Evil at Heart

by Chelsea Cain

  “And then he just hung around?” Archie asked. Courtenay was dead by nine, but her body was not discovered for hours. Hay had had plenty of time to get away. But instead he was one of the first people who responded when the nurse had screamed.

  Henry took the glasses off and set them on the notebook. “Criminal genius, he wasn’t,” Henry said.

  Archie swung his feet to the floor and put his head in his hands. “How did Gretchen get to him?” He tried to remember every interaction he’d had with George, and wondered at what point Gretchen had gotten to him.

  “We’re reviewing his phone records,” Henry said, “interviewing neighbors, friends. He was recently divorced. No kids. His ex-wife said he’d started seeing someone, but she didn’t know who and no one else ever saw her.”

  No one ever did.

  How many men had she gotten to kill for her? He’d seen their bodies when she was through with them. But how many of her sleeper agents were still out there, waiting, willing to do her bidding?

  “She was obviously using him to keep tabs on you,” Henry continued. He looked Archie in the eye. “Anything you want to tell me?”

  Archie dropped his hands and looked up. The phone. Shit. What had he done with the phone? He remembered having it when he fell asleep. Then he must have left it when he went to Courtenay’s room. What had he done with it when he got back into bed? He tried to disguise the panic that surely showed on his face and to focus on the conversation. “When does the ex-wife think the relationship started?” he asked.

  “Two months ago,” Henry said.

  They thought she’d fled, that she’d left the country. But she’d been there the whole time. They’d never been safe. “She never even left town,” Archie said.

  “Why kill Courtenay Taggart?” Henry asked.

  Archie looked out the window. If he hadn’t talked Courtenay into giving up the shard of Formica, she’d still be alive. She wasn’t going to hurt herself, not with that. She’d cut her wrists horizontally, for Christ’s sake. She just wanted someone to pay attention. He had to be the hero. And it had cost Courtenay her life. “I was nice to her,” he said softly.

  “Archie,” Henry said. “You need to come clean right now. Has Gretchen contacted you?”

  Archie glanced toward the floor, to see if the phone had fallen from the bed. It wasn’t there. “No,” he said.

  Henry gnawed at his bottom lip, leaned back in the chair and crossed his arms. The plastic groaned under his weight. “Debbie left town last night,” he said, raising an appraising eyebrow at Archie. “She and the kids. Extended vacation. She called me from the airport.”

  “She could use a vacation,” Archie said.

  “Right,” Henry said. “It’s a coincidence that she took off right after she came to see you.” He hesitated and then scratched the back of his neck. “What I don’t get is, it’s not all for you.” He looked up at Archie. “Whatever she’s doing out there. It doesn’t connect.”

  Of course. Archie had been so focused on what was happening on the ward, that he’d lost sight of the bigger picture. The rest stop. Pittock Mansion. The abandoned house. Eyeballs and old bodies. Gretchen didn’t do anything without a plan. Maybe Archie was supposed to figure it out. Maybe that was the game.

  “You ID the head?” Archie asked.

  “Nope,” Henry said. “Male. His eyes were removed. DNA match will take a couple of days, but the blood type matches a set from the rest stop. Robbins thinks the guy’s been dead a few years. Thinks someone kept his eyes in a jar of formaldehyde.”

  It didn’t make sense.

  “The John Doe Susan found yesterday.” Henry paused. “Robbins called me yesterday. Someone removed his eyes, and replaced them. Apparently the ones in his sockets were a few years old.”

  “Let me guess,” Archie said. “Soaked in formaldehyde.”

  “Gretchen’s apparently got a little eyeball collection. Some people collect unicorns, belt buckles . . .” He spread his hands. “You were lucky all she took was your spleen.”

  “You’re right,” Archie said. “She could have taken my unicorn.”

  Henry didn’t laugh.

  From the bed, Archie could see the sun now, a sliver of orange over the skyline. “They want me out, don’t they?” Archie said.

  Henry stood. “They’re concerned about the safety of the patients. You included.” He folded his glasses closed, hooked them on the collar of his shirt, and slid his notebook into the pocket of his jeans. “You can stay with me. Temporarily. Until we figure something else out.”

  A nice padded cell in New Hampshire, maybe.

  Henry stepped in front of Archie and peered down at him, his broad chest expanding with a deep sigh. “Tell me we’re not playing right into her hands,” he said.

  Archie knew what he was thinking: Gretchen manipulates George into killing Courtenay, knowing that the hospital would have to ask Archie to leave.

  “I’m not the one in danger,” Archie said.

  “Good,” Henry said. “Because I can’t protect you.” He crossed his arms and glared down at Archie for a long moment before continuing. “If you were in touch with Gretchen—if she had found some way to communicate with you, or had some other information that might be of use to the investigation”—Henry lowered his chin and raised an eyebrow—“that might allow me to reallocate some resources.”

