Evil at Heart

by Chelsea Cain

  “One person could have set up all the flashlights,” Henry said, putting the sunglasses back on. “We want to keep the flashlight thing out of the media, okay?”

  “Maybe she had nine accomplices,” Susan said. “Like a serial-killer baseball team. Or maybe she’s trying people out. You know, she cuts one of them from the team after every kill. The last guy alive gets to be her murder buddy.”

  Henry was not amused. “Tell me about these fan sites,” he said.

  “People paint pictures of her and post them,” Susan said. “They write her poetry. Fan fiction. I did a story about it a few weekends ago.” No reaction. Susan exhaled, exasperated. “You don’t even read the Herald, do you?”

  “I get all my news from the Daily Auto Trader,” Henry said.

  The fingerprint tech handed Susan a moist towelette. She scrubbed her fingers with it and the ink wiped right off. Whatever was in that towelette had to be toxic. “I have to work,” Susan said, standing up. The fingerprint tech held out a plastic bag and she dropped the inky towelette in it.

  Henry crossed his arms. “I can’t convince you to keep some of what you saw to yourself?” he said. “So as to, you know, avoid pande-fucking-monium?”

  “No chance,” Susan said. “Besides, you found a head. You don’t think the citizens are going to freak out as it is?”

  Henry grunted. “You’re getting to be a better reporter,” he said.

  “Journalist,” she corrected him. She waved a hand at him and took a few steps away from the van.

  “Wait,” Henry called, and she turned around. He stared at her, working his jaw, one hand behind his neck. Then his hand dropped, and he stepped toward her. “I’m only telling you this because it’s going to come out,” he said. “And it might as well be you.” He sighed. “There are some things about the rest stop we haven’t made public.”

  C H A P T E R 16

  Archie sat on the gift-store floor, surrounded by magazines, the Newsweek open on his lap. Pictures of Gretchen smiled up from all around him on the carpet. He’d found twenty-seven stories about her in all. He’d read the Newsweek first. It was full of excuses. She wasn’t to blame. It was society. We were all responsible.

  Archie didn’t remember society pressing a scalpel into his chest.

  There were photographs of him, too. Standing at a crime scene. Leaving the hospital. The man she’d tried to kill twice. They portrayed him as some sort of hero. It made better copy, Archie guessed, than the truth. The details about their latest run-in were sketchy. Henry had managed to keep under wraps the specifics of how Archie had again found himself at Gretchen’s mercy. He was recuperating from his injuries. She was at large.

  Reality was murkier.

  Archie touched the photograph of her in Newsweek. It had been taken outside the courthouse. She’d been turning away, her wrists in manacles, dressed in prison blue, hair loose, profile perfect, like an image off a coin. He lifted his hand, leaving a fingerprint on the page.

  He turned over his hands and looked at his palms. He was sweating again.

  God, he wanted a Vicodin.

  He wiped his hands on the front of his pants, feeling the phone inside his pocket. He pulled it out. No new messages.

  “If you’re interested in her, we’ve got the book,” the old woman behind the counter said. Archie looked up. She’d unpacked several angels from the box and had lined them up in front of her on the counter, and now peered over them.

  Archie saw himself then, sitting there, surrounded by magazines open to articles about the Beauty Killer, what he must look like. He put the phone back in his pocket.

  The old woman tilted her head toward the window display where a pile of copies of The Last Victim were stacked next to a dozen copies of The Five People You Meet in Heaven.

  Archie closed the Newsweek, got to his feet, and slid it back on its shelf behind him. “I already own a copy,” he said.

  He bent down to gather the magazines on the floor so he could reshelve them, and as he did he glanced up at the old woman. The small television still played behind her, and for a second, Archie thought he saw Gretchen’s face on the screen. He stood there, frozen, in a sort of half squat, convinced he was seeing things, still riveted by the TV, as graphics spun onto the screen to form the words BEAUTY KILLER AT LARGE: DAY 76.

  The graphics burst into flame

  Archie straightened. “Turn it up,” he said.

  The old woman looked at him skeptically. Then she slowly turned to glance at the TV screen, then back at him, and down to the magazines at his feet.

  “Turn it up,” Archie said again. He moved forward, toward the counter and the TV.

  She raised an eyebrow, paused, lifted another angel out of the box and set it on the counter, and then pulled a remote from the pocket of her polyester vest and hit a button.

  A newscaster appeared in an electric-blue KGW raincoat holding a mic with Pittock Mansion in the background. A human head had been found on the grounds. The image cut to another newscaster in another blue KGW raincoat standing in front of a boarded-up house. A body had been found in the house. Police weren’t releasing any details.

  In a wide shot, Archie caught a glimpse of Henry walking into the house.

  Archie reached for the cell phone that was usually clipped to his belt, his fingers on the corduroy of his pants, finding nothing. His cell phone was locked away back at the ward.

  But he had another one.

