Henry, Archie, and Susan drove to Cleveland High in an unmarked police car, Henry behind the wheel, Archie in the passenger seat, and Susan furiously scribbling notes in the back. They parked on the street in front of the three-story tan-brick school and got out of the car. Henry waved at a couple of cops who sat in a patrol car directly in front of the school. One of them waved back.
The day had changed. The clammy morning fog had given way to a clear blue sky and tiny blazing sun. The temperature was in the mid-fifties. In this bright mid-morning light, Cleveland High looked grand and picture-perfect. Whereas Jefferson looked institutional, Cleveland had a sort of architectural elegance, replete with pillars, arched front doors, and a sliver of front lawn. But it still made Susan think of prison.
“We’re going this way.”
Susan glanced up. Archie and Henry were several steps down the sidewalk, and Archie was looking over his shoulder at her. She was still standing facing the school, lost in her own memories.
“Sorry,” she said. “I went here.”
Archie raised his eyebrows. “You went to Cleveland?”
“Ten years ago. Yeah.” She caught up with them. “I’m still recovering.”
“Not a prom queen?” asked Henry.
“Hardly,” said Susan. She had been a troubled teenager, hysterical 15 percent of the time. She didn’t know how parents did it. “Do you have kids?” she asked Henry.
“One,” Henry said. “He grew up with his mom. In Alaska.”
“Is that where you’re from?”
“Nah,” he said. “I just ended up there.”
Archie grinned. “It was the seventies. Back when he had a truck camper. And hair.”
Susan laughed and scribbled a sentence in her notebook. Henry’s jolly face grew serious. “No,” he said, looking between Susan and Archie. “My life is off the record. Period.”
Susan closed the notebook.
“Henry doesn’t want to be interviewed,” Archie said.
“I get that,” Susan said.
They continued walking, turning the corner along the side of the school. Susan could see in the large windows, replaced with new glass since she had been a student, where kids sat staring, in various states of repose, at the front of the room. God, she had loathed high school. “Lee Robinson hated it here, didn’t she?”
“Why do you say that?” asked Archie peering up at the school.
“I saw her school picture. I remember what it was like being that girl.”
“That’s the door,” said Henry, pointing toward the metal fire doors on the side of the building. “Band rehearsal was on the first floor. She came out through there.”
Archie stood with his hands on his hips, looking at the door. Susan could make out a gun in a leather holster clipped to the waist of his pants. He gazed up at the school and spun slowly around on his heels, absorbing every detail. Then he nodded. “Okay.”
Henry led them down the sidewalk. “She walked this way.” Susan followed Archie, who was following Henry. They walked in silence. Susan stepped around a puddle that glittered in the light. It had been weeks since the sun had been out. Under the usual cloud cover, the world looked tamped down, flatteringly lit. Without it, every color sparkled. The conifers were a darker, richer green; the bright leaf buds on the plum trees were verdant, promising spring and roses and riverfront festivals. Even the gray sidewalk, buckling in places from the gnarled roots of trees planted a hundred years ago, looked somehow more vivid.
Susan stepped around another puddle and squinted up at the sky. Sun in March in Portland, Oregon, was almost unheard of. It was supposed to be gloomy and overcast. It was supposed to rain.
When they came to a spot halfway down the fifth block, Henry stopped.
“This is it,” he said. “This is where the dogs lost the scent.”
“So she got into a car?” asked Susan.
“Probably,” said Henry. “Or on a bicycle. Or a motorcycle. Or she flagged down a bus. Or the rain washed her scent away. Or maybe the dogs just weren’t tracking well that day.”
Again, Archie spun slowly around. After a few minutes, he turned to Henry. “What do you think?”
“I think he was on foot.” Henry pointed to a thick laurel hedge that framed the yard of a house just behind the point where the dogs had lost Lee Robinson’s scent. “I think he was waiting for her behind there.”
“It would be risky,” Archie said doubtfully. He walked over to behind the hedge. “This about how thick the foliage was?”
“It’s evergreen.”
Archie considered this. “So he waited for her behind the hedge,” he said tracing his hand along the thick leaves of the bushes. “Appeared. Then what? Talked her into a nearby vehicle?”
“A guy pops out from behind a bush and she gets into his car? Not when I was a teenager,” Susan said.
“No,” Henry said. “He doesn’t pop out.”
Archie nodded, thinking. “He sees her. He comes out on the other side of the hedge. Over here.” He walked along the hedge to the far side, almost around the corner. “Then he makes like he was just turning the corner,” he says, reenacting it. “Happens upon her.”
“He knows her,” said Henry.
“He knows her,” agreed Archie. They were quiet for a moment. “Or”-Archie shrugged-“maybe he popped out and held a knife to her throat and forced her into the back of a van.”
“Or maybe that,” said Henry.
“You look for fibers on the leaves?”
“Four days of rain too late.”
Archie spun around to Susan. “Did you walk home from school?”
“Just the first two years. Until I got a car.”
“Yeah,” Archie mused, his eyes on the hedge. “That’s when you walk, isn’t it? The first two years.” He cocked his head. “Did you like Cleveland?”
“I already told you, I hated Cleveland,” Susan said.
“No. You said you hated high school. Would you have hated high school anywhere, or was there something about Cleveland?”
Susan groaned. “I don’t know. There were some things I liked. I was in drama club. And, if you must know, I was on the Knowledge Bowl team. But only my freshman year. Before I ungeeked.”
“The drama teacher’s been there awhile,” said Henry. “ Reston.”
“Yeah,” Susan said. “I had him.”
“You ever go by?” asked Henry. “Say hello?”
“Drop in on my old high school teachers?” asked Susan incredulously. “I have a life, thanks.” Then a terrible thought struck her. “He’s not a suspect, is he?”
Henry shook his head. “Not unless he got nine teenagers to lie for him. He was rehearsing a school play each of the evenings a girl was taken. So you don’t have to take your apple back. How about the physics teacher, Dan McCallum? You have him?”
Susan opened her mouth to answer but was interrupted by Archie’s cell phone ringing. He pulled it out of his jacket pocket, snapped it opened, and turned and walked a few steps away. “Yeah?” he said. He listened for a minute. Henry and Susan watched him with rapt attention. Susan felt some almost unperceivable shift. She wasn’t sure if it was in Archie’s body language or a charge in the air, or maybe just a projection of her own mind, but she knew for certain that something had changed. Archie nodded several times. “Okay. We’re on our way.” He snapped the phone shut, dropped it carefully back into his pocket, and slowly rotated back toward them.
“They find her?” asked Henry, his face impassive.
Archie nodded.
“Where?” asked Henry.
“ Sauvie Island.”
Henry rolled his eyes toward Susan. “You want to drop her off back at the bank?”
Susan stared at Archie, willing him to let her come along. She can come. She can come. She can come. She longed for his lips to form the words. Her first crime scene. A first-person account. It would make a great lead for the first story. What was it like to look at a murder victim? The stench of a corpse. The legion of investigators examining the scene. Yellow crime tape. She smiled, feeling that familiar hum in her belly again. Then caught herself and quickly forced the pleasure out of her face. But Archie had already seen it.
She looked at him, her eyes pleading, but his face showed nothing.
He started walking toward the car. Fuck. She’d blown it. Her first fucking day with him and he already thought she was some sort of blood hungry asshole.
“She can come,” he said, still walking. He turned and glanced purposefully back at Susan. “But don’t expect her to look like her photo.”