“I will go public with everything,” Susan said, gaining confidence. “Unless you allow me access to the investigation. I know Archie. I know a lot about the BK case. I can help find them.” In that moment, she even believed it. Molly was dead. The Castle story was stalled. But she could help with this. She could do this. “I have to help find them. Please.”
Of course Susan would never have betrayed Archie. But she was banking on the fact that Henry wouldn’t risk that. She wanted him to agree, and at the same time she wanted him to call her bluff. Because if he agreed, it meant he didn’t trust her.
“Okay,” he said. “You’re in.”
Susan hadn’t been to the task force offices since the After School Strangler case had ended. It was in an old bank on the east side that the city had bought and turned over to the department as extra office space. The bank was one story and square, and centered in a parking lot. There was an ATM on the east side of the building where you could still get cash.
They had done a little work on the place: ripped up old carpet, pulled out the cashier’s counter, and installed desks and flat-screen computers. But it still looked like a bank. It still had the old vault. The old bank clock still read TIME TO BANK WITH FRIENDS. It was still lit with fluorescent lights bright enough to count every pimple of a bank robber’s face off surveillance tapes. Not very flattering. Susan pulled at her T-shirt. She’d left right away with Henry, no time to change. Now she was regretting not taking the time to put on a bra.
Claire Masland sat down next to Susan at the conference table in the bank’s old break room. The room was packed with cops. No one had slept. They smelled like a sports team. Susan lifted a paper cup of coffee to her mouth. She had gotten the coffee from an air pot on the counter. It was hazelnut. What kind of cops drank flavored coffee?
“New Kids on the Block?” Claire said.
Susan looked down at her T-shirt. “It’s ironic,” she said.
“Okay,” Henry said. “Let’s get started.” He leaned over and unrolled a map of Oregon onto the conference table. It was covered with different color Post-it notes. “Roadblocks are marked,” he said. “We’ve got bulletins at all airports, bus stations, train stations, and shipyards. We’ve got both their photographs on the wire. Media coverage.” He rubbed the back of his neck and looked up at the group. “What are we missing?”
Jeff Heil examined the map over Henry’s shoulder. “You think she’s still in the state?” he asked skeptically. The map featured only a sliver of Washington above and California below, and to the right, the edge of Idaho, pressing against Oregon, the border forming a vague human profile gazing toward the Pacific.
“She didn’t go far last time,” Claire said.
“Maybe we should search all the basements in Gresham,” someone else said.
Henry shook his head and looked down at the map. “Don’t think I’ve ruled it out,” he said. His shoulders rose and fell with a deep breath. Then he looked up around the room until his eyes rested on Lorenzo Robbins, from the ME’s office. He’d come in while Henry was talking, and was standing just inside the door. “What do we have on the heart?” Henry asked him.
Robbins crossed his arms and leaned back against the door. Several manila folders were stuck under one armpit. Susan didn’t know him, but she’d seen him around. His dreadlocks made him easy to recognize. “It’s a human male’s. Mid-thirties. We matched it to a DNA sample taken from the missing transport guard’s house. Name’s Rick Yost.”
“Can you tell how he died?” Henry asked.
“He didn’t die of a heart attack,” Robbins said.
Henry sighed heavily and moved on. “Anything from the cell phone battery and ammo?” he asked Mike Flannigan.
Susan suddenly felt more awake. She sat up a little. The fact that they’d found a cell phone battery and ammo hadn’t been released to the media. She raised her hand.
Henry saw her hand in the air and winced. “We found Archie’s phone battery and a handful of bullets in a gutter near the park,” he explained. “Can we wait on questions?”
Susan lowered her hand and picked up her cup of hazelnut coffee.
“Just his prints,” Flannigan said. “He must have tossed them from the car.”
Susan hated hazelnut coffee almost as much as she hated vanilla coffee, which was almost as much as she hated all flavored coffees. But she took a sip and swallowed it anyway. Just Archie’s prints. He’d gotten into the car of his own free will. And then thrown the battery and ammo out on his own.
“Okay,” Henry said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “We keep that quiet for now.” He looked around the room at the assembled cops. He looked tired, Susan thought. His blue eyes were bloodshot; the stubble that peppered his bald head was gray. “Let’s get ready for the press conference,” he said.
He stepped away from the table and the cops all got up and started to move out of the room. Susan stared at her coffee. Then she felt someone brush her arm and she looked up and saw Lorenzo Robbins standing between Claire and her. He thrust a manila folder at Claire. “This go to you now?” he asked. “It’s my findings on the park bodies.”