  He slid his hand in his pocket and found the cell phone again. But he didn’t pull it out.

  The old woman was watching the TV now, eyebrows knitted, one hand still wrapped around the feet of the statue of an angel, knelt in prayer, a wire halo stuck into the top of its head.

  “Can I use your phone?” Archie asked.

  She had no reason to say yes, but she reached over and lifted the receiver off a beige desktop telephone and set it in Archie’s hand. “Dial nine,” she said.

  Archie dialed nine, and then Henry’s cell phone number. Henry picked up on the third ring.

  “What’s going on?” Archie asked him.

  “Where are you calling from?” Henry asked.

  “The hospital gift store,” Archie said. “I needed a balloon.”

  He could sense Henry hedge. Archie was on leave. He had no right to know anything about a police investigation. “Susan Ward got a tip and found a body in an abandoned house on North Fargo,” Henry said. “And someone dumped a head in the yard up at Pittock Mansion.”

  They’d found one of Gretchen’s victims on the grounds at Pittock Mansion just months before she was caught. She’d never repeated herself before. But it couldn’t be a coincidence. “Eyes?” Archie asked.

  “The head’s too decomposed to tell,” Henry said. “Robbins is looking at it now. Body in the house has eyes. He’s fresh. Killed sometime overnight.”

  Archie glanced back at the TV screen where KGW news anchor Charlene Wood now stood at the scene interviewing a bystander. “Is it Gretchen?” Archie said.

  Henry exhaled. “There are hearts drawn on the wall next to the body,” he said. “Like at the rest stop. Susan called the paper. It went out on the wire. There are reporters everywhere.”

  Archie felt his chest tighten again. “Is Susan okay?” he asked.

  “She’s a pain in the ass,” Henry said. “Won’t give up the source who tipped her.”

  Archie couldn’t help but smile. “Parker would be proud.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s fucking dandy that her journalistic testicles have dropped, but that doesn’t help me much with the crime fighting,” Henry said. “It looks like the victim’s missing his spleen. That’s not public yet,” he added. “But it will be.”

  The old woman unpacked another angel.

  “I can send a car for you,” Henry said.

  Archie turned and glanced behind him, back into the hall. He thought about telling Henry, but he couldn’t without giving up the phone. What was he supposed to say? “I think she’
s got someone inside the hospital who’s spying on me”? “I just have a feeling”?

  He’d sound like a lunatic.

  “I’m just not up for it,” Archie said. He didn’t need to find her. She would find him. He was sure of it.

  “Your family still coming tonight?” Henry asked.

  Debbie brought the kids by every Wednesday. It was something Archie usually looked forward to, but with all the drama, he’d lost track of what day it was. “They’re still coming,” Archie said, rubbing his eyes.

  “Say hi,” said Henry. He hesitated, and then, in a tone that made Archie wonder if Henry sensed something was wrong, he added: “I’ll check in later.”

  “Okay,” Archie said. He dropped the receiver back into its cradle and glanced up at the TV. It had already gone back to Perry Mason.

  “You’re him, aren’t you?” The old woman tilted her head again in the direction of the front window display.

  “No,” Archie said.

  She nodded. “You’re that detective.”

  She picked up one of the angels and held it out to him. There was a brass plaque at the angel’s feet with a pretty script. Three words.

  WATCH OVER ME.

  She set it in his hand.

  C H A P T E R 17

  A sign posted in the elevator up to the psych ward read:

  SHOULD THE ELEVATOR DOORS FAIL TO OPEN DO NOT BECOME ALARMED. THERE IS LITTLE DANGER OF RUNNING OUT OF AIR OR OF THIS ELEVATOR DROPPING UNCONTROLLABLY.

  “That’s reassuring,” Archie said to the candy striper riding in the elevator next to him.

  Her eyes widened.

  “It’s for the crazy people,” Archie explained. “We panic easily.”

  He wasn’t making her more comfortable. He decided to stop talking. Then he noticed that she was holding an envelope in her hand with his name on it. The envelope was big and square and pink and hard to miss. The candy striper was fanning her face with it. They weren’t called candy stripers anymore. Archie didn’t know what they were called.

  “That’s for me,” Archie said.

  She wasn’t a teenager. College, maybe. She shot Archie a reflexive smile. “I have to deliver it to the ward,” she said. “Before I can go to lunch.”

  The elevator doors opened and they both stepped out into the psych ward’s minuscule lobby. The girl was hesitant.

  “You’ve never been up here before,” Archie said.

  “Are there psychos?” she whispered.

  “Tons,” Archie said. He pressed the call buzzer. “It’s Archie Sheridan,” he said.

  “Just a minute, Mr. Sheridan,” a nurse’s voice responded.

  The girl looked down at the name on the card. “I guess you are you,” she said.

  “I’m pretty sure I still am,” Archie said. He noticed her nails then. French pink with bloodred tips. Women liked it when you complimented them. Archie didn’t know much about women, but he knew that. “I like your nails,” he said.

