Archie lifted his arms off the armrests and folded and unfolded his hands in his lap. He was looking at the copy of The Last Victim. At Gretchen Lowell. Eyes heavy, unblinking. Susan glanced from Archie to the book and back at Archie. It was like once he looked, he couldn’t look away. “It’s not that unusual for psychopaths to get close to investigations,” he said, gaze still fixed on the thick paperback. “They enjoy watching the drama unfold. It makes them feel superior.”

Susan bent forward, resting her forearms on her crossed legs, and scooted a little closer to Archie. She always seemed to make the first move on first dates. “But she risked a lot,” she said softly. “To get to you. And then she didn’t kill you.” He was still looking at the book. Susan was filled with a sudden impulse to reach out and fling it off the table. Just to see what he’d do. “I’m confused by that. It seems out of character.”

“Excuse me,” Archie said. He stood up quickly and went into the kitchen. Susan twisted awkwardly in her seat so that she could watch him. She couldn’t get a read on his face. He stood with his back to her, hands on his hips, facing a sad bank of white Formica cabinetry. And then he sighed and said, “Will you do me a favor and put the book away?”

The book. Was it the photograph of Gretchen Lowell looking like a Breck Girl on the cover that bothered him, or was it what was inside? “Sorry,” Susan called, pushing the paperback into her purse. She hunched her shoulders a little, feeling like a jerk. “It was just a prop. For the interview.”

He didn’t say anything. A hand went from his hip to the back of his neck. She wished he’d turn around so that she could see his face, see what he was thinking. She wanted to do something other than stare forlornly at the back of his curly head, so she started writing in her notebook. “What isn’t he telling me about Gretchen Lowell?” She circled the question several times, until the pen made an indentation in the paper. The question sat on the page, surrounded by blank paper.

He said something. She looked up, mortified. He was standing at the fridge now, looking at her, a beer in his hand. He had definitely said something.

“Excuse me?” she said, flipping over the page she had been writing on so quickly, it tore a little at the spiral.

“I said, you think she showed me mercy.”

Susan twisted around to face him again, lifting her legs under her on the couch, her motorcycle boots pressing a dent into the foam cushion. “At the end,” Susan said, “she killed everyone else she took. She killed you. But she brought you back. She saved your life even.”

Archie stood alone in the kitchen and took a sip of the beer. She wasn’t sure he’d even heard her. Then he walked back into the living room and sat down, placing the beer carefully on the coffee table in front of him. He did everything carefully. Like someone who expected to break the things he took care of. He looked at his hands, thick, laced with veins, still folded in his lap. And then back at Susan. “If Gretchen had been feeling charitable, she would have let me die,” he said matter-of-factly. “I wanted to die. I was ready to die. If she had put a scalpel in my hand, I would have stabbed myself in the neck and happily bled to death right there in her basement. She didn’t do me any favors by not killing me. Gretchen enjoys people’s pain. And she just found a way to prolong my pain and her pleasure. Believe me, it was the cruelest thing she could have done to me. If she could have thought of something crueler, she would have done it. Gretchen doesn’t show people mercy.”

The heat kicked in. There was a rumble and then the slow blow of hot air from a vent that Susan couldn’t see. Her mouth felt dry. The kid upstairs was still running. If Susan had lived there, she’d have killed that kid by now. “But she ended up in jail. That couldn’t have been part of the plan.”

“Everyone needs a career-exit strategy.”

“But she could have gotten the death penalty,” Susan said.

“She had too many bargaining chips.”

“You mean bodies?” Susan asked.

He took another sip of beer. “Yes.”

“Why do you think she agreed to talk only to you?”

“Because she knew I’d go along with it,” Archie said simply.

“And why did you agree? When your wife made you choose? Why choose Gretchen?”

“She’s my ex-wife. And I did it for the families. Because they deserve some closure. And it’s my job.”

“And?” Susan asked.

Archie held the cold bottle next to his face and squeezed his eyes shut. “It’s complicated.”

Susan glanced at her purse. The spine of the paperback was still visible where she had tucked it in the main compartment, along with some loose tampons, her Paul Frank wallet, a plastic case of birth-control pills, and about thirty pens. “So, have you read The Last Victim?”

“God no,” Archie said, groaning.

Susan blushed. “It’s not bad. You know, for a true-crime thriller. Not much in the way of actual journalism. I called the writer. She said that you refused to talk to her. Your ex-wife refused to talk to her. Your doctor refused to talk to her. The department refused to talk to her. She based the thing mostly on news accounts, public record, and her own torrid imagination. There’s this scene at the end where you talk Gretchen Lowell into turning herself in. You convince her that she can be a better person, and she is overcome by your grace and goodness.”

Archie laughed out loud.

“Didn’t happen like that?”

“No.”

“What do you remember?” Susan asked.

Archie flinched.

“You okay?”

“Headache,” he explained. He reached into his pocket and produced a brass pillbox, withdrew three white oval pills, and swallowed them with a pull of beer.

“What are those?” Susan asked.

“Headache pills.”

Susan threw him a dubious look. “Do you really not remember those ten days?”

Archie blinked slowly and let his eyes settle on Susan. He looked at her for long time. Then his eyes slid slowly to a digital clock that sat on a bookcase. The time was wrong, but Archie didn’t appear to care. “I remember those ten days better than I do the days my children were born.”

The heat turned off and the room fell quiet. “Tell me what you remember,” Susan said. Her voice cracked like a teenage boy’s. She could feel Archie appraising her. And she put on her best smile, the one she had learned to use so long ago, the one that made all the men understand that no matter what their troubles, she could make them feel better. Archie wasn’t buying.

“Not yet,” Archie said finally. “You have three more stories, right? You don’t want to spoil the suspense.”

Susan wasn’t ready to let it go. “What about the ‘second man’ theory? Some of the reports said that you said there was a second man there. Someone who was never caught. Do you remember that?”

Archie closed his eyes. “Gretchen has always denied it. I never saw him. It was more of an impression that I had. But I was also not in the most stable mental condition.” He reached up and rubbed the back of his neck and looked at Susan. “I’m tired. Let’s continue this some other time.”

Susan dropped her head in her hands in mock frustration.

“We’ll get to it,” Archie said. “I promise.”

She snapped off the digital recorder. “Can I use your bathroom?”

“It’s off the hall.”

She stood up and walked down the hall to the bathroom. It was as unremarkable as the rest of the apartment. A fiberglass tub and shower combo with a sliding frosted-glass door. A cheap sink with plastic faucet knobs set in a pressboard cabinet. Two gray towels of an unimpressive thread count hanging limply on oak towel racks. Two more sat freshly laundered and folded on the back of the toilet. The bathroom was clean, but not too clean, not fastidious. She stood at the sink, staring at her reflection. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. She was close to the biggest story of her career. So why did she feel so crappy? And what was she thinking with the pigtails? She pulled them out, combed her hair with her fingers, and tied her hair back at her neck. The light in the bathroom made her flesh look like raw chicken. She wondered how Archie Sheridan faced himself in that mirror each morning, sallow, every wrinkle shadowed. No wonder he was a head case. She dug into her pocket, retrieved some lip gloss, and slathered it on liberally. Did he want to be forced back on medical leave? Is that was this was all about?