“Hello?” he said.
But on the other end there was only silence.
Archie hung up.
“I’m going to my room,” Archie told Rosenberg. “I need a sweater.” It was true. He was suddenly very cold. It was probably the adrenaline drop. Hospitals were kept ten degrees colder than what anyone would find comfortable. Archie didn’t know why. Maybe it was to keep patients like him from overstaying their welcome.
He had two sweaters: a green cardigan and a blue crewneck. They were in the bottom drawer of his dresser against the wall facing the foot of his bed. He was opening the drawer when he felt the vibration. He thought it was the medication at first. They were adjusting his Prozac dosage and he felt that sort of thing sometimes, electrical sensations that traveled down his arms, or lit up his brain at night. Brain zaps, the nurses called them, as if they were a perfectly normal side effect, like bloating.
But the vibration wasn’t the medication.
It was a phone.
Archie froze. It had been two months since he had heard a vibrating cell phone, that odd low-frequency buzz, both a sound and a feeling. Fifteen years he’d carried a phone in his pocket. And in two months, he’d already forgotten it.
It was in his dresser.
He traced his fingers up along the dresser drawers, feeling for the telltale vibration. The buzzing stopped.
He opened the second drawer down.
The phone was half covered by a pair of pants, but it was there, clear as day. Archie glanced up at the camera mounted in the corner of the room. The camera didn’t have the right angle to see it.
He reached into the drawer and pretended to be fascinated by an imaginary stain on a pair of corduroys while he fumbled with the phone with his other hand. He didn’t take it out of the drawer. Five hundred and thirty-eight missed calls. One text message. Archie clicked on it.
“DARLING,” it read. “FEEL BETTER?”
Archie’s body stiffened. Gretchen.
She’d gotten someone to put it there, some hospital employee who probably thought the phone was for Archie to keep in touch with a loved one.
It was the second phone she’d found a way to get to him. He’d discovered the first one the second week he’d been there. It was taped under the sink in the bathroom. He’d thrown it away in the bathroom trash, jamming it under half a roll of toilet paper so the custodial staff wouldn’t see it.
This time Archie slipped the phone out of the drawer, and put it in his pocket.
He was Level Four. Rosenberg had said he should go for a walk.
C H A P T E R 11
Three-nine-seven North Fargo was the scariest house in sight. The old bungalow sat abandoned on an empty block that had long ago turned to urban meadow. Its asbestos siding was painted a shade of brown that even in its prime must have embarrassed the neighbors, and its asphalt roof was more moss than shingles. Sheets of plywood covered the windows. The words KEEP OUT were spray-painted across the plywood that covered the front door. If Susan had been scouting locations for a horror movie, she would not have had to look further.
It had to be a prank. It was too perfect.
Susan sat in her car at the curb and craned her head around to look up and down the street. It was late morning, and no one was around. There were no other houses on that block, and the church parking lot across the street was empty. She considered the possibilities. What if there was a body in there? It was feasible. Some PBR-fueled college kids had sneaked inside to party or to read Longfellow or something, and found some dead junkie or homeless person and then didn’t want to report it because they didn’t want to get hassled for trespassing.
Sure. That made perfect sense.
Or maybe it was a trap. A Herald headline flashed in Susan’s mind: INTREPID REPORTER MURDERED AFTER WALKING INTO BEAUTY KILLER AMBUSH. Journalist, Susan corrected herself, remembering Henry’s joke.
Susan pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and stared some more at the house.
This was ridiculous. She was being dramatic. Get it over with, Nancy Drew.
She tossed her cigarette out into the rain, grabbed her purse full of mace, and got out of the car.
Look like you’re supposed to be there. Quentin Parker had taught her that. Look like you’re supposed to be there and no one will ask you what the hell you’re doing. He had always kept a clipboard in his car. No one questions a man with a clipboard, he’d said.
Susan went around to her trunk, where she kept her emergency reporter kit, and got out a flashlight and notebook, which she put in her purse, and an old clipboard. If someone in the church across the street was watching, she would look like she was trying to Rock the Vote, or maybe conducting a survey. And how many corpses do you have inside, sir?
She was wearing black jeans, black lace-up boots, and a black tank top. Add the purple hair and red lipstick and she looked more like she should be working at the MAC counter than conducting door-to-door surveys.