“I need to see her,” Archie pleaded. He hated how he sounded. Desperate. Frantic. Henry, Debbie, Buddy—they had all betrayed him. He looked up and saw Debbie stopped in the doorway, the glass in her hands. “Please,” Archie begged.
Henry was immovable. “You can’t. It’s done. She’ll be transferred tomorrow. She’s in lockdown until then. It’s over.”
No. Henry couldn’t do this. Archie had been the lead on the Beauty Killer Task Force. They couldn’t just cut him out of the case. Archie stood and picked up the phone on his desk and punched in the prison number he knew by heart. The pills burned. Archie coughed. The TV droned on. Focus. “Hey, Tony. This is Archie Sheridan. I need to talk to Gretchen. I’m leaving now. Can you make sure she’s ready?”
There was a slight hesitation. “She’s in lockdown, sir. No visitors.”
Archie closed his eyes. “Can you take a phone in to her?”
Another hesitation. Archie felt sorry for him. “We’ve got instructions not to let you talk to her,” Tony said.
“It’s okay,” Archie said. He pressed the END CALL button on the receiver. “It’s okay.” The pills hurt like heartburn. It was a familiar pain. The drain cleaner that Gretchen had made him drink had burned through his esophagus. It had taken him months to recover from the surgery. He stood there for another moment with the receiver in his hand, and then he heaved it as hard as he could against the white wall of his office. It slammed into the drywall and then fell to the ground in two pieces, the batteries rolling on the carpet. Debbie gasped and dropped the glass of water she was holding. A moment later a framed commendation splintered and the glass fell to the ground in two sharp slices. Debbie dropped to the floor to pick up the water glass. It had fallen on carpet and hadn’t broken. She looked helplessly at the soggy puddle of water soaking into the carpet.
At the moment, Archie hated her. “You knew about this,” he said, coming out from behind his desk.
Debbie looked up, startled. “Henry just told me.”
Her hurt expression cut Archie to the bone. He felt his legs grow weak and he sank to the floor in front of his desk. He hung his head and threaded his hands behind his neck. And still his only thought was of Gretchen. “I know I need help,” he said. He felt desperate, his heart racing, like he might hyperventilate. His mind searched for anything he could say to change Henry’s mind. It didn’t matter what. “Cancel the transfer,” he said. “I can pull myself together. Whatever you want. But I need to see her.”
Henry’s voice was perfectly modulated. It was a tone Archie had heard him use a thousand times with suspects. “You went months without seeing her,” Henry said. “You were doing better.”
Archie’s head pounded. He pressed the bridge of his nose with a thumb and forefinger. “No,” he said with a sad laugh. “I wasn’t.”
Debbie walked over and knelt beside him. “Archie, we’re doing this for you.”
“I need her,” Archie said, his voice barely above a whisper, the pills still stuck in his throat. “You think you’re helping. But it will just make things worse.”
Debbie put a hand on either side of his face. “I miss you so much.”
He looked her in the eye. Her hands felt strange against his cheeks. Unfamiliar. “Leave me alone,” he said. He looked up at Henry. “Both of you.”
Debbie let her hands fall away and she got up and stood behind Henry, her hand on his arm.
“Archie?” Henry said.
Archie looked up. Behind Henry and Debbie, he could see the television; the car being lifted from the Willamette, the senator’s weeping widow.
“I need your gun tonight,” Henry said. “I’m going to sleep on the couch. You can have it back in the morning.”
“Sure,” Archie said. He reached up and picked his keys off the desk and tossed them to Henry and watched as Henry came around and unlocked the desk drawer where Archie kept his service revolver. Henry picked it up out of the drawer, flipped open the cartridge to make sure it was empty, and then closed the drawer.
Henry placed his big hand on Archie’s shoulder and held it for a minute. “I’m sorry,” he said.
Archie didn’t know if he meant he was sorry about Gretchen or taking the gun or conspiring with Debbie. It didn’t matter. If Archie were going to kill himself, he wouldn’t use his weapon. He’d use the pills. Gretchen would have known that.
CHAPTER
17
Archie woke up stiff. It was a combination of the foldout couch in his office and not having taken his first pills of the day. Every day was like waking up with the flu. His first awareness was the stiffness in his legs and arms, the ache in his ribs, his throbbing head, and then Sara, standing next to the bed, dressed for school in a pair of red overalls and a pink T-shirt.
The TV was still on. An aerial shot of flames filled the screen. The local news had taken a break from the senatorial mourning to cover a forest fire somewhere in Central Oregon. Even the news moved on.
“Henry’s making eggs,” Sara said. He could smell the eggs then, the salt and fat wafting in from the kitchen. It made his stomach turn.