Sweetheart (29 page)

Henry lifted his finger and touched his nose. “Your nose is broken,” he said.

Bliss appeared then. Susan couldn’t help but notice her freshly applied red lipstick. When she looked at Susan, she winced, her top lip peeling back in disgust. Bliss had never liked the sight of blood.

The sink. Susan must have cracked her nose on the sink when she fell.

“Fine,” Susan said to Henry. “But I’m not going anywhere without my purse.”

“I’ll risk an officer’s life immediately to retrieve it from your home,” Henry said.

“Thanks,” said Susan. She turned to the paramedics. “Take me to Emanuel,” she said.

If she had to go to the hospital, she at least wanted to go to the one where Archie’s doctor worked.

H
ow old were you when you broke your nose?” Gretchen asked.

Gretchen ran her finger lightly from Archie’s hairline over his forehead and then down to the bridge of his nose. He was lying on his back in the bed. She was on her side next to him. They had just had sex again and he felt strangely weakened by it. There was a new highness now. Different from the pills. The pills were soft, like a bright haze. This was darker, a blackness that skirted the edges of his vision.

“Seventeen,” he said. He knew the question that came next. “I was in a car accident.”

“Was anyone killed?” she asked.

He hadn’t talked about it in so long that he was surprised when he told her the truth. But it didn’t matter anymore, and the very fact that she had asked made him think that she must somehow know the answer. “My mother,” Archie said.

“Aha,” she said.

“Aha?”

“You were driving,” Gretchen said.

“I haven’t even told Henry this story,” Archie said. Only Debbie. No one else. Not since he’d left home. It was his dirtiest little secret. Besides Gretchen.

“Was it your fault?” Gretchen asked.

“I didn’t see a stop sign.”

Gretchen touched his face, tenderly, he thought. Though it might have been something else. “Your father must have never forgiven you,” she said.

Archie hadn’t seen his father since he’d left home. “No,” he said.

They were quiet for a time, and Archie watched the shadows that the ceiling fan threw.

“My mother died when I was fourteen,” Gretchen said finally.

He wondered if it was even true. “Did you kill her?” Archie asked.

“No,” she said. She lifted herself up on her elbows and looked at him. She looked worried, her brow furrowed a little at the center. “Does it scare you?”

He knew what she meant. “Dying?” he said. “Not right now.”

“It’s always all right, at the end,” she said, taking his hand. “They always look peaceful.” She kissed his knuckles. “You did.”

“That might have had something to do with the torture ending,” Archie said. He withdrew his hand and sat up, putting his bare feet on the floor. “I’m getting up,” he said. “I have to go to the bathroom. And then I need to eat something.” It was a lie. But if his plan was going to work, he needed to get Gretchen into the living room.

Y
ou’re going to what?” Susan asked. She was in an exam room at the Emanuel ER dressed in a snappy pair of borrowed green scrubs. She took her oxygen mask off and said it again. “You’re going to do what?”

“I’m going to realign your nose,” the doctor said. Susan was pretty sure he was eighty years old. When he’d first come in, she’d thought he was one of those old people hospitals used to staff the gift store.

“With your hands?” she asked, horrified.

“Yes.” He reached up, and before she could defend herself, he took hold of her nose with both hands. There was a flash of pain and she made a garbled noise and he lowered his hands and smiled.

“There,” he said. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

Susan lifted her hands to her face. “Ow,” she cried.

“The nurse will splint and bandage you and you’ll be ready to go.”

“Don’t I get pain meds?” Susan asked.

The doctor patted her on the hand. “Ice and Advil. You’ll be right as rain.” He turned to Henry, who had insisted on coming and was sitting in a chair next to the examining table. “This your husband?”

“No,” Henry and Susan both said quickly.

The doctor walked out of the examining room. “No one gets married anymore,” he said on his way into the hall.

The nurse smiled. She was tall with dark hair pulled back in barrettes and features that were all scrunched together at the center of her face. “He’s old-school,” she said. “He doesn’t even use anesthesia.”

Susan touched her nose. The slightest brush of her fingers made it throb. Her mother had been taken back to the Arlington by two patrol cops. Bliss didn’t have the stomach for emergency rooms anyway. Susan wasn’t sure if the patrol cops were supposed to protect Bliss or keep her in custody.

The nurse started dressing her nose with white gauze and tape.

Henry stood up. “I’m going to check on Bennett,” he said. “Don’t go anywhere.”

“Is Dr. Fergus working today?” Susan asked the nurse as soon as Henry was gone.

“Yes,” the nurse said. “Do you know him?”

Susan smiled sweetly. It made her whole face ache. “I’m a family friend,” she said. “Can you ask him to stop by and see me?”

Susan was sitting cross-legged on the exam table wearing the oxygen mask and reading
People
magazine when Fergus came in. He looked the same as the last time she’d seen him, when she’d interviewed him for her profile on Archie Sheridan. Same white bristle cut. Same hulking figure. Same superior attitude. He’d agreed to participate reluctantly, and then only after Archie had signed a HIPAA waiver.

He squinted at her for a moment, not recognizing her with the turquoise hair and bandaged nose. Then he blanched, his upper lip lifting. “Oh, it’s you,” he said.

Susan didn’t give him time to leave. She knew Archie took a lot of pills. And she’d started thinking that he might need a refill. If he did, it might be a way to find him. She let the oxygen mask drop to her lap. “Archie’s medication,” she said. “Does he have enough, or would he need more?”