  Archie nodded. He had known Henry for fifteen years. Henry had helped nurse him back to health, had overlooked his pill popping, and had convinced him to go back to work. He’d been the one who drove Archie to the psych ward, and who’d sat with him while he was admitted. He’d put up with far more than he should have, and Archie knew it. Still, Archie didn’t say anything.

  Henry glanced at his watch and looked out the window for a moment. “I’ve got to make some calls,” he said. “Rosenberg’s on her way to rubber-stamp your newfound mental clarity.”

  Just like that. Back into the world. “What are you doing to find Gretchen?” Archie asked.

  “When you want to get over your bullshit and be a cop again, I’ll be happy to brief you,” Henry said. “Until then, you’re a civilian. And your job is to stay alive.” He started to walk away, then seemed to change his mind, and turned back. “I know you’re keeping something from me,” he said.

  Archie didn’t move.

  Henry looked at him for another moment, and then turned and walked out of the room.

  The second he was gone Archie dropped to his hands and knees on the floor and looked under the bed. No phone. He got up and ran his palms along the bedding, searching for a telltale lump. Nothing.

  It was gone.

  Archie sank onto the floor at the foot of his bed. His one connection to Gretchen, and he’d lost it.

  He was still sitting there when Frank shuffled in from the hall with a spot of egg yolk on his pajamas.

  He didn’t look at Archie. Didn’t say hello. Didn’t mention the fact that two people had died on the ward a few hours before.

  Frank.

  Archie stood up and walked past Frank’s bed into the bathroom they shared. There was nothing in that bathroom but an open shower, a sink bolted to the wall, a toilet, and a metal mirror. No bathtub. Debbie would have hated it.

  Archie stood in the bathroom for a minute with his hands on his hips, waiting, heart pounding. Then he looked up into the metal mirror and said to his own warped reflection, “Hey, Frank. Come look at this.”

  Frank was a big guy, heavy, but he was soft. As soon as he walked into the bathroom, Archie kicked the door shut, took him by the shoulders, and slammed him against the wall. Frank’s eyes rolled toward the bathroom door.

  No surveillance cameras in the bathrooms. They had a few minutes before anyone came to check on them. Maybe more.

  Archie leaned in against Frank, and lowered his voice to a growl. “Where is it?” he said.

  Beads of sweat had already formed on Frank’s brow. He retracted his chin an inch. “What?” he ask
ed.

  “The phone,” Archie hissed. “It was in my bed. And now it’s gone.” He bent one elbow and pressed his forearm against the yolk stain on Frank’s chest. “What did you do with it, Frank?”

  Frank’s mouth opened and the tip of his tongue punched its way between his lips. “I can’t breathe,” he said.

  He was authentically panicked, and Archie relented a little. He wanted to intimidate Frank, not give the guy a seizure. Archie put his mouth right next to Frank’s ear. “I need that phone,” Archie said. “It’s important.”

  Frank gave Archie a fearful look. “I just wanted to call my sister,” he said. He waved a hand toward the bathroom door. “It’s in my bottom drawer,” he said. “Take it.”

  Archie stepped back and Frank slid away from him along the wall.

  “I’m sorry,” Archie said.

  He walked out of the bathroom, dug through Frank’s bottom drawer, and found the phone under a stack of neatly folded BVDs. Archie glanced up at the security camera. He didn’t care. They wouldn’t take it away from him. He was leaving anyway.

  Then Archie walked back to the bathroom door.

  Frank was curled up on the floor.

  “Do you even have a sister, Frank?” Archie said.

  Frank didn’t answer.

  C H A P T E R 24

  Sarah Rosenberg was wearing black Lycra capri pants, flip-flops, and a long-sleeved white cotton shirt over a gray T-shirt. “I don’t approve of this,” she said.

  Archie was packing. It wouldn’t take long. His books alone took up half of his overnight bag. He stowed his toiletries in the outside pocket, and was now emptying the dresser into the bag, drawer by drawer.

  She looked around. “Where’s Frank?” she asked.

  “Morning group session,” Archie said. He scooped up an armful of socks and dumped them in his bag. The truth was he didn’t know where Frank was.

  “I want to check out,” Archie said to Rosenberg. Might as well make it official.

  Rosenberg closed the door to the room. “Yesterday you said you were a danger to yourself,” she said.

  Archie thought of Courtenay, bleeding to death in her bed. “It turns out I’m a danger to others,” he said.

  Rosenberg sat on the edge of his bed, tucking one leg neatly under the other. “If you still need help, you won’t be turned away.”

  Archie moved on to his shirt drawer. “I don’t need to be here,” he said. “I’m well. I’m off drugs.”

