by Chelsea Cain
She cleared the compost pile and the fire pit, and when she got to the goat house, she looked inside, and she saw blackness.
“Goat?” she called.
A rustle made the hair on her arms stand up.
Something came forward, out of the dark.
A flash of two glowing eyes. And then a white muzzle.
Susan gave a sigh of relief as the goat pranced forward, baying. She gave the goat’s head a rub. It nuzzled up against her.
The goat was lonely. That’s all. It was the case of the lonely goat, and Susan had solved it.
She petted the goat for a few more minutes and then retraced her steps back inside. It was almost chilly being outside with bare legs.
When she stepped back into the house and closed the screen door behind her, this time she locked it.
CHAPTER
42
Back so soon?” Gretchen asked.
She was out of bed; sitting up, strapped into a wheelchair, her wrists and ankles bound with leather restraints. A larger leather strap circled her chest just under her breasts, harnessing her to the back of the chair. Her breasts pressed against the gray fabric of her institutional pajamas. Sweat beaded on her neck and darkened the neckline of the shirt. Her knees fell apart. The gray pajama pants were too long, and spilled several inches past the leather ankle straps, making her bare feet look especially small.
It was easier seeing Gretchen at night. The hospital was quieter. There were fewer questions. Archie wondered if she had been roused out of bed and put in the chair when he’d told the staff he was coming, or if she had been left upright like that for the night.
“I brought a friend,” Archie said.
Gretchen was sitting in profile and when she turned her head Archie could hear Henry’s breathing change at the sight of her bloated face.
“Oh, good,” she said flatly. “Henry.”
“Hello, Gretchen,” Henry said. His delight at her physical condition was palpable. He walked right up to her, a bounce in his step, and looked her up and down like she was a used car he was going to pass on purchasing. A huge grin spread across his face. “You’re looking well,” he said.
He was enjoying this way too much.
Gretchen glared at Henry.
Henry was beaming. He clutched his hands in front of his chest. “Isn’t Gretchen looking well this evening?” he asked Archie. “Isn’t she beautiful?”
“Was this necessary?” Gretchen asked Archie.
Archie stood inside the closed door to Gretchen’s room. He watched them for a moment. Henry, practically doubled over with glee, pink-faced and bright-eyed; Gretchen, seething in her chair. Henry needed that moment. He needed to see Gretchen suffering, robbed of her loveliness and power. Gretchen had taken something important from Henry. She had taken Archie, his best friend, his partner. And there was a part of Henry that could never forgive either of them for that. So he needed this moment. And Archie let him have it.
Henry laughed at her, and Archie let him. And after a while, Henry straightened up and wiped the tears from his eyes. He looked down at Gretchen and he kicked the wheel of her chair. “We need to talk, hot stuff,” he said.
She tried to look over at Archie.
“Me,” Henry said, leaning over her and gripping the sides of her chair. His voice was humorless now. “Not him. You and I need to have a talk.”
“I don’t find you very interesting to talk to,” Gretchen said.
“James Beaton’s widow was murdered yesterday,” Archie said from the door. Cut to the chase. Henry and Gretchen would go around and around like a couple of territorial dogs all day.
Gretchen nodded. Dusty Beaton’s murder had been on the news, but Archie could tell that this was the first Gretchen had heard of it. There was no verbal comeback. She was off her game.
Even Henry could tell. “Does the pretty girl want her boyfriend to come sit next to her?” Henry asked.
Gretchen didn’t move. “The pretty girl won’t say fuck without him,” she said.
“This is how it’s going to work,” Henry said, rotating the wheelchair around to face the chair by the bed. “You and I are going to have a talk, and if you’re good, I’ll let Archie come sit on the bed.” Henry folded his large frame in the plastic chair opposite Gretchen, and then he looked at Archie and patted the mattress. Archie walked over and took a seat on the edge of Gretchen’s bed, so that the three of them were sitting practically knee to knee.
