Again, Archie spun slowly around. After a few minutes, he turned to Henry. “What do you think?”
“I think he was on foot.” Henry pointed to a thick laurel hedge that framed the yard of a house just behind the point where the dogs had lost Lee Robinson’s scent. “I think he was waiting for her behind there.”
“It would be risky,” Archie said doubtfully. He walked over to behind the hedge. “This about how thick the foliage was?”
“It’s evergreen.”
Archie considered this. “So he waited for her behind the hedge,” he said tracing his hand along the thick leaves of the bushes. “Appeared. Then what? Talked her into a nearby vehicle?”
“A guy pops out from behind a bush and she gets into his car? Not when I was a teenager,” Susan said.
“No,” Henry said. “He doesn’t pop out.”
Archie nodded, thinking. “He sees her. He comes out on the other side of the hedge. Over here.” He walked along the hedge to the far side, almost around the corner. “Then he makes like he was just turning the corner,” he says, reenacting it. “Happens upon her.”
“He knows her,” said Henry.
“He knows her,” agreed Archie. They were quiet for a moment. “Or”—Archie shrugged—“maybe he popped out and held a knife to her throat and forced her into the back of a van.”
“Or maybe that,” said Henry.
“You look for fibers on the leaves?”
“Four days of rain too late.”
Archie spun around to Susan. “Did you walk home from school?”
“Just the first two years. Until I got a car.”
“Yeah,” Archie mused, his eyes on the hedge. “That’s when you walk, isn’t it? The first two years.” He cocked his head. “Did you like Cleveland?”
“I already told you, I hated Cleveland,” Susan said.
“No. You said you hated high school. Would you have hated high school anywhere, or was there something about Cleveland?”
Susan groaned. “I don’t know. There were some things I liked. I was in drama club. And, if you must know, I was on the Knowledge Bowl team. But only my freshman year. Before I ungeeked.”
“The drama teacher’s been there awhile,” said Henry. “Reston.”
“Yeah,” Susan said. “I had him.”
“You ever go by?” asked Henry. “Say hello?”
“Drop in on my old high school teachers?” asked Susan incredulously. “I have a life, thanks.” Then a terrible thought struck her. “He’s not a suspect, is he?”
Henry shook his head. “Not unless he got nine teenagers to lie for him. He was rehearsing a school play each of the evenings a girl was taken. So you don’t have to take your apple back. How about the physics teacher, Dan McCallum? You have him?”
Susan opened her mouth to answer but was interrupted by Archie’s cell phone ringing. He pulled it out of his jacket pocket, snapped it opened, and turned and walked a few steps away. “Yeah?” he said. He listened for a minute. Henry and Susan watched him with rapt attention. Susan felt some almost unperceivable shift. She wasn’t sure if it was in Archie’s body language or a charge in the air, or maybe just a projection of her own mind, but she knew for certain that something had changed. Archie nodded several times. “Okay. We’re on our way.” He snapped the phone shut, dropped it carefully back into his pocket, and slowly rotated back toward them.
“They find her?” asked Henry, his face impassive.
Archie nodded.
“Where?” asked Henry.
“Sauvie Island.”
Henry rolled his eyes toward Susan. “You want to drop her off back at the bank?”
Susan stared at Archie, willing him to let her come along. She can come. She can come. She can come. She longed for his lips to form the words. Her first crime scene. A first-person account. It would make a great lead for the first story. What was it like to look at a murder victim? The stench of a corpse. The legion of investigators examining the scene. Yellow crime tape. She smiled, feeling that familiar hum in her belly again. Then caught herself and quickly forced the pleasure out of her face. But Archie had already seen it.
She looked at him, her eyes pleading, but his face showed nothing.
He started walking toward the car. Fuck. She’d blown it. Her first fucking day with him and he already thought she was some sort of blood hungry asshole.
“She can come,” he said, still walking. He turned and glanced purposefully back at Susan. “But don’t expect her to look like her photo.”
CHAPTER
16