Fergus sighed and put his hands in the pockets of his white medical coat. “I can’t talk about my patient with you.”

“He’s in trouble,” Susan said.

“Detective Sobol has been in touch,” Fergus said. “If anyone tries to refill any of Archie’s meds, Sobol will be notified.”

“Oh,” Susan said. She probably should have known that Henry had already thought of it.

Fergus turned to leave.

“He’s sick, isn’t he?” Susan called out.

Fergus stopped. His shoulders lifted and fell. She thought he was going to tell her something. It was the way he set his shoulders back, like he wanted to get something off his chest. She leaned forward, ready to hear it.

“You’ll want to keep ice on that,” he said.

Henry found Claire in the ER waiting room. She’d found time at some point that day to go home and change and was wearing a T-shirt with a picture of a grizzly bear on it and jeans and red cowboy boots. He felt grimy and tired and his scalp itched. A simple explanation. That’s all he wanted. An accidental carbon monoxide leak. A misunderstanding. Bennett to get a few stitches and laugh it off. Anything that would allow Henry to go to bed for a few hours.

Claire was on her cell phone next to a big sign that read
NO CELL PHONES.
She got off the call when she saw him.

“What’s the word?” he asked her.

“He’s in surgery,” she said. “She drove a fragment of his skull into his brain.” She smirked. “That Buddha packed quite a wallop.”

So much for the nap. “He going to live?” Henry asked.

“Possibly,” Claire said. She put her hands on her hips and shook her head slowly. “He did it.”

Henry raised his eyebrows.

“Heil just called,” Claire said. “We got Bennett’s prints on the furnace. He loosened the thingy.”

“The thingy?” Henry said.

“There might have been a fancier word for it,” Claire said. “Anyway, house closed up like that, it filled right up with poison. A few hours later, she would have been dead three minutes after she came in the front door.”

No. It couldn’t be simple. Not with Susan Ward involved. Henry tried to sort this information out. Why would Bennett try to kill Susan? He rubbed his head. The lack of sleep had settled in his brain like a fog. “He was the first responder to the Molly Palmer crime scene,” Henry theorized. “Maybe he didn’t fall.”

“You think he was trying to destroy evidence?” Claire asked.

“Let’s say he killed Molly Palmer and tried to cover it up. That might give him a reason to go after Susan.”

“Why Susan?”

“She’s working on a story tying Molly Palmer to Castle.”

Claire’s eyes widened. “She was the kid you told me about, the kid he fucked?”

“I think I used a fancier word for it,” Henry said.

He had to protect Susan. He could do that. Archie would want him to. Henry would keep her safe.

If he could keep himself from killing her.

“Let me know if he wakes up,” he said. “We searching his house?”

“Just filed for warrants,” Claire said. Her phone rang and she checked the caller ID. “It’s Flannigan,” she said, lifting it to her ear. Flannigan was back at the task force offices, running the search for Archie. “Let me get this.” She reached up and touched Henry lightly on the shoulder. “It could be good news.”

Y
ou’ll like this,” Gretchen said. “Draw a star.”

They were sitting on the sofa in the living room. Gretchen had put on a white silk blouse and a pair of slacks. Archie was dressed again in the blue shirt and corduroys. He had built a fire while she had made him a sandwich, and now he sat with the sandwich on a plate on his lap. Gretchen had found a pen and notebook in her purse and now handed Archie both.

He put the pen to the pad and tried to draw a star. It came out wrong, one side trailing off. It looked like a triangle. He tried again. The same thing happened.

“I can’t,” he said, examining the pen.

“You can track your neurological decline,” Gretchen said. She got up, leaving Archie to ponder the lopsided lumpy drawing. “It will get worse,” she said as she walked to the bar.

“I tried to make love to Debbie yesterday, and couldn’t get hard,” Archie said, putting the notebook on the floor with the sandwich. He couldn’t eat, and his urine was tinged with blood.

Gretchen was pouring them two drinks at the bar. She walked back to the couch and handed him a glass and stretched out on her back, putting her feet in his lap. “Did you try thinking of me?” she asked.

Archie examined the whiskey for a moment and then took a drink. “Yes.”

Gretchen smiled. “Did she know?” she asked.

“Yes,” Archie said.

“Good,” said Gretchen. She moved her foot, pressing it against his groin. “Maybe I’ll have our love child,” she said.

“You had your tubes tied,” Archie said. “I saw the prison medical reports.”

Something flashed in her eyes. Then it was gone. “Yes. Even at the tender age of seventeen I knew I shouldn’t reproduce.”

It was maybe the most responsible thing she’d ever done. And still, it was sad, Archie thought. To make that decision so young. “And you found a doctor who’d do the operation?” he asked.

“The same one who did the abortion a month earlier,” Gretchen said. She rolled on her side and faced the fire, the orange light reflecting off her smooth skin. “That was the first person I killed,” she said.

“The baby?” Archie asked.

“The doctor,” Gretchen said.

S
usan’s phone rang. It wasn’t supposed to be on and she scrambled to find it in her purse before the nurse came back and busted her. The
Herald.
She picked it up.

“Are you okay?” Derek asked. “It came through on the scanner.” He sounded breathless. “Your mom shot a cop?”