Kill You Twice (30 page)

Archie squeezed her hand. “What else do you remember?” he asked.

Susan looked at their intertwined fingers; and then at Henry. “Why are you so dirty?” she asked.

“Gardening,” Henry said.

“Focus on remembering,” Archie said.

She nodded and looked off at something Archie couldn’t see. “He was laughing and spewing Bible quotes,” she said. “ ‘We reap what we sow,’ and stuff like
that. We made these weapons out of broken mirror pieces and towels and he was about to smash in the door, so we unlocked it, and when he body-slammed it, he fell through and we squirted tea tree
oil in his eyes and I stabbed him in the leg with the mirror. He dropped the machete and Pearl picked it up. But he’d already stabbed me with the hypodermic.” She touched her leg.
“Right here. What was it?”

“A sedative,” Archie said, with a glance at Cloop.

“It worked right away,” Susan said. “I couldn’t help her. But she had the machete. I told her to use it.”

Archie looked questioningly at Claire.

“We didn’t find a machete,” Claire said. “And I don’t think she used it. There’s not enough blood.”

Bliss blew into the room and froze, her red lips a round circle. “I shouldn’t have left,” she wailed.

“I’m okay, Mom,” Susan said as Bliss swept to her bedside, elbowing Cloop out of the way and taking Susan in her arms. Susan’s hand slid from Archie’s grasp as she
reached around her mother’s shoulders.

Archie’s hand throbbed as his circulation returned.

“I tried to keep her safe,” Susan said.

Bliss held on to Susan. When she lifted her head, there was a bright ring of red lipstick on Susan’s neck.

Susan’s mouth was small, the way it got when she was troubled.

“What is it?” Archie asked her.

“He said, ‘Pearl, have you accepted the Lord?’ ” Susan said. “He called her Margaux when he tried to grab her at the center.”

Henry said, “Maybe he heard you call her Pearl.”

Susan shook her head, her expression dead certain. “I didn’t say her name. Not once.”

It was not the only thing that bothered Archie. If Colin Beaton had hunted Pearl down because he thought she had seen him at the scene of Jake Kelly’s kidnapping, then why leave Susan
alive?

He needed to get out of there, to get looking. But as he stood up, Susan caught his hand.

“You have to find her,” she said. “Promise me.”

“Everyone is mobilized,” Archie said. “We’ve issued a three-state Amber Alert. The FBI is coming in. State cops. Everyone. We’ll get him.”

“Promise me,” Susan said. She looked him in the eye. “Because if you promise me, I’ll believe you.”

Archie hesitated. He looked down at their hands. His hand was grimy with soil, black under his fingernails and caked into his knuckles. Susan’s hand. The white blanket. It was all dirty.
Everything he’d touched. Susan reached her other hand and folded it around the first, so that his hand was tucked in hers.

He looked up at her. And he had to fight the urge to lean forward and put his lips on her forehead. Because if he did that, he would want more. “I’ll find her,” he said.
“I promise you.”

Her eyes darted to the left, over his shoulder, in the direction of the door into the room. “Leo,” she said. “Who called you?”

Archie looked over his shoulder as Leo Reynolds walked into the room.

“I did,” Archie said. He pulled his hand away from Susan’s. “You and your mother need somewhere safe to stay.”

CHAPTER

T
he cocaine was
gone. It had been the first thing Susan had checked, in the guise of taking a shower. The whole gym bag
was gone. Like it had never existed.

Now she sat, wet-haired, on Leo’s couch, wearing his robe, pondering the irony of Archie sending Bliss and her to stay with a drug dealer to keep them safe.

Bliss had the TV on. All the local channels were live with coverage. Bliss flipped through them, as if one might offer some new information, some glimmer of hope; but it was all the same images,
over and over again. Pearl, represented by a series of DCS mug shots, the digital composite of Colin Beaton, and video of an earlier press conference—the chief of police, the mayor, and
Archie, freshly scrubbed and in a clean suit. Footage of their house, lit up by TV news lights, cops going in and out. Beaton was still at large. Pearl was still missing.

Bliss changed the channel again. She looked pale, her mouth a tight, small line.

“Archie will find her,” Susan said.

“Archie could have killed you,” Bliss said, not moving her eyes from the TV. Ever since the doctor had told them about the call Archie had made to force her out of sedation, Bliss
had been seething. Maybe if her mother could have had the opportunity to scream at Archie, she would have gotten it out of her system. But Archie had gone by the time she found out, so Bliss was
reduced to angry grumbling.

“He knew what he was doing,” Susan said, though she wasn’t sure she believed it.

Bliss turned and looked at Susan. The muscles in Bliss’s neck were taut. When she put her hand on Susan’s leg, Susan could feel it tremble. “Don’t waste your time on
him,” Bliss said quietly. “There’s a reason his marriage didn’t work out.”

Little did she know, thought Susan.

“I’m going to get some water,” Susan said. She stood up and went into the kitchen. Leo’s kitchen was all steel appliances and sharp angles. He was making tea. His
gleaming white dress shirt was rolled up at the sleeves and his black pants were crisply pressed. He looked up at her and smiled. “Chamomile,” he said.

Susan lifted herself up to sit on the black granite counter, next to the two matching white ceramic mugs that Leo had ready for the tea. “Do you have any blow?” she asked.

Leo raised his eyebrows. He picked up the electric kettle and poured steaming water into the two cups. “Do you think that’s a good idea right now?”

“I think it’s the perfect idea right now,” Susan said. “I need a boost.”

He picked up a spoon and stirred the tea bag in one cup, then the other. Susan could smell the chamomile, pungent and floral. “All out,” Leo said.

She poked him in the arm with her index finger. “You’re lying.”

“You just got out of the hospital, Susan.”

Susan pushed herself off the counter. “So let’s celebrate,” she said. She headed for his bedroom, and he followed her. She knew where he kept a gram now and again. It
wasn’t like she didn’t know he did coke occasionally. She wasn’t stupid. She opened the top drawer of his dresser, and he closed the bedroom door. Inside the drawer was a leather
toiletry bag. Susan pulled it out and unzipped it. The coke was in a little plastic bag, the kind you get at bead stores. There was also a black straw, about two inches long.

“Good news,” Susan said. “Looks like you’ve got some left.”

Leo stood just inside the bedroom door with his hands in his pockets.

She tapped some white powder out of the bag onto the smooth dark wood of his dresser.

“You don’t want to do much of that,” Leo said.

Susan ignored him, put her hair behind her ears, plugged one nostril, and snorted.

She recoiled immediately—her nose burned and her eyes watered. She rubbed at her nose and jumped up and down. “Fuck, that’s strong,” she said.

“It’s uncut,” Leo said quietly.

“Get me a tissue,” Susan said, flailing a hand.

He laid a handkerchief in her palm. He was that kind of guy, the guy with the cloth handkerchief.

Susan blew her nose and handed him back the handkerchief.

She actually felt great. Her arms tickled. Her brain felt warm. She felt like she was getting more oxygen, like a veil of haze had been lifted. “That’s really good shit,” she
said.

“Archie’s going to fucking kill me,” Leo said.

“Why do you care so much what Archie thinks?” Susan asked.

“Why do you?” Leo countered.

Susan shrugged and turned away. She felt like moving.

“He caught my sister’s killer,” Leo said. “We have a relationship. I’ve known him forever.”

“He doesn’t even like you,” Susan said. Did she say that aloud? She put her hand over her mouth. “Sorry.”

“He likes me,” Leo said. “He just doesn’t like me with you.”

“Why?”

“He could probably foresee this moment,” Leo said.

“I found the gym bag.” She had said it. It had come right out. That’s what a bump of cocaine gave you—courage. She put her hands on her hips for emphasis.

Leo blinked at her, then exhaled like someone had socked him in the belly. He threaded his hands behind his head. “Fuck,” he said. He was sputtering, shaking his head. He looked
angry, even angrier than she thought he’d be. “Fucking Christ, Susan. I told you not to snoop.”

His reaction made Susan feel defensive. “You’re a drug dealer,” she said, “just like your father.”

“Did you touch it?” Leo asked. He was pacing, looking at the floor. “Shit, they’re going to print it.” He walked over to her and took her by the arms. “Did
you touch the plastic?”

Susan was confused. “Print it? What? No.”

He let go of her and backed away.

“What did you do with it?” Susan asked him.

He turned away from her and started pacing again. “Shit, we cannot be having this conversation. Not now.”

The seriousness of this was settling on her. “What are you?” she asked.

His look was sharp. “What did you think I was?”

“A lawyer.”

He leveled a skeptical gaze at her. “With one client?”

