That was just it, though. He had.
“I need to catch her,” Archie said. He couldn’t make his family happy, but he could keep them safe.
“How?” Rosenberg asked.
Archie smiled, remembering the engraving over the entrance to Ben and Sara’s school. “ ‘Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire,’” he said.
Rosenberg didn’t say anything.
“Yeats,” Archie said.
“I know who said it,” Rosenberg said. “I’m just not sure how it applies.”
“She’ll keep killing,” Archie explained. He was growing more and more comfortable with his plan, convincing himself that it wasn’t mad. “She can’t stop herself. She burns everything she touches. How do you put out a fire? You feed it, and let it burn itself out.”
“Or you run as fast as you can, and call nine-one-one,” Rosenberg said.
“Or that,” Archie said.
CHAPTER
39
Debbie Sheridan answered the door in a white terry-cloth robe with the words ARLINGTON CLUB stitched in gold thread on the breast. Susan’s room hadn’t come with a robe. Her room hadn’t even come with shampoo.
“Archie isn’t here,” Debbie said.
Susan tried to crane her neck past Debbie to see if the box she’d given Archie was still where she’d left it. She could hear the kids’ voices inside. “I gave him a box of notes that I need to look at,” Susan said.
Debbie seemed unimpressed by Susan’s predicament. “You’ll have to come back later,” she said, closing the door.
Susan blinked at the closed door four inches from her nose. “Okay,” she said. She was going to go back to her own room, but as she brushed her fingers against the doorknob, she reconsidered and turned and headed for the door to the stairs.
“Where are you going?” she heard a voice call. Bennett.
Susan turned back to face him. “Do they ever give you time off?”
“I volunteered to work double shifts,” Bennett said. He was sitting in the chair. He didn’t even look tired. “Where are you going?”
“Out?” she said.
Bennett stood up, carefully marked his place in the magazine he was reading and set it on the chair, and walked over to her. “You’re supposed to stay upstairs,” he said, eyes narrowing.
Susan splayed her fingers in agony. “I need to have a cigarette,” she said.
“Bad habit,” Bennett said.
Susan smiled. “Have you ever been profiled? I could write a story about you. For the paper.” She fluttered her eyelids. “Something heroic.”
“I have one assignment,” Bennett said, crossing his arms. “To sit here in this hallway and make sure you and Detective Sheridan are safe.”
Susan reached into her pocket and produced a pack of cigarettes and wiggled them. “I could share,” she said.
“I don’t smoke,” said Bennett.
“So what am I supposed to do?” Susan asked.
Bennett reached into his own pocket and pulled out a weathered-looking pack of Big Red. “Gum?”
“Archie’s not here,” Susan told Bliss when she got back into the room.
“It took you long enough. Where did you get the gum?”
Susan’s phone rang. It was the Herald. She picked it up.
“Just met with editorial,” Ian said. “They’re excited about the blog.” He paused dramatically. “I’ve got the headline—SAFE HOUSE DISPATCHES. You have content yet?”
“Is the paper under pressure to bury the Molly Palmer story?” Susan asked.
Ian was quiet. She listened to him get up and close his office door. Finally, he said, “Yes.”
“Are you fighting for me?” Susan asked. “Behind the scenes?”
“I know you won’t believe it,” Ian said. “But yes.”
She believed him. Not because he wasn’t an ass, but because he was a journalist first. And then an ass. “I’ll do the dispatches,” Susan said. “But I want print. No more of this Web bullshit. And I’m only doing it because I want you to run the Castle story.”
“More people look at the Web site than read the paper,” Ian said.
“Oh,” Susan said. “I’ll post something in the next half hour.”
It was dark by the time Susan posted that day’s final blog. The police had determined that Gretchen had been having an affair with B. D. Cavanaugh, the guard who’d killed himself. And Gretchen had killed the female transport guard and taken off with the male one. If he was still even alive. Since Susan was sequestered she had to do all her legwork over the phone and by e-mail. With her mother on the bed next to her watching daytime TV. Bliss didn’t have a TV in the house on principle, and whenever she was around one she was completely transfixed.