“I haven’t even opened the box,” Henry said.
That meant that Archie had done it. “Does the name John Bannon mean anything to you?” Susan asked Henry.
Henry moved the car forward another few feet. “He was Buddy Anderson’s old partner,” he said. “Back when Buddy ran the task force.”
“Molly said he was her contact,” Susan said. “He was the guy she called when she needed more money. He was Castle’s lackey.”
“Bannon’s been dead ten years,” Henry said. The guy in the car behind them started blasting ZZ Top. He had a good sound system and the Crown Vic pulsed with the bass beat.
Another dead end.
The ZZ Top fan turned up his stereo.
“For fuck’s sake,” said Henry, lifting his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose.
“Heather Gerber,” Susan said suddenly.
Henry lowered his hand. “What?”
“This is all about Heather Gerber,” Susan said. “Archie said that you never forget your first one. Your first cigarette. Your first corpse in the woods. I thought he was talking about the two bodies we found that night in Forest Park.” Susan cringed at her narcissism. “My first corpse in the woods. But he was talking about his first corpse. His first big case—Heather Gerber.”
“Okay,” Henry said.
“So maybe we should be looking for her,” Susan said. She tore another shred off the label and dropped it onto the floor. “If you were looking for someone, what’s the first thing you’d do?”
“Pick that up,” Henry said.
Susan leaned down and picked up the piece of label off the floor. “Sorry,” she said.
“Trace their cell phone,” Henry said. “That’s the first thing I’d do.”
“You can do that, right?” Susan asked. “Triangulate a general position using pings off cell towers?” The ice was starting to melt, and cold water was trickling down her arm.
Henry slid her a surprised look. “Listen to you,” he said.
“I did a story on those hikers they found lost in the woods last year,” Susan said. The weather had been bad and the search had been called off. They’d found their bodies the next morning.
“We can do better than that. Newer phones have built-in GPS signals. We can get a location within fifty to a hundred meters.”
“It would be a new account,” Susan said. “He would have set it up in her name in the past few days.”
“You think Archie has a phone in Heather Gerber’s name? If he has another cell phone, why doesn’t he just call us on it?”
“I don’t know.”
Henry flipped open his cell phone and hit a speed-dial button.
“I want to see if we can find a cell phone registered to Heather Anne Gerber,” he said into the phone. There was a pause. “Archie’s carrier is Verizon,” Henry said. “Start there.”
CHAPTER
63
Henry drummed his fingers against the hot steering wheel. Susan had her feet up on the dashboard again, but Henry was letting it slide. They had moved only a car length when Henry’s cell phone rang again. He picked it up.
Above them, a few hundred feet straight up to the right, a cliff side was being held together with chicken wire. A yellow sign warned ROCKS.
“Found it,” Claire’s voice said. “Heather Anne Gerber. Archie added the phone to his family plan. He said she was his daughter.”
“Give me the number,” Henry said, tearing a Post-it off the pad affixed to the dash. “Then get a trace on it and call me back.”
Claire read him the ten digits and Henry wrote them down.
“Well?” Susan asked when he hung up. With the leaking ice pack against her face, Henry could barely make out anything she said.
He didn’t answer. Instead he punched in the number of the phone Archie had registered to a dead girl.
The phone went right to voice mail.
“It’s me,” Archie’s recorded voice said. “Hurry.” The voice mail beeped.
“God fucking dammit,” Henry said into the phone. “You better have a fucking epic excuse for all this.” His voice thickened and he swallowed hard, turning his head to hide his emotion from Susan. “I’m on my way.”
He hung up and turned to Susan.
“It’s him,” he said.
His phone rang and he snapped it to his ear before it could get to the second ring. “There’s a timber road at mile post 92 off Highway 20 near the Metolius River. We’re getting a hit two miles up that road. Flannigan checked and there’s only one house up there.”
They had just passed mile post 38. Susan had been right. It had been Gretchen. And Henry had headed in exactly the opposite direction. No time to kick himself now. “Okay,” he said. “I’m going up there. Get everyone you can to that house.”
“You know there’s a fire, right?” Claire asked.
Henry flipped on the siren, pulled into the oncoming lane, and executed a U-turn. Up ahead a plume of flesh-colored smoke rose ominously from the horizon. “Yep,” he said.