by Chelsea Cain
“You’ve seen her picture?” Archie asked. Everyone had seen her picture, you couldn’t avoid it, but he had to be sure.
“Sure,” Mrs. Beaton said. “She was on the cover of TV Guide four times. I would have remembered someone who looked like that.”
Archie was quiet, thinking. The A/C unit hummed. The dog snored. Mrs. Beaton cracked her knuckles.
Archie said, “Did you have any reason to think your husband might be unfaithful?”
Another snort. “You mean before he cleaned out our bank account and took off?”
Archie nodded.
“He was very loyal to his family,” she said. “He didn’t have any reason to leave.” She fixed her eyes on Archie. “Is he dead?”
“I have no idea,” Archie said. He really didn’t. He didn’t know what Gretchen was playing at. Had she really killed this man? Or had she just read about him in some old newspaper clipping and sent Archie off to chase his tail? She’d known that Susan would share the recording with him. She’d known that he’d investigate her claim. But as far as Archie could tell, the case was stone cold.
“Are your children still in town?” Archie asked.
Mrs. Beaton lifted her shoulders in a sad sort of shrug. “Would you stick around if you’d grown up here?”
Archie had not set foot in the town he’d grown up in since the day he’d left for college. “I’ll let you get on with your day,” he said, standing up and brushing the dog hair off his pants.
Mrs. Beaton’s eyes narrowed and her mouth formed a crooked smile. “Why are you here, really?” she asked.
“Just following up on a tip,” Archie said. “It’s probably nothing.”
She didn’t move. She sat dwarfed in the chair, the wineglass still in her hand. The walker was still positioned in front of the chair. Two pink tennis balls had been affixed to the walker’s front feet.
“I’ll let myself out,” Archie said. He stepped over the dog. It growled and pawed at something in its sleep.
CHAPTER
34
Archie immediately recognized the beat-up Saab taking up two spots in the parking lot of the Hamlet Inn. He pulled up next to it. Susan was sitting on the hood eating a sandwich.
“Thought I might run into you here,” she said with her mouth full. “I talked to the manager.” She swallowed and licked her fingers. “The woman who ran the place back when Beaton disappeared is dead. This guy is pretty useless. He was in diapers back then.” She held up half of the sandwich. “Want some?”
Archie took the sandwich and sat down next to Susan. The hood of her car was hot. Vehicles zoomed along Highway 30, the last gasp of rush hour. On the other side of the highway were train tracks and a few dilapidated buildings.
“Nice view, right?” Susan said dryly. “How was the wife?”
Susan had a way of showing up at all the wrong places. “You following me?” Archie asked.
“I looked her up when I got to town, and I saw your car in front of her house,” she said with a shrug. “What’s with that color, by the way?”
Archie took a bite of the sandwich and chewed it. “Didn’t ask,” he said.
“Did you learn anything?” Susan asked.
She was barefoot, her flip-flops on the pavement, her dirty feet on the hood of the car, and she was wearing a T-shirt from Portland’s old 24 Hour Church of Elvis. The late-day sun made her orange hair look like some sort of radioactive halo.
“What?” she said.
“Are we partners now?” Archie asked.
“I gave you the recording,” she said.
Archie didn’t want her harassing the elderly. “Leave the woman alone,” Archie said with a sigh. “She doesn’t know anything.”
“Think Gretchen did it?” Susan asked.
Archie peered at the sandwich in his hand. “What is this?”
“Tempeh, mustard, and sprouts on whole grain.”
Archie worked his tongue on a seed caught between his teeth.
“I don’t get it,” Susan said. “Why go through the trouble of cutting up the body? Why not just meet him somewhere in the middle of nowhere and then leave him there? If he thought he was getting laid, she could have talked him into going anywhere. Why this place? It wasn’t for the romantic ambience, believe me.”
She had a point. Gretchen said it had taken five trips to get Beaton’s body out of there. Where? To his car? It had disappeared with him. She had brought supplies. She had planned the murder. She would have planned the disposal of the body.
Archie heard the whistle before he saw the train. The tracks ran along all of Highway 30. They’d been there before the highway was, supporting the port towns that had grown up along the Columbia. Trains carried supplies, hauled lumber. They were lifelines.
All that luggage, I needed a porter.
The train rumbled past, a blur of primary-colored freight cars.
“I think I know how she got rid of the body,” Archie said.
CHAPTER
35
Susan listened as Archie laid it all out for Henry and Claire. Susan’s interview with Gretchen. Her story about killing James Beaton. His visit to St. Helens. The four of them were crammed into Archie’s office. Archie was in the chair at his desk, and Henry and Claire were sitting in the chairs that faced the desk. There were no more chairs, so Susan perched herself on the desk’s corner. The office door was closed. The blinds were drawn. This was serious.
Henry rubbed his face. Then he dropped his hand and looked at Archie. He slowly scratched the stubble above his ear.
He didn’t look pleased.
Susan squirmed. She could feel tempeh stuck between her teeth.
She saw Claire glance at Henry.
Then Henry rubbed his face again, and leaned forward toward Archie. “What are you doing?” he asked. His voice was quiet, entirely calm, totally controlled. Susan could barely hear him. It was a bad sign. Susan had a feeling that the quieter Henry got, the angrier he was. “You know we have another case,” Henry said to Archie. “Two murders. A. Serial. Killer.”
“It’s related,” Archie said quickly. He nodded at Susan. “Tell him the name she gave you.”
They all looked at her. She had been working on getting the tempeh out with her tongue. Now she felt a slow bloom of heat rise from her chest to her cheekbones. The tempeh would have to wait. “Ryan Motley,” she said.
She saw Henry’s eyebrow twitch.
“Give him the flash drive,” Archie said.
Susan froze. Her whole face felt hot now. She was perspiring. Flop sweat. She’d used the term, but she’d never actually experienced it.
Archie was impassive, looking at her, waiting.
“Huh?” she said.
“I’m not stupid, Susan,” Archie said matter-of-factly. “Give it to him.”
She could deny it. But one look at Archie’s face told her she wouldn’t get away with it. She slumped and dug into her purse, and then held out the silver flash drive she’d stolen from Archie’s desk. “Here,” she said, hanging her head.
Henry snatched it from her. “You showed her the flash drive?” he said to Archie.
“I took it,” Susan mumbled.
“What?” Henry said.
She sat up straight and said, loudly, “I took it from his desk.”
“So you looked at it?” Archie asked her.
Susan hesitated, confused.
“What’s on it?” Henry asked.
“What do you mean, you took it from his desk?” Claire said.
Susan didn’t understand. Why were they asking her what was on it? She had taken the flash drive from them. The thing had been in Archie’s possession for at least three months. Then she realized that she had completely misunderstood. Archie hadn’t decided the murdered children weren’t worth looking into. He didn’t even know about them. “You two haven’t looked at it,” she said in amazement. “You haven’t opened the files at all.”
Henry glanced at Archie. “Have you?�
�� he asked Archie.
“No,” Archie said.
“Rewind,” Claire said. “Someone tell me what the fuck is going on.”
At least Susan wasn’t the only one in the dark.
Archie exhaled slowly, and then sat forward and folded his hands on his desk. It was quiet. Archie kept his eyes on his hands. “Gretchen gave me the flash drive a year ago. She said that she hadn’t killed any of the children we’d accused her of murdering, that she had had an apprentice who’d gone rogue. He acted alone. She said his name was Ryan Motley and that I needed to find him and then she gave me that.” He shot a furtive glance at Henry. “Henry and I agreed not to pursue, to not even look at it. Henry said—and I agreed—that she was trying to manipulate me. Us. That it was a game. We agreed that she was lying.”
Claire shot Henry a we’ll-talk-about-this-later look.
The silver flash drive glinted on the desk.
