“You sure you want to do that?” Leo asked.
Susan bent over the table, held a nostril closed and inhaled. It burned and she squeezed her eyes shut and wrinkled her face. Her sinuses felt like they were on fire, like she’d just snorted Clorox. The back of her throat filled with a sludge of foul, bitter mucus. It took her a moment to identify the taste—gasoline. She forced herself to swallow a couple of times and pressed her nostrils closed. “Ow,” she said.
“It’s pretty pure,” Leo said softly.
When she opened her eyes, Cousin was still rocking back and forth in his chair. She felt a surge of energy. The burning stopped. The bad taste in her mouth subsided. Her face and arms tingled.
It was better than what she remembered from college.
“Is that what crack’s like?” Susan asked him.
Cousin stopped laughing. “You think I’ve used crack?” he said. “Shit, girl. I don’t touch the stuff. You go near that, your life is ruined.”
Leo put out Susan’s cigarette in the Camel ashtray. “Find these
people,” he said to Cousin. “It’s important to the old man. Put the word out. I want them to know we’re looking for them.” He turned to Susan. “Let’s go,” he said. “Before you get us all arrested.”
They stood up and Susan followed him toward the door.
“You have interesting friends,” she said to Leo.
“My job involves a lot of community outreach,” Leo said.
They took a few more steps.
“Star?” Susan said.
Leo’s eyes fell away from her and he made a noncommittal motion with his hand. “We slept together once or twice,” he said.
Susan felt a ball of disappointment in her stomach. It was stupid. So he’d had sex with a hot stripper with implants. She had other things to worry about besides another inappropriate crush. She had to focus on finding Archie.
They passed the dancers’ dressing room door. A green street sign over the door read
STRIPPER ALLEY.
Susan’s mind was going a mile a minute.
Leo Reynolds didn’t know she existed. Not that way. She had purple hair and the body of a ten-year-old boy. He slept with strippers and was, apparently, some sort of drug lawyer. His sister had been murdered. His brother was part of some fucked-up Gretchen Lowell Love Club killing spree. And his father was a drug kingpin.
Leo had led the police to Jeremy’s room. He’d been there. He knew about the collage, about the notebook. Now everyone would know. Jeremy’s face, his story, his family, would be all over the news. It would not be good for business.
Something wasn’t right.
They walked past Paul-Bunyan-the-doorman and out into the early morning light. The entire sky glowed tangerine, bathing the Paul Bunyan statue across the street in a fiery light that made him look even more like an axe murderer.
It was almost six. Archie had been missing for over five hours.
As they walked to the car, Leo handed her a perfectly folded white handkerchief. “Your nose is running,” he said.
Susan sniffled and wiped her nose with the handkerchief, then handed it back to him. He raised an eyebrow at the snotty handkerchief, but folded it and put it back in his pocket.
When they got to the car, he opened the door for her, and she got in. “Does your father know you’re helping the police?” Susan asked him.
He closed her door, walked around the back of the car, and got in the driver’s seat. He looked at her. “Yep,” he said.
“Do you do anything without your father’s approval?” Susan said.
Leo started the car. “He would not approve of you.”
C H A P T E R 49
The coke had worn off and Susan had to will herself to look passably alert. Ian had started holding the editorial meetings in his office instead of the conference room, so he could sit behind his desk and make everyone else gaze in awe at his authority. There were only two extra chairs in Ian’s office and there were six reporters who had to come to the meeting, which meant that four of them had to stand or sit on the floor.
Susan usually came early to get one of the chairs. But she’d come straight here after Leo had dropped her at her car, and there was only space left on the floor.
“So,” Ian was saying. “Apparently what we have on our hands here is a serial-killer cult. These are all people of interest in all of the recent murders we’ve been attributing to the Beauty Killer. Two have been identified.” Ian had a dry-erase board he’d hauled in from the conference room and propped behind his desk so he could write down story ideas and then cross them out or circle them, and he’d taped pictures of Jeremy and Pearl on it. “Jeremy Reynolds. From Lake Oswego. His father’s a bigwig in real estate and venture