“I didn’t have specific knowledge of it,” Buddy said. He said it without hesitation, unblinking, his posture firm. “Sure, I heard rumors over the years. Like everyone,” he added meaningfully. “But I swear to you, I thought she was older. An indiscretion. A lot of politicians fool around. It goes with the territory.” He rolled down a sleeve and buttoned the cuff. “Shouldn’t you be looking for Archie?” he asked.
Henry stood at the window. Another news van pulled forward and parked. “I think I am,” he said.
He looked back at Buddy, who was working on the second sleeve. “When did you find out?” Henry asked. “Just out of curiosity.”
“Senator Castle increased school spending by thirty percent, expanded health care to half a million kids, reinvented how we take care of the elderly in this state, and set aside more than a million acres’ worth of wildlife refuge areas,” Buddy said, buttoning his other cuff. He glanced up at Henry. “He was a great senator, and a great man. And that’s how I’m going to remember him.”
The two stared at each other for a moment. Castle had won two of his five terms by the smallest margin in the history of the state. But since he’d died, everyone Henry came across claimed to have always voted for him.
Henry looked back out the window. “I’ll stay for a while,” he said slowly. “You can go.”
He heard Buddy close his laptop, then the sound of his expensive shoes slapping on the carpet as he exited the suite. Buddy was an operator and a political survivor and Henry had no doubt that he’d warned the kid not to talk to Susan. He also had no doubt that Buddy wasn’t telling him the truth about what he knew and when he knew it. Henry just didn’t know what old political gossip, even prosecutable gossip, had to do with locating Archie.
The door to Archie and Debbie’s bedroom opened and Debbie walked in wearing a slip-dress nightgown, and pulling on a hotel robe over her freckled shoulders. Her short hair was flat against one side of her head; a pillow seam creased her cheek.
“Anything?” she asked.
“No,” Henry said.
She walked over and laid her head on his shoulder and he put a hand on the back of her head. She didn’t cry. Her shoulders didn’t shake. Her breathing was even.
“I’m going to get someone else to come stay with you,” Henry said. “Buddy had to go back to work.” She lifted her head. This close he could see that her eyes were red. “Can I brush my teeth?” he asked. “Borrow some deodorant?”
She nodded and gestured toward the bedroom. “In there.”
The room was cool and dark, the bedding folded down. A dent in the pillows still marked where Debbie had been lying minutes before.
“You can lie down,” Debbie said. “And rest if you want.”
Henry moved quickly into the bathroom and picked up Archie’s toothbrush and leaned over the sink. “I have to get back,” he said. When he’d finished cleaning up he went back into the bedroom. The lights were on now, and Henry noticed several suitcases still lay on the floor half unpacked, and next to them, a cardboard box filled with reporters’ notebooks and three-ring binders. Debbie had pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and was sitting on the bed.
“What’s all that?” Henry asked, pointing at the box.
“Susan Ward’s notes,” Debbie said. “About Castle.”
Henry looked at the box again. It was something. And at this point, anything might help. “Can I take them?” he asked.
“You can burn them if you like,” Debbie said. “I don’t care.”
Henry went over next to Debbie and stooped down to pick up the boxes. He felt her hand on his shoulder and looked up.
“I want to help,” she said. “If you want me to make a statement to the media. Anything. Just let me know. I could plead with him to come home.”
“I don’t think that would help,” he said.
“He’s on some sort of suicide mission,” she said, finally voicing it.
Henry turned away, unable to look at her. If he’d taken better care of Archie, he could have stopped this. If he’d forced him into rehab. Stopped the visits with Gretchen. But they had all been too greedy. It had been so long. And there were so many victims still missing. “I know,” he said.
CHAPTER
51
Archie smoothed Gretchen’s hair with his hand. She was lying in the crook of his arm, her cheek on his chest. He felt great tenderness for her, her breaths, her breast moving against his rib cage, the curve of her hip. It was a postcoital illusion, he knew. His whole relationship with Gretchen was one long postcoital illusion. He lifted his hand from her hair. The hand was swollen again, and he made a fist a few times to get the blood flowing before settling it back on her head. Her breathing was steady and even and he wondered if she was asleep.
He could kill her now, he realized. He could take a pillow and cover her head and smother her.
She would fight it, but he could straddle her and use his weight as leverage, press the pillow hard into her face until she lost consciousness and then cover her mouth and her nose with his hand until he was sure she was dead.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked.