by Chelsea Cain
“Well,” Debbie had said as they pulled around to head home. “It was a pretty drive.”
There were nice rest stops along the Gorge, WPA projects that looked like stone cottages plucked from an enchanted forest. This wasn’t one of them. This rest stop was a cinder-block rectangle, painted Forest Service brown, an entrance for men on one side, women on the other. No free coffee here. There were two patrol cars out front, but they didn’t have their lights on. They had closed the women’s entrance off to the public, but the men’s room was still open. Archie counted four more cars in the parking lot. A man in a baseball cap headed into the men’s room. A woman threw a ball for her dog. A second woman, a blonde, got into a dark Ford Explorer. Archie felt his body stiffen. He was careful not to look back, not to let Henry notice him react.
Sometimes a blonde was just a blonde.
Beyond the boundaries of the blurry yellow light thrown by the rest stop’s floodlights was vast darkness: no cloud cover, no light from the city. The Gorge sky was filled with stars. An unyielding dry breeze moved through the trees, and the brown grass crunched under Archie’s feet. You never had to mow your lawn in August in Portland, unless you watered it. Two months ago, the grass had still been green.
“Everything’s dead,” Archie said to Henry. Henry was wearing black jeans, a black T-shirt, cowboy boots, and a black leather jacket. But Henry was a step ahead and didn’t hear him. Archie ducked under the tape and followed Henry into the rest-stop bathroom.
A flash went off. Archie blinked, momentarily blinded. As his eyes refocused he saw a state trooper with a big digital camera. The trooper was in his late twenties, Archie guessed, his dark hair receding prematurely above each temple, his face a little doughy. But he had even features and straight teeth and the build of an ex-jock, and the silver, five-point badge pinned to his chest was polished to a high sheen. The state-trooper uniform was ridiculous—the big hat, the epaulets, the blue pants with light-blue stripes down the sides; they looked like park rangers who’d lost a fight with a blueberry. But this guy wore it well. He almost looked like a real cop. The trooper looked up and lifted his thick eyebrows at Archie. “Hey,” the trooper said. “Hey, it’s you.”
Archie tried to force his mouth into a friendly smile. It had been like that since Gretchen had taken him captive, this sort of morbid celebrity. There had been a paperback bestseller, The Last Victim, about his kidnapping, and a TV movie. Gretchen’s escape from prison and their subsequent second run-in had only made it worse.
“Let him look around,” Henry told the trooper.
A leathery-skinned man dressed for a day hike stood by the sink.
“Can I go now?” he asked Henry.
“A few more minutes,” Henry said.
Archie reached into his pocket looking for the brass pillbox of Vicodin he usually had. It was reflex. He knew it wasn’t there. They had taken it at the hospital, along with his cell phone and the belt Debbie had given him on their last Christmas together. He hadn’t known what to do with his hands since. He settled on putting both of them in his pants pockets and focused on taking in the scene. The bathroom was familiar. The scratched sheet-metal mirror. The too-bright white walls. The fluorescent lights. It was not unlike his room at the psych ward. With at least one noticeable difference. The bathroom had been trashed. “Malicious mischief,” they called it, a term that Archie had always liked. Of the six stalls, five had been deliberately clogged with toilet paper and feces, a stew of brown sludge and disintegrating paper. The metal stall doors hung off their hinges. Someone had urinated on the floor. The porous concrete had absorbed most of it, but there were still a few standing puddles, reflecting the jumpy white fluorescents above. Pipe noise echoed in the room, water rushing, footsteps, everything louder, distorted. Archie leaned across the overflow to peer into the last stall, the one where they’d found the body parts. It was the cleanest of the stalls, the toilet seat still attached, the hinges intact. They had wanted someone to use that stall, to flush, to find the bloody surprise. They had wanted the drama.
An iPod in a yellow jelly case lay facedown on the floor at Archie’s feet.
Another flash went off. Archie turned to see the state trooper lower his camera. “Sorry,” the trooper said.
Claire Masland walked in. He hadn’t seen her in two months, but she didn’t let on. She smiled briskly, ran a hand through her short dark hair, and said, “Hi, Archie.”
She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt with a picture of a bear on it and black motorcycle boots. Archie took a step toward her and picked a cat hair off her shirt. Henry had cats. “Hi, Claire,” Archie said.
Claire broke the seal on a water bottle she had in her hand and took a slug. “You seen the wall?” she asked.
“Show me,” Archie said.
It looked like the hearts had all been drawn by the same person. The same shape, two plump humps, a sharp point. The marker line thickness was consistent. It must have taken whoever did it a while, because there were a couple hundred hearts. Careful, methodical. Not the same person who’d torn apart the bathroom. Someone else.
Another flash.
If Gretchen had done this, there would be more. This was a woman who’d pulled a victim’s small intestine out with a crochet hook. Her aim was not to disturb. Her aim was to terrorize. A spleen in a trashed public toilet was gross. But it was not up to Gretchen’s pay grade. “Anyone check the back of the toilet?” Archie asked.
The others looked at each other. The state trooper shrugged.
Archie went back to the stall, stepped over the iPod, and walked through the overflow to the toilet. Most public restrooms these days had tanks built into the wall, steel bowls, and lasers that could tell when you’d gotten off the pot so the automatic flusher could kick in.
The great toilet-upgrade revolution had not yet reached this particular Gorge highway rest stop. This toilet had a tank on the back. Archie picked up the heavy porcelain lid and slid it over, resting it perpendicularly on the back of the tank.
What he saw in the water made his stomach turn.
Henry, Claire, the ME, and the state trooper all crowded in as close as they could come without getting their feet wet.
“Well?” Claire asked.
“Hand me a container,” Archie said. His voice was calm. He was glad he could still do that. He could see something horrible and not let it show. He’d learned a long time ago that the more dangerous the situation, the more crucial it was to remain in control.
The ME disappeared for a moment and returned with a six-inch clear plastic tub, the sort of thing a deli might pack potato salad in. Archie stretched an arm back for the tub, and then lowered the tub into the back of the tank and scooped up a healthy amount of the contents.
He held it up for the others to see.
The state trooper lifted his hands to his face, scrambled to the next-door stall, and vomited.
“Jesus,” Claire said.
It looked like eyeball soup. Archie had managed to scoop up four eyeballs, and he could see at least two more still in the tank. They had been cleanly removed from their sockets—whole, plump, iridescent white orbs, mottled with red tissue, each iris a pupilless pale blue. Some floated. Some just sort of hung in the water, like pearl onions in a jar.
The plastic tub had a recycling symbol on it. Archie wondered if the ME would rinse it out and reuse it when they were done.
He handed the tub to the ME. “Why don’t you keep an eye on this,” Archie said.
The trooper came back around, wiping his chin with a paper towel he must have picked up off the floor.
Archie walked back over to the wall of hearts. No rapid pulse, his breathing normal. It must have been the antianxiety meds. Gretchen was out there. She was killing again. And he wasn’t afraid.
Archie laughed.
Two months earlier, in a hospital bed, his throat cut, nearly dead, he and Gretchen had made a deal. He’d tried to sacrifice himself to catch her. But once again, she’d man
aged to pull him back from the brink of pastoral darkness. She wanted him alive. So he agreed not to blow his brains out, and she agreed not to murder anyone.
Now the deal was off.
Archie felt Henry’s hand on his shoulder.
No one moved. The only sound was the steady hum of one of the toilets running.
“I shouldn’t have brought you here,” Henry said.
The ME held the plastic tub of eyes up to the flickering light. The eyeballs bobbed and spun.
“So what do we do now?” the trooper asked finally.
“Seal the scene,” Archie said. “Call in the task force.” Archie looked around the bathroom. “See if you can turn up any more parts.”
The trooper’s face glowed. “It’s her,” he said. “Gretchen-fucking-Lowell.” He slowly shook his head and tried to hide his lopsided grin.
Archie had seen it before. The naked exhilaration young cops brought to the Beauty Killer crime scenes. Like they were in on something special. Like they might be the ones to catch her.
“I didn’t mean”—the trooper hesitated, his cheeks coloring—“I thought it was exciting.” He glanced down at his boots, then back up at Archie. “Did she do that to your neck?”
“Yeah,” Archie said, not moving. “She did that to my neck.”
The trooper’s eyes darted away again, somewhere over Archie’s shoulder. “Sorry,” he said.
“Don’t be,” Archie said. “I was unconscious.”
The trooper’s hand went up past the knot of his blue tie, to the collar of his dress shirt, and Archie noticed a high school ring. “You’re lucky,” the trooper said. And then, after a brief pause, the trooper clarified, “To be alive.”
Lucky. The trooper didn’t want to catch Gretchen. He just wanted to meet her. “You can ask me if you want,” Archie said.
“Archie, come on,” said Henry.
“No,” Archie said. He beckoned with his hand. “Go ahead. Ask me.”
Someone flushed a toilet in the men’s room on the other side of the wall and the tinny sound of rushing water filled the room. Archie could see Claire in the periphery of his vision give Henry a look. Henry didn’t move.
The trooper’s cheeks were scarlet now. He looked down again, then up. His eyes shone. A high-school football player, Archie decided. A quarterback. You didn’t have to have a college degree to join the state cops.
“What’s she like?” the trooper asked.
Archie stepped forward and took the trooper’s free hand in his and lifted it to his own neck. “Feel that,” Archie said gently, guiding the trooper’s fingertips over the thick scar on his neck. The trooper didn’t pull away, didn’t cringe, instead he leaned forward, his eyes following the line of Archie’s scar, still raw and fibrous, still sensitive to the touch. Archie could see the pulse in the trooper’s neck quicken. Archie moved the trooper’s hand over an inch. “The jugular is here,” he said, pressing the trooper’s fingers into his neck so he could feel the arterial cord pulsing beneath the flesh. “Gretchen knows where to cut,” Archie said. “I didn’t get lucky. If she’d wanted me dead, I’d be dead.” Archie let go of the trooper’s hand and the trooper slowly withdrew it. “What’s she like?” Archie repeated softly. He put his hand on the trooper’s shoulder and leaned forward, so his face was inches from his. Gretchen was a beautiful, sensual, charismatic, manipulative bitch, the object of Archie’s sexual obsession, his torturer, and the person who knew him best in the world. “She’s a serial killer,” Archie said. He smiled and gave the trooper’s shoulder an avuncular pat. “If you ever lay eyes on her, shoot her.”
Archie turned to Henry. “I’m ready to go back to the loony bin,” he said.
C H A P T E R 5
Susan Ward made her way quickly down the hospital corridor. It was 9 A.M. and she was already in a bad mood. There was something going on out in the Gorge and Ian had sent Derek Rogers to cover it instead of her. She’d already called Derek eleven times. This was number twelve.
“What do they mean ‘body parts’?” she asked him. She was having trouble holding her phone to her ear, keeping her paper cup of coffee from spilling, and digging through her purse for an Altoid to mask the taste of the cigarette she’d smoked in the hospital parking garage.
“They’re not saying,” Derek said. He had been out there most of the night and it sounded like the novelty was wearing off. “But they’ve got half the Beauty Killer Task Force out here and FBI and volunteers searching the woods.”
It would be big news if there hadn’t already been so much Gretchen Lowell pandemonium. The Herald had run a front-page story about her every day since she’d escaped. She’d been spotted in Italy, Florida, Thailand, and Churchill, Manitoba. All the freaks who’d ever claimed to have been abducted by aliens were now claiming that they’d seen the Beauty Killer. Crimes all over the world were being attributed to her. If you believed the twenty-four-hour news channels, she’d murdered a family in Thailand and then made it to England to kill a fishmonger by sundown.
