“Don’t tell it if it’s not dirty,” Henry said.
Susan brushed a lock of purple hair out of her eyes. “The cop asks why she’s in such a hurry,” she said, “and the woman explains that she’s late for work. ‘I suppose you’re a doctor,’ the cop says, ‘and someone’s life hangs in the balance.’ ‘No,’ the woman says, ‘I’m an asshole stretcher.’ ” Susan giggled. Henry’s face clouded. It occurred to Susan at this moment that maybe Henry wouldn’t like this joke, but there was no turning back, so she went on. “ ‘An asshole stretcher,’ the cop says. ‘What’s that?’ ‘It’s where you start with one finger,’ the woman says.” Susan lifted one of her fingers and wiggled it for effect. “ ‘And then work in a second until you’ve got your whole hand in there.’ ” Susan demonstrated, like she was stuffing a turkey. “ ‘And then the other hand, and you keep stretching until it’s about six feet.’ ” She pantomimed it. “ ‘What do you do with a six-foot asshole?’ the cop asks.”
“Let me guess,” Henry said. “Give him a badge.”
Susan dropped her hands back in her lap. “You’ve heard it,” she said.
Henry pressed the buzzer. “Mine was better,” he said.
“I can write a good book about this case,” Susan said. “Something important even, maybe.” They both knew what that meant. Not like The Last Victim. “Gretchen is a celebrity to some people. I want to explore that. I want to understand the cultural fascination with violence.”
“Come on, Susan,” Henry said, lifting his hand to the back of his neck. “Let him move on.”
“You know what I’m working on now?” Susan said. “It’s a bathroom book. A thousand weird ways people die. Like how many people a year are killed by falling coconuts.”
“How many?” Henry asked.
“About a hundred and fifty,” Susan said. “They’re really dangerous.” She raised her finger again. “The point is I can’t do this Gretchen book without him.” She gave Henry a pleading look.
A female voice cracked over the intercom. “Can I help you?” the voice said.
“Finally,” Henry muttered. “It’s Henry Sobol to see Archie Sheridan,” he said.
“I’ll be right there,” the voice said brightly.
Susan wasn’t ready to give up. “I watched her cut his throat,” she said. She and Henry had both been there. Susan had held a dish towel on Archie’s neck, felt his warm blood soak the cloth. She blamed herself for Gretchen’s escape. She wondered if Henry blamed her, too. Susan had, after all, in a blaze of panic, provided Gretchen with access to a gun.
Henry looked her up and down and then frowned. Susan thought he was going to say something snarky about her hair. But instead he squinted at her and said, “You take care of yourself, right?”
“I take vitamins,” Susan said.
Henry sighed. “I’m talking about varying your route to work,” he said. “Locking your door at night.That sort of thing.”
The hair on Susan’s arms stood up. Henry would only ask her that if he thought there was a chance she might be in danger. “Oh, God,” she said. “You think it might actually be her.”
“Just take precautions,” Henry said. “Can you do that?”
A knot of anxiety tightened around Susan’s throat. Take precautions? She’d moved back in with her mother. They hadn’t locked the front door of their house for as long as Susan could remember, until two months ago. Since then, Susan’s mother, Bliss, had lost eight keys. “What happened out there?” Susan asked. “Is there something you guys aren’t releasing?”
The door opened and a nurse appeared.
“I shouldn’t have said anything,” Henry said to Susan.
“You think I don’t think about her all the time?” Susan said. “I see her face everywhere I go. It’s on every channel. I saw a kid downtown yesterday selling RUN, GRETCHEN Tshirts. They sell these heart-shaped digital key chains that count the days since she’s escaped. In L.A., you can get a Gretchen Lowell manicure. French pink with bloodred tips.”
The nurse stared at Susan. Susan didn’t care.
“If she’s back in the area,” Susan said, “the people have a right to know. You have to go public.”
Henry walked through the door.
“I’ll wait here,” Susan said. The door closed. Susan sank back in her chair. If Gretchen was back, she’d pick them all off one by one, just for fun.
She called Derek again.
He didn’t pick up.
Susan dug into her purse, pulled out her car keys, and checked the digital readout on the key chain. Gretchen had been at large for seventy-six days and counting.
If she made it a hundred, a bar downtown had promised to serve free Bloody Marys to the first one hundred blondes who walked through the door.
If you were going to be murdered, you might as well be drunk.
C H A P T E R 7