  Her cheeks dimpled and she inspected a fluttering hand. “It’s called a ‘Beauty Killer,’ ” she said. “My manicurist says all the celebrities are doing it.”

  Archie nearly choked. A Beauty Killer manicure? Everyone had lost their minds.

  “Are you okay?” the girl asked.

  Muffled hollering echoed from behind the door. Archie recognized the bellicose ranting of his roommate, Frank.

  The girl drew a sharp breath.

  “He’s harmless,” Archie assured her.

  The girl tapped a foot and bit her bottom lip. “What’s taking them so long?”

  “They’re distracted,” Archie said. It took a few minutes and several staff members to subdue one of Frank’s tantrums. He gave the girl what he hoped was a sane smile. From inside the ward, Frank howled something about devils. The girl stiffened. “Why don’t you just give me the card?” Archie suggested.

  She considered it for a split second, then pushed the card into Archie’s hand.

  “Okay,” she said, hitting the elevator button. The doors opened immediately and she leaped inside. “Nice angel,” she said as the doors slid closed.

  Archie set the angel down on the table of Al-Anon brochures and examined the envelope.

  There was no postmark, which meant that it hadn’t come through the mail—someone had dropped it off at the hospital. The return address was 397 North Fargo. No name. The body had been found on Fargo. The address wasn’t in Gretchen’s handwriting, but it would not have been hard for her to find someone else to write it. Archie worked his finger under the flap and along the glue line, and pulled out the card.

  The card was old-fashioned, the paper softened with age. Two red hearts were connected by a gold chain. Below the hearts was a white ribbon emblazoned with the words A VALENTINE MESSAGE. Archie opened the card. Printed inside, in pretty cursive, was a poem: “May this chain/Be the one sweet tether/That binds your heart/And mine together.”

  She could get to him anywhere. It was just a matter of time.

  Frank’s screaming quieted, and a nurse came and opened the door. Archie walked inside.

  He left the angel on the table.

  C H A P T E R 18

  Susan sat glued to her computer at the Herald. She had copy due at two. And it was already quarter of.

  Eyeballs in a toilet tank. Susan wondered if Gretchen had gouged them out while the people were still alive, or waited until after she’d murdered them. Either way, it made Susan’s eyes ache just thinking about it.

  The Pittock Mansion Head, as everyone was already calling it, had made national news. CNN quoted a source at the ME’s office saying that the head’s eyes were missing. They were running an online poll where you could guess what color they were going to turn out to be. Brown was winning two to one.

  The Herald was abuzz. The TVs bolted to the ceiling were all tuned to live reports from the house on Fargo and from the Gorge and from Pittock. There was talk already of doing another special issue. Susan was working on a first-person account of finding the body; Derek was working the news angle and Ian had sent two other reporters up to the mansion. Thanks to Henry, Susan had broken the additional details about the rest-stop story on the Herald Web site. The eyeballs. The hearts on the wall. The spleen. They’d go big on it the next day—front page, above the fold. Henry had promised a sketch of the dead guy in the house by deadline, so they could run it and see if anyone recognized him.

  The cops had their Beauty Killer Task Force; the Herald had its own version—Susan and Derek, plus two other reporters, two editors, two photographers, a copy editor, and an intern. They’d profiled the families of victims. They’d tracked down people who claimed to have seen Gretchen Lowell since her escape. They’d interviewed anyone and everyone who’d ever had contact with her and lived. The only thing they hadn’t done was a background on her. No one knew where Gretchen Lowell came from. There was a record of her being picked up for writing a bad check in Salt Lake City when she was nineteen. That was it. No school records. No birth certificate.

  Just a lot of bodies and the few biographical details Gretchen had doled out in prison, most of which were probably lies. The lack of information had left the reporters covering the manhunt with little choice but to recycle the same interviews, the same experts, over and over again.

  The thrill of the hunt had turned tedious and a gallows humor had taken root. A photograph of Gretchen Lowell peppered with darts hung on the wall. Ian had given everyone in the group mugs with Gretchen Lowell’s face on them and the words I’D KILL FOR SOME COFFEE.

  “What did Gretchen Lowell give Archie Sheridan for Valentine’s Day?” the intern asked. She never remembered his name. She just thought of him as “the intern.”

  “Not in the mood,” Susan said, eyes on her monitor.

  “His heart,” the intern said. “Ha!” He was wearing a RUN, GRETCHEN T-shirt and Kissinger glasses that were either incredibly hip or deeply uncool—Susan hadn’t figured out which. She glared at him, and he turned back t
o his computer.

  “I’m forwarding it,” he said.

  “You do that,” Susan said.

  She went back to cramming her near-death experience into thirty inches. Advertising was tight, and it took more than a dead body and a serial killer to justify space for a story someone couldn’t read, in one sitting, on a toilet.

  She scrolled through her call log again and found the number of the man who’d phoned her with the address.