Susan Ward made her way quickly down the hospital corridor. It was 9 A.M. and she was already in a bad mood. There was something going on out in the Gorge and Ian had sent Derek Rogers to cover it instead of her. She’d already called Derek eleven times. This was number twelve.
“What do they mean ‘body parts’?” she asked him. She was having trouble holding her phone to her ear, keeping her paper cup of coffee from spilling, and digging through her purse for an Altoid to mask the taste of the cigarette she’d smoked in the hospital parking garage.
“They’re not saying,” Derek said. He had been out there most of the night and it sounded like the novelty was wearing off. “But they’ve got half the Beauty Killer Task Force out here and FBI and volunteers searching the woods.”
It would be big news if there hadn’t already been so much Gretchen Lowell pandemonium. The Herald had run a front-page story about her every day since she’d escaped. She’d been spotted in Italy, Florida, Thailand, and Churchill, Manitoba. All the freaks who’d ever claimed to have been abducted by aliens were now claiming that they’d seen the Beauty Killer. Crimes all over the world were being attributed to her. If you believed the twenty-four-hour news channels, she’d murdered a family in Thailand and then made it to England to kill a fishmonger by sundown.
“Keep me posted,” Susan said. “I’m at the hospital.”
“When are you going to give up?” Derek said.
Susan wedged the phone between her ear and her shoulder and managed to locate the Altoids tin under a purseful of balled receipts, pens, gum wrappers, and used tissue. “Maybe this week he’ll see me,” she said.
“If Ian finds out you’re working on a book, he’ll pop his ponytail,” Derek said.
Susan pressed the button for the elevator up to the psych ward. Ian had given Derek the crime beat after Susan’s mentor, Quentin Parker, had been killed. Susan told herself she didn’t care. She had some projects up her sleeve that might get her out of the newspaper business once and for all. The sooner the better, the way things were going. She just needed to get Archie to talk to her.
“Hello?” Derek said.
“Did you know,” Susan said, “that since 1958 over four hundred people have died of an allergic reaction to sperm?”
There was a pause. “Uh, no,” Derek said.
The elevator dinged and the silver doors slid open. “I’ve got to go,” Susan said. She popped an Altoid in her mouth and dropped the tin back in her purse. “I’m here.”
C H A P T E R 6
They wouldn’t let Susan in. They never did. Her name wasn’t on Archie’s list of approved visitors. But Susan buzzed and sent the nurse back to ask if Archie would see her, and when the nurse came back, like always, and said no, not today, but he says hi, Susan took a chair in the psych-ward waiting room. If she came often enough, and sat long enough, eventually, she hoped, Archie would relent.
And if he didn’t, well, it was a nice quiet place to get some work done.
There were two chairs, both pee-colored molded plastic, and Susan always sat in the left one. “Waiting room” was generous. It was more like a waiting closet. No windows. Just five feet square, filled by two chairs and a card table stacked with mental-health brochures. Susan was halfway through her coffee and had taken a break from her laptop to read a leaflet about adult hyperactive attention deficit disorder when the elevator doors opened and out stepped Henry Sobol.
He lifted his eyebrows when he saw her. “Purple, huh?” he said.
“It’s called ‘Plum Passion,’ ” Susan said, touching her violet hair. It had been turquoise. Before that, pink. Susan threw a glance at the psych-ward door. If Henry was here to talk to Archie, maybe the thing at the Gorge did have something to do with Gretchen. “Are you here because of the rest stop?” she asked.
“Just visiting a friend,” Henry said.
Henry didn’t visit in the mornings. At least he’d never come while she was there.
“You can trust me,” Susan said. She knew that Henry didn’t believe her. And maybe it wasn’t even true. But Susan wanted it to be.
Henry started to reach for the call button, but then hesitated and turned back to her. “You know what a journalist is?” he asked.
“What?” Susan asked.
Henry’s expression didn’t flicker. “A dead reporter.”
“Ouch,” Susan said.
“I stole it,” Henry said.
Susan leaned forward. “You hear the one about the woman who got pulled over for speeding?” she asked. She never remembered jokes. But she’d heard her mother tell this one so many times it had stuck.