Susan’s nose was running. She didn’t want to ask for the handkerchief again. She sniffled and wiped it with her hand. “That was a lot of coke, Leo.”

His eyes widened slightly. It was quick, but she caught it. “Yeahhh,” he said.

It wasn’t coke. It had looked like coke. “What was it?” Susan asked. She didn’t feel euphoric anymore, just jittery. “Was it heroin?”

Heroin. Hero. It was weird the way the brain worked. Maybe it was the cocaine. Maybe it was free association. All Susan knew was that up until that moment she had forgotten about the note that
her mother had left her, about Gabby Meester and the
Trib
’s Heroes column. And now she remembered. And what’s more, she remembered that when she and Bliss went back into the
house, the note was gone. It had been next to her laptop, next to the phone. And then it wasn’t there. Beaton had taken it. Because it was important.

“I need your computer,” Susan said.

CHAPTER

A
rchie stared into
the darkness of Gretchen’s room. The hall lights made a door-shaped rectangle of light on the
floor. The room was cold.

“Are you awake?” Archie asked.

“Yes,” Gretchen said.

The light switch was in the hall, just outside the door. Archie flipped it on, and the door on the floor disappeared as the room sprang into sick institutional color. Gretchen was lying on her
back in bed. He had the feeling that she’d been lying there a long time awake in the dark.

“Gretchen Stevens,” Archie said. “It’s a pleasure.”

She didn’t react visibly to that. But then he wasn’t close enough to see any minute shifts of expression play on her face. “What a busy bee you’ve been,” she said.
She turned her head and looked at him. “I wasn’t expecting you. No one came in to tie me up.”

“I’ve had a long day,” Archie said from the doorway. “I didn’t call ahead.”

She beckoned him with a hand. “Come and fill me in. I’m a little out of the loop.”

Archie walked to her. She scooted a little over in the bed and propped herself up on her elbows and he sat down on the edge of the bed. He could feel his closeness to her.

Her hand ran up his back and threaded into the short hairs at the base of his neck. “Tell me about your day,” she said.

His shoulders relaxed under her touch and he let his head drop forward. “Your old friend Colin Beaton put Susan Ward in the hospital and he kidnapped a kid named Margaux Clinton.
Seventeen. A foster kid, like you.”

He stole a sideways glance at her.

She gave him a small smile. “He doesn’t like that name now.”

“Sorry, Ryan Motley.”

She looked different. Her skin was clearer, and her eyes seemed sharper. The slowness of her speech was gone. Or was he imagining it?

Her fingers moved deeper into his hairline, caressing his scalp.

“The Beatons took you in,” he said. “And you murdered James Beaton. Was it Colin’s idea? Did you do it together?”

“That’s sweet,” she cooed. “You want to blame it on him. He was the psychopath and I was the innocent flower, caught up in the carnage.” Her lips spread into a
wicked smile. “Sorry, darling. Daddy Beaton was all me.”

“You turned Colin into a killer,” Archie said.

“I showed him how to survive—I didn’t know he was insane.”

Archie chuckled dryly. “Now he’s the insane one?”

Gretchen sat up so that she was directly behind him, and she put her head over his shoulder and her lips to his ears. Her warm breath fluttered against his neck. “He’s testing
God,” she whispered.

The Church of Living Christ. Scriptural purists. “He believes in faith healing,” Archie said, understanding. Gretchen tortured her victims for her own amusement. Beaton tortured his
victims to make dying last longer, to give them as much time as possible for God to step in. “He tries to save them.”

Gretchen’s face lit up with delight. “With
prayer
. And they die anyway, of course.” She arched an eyebrow. “You’d think he’d catch on.”

“Why did he carve the hearts on some of the children?”

“It’s a private joke.”

“It’s not very funny.”

She shrugged and settled back onto her elbows again.

Archie looked around the sad, dank room. “Is this better than prison?” he asked.

“It’s better than lethal injection.”

“Worried that the angels won’t be there to greet you?”

She blinked, and looked away, and Archie couldn’t tell if she was really feeling something or if she was just faking it. When she looked back at him, her eyes were soft. “Lie next to
me,” she said.

Archie glanced at the door. This was going too far. He scratched the back of his head. He could feel the weight of her stare. He took off his shoes, slowly, and lined them up side by side on the
floor. Then he stretched out next to her on the bed, so that they were shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip.