Heartsick

Archie sat at his new desk, listening to his taped interview with Fred Doud. Kristy Mathers was dead. And now the clock restarted. The killer would take another girl. It was just a matter of time. It was always a matter of time.

The office lights were on, but Archie had turned off the fluorescent overheads in his office and now sat in near darkness, the only light streaming in from his open door. He had finally sent Henry to drive Susan Ward back to her car, and he and Claire Masland had followed the medical examiner’s vehicle to the morgue, where they met Kristy’s father and he identified her body. Archie had become an expert at shattering families. Sometimes he didn’t have to say a word. They just looked at him and knew. Other times, he had to say it over and over again, and still they blinked at him dumbfounded, heads shaking in disbelief, eyes stubbornly bright with denial. And then, like a wave, it would crash and the truth would flood in. It took a lot of effort to remind himself that he was not the cause of their anguish.

But Archie did not mind being around grief. Even the most blatant assholes seemed to function in a state of grace when confronted with the brutal loss of a loved one. They moved through the world differently than other people. When they looked at you, you had the feeling that they were really seeing you. Their entire universe was just this one thing, this one event, this one loss. They seemed, for a few weeks, to have things in perspective. Then the inconsequential shit of their lives would start to seep back in.

He looked up. A

He rubbed his eyes, smiled wearily, and waved her in. A

She did, and the room was flooded with jumpy white light, causing the vise of pain that gripped Archie’s head to crank a turn tighter. He stiffened, and stretched his neck until he heard a satisfying pop.

A

“That it?” he asked, nodding at the document.

“The fruit of my labors,” A

Archie’s ribs hurt from sitting so long and acid burned in his stomach. Sometimes, he would wake up in the middle of the night and find himself in the right position, and realize that he wasn’t in pain. He’d try to remain still, to stretch out the blissful interlude, but eventually he’d have to turn over or bend a knee or stretch an arm out, and then there’d be that familiar twinge or burn or ache. The pills helped, and sometimes he told himself that he was almost getting used to it. But his body still proved a distraction. If he was going to concentrate on A

“Sure,” she agreed.

They walked through the empty squad room, where a custodian was uncoiling a vacuum cleaner cord, and Archie held the big glass bank door open for A

“I think we’re dealing with a budding sociopath,” A

“You like them?” A

Archie cleared his throat. “You said he was a budding sociopath?”

“You don’t want to talk about my calves?” A

Archie smiled. “I’m just trying to avoid a sexual harassment lawsuit.”

A

They started walking again and A

“But he kills again.”

“The need overpowers him. But it’s about the rape. Not the murder. He’s a rapist who kills, not a murderer who rapes. It’s not part of his fetish. It’s not necrophilia. He kills them to spare them from experiencing the rape.”

“What a guy,” said Archie.

They walked past a darkened paint store, past a shuttered espresso drive-thru booth, past a hipster dive bar. The window of the bar was filled with neon beer signs: PBR, RAINIER, SIERRA NEVADA. A half-assed marquee advertised a band called Missing Persons Report. Nice. Archie glanced inside as they went past and caught a flash of people, mouths open wide, laughing, the sound of drunken levity.

A

Archie shook his head. “We’ve pulled every unsolved rape over the last twenty years. No good fits.”

They came to an intersection. If Archie had been alone, he would have walked against the light, but because A

“Look out of state. If you can’t find anything, it means that the rapes weren’t reported, which is useful in itself.”

Archie considered this. “He has power over women.”

“Or used to,” A

“He loses his power; he compensates with violence.”

A

“So he does it again.” Archie sighed. The light changed, finally, and they walked across to the other side of the street and started heading back south. It wasn’t much of a walk. But it felt good to move.

“Yes. And gets away with it again. So now the societal boundaries that he’s always been uncomfortable with are seriously eroding. I think that part of him, that first time, fully expected to get caught. Maybe he even wanted to get caught, to be punished for his deviant fantasies. But he wasn’t. So now he’s thinking that the law doesn’t apply to him. He’s feeling special.”

“And the bleach? Is it a purification ritual, or is he studiously destroying forensic evidence?”

He could see A