He nodded. “As long it doesn’t get in the way of me doing my job, sure.”

“You don’t have a problem with that? Me following you around while you’re trying to work?”

“No.”

“And I’ll want to talk to people around you.” She examined his face. It remained relaxed, unconcerned. “Your ex-wife, for instance.”