Susan relented and ducked across the street and found a wooden bench that faced the Arlington. That part of the park had a decorative public water fountain and a low concrete wall with a medallion bearing Simon Benson’s profile on it. The fountains, so-called Benson Bubblers, were all over downtown Portland. The story was that Simon Benson, a turn-of-the-century Portland lumber baron, had the bubblers installed to discourage his workers from drinking beer in the middle of the day. Susan didn’t know if his plan had worked, but a hundred years later there were signs all over the park warning that alcohol was prohibited.
Susan ashed her cigarette on the hexagonal cobblestones beneath her feet. She smoked American Spirits. Molly was dead. And Susan was smoking. She needed to get back to Molly Palmer. The blog could wait. Writing a book about Gretchen could wait. She needed to stay focused. She needed to find a way to get the Herald to publish Molly’s story. She was growing more and more certain that Molly’s death wasn’t an accidental overdose. She needed to find out who killed her. And she needed to find out who was trying to cover it all up.
She was pretty sure that one line of inquiry would lead to the other.
A shaggy-haired homeless man came and sat down next to her with a bundle of Street Roots newspapers. He stank of grime and body odor, but Susan was determined not to react to it. He dropped the newspapers between them on the bench, sniffed the air, made a face, and turned to Susan.
“Do you mind?” he said.
“What?” she said.
“Not smoking.”
CHAPTER
40
The beaver was three feet long and had been stuffed standing on its back paws, its tail a plate-sized flap on the carpet, head turned, as if he had just caught sight of something dangerous out of the corner of his eye. He’d been dead about a hundred years and his fur was molting, but there was a spark of fear in his black glass eyes that made him look almost lifelike. Archie could relate.
The beaver stood beside the ma?tre d’s station in the Arlington Club Restaurant. Archie felt bad for the ma?tre d’, because the restaurant was for members and guests only, and Archie had never seen more than seven people in there at a time. Mostly the ma?tre d’ spent his time leafing through the leather-bound reservation book and, when he wasn’t doing that, picking up the tiny feathers that fell from the stuffed pheasant on the mantel and drifted to the carpet below.
Debbie glanced up at the buck’s head hung above the door to the dining room. “This place gives me the creeps,” she said. There was only one other table occupied for dinner, and the clanking of their silverware carried more than their voices.
“It won’t be for long,” Henry said. “A few more days.”
Debbie looked at Archie as if she wanted some kind of confirmation, a nod, something. They hadn’t talked about the previous night. What could he say? Sorry?
Archie looked at his plate.
After his visit with Rosenberg he’d spent a few hours at the task force offices trying to help with coordinating the manhunt, and the rest of the day at the Arlington Club, trying to seem normal for his children. Claire was upstairs with them now, so Archie and Debbie could have some time together. But they couldn’t even do that without Henry.
The food was all right. Archie took another bite of salmon drizzled in cilantro pesto, still avoiding Debbie’s gaze. Salmon was pretty much all they served. Salmon cakes. Salmon salad. Salmon fillet. Salmon steak. It was Copper River season, when hundreds of fishermen flocked to the head of the three-hundred-mile rugged Copper River in Alaska to try to catch the fish going upstream to spawn. That’s when the fish were rich with fat. The farther on their journey you caught them, the more damaged and tasteless they became.
Archie’s stomach churned and cramped. He had cut back on the pills before. He knew how the withdrawal started. He put down his silver fork and his white cloth napkin, pushed his chair away from the table, and stood up. “I’m going to the bathroom,” he said.
Henry stood, too, intending to go with him.
They were too worried about him, and not worried enough about catching Gretchen. If it had been up to Archie, he’d have called in the army. But it wasn’t up to Archie. With the exception of his therapy field trip he’d spent the day under lock and key at the Arlington, not making eye contact with Debbie.
Archie sighed. “Are you going to watch me take a shit?” he asked.
Henry looked around at the vacant restaurant, the restroom within sight at the end of the room, then shrugged and sat.
“Thank you,” Archie said.
The men’s room had stalls with doors that shut. Classy. Archie finished up and washed his hands. The liquid hand soap smelled like lilacs. Or maybe he was just imagining it. He felt bleary from lack of sleep. His eyes looked yellow in the bathroom mirror. He used a real towel to dry his hands and dropped it in a straw bin below the marble counter.
The kid was waiting for him outside the bathroom door. He wasn’t a real kid. He was twenty, probably. Archie could see the hole in his lip from where he wore a piercing when he wasn’t at work. His white busboy jacket was starched flat and as he got close to Archie, Archie caught the harsh waft of fresh cigarette smoke.