He shrugged defensively. “I’d heard the same rumors that everyone else had over the years.”
“But you knew her name,” Archie said softly.
“It was an affair,” Buddy said to Archie. “Jesus, don’t be so self-righteous. All the time you and Debbie have been together, you’ve never thought about fucking around?”
The adrenaline of Gretchen’s call was lifting, and Archie felt sick again, stomach acid rising in his throat.
“She was fourteen,” Susan said.
Buddy’s face colored. “I thought she was older than that,” he said. “Eighteen.”
A phone started to ring. For a split second Archie thought it might be Gretchen again, but the ring was wrong. He leaned his head back on the sofa and closed his eyes. His head hurt. His side throbbed. His skin felt like it was crawling with ants. “Susan ID’d her. We matched dental records. It’s her.” He glanced back at the second bedroom, where Debbie and the kids were. The door was still closed. He looked back at the others.
The phone was still ringing.
“Is someone going to get that?” Archie said wearily.
“It’ll wait,” Buddy said, tapping the leather phone holster on his belt. He stood. “This is a political shit storm, my friends,” he said. “If the affair gets out.”
“It’s not an ‘affair’ if the girl is fourteen and the man is fifty,” Susan said. “It’s statutory rape.”
Archie sighed. Did he have to spell it out? “It’s more than that, Buddy,” Archie said. It was a motive for murder.
Susan took a tiny step forward into the room. Her voice was just above a whisper. “You think Castle killed Molly?”
Henry, who had been holding his injured knuckles to his mouth, lowered his hand. “Jesus,” he said.
“No,” Buddy said. “I worked for the man. He wasn’t capable of murder.”
Susan bit her lip. “He was capable of fucking a fourteen-year-old and covering it up for fifteen years,” she said.
“This is your fault,” Buddy said, shoving a manicured finger in Susan’s face. “If you’d let the thing rest—” He caught himself, clenched his hand and withdrew it. “Anyway, the story isn’t out yet.” He nodded to himself a couple of times. “If we’re lucky, no one will connect Molly Palmer to the senator.”
“She was his kids’ babysitter,” Susan pointed out. “Besides, I’m standing right here.” She waved. “Hello. Journalist.”
Buddy waved his hand in the air, like he was swatting away a bee. “It will still take the press a few days.” He turned to Susan. “Until then, embargo it.”
Susan’s face scrunched up in offense. “You can’t tell me to embargo a story.”
“I already did. You think it was the Herald’s idea to not run the thing after the senator died?”
“That’s censorship.” Susan looked helplessly at Archie. “That’s government censorship.”
Archie leaned forward a little, hoping to stem the black burn of pain that had been building under his ribs. It didn’t work. Buddy’s ringing phone was driving him crazy.
“You okay, Archie?” Henry asked.
Archie looked up at Buddy. “Did you call Fergus?” Fergus had been Archie’s doctor from the minute they’d first wheeled him into Emanuel, after his ten days with Gretchen. He was one of the best trauma surgeons in the U.S. And he was discreet.
“His answering service was going to send him over,” Buddy said.
“I thought you were faking,” Henry said, coming around the sofa and kneeling beside Archie. “To get her to call.”
Archie watched behind Henry as the hairline crack in the plaster wall began to spread, inching up the baby-shit wall, a tiny heart-shaped fissure. “Half faking,” Archie said.
CHAPTER
34
Fergus moved his cold hand along the bare skin over Archie’s rib line. Archie’s shirt was open and he was sitting on the bed. Buddy had taken Debbie and the kids downstairs to get something to eat. Henry and Susan were in the living room.
Fergus pressed his fingers into Archie’s scarred flesh. “Your liver’s failing,” Fergus said.
She had to be right.
Fergus moved his hands up and felt the lymph nodes under Archie’s jaw. His hands weren’t getting any warmer. He usually wore a bow tie, but today he wore khakis and a golf shirt. “Cirrhosis,” Fergus said. “I won’t know how severe it is until I run some labs.”
There it was. There was a farmer’s market on Saturday in the park across the street and Archie could hear the faint sound of milling crowds and a Grateful Dead cover band. “The pills?” Archie asked.
Fergus looked at Archie over his glasses. “You need to give them up.”