Heartsick by Chelsea Cain Page A

for fibers on the leaves?”

    “Four days of rain too late.”

    Archie spun around to Susan. “Did you walk home from school?”

    “Just the first two years. Until I got a car.”

    “Yeah,” Archie mused, his eyes on the hedge. “That’s when you walk, isn’t it? The first two years.” He cocked his head. “Did you like Cleveland?”

    “I already told you, I hated Cleveland,” Susan said.

    “No. You said you hated high school. Would you have hated high school anywhere, or was there something about Cleveland?”

    Susan groaned. “I don’t know. There were some things I liked. I was in drama club. And, if you must know, I was on the Knowledge Bowl team. But only my freshman year. Before I ungeeked.”

    “The drama teacher’s been there awhile,” said Henry. “Reston.”

    “Yeah,” Susan said. “I had him.”

    “You ever go by?” asked Henry. “Say hello?”

    “Drop in on my old high school teachers?” asked Susan incredulously. “I have a life, thanks.” Then a terrible thought struck her. “He’s not a suspect, is he?”

    Henry shook his head. “Not unless he got nine teenagers to lie for him. He was rehearsing a school play each of the evenings a girl was taken. So you don’t have to take your apple back. How about the physics teacher, Dan McCallum? You have him?”

    Susan opened her mouth to answer but was interrupted by Archie’s cell phone ringing. He pulled it out of his jacket pocket, snapped it opened, and turned and walked a few steps away. “Yeah?” he said. He listened for a minute. Henry and Susan watched him with rapt attention. Susan felt some almost unperceivable shift. She wasn’t sure if it was in Archie’s body language or a charge in the air, or maybe just a projection of her own mind, but she knew for certain that something had changed. Archie nodded several times. “Okay. We’re on our way.” He snapped the phone shut, dropped it carefully back into his pocket, and slowly rotated back toward them.

    “They find her?” asked Henry, his face impassive.

    Archie nodded.

    “Where?” asked Henry.

    “Sauvie Island.”

    Henry rolled his eyes toward Susan. “You want to drop her off back at the bank?”

    Susan stared at Archie, willing him to let her come along. She can come. She can come. She can come. She longed for his lips to form the words. Her first crime scene. A first-person account. It would make a great lead for the first story. What was it like to look at a murder victim? The stench of a corpse. The legion of investigators examining the scene. Yellow crime tape. She smiled, feeling that familiar hum in her belly again. Then caught herself and quickly forced the pleasure out of her face. But Archie had already seen it.

    She looked at him, her eyes pleading, but his face showed nothing.

    He started walking toward the car. Fuck. She’d blown it. Her first fucking day with him and he already thought she was some sort of blood hungry asshole.

    “She can come,” he said, still walking. He turned and glanced purposefully back at Susan. “But don’t expect her to look like her photo.”

    CHAPTER

    16

    Y ou know, there are actually tons of dead bodies on Sauvie Island,” Susan said from the backseat. “A lot of the gay guys who used to go to the nude beach died of AIDS and had their ashes scattered there. The upper beach? Above the tide line? All bone chips and charcoal.” She scrunched up her face in disgust. “Sunbathers oil up and lie down and end up with tiny fragments of dead guy in their crevices.” She waited. “I did a story about it. Maybe you read it?”

    No one answered. Henry, she realized, had tuned her out about ten miles ago. Archie was on the phone.

    She crossed her arms and tried not to yammer. It was the curse of the feature writer. Useless facts. And she had done plenty of stories about Sauvie Island: organic farmers, the cornfield maze, the nude beach, bicyclist clubs, eagles’ nests, u-pick berry fields. Herald