Free Sweetheart by Chelsea Cain

chipper.”

CHAPTER
     

11
     
    S usan trudged after Henry. The ME had shown up, just behind the crime scene investigators and about a dozen other cops. The crime scene had been lit and taped off, and they were using sifters to separate the bone chips from the dirt. She wasn’t allowed beyond the crime scene tape, and Archie was too busy to talk, so she had decided to trail Henry. Not that she’d been invited.
    “Listen,” she was saying to Ian on her cell phone. “I can get it in. I’ll be there in an hour.” She glanced at her watch, but it was too dark to see it, so she held her phone down to her wrist and read her watch by the phone’s LCD light. Ten P.M. The outlying editions started printing at 11:00 P.M., but the metro area sunrise edition didn’t go to press until 2:00 A.M. She had plenty of time. Plus, she wanted to keep Ian happy right now, at least until after the story about Molly and Castle ran.
    Henry was hurrying up the long cement staircase that led out of the park up to street level. Was he trying to ditch her?
    She held the phone back to her ear. “We’re doing a spread on Castle’s death,” Ian was saying. “Eight stories. I can get you on the front page of Metro, below the fold.”
    “Below the fold?”
    “There’s a fire up near Sisters,” Ian said. “That’s the Metro lead.”
    She took the stairs two at a time. “Three bodies,” she said, exasperated. “How is that not A-one? And who gives a shit about a fire in Central Oregon?”
    “Spoken like someone without a second house in Central Oregon,” Ian said with a snort. “And you don’t know the bodies are connected,” he added. “And they’re nobody.”
    Bugs bounced off the yellow streetlights that lit the stairs. The bugs probably spent their whole life cycle doing that, Susan thought. Smacking against the grate that covered the bulb, again and again. “Nobody?” she said.
    Ian sounded bored. “Word is the first girl was a prostitute. The other two probably are, too. Or homeless. No one cares, Susan. Dead politicians sell papers. Dead hookers don’t.”
    “Castle was a sexual predator,” Susan reminded Ian. She tried to make her voice sound steely with resolve.
    “We’re not running that story when the entire state is mourning him,” Ian said.
    Sometimes Susan couldn’t remember why she’d ever slept with Ian. (He had let her hold his Pulitzer.) “You’re a hypocrite, Ian,” she said.
    “While I have you on the phone,” Ian said, ignoring her. “The fact checkers can’t get ahold of Molly Palmer. They keep getting her voice mail. You have another number for her?”
    Susan’s stomach clenched and she forced some more bravado into her voice. “She’s a stripper, Ian. She doesn’t carry her phone on her when she’s naked.” She made a mental note to find Molly, before her skittishness cost Susan her story.
    “I’m hanging up now,” Ian said.
    The line went dead and Susan pushed the phone back into her sweatshirt pocket and groaned in frustration. So much for keeping Ian happy.
    “It’s called a ‘high-risk lifestyle,’ ” Henry said. He had turned to wait for her at the top of the stairs.
    “What?” Susan said, jogging up the last few steps. She bent over for a minute to catch her breath. Her sneakers were covered with mud. She’d ruined more shoes in this job. …
    “Prostitutes,” Henry said. “Addicts. Homeless. They live ‘high-risk lifestyles.’ So we look hard for a couple of days after one of them gets stabbed in the neck with a fork, and then we move on to the more important cases involving honor students.” He started walking away again, up the street. “You know how many black teenage gang members and hookers end up dead without more than a line of copy in your newspaper?”
    “What about Heather Gerber?” Susan asked, struggling to get her notebook out as she caught up with him. Heather had been Gretchen’s first victim. A runaway. A street kid. A prostitute. They had