“You’ve got to get up,” Sara said.
Archie rubbed his face and looked at his watch. It was 6:30 A.M.
Sara took his hand and began to pull.
He was wearing a pair of pajama pants that Debbie had bought for him a few Christmases ago, and no shirt, and as he sat up the blanket slipped and exposed his scarred chest. He felt the cool air on his torso, saw Sara’s eyes widen, and then he looked down to see his mutilated body. He pulled his hand away from Sara’s and lifted the blanket up to his armpits. He expected her to shrink away, but instead she leaned against him and wrapped her arms halfway around his neck. “I have scars, too,” she whispered. She pulled back her hair to show him the paper-thin scar at her hairline from where she had fallen off a sled when she was three. “See?” she said.
Archie touched the scar on his daughter’s head. It was so slight that it barely registered under his thick fingers; nothing like the chasms that marked his own skin. When he ran his hands over the topography of his own scars, he could imagine he was feeling the surface of another planet.
Archie kissed her on the forehead, the scar under his lips. “Go eat some eggs,” he said. “I’ll be up in a minute.”
Only when Sara left the room and closed the door behind her did he pull back the blanket all the way and sit on the edge of the bed. He reached up and felt the heart-shaped scar, his heart beating underneath it. He liked the way it felt now, and he let his fingers slide over its surface for a long moment, before he reached for his pants, and the pills in the front pocket.
He glanced up at the crawl along the bottom of the TV. Two fires had merged.
Archie showered and shaved. The pills kicked in under the warm rain of the shower and by the time he was done shaving he felt a comfortable Vicodin buzz. The pills created a kind of dull roar in his head that muted the guilt. He thought, sometimes, about giving them up. But only first thing in the morning. Never once he was high.
He dressed for the day in brown pants and a brown button-down shirt, and then walked out into the kitchen. The kids had finished eating. Henry was standing at the stove, wearing Debbie’s white chefs apron and making scrambled eggs. His head was freshly shaved. He was wearing a different set of clothes from the ones he’d had on last night. He’d planned ahead and brought an overnight bag.
Henry looked up at Archie and smiled. “You look like a UPS man,” he said.
Sara ran from Debbie to Archie, slamming her metal lunch box into Archie’s thigh. Ben stayed where he was, next to Debbie.
Sara looked up at Archie. “I have a spelling test today,” she said.
“You’re in first grade,” Archie said.
“Henry was quizzing me,” she said.
“She can spell better than I can,” Henry said.
Debbie walked up and put her hand on Sara’s shoulder and kissed Archie on the cheek. “I’ll see you tonight,” she said. “Henry said he’d watch the kids. We can go out. Do something fun.”
“Sure,” Archie said.
Debbie nodded and then took Sara by the hand. “Let’s go,” Debbie said. “Ben, kiss your father.”
Ben trudged forward and Archie bent down so his son could kiss him goodbye.
“I love you, Daddy,” Sara said. “L-O-V-B.”
“E,” said Archie.
And they were gone.
Archie got a cup of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table. The kids’ dishes still sat there, crusts of bread and egg goop and grease.
“My gun?” Archie said.
Henry walked over to one of the high cupboards over the stove and reached up and removed Archie’s gun, and then walked over to the table and laid it in front of Archie. “It’s empty,” he said.
Archie picked it up and held it for a moment in his hands and then slipped it into the leather holster on his waist.
“Do you want to talk some more?” Henry asked.
“Is she in transit?” Archie asked.
“Yep,” Henry said.
“Then there’s nothing to talk about,” Archie said. Before Henry could respond, Archie’s cell phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket, snapped it open, and held it to his ear.
“It’s me,” Archie heard Susan Ward say. “I know who your Jane Doe is.”
CHAPTER
18
The Portland city morgue was in the basement of a beige-colored stucco building in the north part of the city. The walls inside were painted beige. The linoleum was beige. The paper sterile gowns that Susan and Archie had to wear were beige. The room where they did the autopsies was in the basement. All morgues were in the basement. If you believed what you saw on TV. There was a line of steel gurneys, a lot of scales and devilish-looking containers, and four large drains in the floor for hosing down blood at the end of the day. About ten feet up, a bank of frosted windows let in a weird white light and someone had jammed a lot of house-plants up on a ledge below them. Spider plants. Rubber tree plants. Ferns.