“I start electroshock therapy this evening,” Gretchen said. She raised a skeptical eyebrow in Archie’s direction. “The new doctor you arranged to lead my team feels it’s in my best interest.”
“Hey, it’s like the electric chair,” Henry said, slapping his knee with a grin, “but in small doses.”
Archie looked away, at the white wall behind Gretchen’s head. Even across the room, Archie could make out the graffiti that had been carved into the wall and then layered with paint over the years. Kill me. They’re listening.
Let Henry do the talking. That was the agreement.
“I have an alibi,” Gretchen said. “I was here when Mrs. Beaton was murdered.”
“See, the thing is,” Henry said, “the Widow Beaton was gutted and mutilated. Seems someone dug her nose out of her face and left it on the carpet.”
Archie looked at Gretchen.
She smiled at him. “That sounds familiar,” she said.
Henry leaned between them. “Who killed her?” he asked.
Gretchen settled back in her chair. Her reactions were a half beat off, like someone who’d had three cocktails too many. “It wouldn’t be my place to speculate,” she said. She licked a flake of dried saliva from the corner of her mouth. “That’s your job.”
Henry hunched farther forward in his chair, his back muscles tightening under his shirt. “Just give it a go,” he said.
A lock of blond hair fell in front of one of Gretchen’s blue eyes. She looked at Archie with the other one. “If I were to hazard a guess,” she said in a mock whisper, “I would presume that it was Ryan Motley.”
Henry’s upper lip tightened. He glanced over at Archie. Archie gave him a look that said, If you strangle her, she wins.
Henry exhaled slowly, working his jaw. Then he fixed his gaze back on Gretchen. “You want us to believe that he’s been out there killing all this time and we’ve never noticed?” he said. “What is he, invisible?” Henry clawed his hands in the air. “Does he sneak into children’s bedrooms at night?”
“No,” Gretchen said coolly. “That’s the tooth fairy.”
Henry’s big hands tightened into fists. He was close to her, closer than Archie dared. The veins pressed against the skin of his forehead. She was Henry’s weakness as much as she was Archie’s. Henry could always control his emotions, except when it came to her. Archie wondered sometimes what bothered Henry most—the fact that Gretchen had nearly killed Archie, or the fact that they’d had an affair. “You’re making shit up,” Henry said.
Gretchen didn’t flinch, didn’t blink. Her beauty may have been marred, but when she comported herself, she looked as regal as a queen. Henry didn’t like that. Archie could see it in his face. He wanted her defeated.
“There are a lot of people out there killing other people,” she said. “There are serial killers you don’t know about, and that you will never catch. They will die natural deaths surrounded by their grandchildren, and no one will ever know what ghoulish trophies grandpa kept in the jars hidden under the shed.”
“Why would Ryan Motley want Dusty Beaton dead?” Henry asked.
Gretchen turned to Archie. “Because you were getting close, darling,” she said.
“Talk to me,” Henry said, tapping his chest. “I’m the one asking the questions.”
Archie couldn’t help it. “Close to what?” he asked.
Gretchen batted her crusty eyelashes at him. “Are you ready to talk to me now?”
Henry got up, stepped in front of Archie, put hi
s hands around Gretchen’s forearms, and pushed her chair back a few feet.
Archie was now staring at Henry’s back.
“It’s not like the others, princess,” Henry said. “He didn’t leave a flower. He didn’t move the body up.”
“He’s copying me,” Gretchen said. “He copies me sometimes.”
Archie could see the stubble on the back of Henry’s shaved head, and, if he craned his neck, he could see Gretchen around Henry’s shoulder. Her hair covered half her face now. A piece was stuck to the crust at the corner of her mouth. Behind her, on the white wall, Archie could see more scratched messages. She’s trying to kill me.
“Like with all the kids you’re accused of killing,” Henry said. “Like how he’s the real child killer and you’re falsely accused.”
“Yes,” Gretchen said. She shrugged. “I mean, I killed all the others. I just feel it uncharitable to take credit for actions not my own.”
