Kent’s posture stiffened defensively and he looked at Henry. “Hey, man, health insurance is a real problem in this country.”
Archie stepped slightly forward. “Where were you between five and seven on February second and March seventh?” he asked Kent.
Kent turned to Archie, his shoulders dropping. “Working. I do afternoons at Cleveland. I’m generally on until six.”
“Then what?” Archie asked.
Kent shrugged. “I go home. Or to band practice. Or to a bar.”
“You drink?” Henry said. “I thought you said you were a diabetic.”
“I am. And I do,” Kent said. “That’s why I need the insulin. Look, the day the kid from Jefferson disappeared, my Dart broke down. I had to call my roommate, and he came and gave me a jump. Ask him.” He gave Archie his roommate’s name and cell phone number and Archie wrote the information down in his notebook. “And why don’t you do something about all the fucking media trespassing on school grounds? They’re wigging out the kids. And they don’t get their facts straight.”
Archie and Henry exchanged glances. How did Kent know which facts were straight?
Kent’s face reddened and he jammed a toe into the grass. Then asked, “You going to tell Amcorp about my record?”
“That would be the coplike thing to do,” Henry said.
Kent smirked. “Where were the cops when those girls were taken off the street by some psycho?”
Henry turned to Archie and said loudly enough for Kent to hear, “You like him for it?”
Archie made a show of examining Kent while the custodian stood shifting uncomfortably under the weight of Archie’s stare. “He’s handsome,” Archie conceded. “I could see girls going with him. His age is in the profile range.”
Kent’s cheeks colored.
Henry widened his eyes incredulously. “You think he’s handsome?”
“Not as handsome as you,” Archie reassured him.
“I have work to do,” Kent said, picking up his bucket of paint and his brush.
“One thing,” Archie said to him.
“Yeah?” Kent said.
“The graffiti. What did it say?”
Kent looked at each of them a minute. “‘We’re all going to die,’” he said finally. He stared at the ground and shook his head. Then laughed and looked back up, his dark eyes flashing. “With a goddamn smiley face.”
CHAPTER
20
S usan sat at the Great Writer’s blue desk near the window, watching the pedestrian lunchtime traffic go in and out of the Whole Foods that was catty-corner to her building. The first story was written and sent. She hated this part. She hated waiting for the affirmation from Ian, but she craved it. She hit REFRESH on her E-mail display. Nothing. She was filled with a sudden overwhelming certainty that he hated it. He abhorred her pathetic attempt at literary journalism. She had blown her one shot to write something big. They would probably fire her. She couldn’t even bring herself to reread it—sure that she would see every typo, every passive voice, every lame excuse for a sentence. She hit REFRESH again. Nothing. Catching the time on the monitor, she scrambled to the Great Writer’s velvet sofa, curled up, and turned on the midday news. Archie Sheridan’s face filled the screen and a crawl announced that this was a special report. He looked tired. Or was the word weary ? But he had shaved and brushed his dark hair and his lined, hangdog face held a certain authority. She longed to feel that in control.
She watched Archie grimly confirm the death of Kristy Mathers, and then the screen switched back to a pair of daytime local news anchors who bantered in trepidation about the human monster at large and then segued right into a special report on the sudden dearth of rain in the Willamette Valley. The press conference had been at ten o’clock, which meant that it had been over for almost two hours. She wondered what Archie Sheridan was doing now.
The phone rang, and Susan nearly tripped trying to get to it before the third ring, when the voice mail would pick up. She saw the caller ID and knew immediately who it was.
“I love it,” Ian said without introduction.
Susan felt the morning’s tension bleed from her shoulders in an instant. “Really?”
“It’s great. That juxtaposition of walking in the dead girl’s steps at Cleveland and then finding Kristy Mathers’s body—it’s exactly what we wanted, babe. There’s not much about Sheridan in here. You’ve hooked us: Now I want Sheridan dismembered, so we can see his beating heart.”
“That’s for next week,” Susan said happily, pouring herself a cup of cold coffee and putting it in the microwave. “Leave the assholes wanting more, right?”
“The assholes?”
Susan laughed. “The readers.”
“Oh,” said Ian. “Right.”