“She is lying,” Claire said.
“That’s what we thought,” Archie said.
“No,” Claire said. She sat up in her seat a little, and held her shoulders back. “I was at some of those crime scenes, remember?” she said. Her voice had an edge to it that Susan had never heard before. “I saw what she did to those children.”
“She was never convicted of murdering a single one of those kids,” Archie said. He gave Henry an I-could-use-your-help-here look, but Henry just shrugged.
Claire was sitting on the edge of her chair now. “She was never convicted of killing a lot of the people she went all Mengele on,” she said. “We went for convictions on what we could prove.” She pointed at Archie. “That was your idea. Get her behind bars and then get her to confess to the other murders.” Archie looked back at her, composed. Susan knew that face. He could take it on and off at will. Claire crossed her arms. “If anyone had asked me, I’d have said to euthanize the bitch,” she said.
Henry was studying something on the floor. Susan was hoping that Claire didn’t yell at her.
Archie unfolded his hands and placed his palms on the desk. “She confessed to twenty-one more murders,” Archie said calmly. “None of them children.”
Claire leaned forward. “This is revisionist bullshit,” she said.
Archie looked up. Henry looked up. Susan tried to take up less space on the desk.
“Some sick PR play,” Claire said. “She didn’t kill any kids. She’s mentally ill. Not to blame for her actions.” She squeezed Archie’s hands. “So, what? We’re supposed to understand? It’s suddenly no big deal? There is no Ryan Motley.”
Henry gave Susan a you-should-leave look, but she ignored him.
“Can we just entertain this?” Archie asked.
Claire exhaled and turned back to Henry. “Why are you just sitting there?” she asked him. “We can’t trust his judgment when it comes to her.”
Susan thought Henry looked tired. He crossed his legs, lifting the one that still gave him trouble and placing it on top of the other knee. “What’s on the flash drive?” he said to Susan.
Finally.
Susan opened her purse, pulled out a sheaf of paper, and spread it on the desk. “News stories,” she said, trying not to sound excited. “Seven murders over six years. All children. Different states. All unsolved.”
Everyone leaned forward and studied the articles on Archie’s desk, except for Susan—who couldn’t see over everyone else’s heads and knew the articles now by heart anyway. She dug at the tempeh between her teeth with her fingernail.
Archie sat back and did a quick search for a phone number on his computer. Then he picked up his phone and dialed it. “This is Detective Archie Sheridan with the Portland Police Department. I’ve got a question about a cold case. The detective in charge was”—he glanced at the article—“Lew Ellis.”
He kept the phone in the crook of his shoulder while he continued to scan through the pages on his desk.
After a few minutes, he said, “Detective Ellis? Hi.” He paused. “Yeah. That’s me.” Nodded. “Thank you.” He picked up one of the articles. “I’ve got a question about an old case of yours,” he said. His eyes searched the article and then stopped on a name. “Calvin Long. I’m wondering if there were any details that you didn’t release to the press.”
Everyone in the room leaned a millimeter closer.
“Really?” Archie said. He looked up, right at Claire. “What kind of flower?”
CHAPTER
36
Archie listened as Gretchen’s voice filled the break room. He was used to her voice. For a long time, after she’d almost killed him, he’d heard it in his head, reassuring him, comforting him, as if his inner voice had become hers. He could conjure that voice in an instant, he knew it so well. Even muddied by the medications, he’d know her voice anywhere.
She was detailing how she’d gutted and dismembered James Beaton. He’d listened to this part seven or eight times, but it still made the hair on his arms stand up. It wasn’t the content or the brutality of her words—he’d heard and seen worse—it was the way she talked about it, determinedly remorseless.
Archie looked around the conference table. They had all stayed late.