“I see,” Henry said. “So he copies you sometimes, and sometimes he kills kids his own sicko way, with the torture and the lilies, and then sometimes he kills grown-ups with the torture and the lilies.” He craned his head back toward Archie. “This guy, he likes to change it up.”
“He was always a self-starter,” Gretchen said.
“You’ve known him awhile,” Archie said.
Gretchen craned around Henry and looked Archie in the eye. “Longer than I’ve known you,” she said.
Henry leaned to the side, blocking Gretchen’s view. “When was the last time you saw him?” he asked her. He leaned his weight on his good leg. He did that late in the day, when his leg bothered him more. Archie hoped that Gretchen wouldn’t see it.
“Just a few days ago,” Gretchen said.
“Now, see there, angel face, you’re fucking with me,” Henry said. “That makes it very hard for me to take you seriously.”
“I heard you almost died,” Gretchen said. “It must be hard for you. A man so invested in being strong, reduced to a lesser version of himself. Did they tell you that you’d recover fully?” She leaned around Henry’s shoulder again and shot Archie a devious smile. “They were lying.”
Henry’s head was down.
Archie put a hand on his friend’s back and stood. “That’s enough,” he told Gretchen. He walked around behind Gretchen’s wheelchair. The photograph was in his inside jacket pocket. Now he slid it out and squatted next to Gretchen. He showed her the picture. “I think that this is you,” he said.
Her eyes traveled slowly down his face and chest, and then fixed on the photograph. She didn’t move. Archie could hear her breathing. “That’s a shadow,” she said.
“I saw another photograph,” Archie said gently. He put his finger on the teenage boy in the picture. “One where he is taking the picture.” That girl had been skinny, with a flat chest and dark hair; shoulders slumped, trying to take up less space. Nothing like the Serial Killer Centerfold. “You must have worked hard to reinvent yourself,” Archie said.
“And look at you now,” Henry said dryly. “Such a looker.”
Archie studied Gretchen. Scrutinizing her for answers, some hint of recognition, a flicker of emotion. “What were they to you?” he asked.
Her eyes moved back up to meet his. Her head swayed a little. He realized how much effort she was putting into this, appearing functional with all those drugs in her system. But the clues were there—swollen eyelids, slack jowls, heavy limbs. She was exhausted. The hair stuck to the crust at the corner of her mouth fluttered as she exhaled.
“Will you get my hair out of my eyes?” she asked.
Archie hesitated only for a second, and then he reached out and touched her hair with his fingers, brushing it back across her cheek, and then tucking it behind her ear. His fingertips grazed her earlobe and the touch reverberated up his arm.
The hair gone, her full face was revealed. Even with the added weight, inflamed skin, crud stuck to the roots of eyelashes, sores at the corners of her mouth—he could still find something lovely about her. He wondered how long that would last. How many years in this place it would take before he could face her and not feel that physical draw.
“Give us a minute,” Archie told Henry.
Henry didn’t move.
Archie turned around. He could do this. He just needed Henry to trust him. “It’s okay,” Archie said. “She’s tied to a chair. I think I can handle this.”
Henry snorted. He took a step, cringing only slightly as he put weight on his bad leg. “I’ll be right outside,” he said. He paused and leaned back in front of Gretchen. “You look great, sugar lips,” he said. “Keep doing what you’re doing.”
Gretchen stared straight ahead.
Henry chuckled. “This was fun,” he said. He was still smiling as he left the room.
When the door was closed, the two of them sat there. The leather straps that held Gretchen’s wrists to the arms of the chair were lined with sheepskin. They buckled like belts. Her arms were pale and spotted with bruises. Archie didn’t know how much weight she had gained. Her body had changed. Her thighs spread wider on the seat. Her hips looked bigger. Her once-flat belly was now rounded. Even her neck and face looked filled out. Her breasts were fuller than before. Her angles had softened. But her figure was still there. It still pulled at him.
He wanted her to look worse. He wanted to look at her and feel nothing.
“Thinking up new ways to hurt me?” Gretchen said.
