“Thought she was sixteen,” Henry said. The light was on the hood and Henry flipped it on, put one arm behind Archie’s seat, and began to back up.
That was the cutoff for statutory rape. Sixteen and over, you could consent; under sixteen, you couldn’t. It was one of those laws that depended a lot on context.
“Fourteen,” Archie said. The context on this one wasn’t very forgiving. “Castle was fifty-two at the time. Susan told me the Herald’s got a tell-all,” he added. “An exclusive interview with the woman.”
“No crime in it,” Henry said. His eyes were still focused behind them as he slowly directed the car in a perfectly executed Y-turn. Henry had driver’s licenses from seventeen states. He’d moved every year before he became a cop. Just to see more, he’d told Archie once when they were drunk. Archie had never lived anywhere but Oregon. But then, he had only one ex-wife. Henry had five.
“The statute of limitations back then was three years,” Henry continued. “You could stretch it to six if your vic was especially adorable.” A bored-looking uniformed cop lifted a piece of crime tape to let them drive out of the cordoned area on the bridge. “Now you get six years after the kid tells someone or turns eighteen. Whichever comes first.”
There was a steel travel cup of coffee on the dash, and it started to slide forward as Henry sped up. Archie reached for it and took a sip of the lukewarm coffee. Castle had a law degree. He’d probably popped a bottle of champagne the day he hit the three-year mark. “Lady Justice appears to not be Castle’s primary fear,” Archie said. The AC started rattling again and Archie hit the dash with the heel of his hand again. The rattling stopped.
“Yeah,” Henry said with a wry chuckle. “Back when I worked in D.C., they used to call it the ‘Three Dees’: disgraced, disbarred, and divorced. Bad press. That’s what really scares these motherfuckers.”
“By ‘motherfuckers’ you mean politicians?” Archie asked, taking another sip of the lukewarm coffee.
“Yep,” Henry said.
“And what were you doing in D.C.?” Archie asked.
“I was working for a motherfucker,” Henry said. “Shaved my muttonchops and everything. Then I saw the invoices the public housing contractors were turning in. Ten thousand bucks per urinal.” He shook his head slowly at the thought of it. “That was after I stopped teaching inner-city high school kids and before I became a bush pilot.”
“When was the motorcycle trip across South America?” Archie asked.
“After I left Alaska,” Henry said. “Char and I had just broken up. You know, I spent a month with a native tribe when my bike broke down in the mountains. They had this leaf there—if you chewed it, you saw an image of your future.”
“What did you see?” Archie asked.
“A white horse, a kid holding a bird, and a big-titted woman with a sword.”
Archie blinked silently at Henry for a moment. “So obviously you thought, ‘I’ll become a cop.’”
Henry smiled broadly, his mustache turning up at the corners. “It seemed like a clear omen.”
Archie just shook his head. Closing the Fremont Bridge had fucked rush hour. I-5 north, 405, even the surface streets had come to a halt. Once they got through the roadblock at the end of the bridge, Henry put the siren on so they could ride the shoulder of the freeway. Technically, they weren’t supposed to use the sirens in nonemergency situations. Henry considered traffic jams an emergency.
“So you think Castle decided to take the plunge?” Henry said. “Grabbed the wheel. Murder-suicide?”
“Maybe,” Archie said.
“You gonna tell the Feds?” Henry asked.
Archie considered it. “We’ll wait and see what the crime scene techs come up with,” he said. “If it wasn’t intentional, no point stepping on Susan’s story.”
Henry grinned, and slipped on his aviator sunglasses.
“What?” Archie asked.
“You’re nice to her because she likes you,” he said.
“I’m nice to her because I’m nice,” Archie said. “And she likes me because I’m old—”
“A geriatric forty,” objected Henry, who was ten years older than that.
“Old,” repeated Archie. He added: “Powerful.”
“Bossy,” countered Henry.
Archie tried, “Commanding?”
Henry nodded in compromise. They were through downtown now, on the Marquim Bridge, headed back to the eastside. Traffic was better. The sun was out. And Mount Hood and Mount St. Helens loomed on the horizon. Archie always thought they looked strange in the summer, their massive rocky structures oddly naked.
“Not to mention,” Archie said, “fucked up and unavailable.” He rolled down the window and dumped the rest of the coffee out the window.
“Well,” said Henry. “How could she resist?”
CHAPTER
7