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.“I better not,” he said.She turned around to face him.“It’s just a swimsuit,” she said, smiling.Her eyes were blue.Her cheek dimpled on one side.Archie cleared his throat.“It’s an extraordinary swimsuit,” he said.Her smile broadened.“Thank you for noticing.”Her hand was still holding the swimsuit top in place.She had a French manicure.Between the nail care and the expensive highlights, she was spending a lot of money on upkeep, for a college student.“Where did you say you were going to graduate school?” Archie asked.She looked at him for a moment, and then padded forward on her bare feet, until she was right in front of him.He could smell the coconut of her suntan oil and the sweetness of her perfume.Her breasts were inches from his chest.She looked up at him, lips parted slightly, and for a second Archie thought she might lift her mouth to his.They were so close he could feel the warmth of her breath feathering his chin.“You’re the detective,” she said.Archie tried to think about baseball, but nothing baseball-related came to mind.She didn’t move, didn’t step back.The air temperature in the few inches of space between them felt like it had gone up ten degrees.Archie felt a trickle of sweat wind its way across his forehead, behind his ear, and down the back of his neck.“I don’t have a cat,” he said.“I have some old scars that get irritated by the heat.I scratch at them, and they bleed.I came home to change my shirt.”She tilted her head slightly.She had pierced ears but wasn’t wearing earrings.“You should put on a blue one,” she said.“You’d look nice in blue.” She stepped back, and then walked off in the direction of the roof access door, the orange strings of her bikini top trailing loose behind her.Archie exhaled.The tattoo was still very black, he noticed.It had been a recent acquisition.CHAPTER20By the time Susan rolled up to the task force offices, she had spent an hour and a half on I-5 in heavy traffic, with no A/C, in the heat of the day.She was so sweaty she glistened, and her left arm was sunburned from having her elbow out the open window.She looked in the backseat for a hat to cover her sweaty, matted hair, and after some digging found a white Panama with a black band.This was why it paid not to clean out your car.She still wasn’t ready to go inside.Archie was in there, and he wouldn’t be happy with her.He would look all disappointed and fatherly.He was only twelve years older than she was, but had a way of making those twelve years seem like a century.She could already hear his voice, lecturing her.I’m not angry with you, just disappointed.“Gathering your courage?” she heard Archie ask.She jumped.Archie was standing outside her window.He was wearing a blue button-down shirt and corduroy pants.The man did not know how to dress for the weather.“How long have you been standing there?” she asked.“I just got back from an errand,” he said.“You need to get your A/C fixed,” he added, squinting up at the blindingly blue sky.“It’s only going to get hotter.”He didn’t seem that mad at her.A couple of uniformed cops she didn’t recognize walked by and nodded at Archie.He tapped the roof of her car with his palm.“Let’s talk in my office,” he said.“Now.”Susan’s heart sank.He just wanted to get her alone before he laid into her.Fine, then.She deserved it.She got out of the car.Her skin made a Velcro sound as it peeled off the vinyl seat.Her T-shirt was sweat-sodden and her scalp itched under the hat, but she followed Archie into the bank, past the uniformed cop at the front desk, past the detectives’ desks.She was careful to keep her eyes forward, careful to avoid seeing the desk where Heil had sat.She wasn’t sure if it would be worse to see it empty or to see someone else sitting at it.Just a few years before, she had only seen one dead body—her father’s.And he had died of cancer.Working on the crime stories for the Herald, following Archie around, she had seen more.But Jeff Heil’s death haunted her the most.Maybe because they had been together, and she knew that it could have been her.It had not been easy.She’d had nightmares for two months after the flood: dark waters, creatures she couldn’t see, Heil’s limp corpse sinking beneath the surface.Bliss had fed her ginger tea, played Deepak Chopra audiobooks day and night, and convinced Susan to float in a sensory deprivation tank for three hours a week.Now, even with the anxiety gone, Susan still avoided that stretch of Division Street.She still kept her eyes on the bridge when she crossed the river, careful not to let her eyes wander down to the water below.Archie didn’t talk about it.She hadn’t heard him mention Heil’s name since the funeral [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]