Michael Flannigan, his cap pulled low, fingers tugging on a recently grown beard; Josh Levy, back from a year working Vice, where he’d gained twenty pounds and stopped wearing a tie; Greg Fremont, who rode a recumbent bicycle to work and a button on his lapel—an outline of the state of Oregon with a green heart in it; Martin Ngyun, in his ubiquitous Blazers cap, so comfortable at a computer that when he wasn’t, he drummed his fingers on a phantom keyboard. Then there were Henry and Claire, who, despite the fact that there was no one who hadn’t figured out they were a couple, still sat as far apart from each another as possible.
Everyone in the room had been on the Beauty Killer Task Force except for Mike Flannigan, and he’d helped them catch four killers since. These people knew Gretchen. They had met her when she’d infiltrated the task force as a psychologist who had volunteered to work with them. They knew her murderous handiwork from scores of crime scenes. They had seen Archie consumed by her, nearly killed by her.
They listened in silence.
Henry chuckled when Gretchen brought up Susan’s daddy issues. Archie saw Claire kick Henry under the table.
Then the recording ended.
No one said anything for a while. The only sound was Flannigan scratching his chin.
Archie cleared his throat. “What you don’t hear on the recording is what Gretchen said after it was turned off. She told Susan that a man named Ryan Motley is behind the murders of Jake Kelly and Gabby Meester,” Archie said. “Gretchen claims he was an associate of hers at one point, and she gave us these.” He fanned out the stack of articles Susan had printed. “We know that lilies were left at the scene of at least three of these murders. Different varieties, but all Asiatic.”
The others reached for the printouts, their heads down, scanning them.
After a few minutes, Flannigan looked up at Archie. He touched the brim of his cap. “How does this relate to James Beaton?” he asked.
The others looked up. Claire gave Archie a look as if to say, See?
“I have no idea,” Archie said honestly. “Beaton went missing eighteen years ago. His wife thinks he ran off, and there’s some evidence to support that. I have no idea if he was really murdered or, if so, that Gretchen did it. Don’t focus on that. Focus on Ryan Motley. If these are all his victims, it gets us that much closer to catching him.”
“But what’s her game?” Levy asked. “Why confess to killing Beaton?”
“She wants him caught,” Archie said. “The disappearance of James Beaton is connected to Ryan Motley somehow.” He looked at Levy. “You’re right,” he said. “This is a game to her. She wants to make us work. But she’s given us the pieces. We just have to put together the puzzle.”
They didn’t look convinced.
Henry took his feet off the table. “Listen,” he said. “Archie
can read her. If he says her information is solid, it is. Whoever killed these kids, killed our victims, or at least is trying to make it look like he did. We follow his lead. You don’t have to understand it.”
Archie slid over the laptop that had been playing the MP3, and brought up an image from Google Earth. He turned the laptop around to face the others. “This is the Hamlet Inn. These are train tracks. I think she cut Beaton up and carried him in pieces over here, and when the train went by, she tossed the body parts on as it went past.” He looked at Ngyun. “Martin, I want you to track the lines that went past that day and see if there were any remains found in the cars or along the tracks. Those tracks run across the country, so the remains could have been discovered several states away and were never traced back.”
“Okay,” Ngyun said.
“We need to determine if these earlier murders were committed by our killer. Contact all the investigators who worked these cases, and review all the case files. Maybe we’ll find a common suspect, or a name that keeps popping up as a witness. You don’t kill this many people without making a mistake.”
“On it,” Levy said.
“Maybe,” Flannigan said, “Gretchen knew about the lilies because she killed these kids.”
Archie picked one of the printouts up off the table and slid it over to Flannigan. “The most recent one,” he said. “Look at the date.” A child had been murdered and left in a park in Illinois in November, almost four years before. “She was busy carving me up,” he said. He shook his head at the irony of it. “I’m her alibi.” She had almost never left his side during the ten days he spent strapped to a gurney under her scalpel. She was certainly not gone long enough to get to Illinois and back. “Look,” Archie said. “She’s a liar. She’s lying about some of this. But not everything. She didn’t kill Kelly or Meester. I think she knows who did.”