“You’re funny.”
“Thanks.” He bent over the boot, unlocked it, and in a swift, almost violent motion pulled it off the front wheel. Then he stood, holding the heavy boot under one arm, and waited.
Susan fidgeted self-consciously with her purse. “How much do I owe you?” she asked.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said, his eyes turning cold. “I’ll let you off free and clear if you agree not to exploit a dead kid for a newspaper story.”
Susan felt like she’d been slapped in the face. She was speechless. He just stood there looking handsome in his coveralls. “It’s not really exploitation,” she stammered. She wanted to defend herself. To explain the importance of what she was doing. The public right to know. The beauty of shared humanity. The role of the witness. But suddenly, she had to admit that it all seemed pretty lame.
He pulled a ticket out of one of his many pockets and held it out to her. She took it and flipped the ticket over in her hand. Fifty dollars! And it would probably go to the fucking football team or something.
She wanted to say something clever. Something that would make her feel less like a bottom-feeder. But before she could, she heard the distant music of Kiss. She stopped and listened. It was the Kiss song “Calling Dr. Love.” She saw a flash of embarrassment cross the janitor’s face as he fumbled in his pants pocket. It was his cell phone ring.
And he thought she was a teenager.
He pulled the phone out of his pocket and looked at the caller ID. “Better take this,” he said to Susan. “It’s my boss, calling to fire me.”
Then he lifted the phone to his ear and walked away.
Susan watched him go, puzzled, and then got into her car. The Kiss song rattled in her head: “Even though I’m full of sin/ In the end you’ll let me in…”
As she pulled her car out of the parking lot, she had an idle thought: Janitors probably had a lot of access to bleach.
“What do they have in common?” Archie asked Henry.
They were walking along the Sauvie Island beach where Kristy Mathers had been found. It was Archie’s default. No clues? No clear avenues of exploration? Return to the scene of the crime. He had probably spent whole years of his life walking in Gretchen Lowell’s steps. It got him in the right headspace, and there was always a chance they’d find a clue. He needed a clue.
The river lapped at the beach, where a squiggle of foam and muck marked the tide line. A freighter with Asian characters on the side slid by in the distance. Above the Asian characters was the translation: Sunshine Success. No one was on the beach. It was dusk and the light was low, though the winter sky in the Northwest had a way of holding light, so that no matter what time of night it was, it always looked like the sun had just set. Still, it would soon be too dark to be out there. Archie held a flashlight so they could find their way back to the car.
“They look alike,” said Henry.
“Is it that simple? He stalks the schools? Picks girls out that fit a type?” After Archie and Henry had left Jefferson, they had spent the morning interviewing teachers and staff members at Cleveland who fit the profile. There were ten in all. It had yielded nothing. Claire had tracked down Evan Kent’s roommate, who had confirmed his story about the jump-started Dart. But he put it earlier, more like 5:30. Which left him enough time to get north to Jefferson.
“They’re all sophomores.”
“So what do sophomores have in common?” Archie asked. Seven of the Cleveland staffers had alibis. Four didn’t. He had gone over the alibis again and they had held up. That left three suspects in play at Cleveland: a school bus driver, a physics teacher, and a math teacher/volleyball coach. Plus Kent who worked at both Cleveland and Jefferson. Plus about ten thousand other perverts loose in the city. They would watch Kent, and check out the other three. The ten thousand perverts were on their own.
“They were all freshmen last year?” Henry guessed.
Archie stopped walking. Could it be that simple? He snapped his fingers. “You’re right,” he said.
Henry scratched his bald head. This time of day, it started to get a little gray stubble. “I was kidding.”
“Tell me we checked to see if they all transferred from the same freshman class.”
“All three went to their respective schools the year before,” Henry said.
“Is there a test they all take freshman year?” Archie asked.