  “You’re on different drugs,” Rosenberg said.

  Archie dropped a stack of pants into his bag. “If I stay here, she will find another way in. And she will kill someone else here. I saved Courtenay. So she killed her. You have helped me, Sarah. I like you. Gretchen will certainly have figured that out by now.”

  Rosenberg’s voice caught in her throat. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that if I stay here, she’ll go after you.”

  Rosenberg paled. “I have kids.”

  “I know,” Archie said.

  “There’s an outpatient program,” Rosenberg said. “You come for meetings. For a week or so. You need to keep seeing your internist and hepatologist.” She shook her head, like even she couldn’t believe what she was doing. “You must have no contact with her.”

  “I don’t know where she is,” Archie said.

  Rosenberg leaned forward. “It’s easy to not take Vicodin, when there isn’t any,” she said. “But if you had a few pills in front of you, what would you do then?” She let that sit between them for a minute, and then stood. “I need to fill out some paperwork,” she said. She paused, and Archie thought he saw a glimmer of fear beneath her professional demeanor. “All of this death—it’s far from over, isn’t it?”

  Archie sat down in the plastic chair by the window. He could feel the phone vibrate in his pocket. “It’s just starting.”

  C H A P T E R 25

  Carol Littleton had been going to the Portland Rose Garden three mornings a week for forty years. She had married her husband there. He had been a Royal Rosarian. She had been the 1939 Rose Queen. They had bought a home that faced the garden, and, until her husband had died ten years before, they had routinely strolled the paved paths, past the low, stone walls, through the rose archways, and along the long rows of rosebushes with their plump pungent blooms.

  For the last decade, she had had a specific destination in the garden—Neville Chamberlain. All members of the Royal Rosarians were knighted under their chosen variety of rose, their “namesake” rose, and the Neville Chamberlain had been her husband’s.

  The Rose Garden had rules about spreading the ashes of loved ones in the garden. Carol understood. That sort of thing piled up, and who wanted to go to a rose garden and see charred bits of people in the topsoil?

  There were rules.

  But you could get around them.

  Carol had been secreting her husband over a few tablespoons at a time since 1997.

  There were never many people in the garden at eight in the morning, so she was surprised to see the couple sitting on the bench overlooking the city. It was a nice bench. The Rose Garden was up on a hill and the bench had a nice view of downtown, and Mount Hood beyond it. Carol and her husband had sat on that same bench many times.

  She walked down the path toward them, her hand around the Ziploc full of ashes in her pocket. She was still a good forty feet away when the stench hit her.

  She didn’t have much of a nose anymore. Too many Lucky Strikes in her younger days. It was why she liked roses—they were one of the few flowers aromatic enough for her to appreciate.

  This odor was so foul it seemed to shout at her. She didn’t know how the couple on the bench were standing it. It smelled like something had died. A raccoon maybe, or a squirrel.

  As she got closer, Carol lifted a handkerchief from her pocket and put it over her nose.

  “Gracious,” she asked the couple, “it smells like the devil, doesn’t it?”

  The two were both dressed in long coats and hats—too warm for day, but not out of the question before the sun came up. The summer nights in Portland were still chilly. But the sun had come up, and Carol could see quite clearly that the couple didn’t need coats to stay warm.

  The young couple was not a young couple at all.

  Carol pressed the handkerchief harder against her face. For a second, a ring of black circled her vision, as her blood pressure dropped, but she took three long, deep breaths and steadied herself. Don’t faint, she told herself.

  She’d been a nurse during the war, stationed at an airbase outside London. She had seen corpses. She had even seen corpses worse than these.

  Just don’t faint. If you faint, you fall, if you fall, you break your hip, if you break your hip, you give up the house, you give up the walks, you give up Otis.

  The bodies on the bench were mostly covered by the long coats and hats, but she could see their faces. They looked like wax dummies that had been left too close to a fire—features just beginning to melt. Their mouths were open, jaws dropped farther than ever possible in life, the inside black, like they’d been drinking oil. Their noses were bent, as if the skin had slipped a little. Horrible.

  She looked around the garden and saw no one. The grounds were a maze—hedges and shrubs, walls, and gates. There might be other people there, she just couldn’t see.

  “Hello?” she hollered. “Is anyone out there?”

  And then, as loud as an old lady could, “Hello?”

  She was alone. She wrapped her hand around the sandwich bag of ashes in her pocket, and clutched it.

  A bright yellow butterfly fluttered past and alit on the hat of one of the corpses.

  No human remains at the park. It was a rule.

  Carol Littleton didn’t have a cell phone. But she had a medical alert necklace with a panic button. Stupid thing. Her daughters had made her wear one. It was supposed to have a five-hundred-foot range.