The cabdriver snorted, as if the two were indistinguishable.
Archie had spent the morning with Henry, reviewing a mountain of paper comprised of citizen tips. There were thousands: letters, transcripts from the tip hot line, even postcards. It was tedious work and Archie could have delegated it. But it gave him something to do. And there was a chance, a slim chance, that somewhere in all of that paper was the information they needed.
After six hours, they had gone through almost two thousand tips. And were no closer to finding the After School Strangler.
“It’s Saturday,” Henry had said. “Go home for a few hours.” And Archie had agreed. He didn’t tell Henry that, as Sunday fast approached, he was having a hard time concentrating on anything but Gretchen.
But when the cabdriver asked him his address, he found himself giving this one instead.
So Archie gazed at the house, as if something about it could help him make sense of everything that had happened since that last time he’d walked through its front door.
A shiny black Audi wagon pulled into the house’s driveway and parked in front of the garage, and a dark-haired woman got out with two dark-haired boys. She walked around the back of the car, opened the hatchback, and handed the older boy a paper bag of groceries and he went inside with the younger boy trailing after him. Then she got another bag of groceries from the back of the wagon, turned, and walked toward the cab.
“She the one you’re stalking?” the cabbie asked.
“I’m not stalking anyone,” Archie said. The woman with the groceries was clearly headed directly for them, intent on a conversation. Something like “Why the hell are you idling in front my house?” maybe. He thought about telling the cabbie to drive away, but the woman was descending on them and he didn’t want to rattle her further by pealing out in a cloud of exhaust. So he was sitting in a cab in front of her house. It was a residential street. There were a multitude of explanations. He would just have to pick one. Doing his best to look respectable, he rolled down the window just as she took her last few steps to the taxi. It was all moot.
“You’re Archie Sheridan,” she said.
She had recognized him. That left little room to maneuver.
The woman gave him a concerned smile. She was wearing black leggings and a large black sweatshirt with the sleeves pushed up to the elbows. The sweatshirt had a Sanskrit symbol on it. Yoga clothes. Her curly black hair was swept up in a ponytail. She was in her forties, and wore it well; the fine lines around her mouth and eyes probably were noticeable only in natural light.
He nodded. Archie Sheridan. Hopeless. Untethered. At your service.
She thrust a hand in his direction. Her forearms were lean and strong. “I’m Sarah Rosenberg. Mind giving me a hand with the groceries?”
He followed her into the kitchen, his arms full of groceries from Whole Foods. He didn’t remember the last time he’d carried an armload of groceries like that; it reminded him of his family, of the pleasures of normalcy. But then there was the house. It looked exactly the same. The entryway, the hallway, the kitchen. Archie felt as if he’d walked into a dream. The older boy, a young teenager, had already started unpacking the bags, and the contents were strewn over a large kitchen island—fresh tulips, leeks, apples, expensive cheese.
“This is Detective Sheridan,” Sarah said.
The boy took the groceries from Archie’s hands.
“My son Noah,” Sarah said.
The boy nodded at Archie. “Some of my brother’s friends won’t come over here anymore,” he said. “They’re afraid of her or something. Like she’s still here. Like she’s going to get them.”
“I’m sorry,” Archie said.
He felt Gretchen everywhere around him, as if she were there next to him, her breath on his neck. The room she had used as an office was through the kitchen, on the other side of the entryway. Archie realized that he was squeezing the pillbox in his pocket, and he forced himself to release the tension in his hand.
“It looks pretty much the same,” Sarah was saying as she loaded food into a large steel fridge. “The police said that it happened in my office, right? She had moved a few things around, but it’s mostly how it was the last time you were here.” She looked at Archie meaningfully. “Feel free, if you want to take a look.”
“Yeah,” Archie said before he even realized it. “I’d like that.”
She motioned with her head that he could go alone. Archie was grateful for that. He left Sarah and Noah in the kitchen and walked to the room where Gretchen Lowell had drugged him.