“You’re the expert,” Archie said. “You taught me everything I know.”
“I didn’t think you’d like it so much,” she said.
Archie didn’t answer. He looked outside, through the bars, at the brick wall.
She said, “If we’re just going to sit here, I’d like another Lorazepam.”
Archie glanced at the closed door. It was soundproof. No one was listening.
“I killed a man a few months ago,” Archie said.
Gretchen stared at him.
He studied his shoes, the laces confiscated downstairs. “That man who kidnapped the boy and killed those people during the flood. He killed Jeff Heil, a detective I worked with.”
“The one who poisoned Henry.”
Archie nodded.
“Was it self-defense?” Gretchen asked.
Archie scratched the back of his head. “At first.” He glanced up at her. Her face was absent of emotion. “He came at me,” Archie explained. “We fought.” He touched his forehead, above the eyebrow. “He had a skull fracture. A piece of the bone was missing. His brain was exposed.” Archie rubbed his eyes. “He was subdued. He was probably dying. He was certainly not a threat.” Archie looked at his hands again. They were soft hands, the hands of an academic, not big like Henry’s. He was not a fighter. As his apartment wall could attest. “I punched him,” Archie said. “I jammed my fist through the hole in his skull.” These hands, his hands, had done this. He still couldn’t quite believe it. “The bone fragments gave way.” He turned his hands up, studying the palms. “His brain was warm Jell-O. It just slid out between my fingers.”
“Did you like it?” Gretchen asked.
Archie folded his hands and looked up at her. “I’m not like you.”
Her brow furrowed. “But you don’t regret it.”
“I’m glad he’s dead,” Archie said. “It makes things easier for the boy.”
“You got away with it,” Gretchen said.
“They never found the body,” Archie said with a shrug. “They accepted my version of events.” He glanced back at Gretchen’s bed, where he had left the photograph of the Beaton family. He had Gretchen’s full attention now. If there was one thing she loved, it was seeing Archie turn himself inside out. “You know that’s how my mother died,” he said.
Gretchen licked her lips. “In the car accident?” she said.
“She had a skull fracture,” Archie said. “No air bags. No shoulder strap. Her head hit the dashboard.” It had been almost twenty-five years, and his chest st
ill tightened when he thought about that day. “It took her ten minutes to die. I tried to hold her skull together, but by the time the ambulance got there it was too late. I could feel her brain pulsing under my fingers; I thought she was alive. But it turned out that it was just my own pulse I was feeling.” His hands betraying him again. He was sitting close to Gretchen, their knees almost touching. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “I was seventeen,” he said. He let that hang in the air for a moment, and then he rocked his chair back and grabbed the photograph off the bed from behind him. When he had it, he scooted the chair back right in front of her, the feet of the chair against the feet of her wheelchair. Her knees were open slightly, and he sat with his knees open, too, just a little bit wider, so that the outside of her knees rested against the inside of his. He laid the photograph on her lap between them.
He felt her stiffen. He might not have noticed it if they hadn’t been touching. But she reacted to the contact of the photograph against her body. It meant something to her.
He was on the right track.
“That’s about how old you were here, isn’t it?” he said, touching the shadow of the girl. His hand was on the photograph; the photograph was on her upper thighs. Touching the girl in the photograph was like touching Gretchen. He was aware of her breasts, rising and falling with her breaths; her breathing quickening. He said, “That day, when I went through that stop sign, it changed everything. My life is before that day, and after that day.” He could feel the burn where their knees made contact. She was pressing her knees out against his, or the other way around. “Just as there is my life before you, and after you.”
He traced his fingertips over the girl’s shadow, her long limbs exaggerated by the angle of the sun, her elbows, the silhouette of her skirt. “This girl”—he tapped his finger on the photograph—“hadn’t killed anyone yet.” Archie moved his finger to the image of James Beaton. “You said that he was your first victim.” Archie held the photograph up, showing it to her. “What was the thing that changed? What happened to her?”