The mayoral aide was glancing around helplessly. His suit was cheap and looked shiny in the sun.
The mayor leaned forward toward Archie and spoke in an urgent whisper. “I can’t cancel the press conference. The story’s out. A teacher’s dead. A dead girl’s bike is in his garage. They’re live with it right now. It’s on TV.” He gave TV an agonized emphasis.
“Then hedge our bets,” Archie said.
The veins in the mayor’s neck thickened and raised. “‘Hedge our bets’?”
Archie reached out and patted the hood of the silver Ford Escort that sat, parked just in front of the garage. “The car’s not big enough,” he said to the mayor. “How’d he get the bike and the girl in a compact, hmm?”
The mayor began to rub some imaginary object between his fingers. “What am I supposed to say?”
“You’re a politician, Buddy. You’ve always been a politician. Find a way to tell them that we don’t know what the fuck is going on in a way that makes it look like we know what the fuck is going on.” Archie gave the mayor an I-know-you-can-do-this arm squeeze and backed away.
CHAPTER
41
S usan sat on the couch with her laptop and a glass of red wine and started writing about Gretchen Lowell. As far as she was concerned, the After School Strangler story had ended with Dan McCallum’s suicide. She was sure they’d find Addy Jackson’s body somewhere. He’d killed her and dumped her like he had the others, and she was in the mud, waiting to be discovered by some unlucky jogger or Boy Scout troop. The image of Addy’s half-buried corpse flashed in her mind, and she felt her eyes burn with tears. Crap. She was not going to let this get to her, not now. She wiped the image clean, but it was replaced by Kristy Mathers’s damaged naked body twisted on the dark Sauvie Island sand. And then by Addy’s parents, and how they had looked at Archie with such despair and expectation, wanting him to save their daughter, to save them. And then by her own father.
Her cell phone jumped and vibrated on the coffee table. The caller ID screen read UNKNOWN NUMBER. She picked it up and lifted it to her ear. “Yeah?”
“My name’s Molly Palmer.”
“Holy shit,” Susan said.
There was a pause. “Look. I’m just calling to tell you that I don’t want to talk to you. I have nothing to say.”
“It’s not your fault,” Susan said quickly. “He was an adult. There’s no excuse.”
There was a bitter laugh. “Yeah.” There was another pause. “He taught me to play tennis. You can put that in the article you’re writing. It’s the only nice thing I have to say about him.”
Susan tried to control the desperation in her voice. Molly was the story. If she could get her to talk, the paper would have to run it; if not, she’d have nothing, and the senator would get off free and clear. “Get it off your chest, Molly,” Susan pleaded. “If you don’t, it will just eat at you. It will just poison everything.” She twisted a piece of hair around a finger until it hurt. “I know.”
“Listen,” Molly said, her voice catching. “Do me a favor, okay? Don’t call Ethan anymore. This whole thing is starting to freak him out. I don’t keep in touch with a lot of people from back then. And I don’t want to lose him, too.”
“Please,” Susan said.
“It’s ancient history,” Molly said. And she hung up.
Susan held the phone to her ear for a moment, listening to the dead line.
Ancient history. And without Molly, it would stay that way. Susan squeezed her eyes shut in frustration. Ian could have gotten Molly to go on the record. Parker, too. Susan had had Molly in her hands, and she’d lost her. She put her phone down, took a deep breath, wiped her nose and eyes with the back of her hand, and poured some more wine in her glass. There was nothing more reassuring than a full glass of wine.
She considered calling Ethan again. He had clearly given Molly her messages. But then she thought of the pain in Molly’s voice and how she just wanted to be left alone, to leave the past behind.
Was that so wrong?