Heartsick by Chelsea Cain Page A

voice casual.

    Claire shrugged, her eyes still on the microwave timer. Thin people, Anne noticed, never seemed to stop eating. “Fine,” Claire said. She lifted a hand to her mouth and tore at a bloody cuticle.

    “Fine?”

    Claire’s gray eyes steeled and her hand fluttered to her lap. “Yes, Anne. Fine. They ask you to keep an eye on him?”

    “I’m just concerned about a friend,” Anne said. She examined Claire, the dark circles under her eyes, the bitten cuticles. The stress was already taking its toll.

    “Work’s the best thing for him,” Claire said. The microwave dinged and Claire hurried to push her chair back and stand up. “Besides, Henry says he’s okay.”

    “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