“Yes.” She laughed and the effort caused her to wince in pain.
“They told me that he broke four of your ribs,” Archie said. His own ribs still ached sometimes, where Gretchen had driven a nail through his rib cage.
“Every time I breathe, I think of you.”
“Tell me who it was,” he said.
“You’ve moved back in with her, haven’t you?”
The question caught Archie by surprise. Debbie often talked about Gretchen as if she were his mistress. But to Archie it sometimes felt like the other way around. As if, by moving back in with his ex-wife, he was cheating on Gretchen.
That was probably worthy of bringing up in therapy.
Gretchen was waiting for him to answer. Her beautiful eyes shimmered. She looked hurt. It was all an act, of course. Everything Gretchen did was an act.
“Yes,” Archie said.
She slid him a slow, wicked look and whispered: “But you still haven’t fucked her.”
Archie stopped breathing.
“That’s it,” Henry said.
Archie heard the door to the infirmary open and male voices and the smack of footsteps against the linoleum.
“Archie,” Henry warned.
Archie saw the same thing Henry did—his and Gretchen’s hands intertwined. But he still couldn’t move. He saw Gretchen smile sweetly at Henry. It was a smile Archie knew. It meant, Fuck you. And still Archie didn’t move.
Henry’s voice was a harsh whisper: “Goddamn it, Archie.”
It was like a switch had been thrown. Archie snapped his hand back and pushed the chair back a foot, threading his fingers behind his neck just as the warden and two guards entered.
“Gentlemen,” the warden said. “I’ve got something you should see.”
Henry waited until Archie and the others had cleared the curtain on their way out of the room. Then he lifted himself off the wall he had been leaning against and took a step toward the bed.
“It’s funny,” he said to Gretchen. “How he beat the shit out of you. And somehow didn’t touch your face.”
She stared back at him, expressionless, that way she had of seeing right through you. It wasn’t just Henry. She didn’t have time for anyone but Archie.
“You think this will get him back here?” Henry said. “That he’ll be at your beck and call again? You’re wrong. He’ll see through it.”
She just blinked.
He turned and took a step to catch up with the others.
“Henry,” she said.
He froze at the sound of her voice saying his name. He turned back. She tilted her head and raised an eyebrow. “It will be interesting to see which one of us knows him better,” she said.
Christ, she was smug. Henry had spent years blaming himself. For not suspecting Gretchen in the first place. For not finding Archie sooner. For endorsing the insane plea bargain that would send his friend into her clutches week after week. He had known Archie before. He knew how he had changed. The plea bargain wasn’t worth it. It didn’t matter how many bodies she could produce. Gretchen Lowell was a poster girl for the death penalty. He learned forward. “Whoever did this to you,” he said flatly, “deserves a fucking medal.”
Archie appeared around the curtain. “You coming?”
Henry straightened up, flustered. “Yeah,” he said. He followed Archie around the curtain. Out of the corner of his eye, Henry thought he’d seen Gretchen wink at Archie, but he couldn’t be sure.
CHAPTER
15
The guard hadn’t been dead long. But it was long enough. He’d hung himself in the locker room, one of the few spaces in the prison without security cameras. It was a thin, long room, now crowded with people standing close, but not too close, to the body that was hanging from an overhead sewer pipe.
“His name is B. D. Cavanaugh,” the warden said to Archie. “He’s been here nine years. Clean file.”
Hanging was the second most popular means of suicide in the U.S., after guns. Archie didn’t see the appeal. It was too hard to control. Sure, if you were lucky, your spinal cord snapped, and you were dead in an instant. Even in the absence of a fracture, obstruction of the carotid arteries or vagal collapse could lead to a relatively peaceful death. Quick unconsciousness, followed by a massive coronary. But if you were unlucky, your neck didn’t snap, and your carotid arteries kept pumping and you died a slow, agonizing death from strangulation.
The guard hadn’t been lucky. His face was engorged and discolored, his eyes filled with blood, his tongue protruded between blue lips, and a stream of sweet-smelling urine ran down the tan pants of his uniform and pooled where his toe brushed the carpet below.
“He the guy who assaulted Gretchen?” Archie asked. The smell of urine mixed with the pungent floral-mothball bouquet of pink urinal cakes.
“He had access,” the warden said. “He was on shift. And look at his hands.”