“Keep me posted,” Susan said. “I’m at the hospital.”
“When are you going to give up?” Derek said.
Susan wedged the phone between her ear and her shoulder and managed to locate the Altoids tin under a purseful of balled receipts, pens, gum wrappers, and used tissue. “Maybe this week he’ll see me,” she said.
“If Ian finds out you’re working on a book, he’ll pop his ponytail,” Derek said.
Susan pressed the button for the elevator up to the psych ward. Ian had given Derek the crime beat after Susan’s mentor, Quentin Parker, had been killed. Susan told herself she didn’t care. She had some projects up her sleeve that might get her out of the newspaper business once and for all. The sooner the better, the way things were going. She just needed to get Archie to talk to her.
“Hello?” Derek said.
“Did you know,” Susan said, “that since 1958 over four hundred people have died of an allergic reaction to sperm?”
There was a pause. “Uh, no,” Derek said.
The elevator dinged and the silver doors slid open. “I’ve got to go,” Susan said. She popped an Altoid in her mouth and dropped the tin back in her purse. “I’m here.”
C H A P T E R 6
They wouldn’t let Susan in. They never did. Her name wasn’t on Archie’s list of approved visitors. But Susan buzzed and sent the nurse back to ask if Archie would see her, and when the nurse came back, like always, and said no, not today, but he says hi, Susan took a chair in the psych-ward waiting room. If she came often enough, and sat long enough, eventually, she hoped, Archie would relent.
And if he didn’t, well, it was a nice quiet place to get some work done.
There were two chairs, both pee-colored molded plastic, and Susan always sat in the left one. “Waiting room” was generous. It was more like a waiting closet. No windows. Just five feet square, filled by two chairs and a card table stacked with mental-health brochures. Susan was halfway through her coffee and had taken a break from her laptop to read a leaflet about adult hyperactive attention deficit disorder when the elevator doors opened and out stepped Henry Sobol.
He lifted his eyebrows when he saw her. “Purple, huh?” he said.
“It’s called ‘Plum Passion,’ ” Susan said, touching her violet hair. It had been turquoise. Before that, pink. Susan threw a glance at the psych-ward door. If Henry was here to talk to Archie, maybe the thing at the Gorge did have something to do with Gretchen. “Are you here because of the rest stop?” she asked.
“Just visiting a friend,” Henry said.
Henry didn’t visit in the mornings. At least he’d never come while she was there.
“You can trust me,” Susan said. She knew that Henry didn’t believe her. And maybe it wasn’t even true. But Susan wanted it to be.
Henry started to reach for the call button, but then hesitated and turned back to her. “You know what a journalist is?” he asked.
“What?” Susan ask
ed.
Henry’s expression didn’t flicker. “A dead reporter.”
“Ouch,” Susan said.
“I stole it,” Henry said.
Susan leaned forward. “You hear the one about the woman who got pulled over for speeding?” she asked. She never remembered jokes. But she’d heard her mother tell this one so many times it had stuck.
“Don’t tell it if it’s not dirty,” Henry said.
Susan brushed a lock of purple hair out of her eyes. “The cop asks why she’s in such a hurry,” she said, “and the woman explains that she’s late for work. ‘I suppose you’re a doctor,’ the cop says, ‘and someone’s life hangs in the balance.’ ‘No,’ the woman says, ‘I’m an asshole stretcher.’ ” Susan giggled. Henry’s face clouded. It occurred to Susan at this moment that maybe Henry wouldn’t like this joke, but there was no turning back, so she went on. “ ‘An asshole stretcher,’ the cop says. ‘What’s that?’ ‘It’s where you start with one finger,’ the woman says.” Susan lifted one of her fingers and wiggled it for effect. “ ‘And then work in a second until you’ve got your whole hand in there.’ ” Susan demonstrated, like she was stuffing a turkey. “ ‘And then the other hand, and you keep stretching until it’s about six feet.’ ” She pantomimed it. “ ‘What do you do with a six-foot asshole?’ the cop asks.”