“Leave it,” Archie said. “It doesn’t matter.”
But Susan kept pressing the gray towel into the carpet. Her hands were shaking. “It’s okay,” she said. He saw her glance around, taking in all the guns, the frantic energy of the cops in the room. She pushed the towel harder into the carpet. “It’s okay,” she said again, barely audible.
“Susan,” Archie said, louder. “Leave it.”
She looked up at him, lifted her hands from the towel, and nodded.
“Debbie and the kids?” Archie asked Henry.
“I’ve got units on their way to pick them up now,” Henry said.
Archie nodded, his heart starting to slow. “What happened?”
“We have no fucking idea,” Henry said, his face reddening, hand behind his neck. “They stopped to gas up just south of 205. She was practically hog-tied. There were two sheriff’s deputies traveling with her. A clerk noticed that the truck hadn’t moved from the pump, and went to check on it. He found a female sheriff’s deputy dead. Gretchen and the male deputy were gone.”
Archie shook his head. He had no doubt that she had convinced that male deputy to help her. That he was now dead. Even with the shit beaten out of her, Gretchen was dangerous. If she was even as hurt as she’d seemed. “Fuck,” Archie said.
She had planned the whole fucking thing. They were fools. They were all the biggest fucking saps in the whole fucking universe. He sat on the edge of his desk and slowly, softly, he started to laugh.
“This is funny?” Henry said, not amused.
“She had it planned,” Archie explained. “She wanted to be transferred. Don’t you get it? The assault at the prison. She wasn’t playing me.” He pointed a finger at Henry, Henry who would do anything for him, who would transfer a prisoner, end the identification project, if he thought Archie was coming unhinged. “She was playing you.”
Henry squinted at him and Archie saw a flicker of realization in his friend’s eyes.
Henry ran an angry hand over his bald head. “She knew how you’d react,” he said. “And she knew what I’d do.”
“Of course she did,” Archie said.
“Enough,” Claire said. “We need to get you into protection.”
But Archie didn’t move. “How did she kill her? The sheriff’s deputy? She doesn’t usually kill people quickly. How did she do it?”
Claire glanced at Henry. “She cut her throat,” Claire said.
“She had a knife?” Archie asked.
“We don’t know,” Henry said.
Susan stood up from where she had been sitting on the carpet. Her hands had stopped shaking and she pulled at a piece of turquoise hair. “I don’t mean to be mercenary,” she said. “But has this been released to the media?”
“We’re keeping it quiet for now,” Henry said. “The mayor’s afraid of a panic.”
“She’s going to kill someone,” Archie said. He looked from Henry to Claire, trying to make them understand. “She likes to kill people. She hasn’t gotten to kill someone, slowly, the way she likes, in almost three years. We’ve got to warn people.”
Claire looked at her watch. “We need to go,” she said to Henry.
“No,” Archie said, shaking his head, staying firmly planted on the desk. “She needs to be able to find me.”
“That’s actually the opposite of what needs to happen,” Claire said.
“Do you want to catch her?” Archie asked.
“She’s probably on her way out of the country by now,” Henry said.
Archie’s phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and looked at it. The caller ID read UNKNOWN CALLER. “No,” Archie said, “she’s not.”
“Hello?” he said into the phone.
Gretchen’s voice purred back, “Hello, darling.”
The relief swept over him like a wave, washing away the anxiety, the nausea, the fear. He slid off the front of the desk to the floor. His fingers were cold around the phone, but his body felt hot, the back of his neck suddenly wet with sweat. Then he realized, he wasn’t afraid of her.
He was afraid of never seeing her again.
“It’s good to hear from you,” he said.
CHAPTER
21
Archie tried to shut out everyone in the room, to focus only on the telephone pressed against the side of his face, only on Gretchen. He was aware of Claire’s hand on his shoulder. He could see Susan Ward open her notebook and place a pen against it. He could see Henry on his phone, ordering a trace on the cell. They would need two minutes to trace the call, if she was calling from a landline and they didn’t have to get cell carriers involved. Archie looked at his watch and started counting.
It was 10:46 A.M.
“Do they have you in protection yet?” Gretchen asked.
Archie swallowed hard. “Gretchen, you have to turn yourself in.”
He could almost hear her smile through the phone. “You’ll miss me, won’t you? Like I’ve missed you.” Her voice turned cold. “All those Sundays you stayed away.”
“I’ll visit you,” Archie said. His stomach burned, his head ached. “I want to. You know I do.”