Evil at Heart

by Chelsea Cain

  “I don’t know,” Archie said.

  Susan looked over at him. There was one thing she was sure of: Archie Sheridan knew more than he was telling.

  Henry said, “You going to let us look at your call log now?”

  There was no reason not to tell him. “It’s a dead end,” Susan said. “I looked it up. It’s a pay phone on MLK, about a mile from where I found the body.” Good luck fingerprinting that, Susan thought.

  Henry brought his fist to his mouth for a minute and pressed it against his upper lip. Then he lowered it. “Let us make a copy of your hard drive,” he said.

  “So you can track my Web-surfing history?” Susan said. “Forget it.” The idea of Henry having access to her hard drive, with its novel-in-progress, half-baked poetry, and last month’s flurry of hemorrhoid research made her stomach drop. “I’m working on other stories, with important sources and confidential stuff.” She looked to Archie for some support. He was a reasonable person. He understood. But he was just sitting there on the couch, looking past Henry to the already-dead-looking image of Fintan English. “Journalists can’t just give their hard drives to the police,” Susan said. “There’s a rule.”

  “The crime,” Archie said to no one in particular, “is not getting him psychiatric help. He was ill.” He looked up at Henry. “They used him,” he said.

  Something passed between them and Henry cleared his throat and then leaned over Susan, his hands on his knees. “I told you to take him home,” Henry said.

  “Sorry,” Susan said.

  “I don’t know what the fuck is going on,” he said to Susan. “But he can’t be here.” He looked between them. “Take him to my house. If anyone contacts either of you with mysterious addresses, cryptic greeting cards, et cetera, ignore your natural instinct to thwart the letter of the law, and call me.”

  Archie gave them a pleasant, distracted smile. “Absolutely,” he said.

  “Go,” Henry said.

  Susan and Archie stood up and started walking toward the door.

  “It’s going to get a lot worse,” Archie called back to Henry as they left. “They’re having fun.” The door was open and he walked through it into the sunshine and onto the stoop full of Venus flytraps. Susan followed him.

  C H A P T E R 32

  Oh my God,” Susan said as soon as they got in the car. “I thought he might actually arrest us.” She left her car door open, got a fresh pack of cigarettes out of the glove compartment, lit one, and took a drag, feeling her heart rate immediately slow. “Let me just have half of this,” she said to Archie. The car was hot, and she didn’t have air-conditioning. “You can roll down your window if you want.”

  Archie pulled his seat belt over his lap and buckled it. “I need you to take me somewhere,” he said.

  Susan looked over at Archie. Was he kidding? “Henry said to take you to his house,” she said.

  “I know one of the kids in the photograph,” Archie said softly. “His sister was one of Gretchen’s early victims. I want to talk to his family. See if he’s involved. I owe them that.”

  Susan’s heart was racing again. She took another drag off the cigarette. This time, it didn’t help. “You didn’t tell Henry,” she said. “We should go back in and tell him. Right now.”

  “I want to determine the extent of the boy’s involvement.”

  “His involvement in what?” Susan said. “Murdering people?”

  “He’s a troubled kid,” Archie said. “Like Fintan English. Only no one helped Fintan.”

  Susan took one more hit off the cigarette and then tossed it in the street, closed the door, and started the car. She was supposed to be interviewing the dead orderly’s neighbors right now. But fuck it, she knew what they were going to say. He always seemed so nice. “This book I want to write about Gretchen’s impact on pop culture,” she said. “Will you cooperate?”

  Archie sighed and rubbed his eyes with one hand. “Why not?”

  “Okay,” Susan said. She pulled forward out of the parking spot, sending a collection of pens cascading from the open glove compartment onto Archie’s lap.

  He gathered them up and put them back in the glove box and closed it.

  “You know, two hundred people a year choke on pens and die,” Susan said.

  Archie reached under his thigh, pulled out a crushed empty cigarette box that had been on the seat, and tossed it on the floor. “How many die from smoking?”

  C H A P T E R 33

  Lake Oswego was where the rich people lived.

  Archie wouldn’t tell Susan an address. Only that it was on the lake. The town was named after the lake. The lake was where the really rich people lived. What was it with rich people and water?

  Susan called Derek so the Herald could break the Fintan English story. He’d write it. She’d get a co-byline. The Herald got the scoop. Everyone was happy.

  After she hung up, Archie asked to borrow her phone.

  “Didn’t they give you your phone back when they released you?” Susan asked him.

  “ ‘Checked out,’ ” Archie said, taking her phone. “Not ‘released.’ I wasn’t incarcerated.” He dialed a number from memory. “It’s Archie Sheridan,” he said. “I need to see him. Is he there?” He paused. “Right now,” Archie said. Then he hung up.

  It was all very mysterious.

  They drove through First Addition. That was the old part of Lake Oswego, where you could still live on a less-than-obscene salary. There were trees and yards, and old Sears mail-order Craftsmans, and a supermarket where you could still buy groceries on account. The town’s claim to fame was that Bruce Springsteen had married local-girl-turned-model Julianne Phillips at a church there. The marriage only lasted four years, but everyone still talked about it.

  “Lake No Negro,” Susan said.

  Archie arched an eyebrow. “I don’t think they call it that anymore.”

  “I used to go to parties out here in high school,” Susan said. “They had the best drugs.”

  They were passing a newly constructed mall downtown. It had the façade of an alpine ski lodge, like something from the Swiss Pavilion at Epcot Center. “The idle rich,” Archie said.

  They drove for a while in silence with the windows rolled down. Eventually, Susan got anxious and turned the radio to the alternative rock station. She’d had a few iPods, but they were always getting stolen out of her car. That was Portland for you. Rife with pacifists and vegetarians, but if you parked your car on the street, chances were someone would jimmy the lock and sell your iPod on Craigslist.

  They went over some railroad tracks and past the private drive that led to the Oswego Yacht Club, then over a quaint stone bridge. Ducks paddled on the lake. The neighborhood got more private and quiet at this point. The homes looked like beached houseboats with docks where motorboats bobbed expectantly. As they continued around the lake, the houses got bigger and the traffic more scarce. Everyone they passed smiled and waved. The houses looked like they’d been ordered from a Pottery Barn catalog and assembled from kits. The cars were all Land Rovers and Volvos and BMWs. A few Civics—but Susan was pretty sure they belonged to college-aged children home for summer break from Brown.

  Archie directed her past a plastic yellow Herald mailbox, up a private lane to a pair of iron gates. “Stop here,” he said.

  Susan couldn’t see the house, but the gates were pretty fucking impressive.

  “Who lives here?” she asked.

  “His name’s Jack Reynolds,” Archie said.

  Susan raised her eyebrows. “He’s rich,” she said.

  “He’s very rich,” Archie said. There was an intercom on a pole a car length in front of the iron gates. It looked like something you might order a burger from.

  Archie took his seat belt off and leaned over Susan. His sudden intrusion into her space made her stomach hurt. His dark hair, flecked with gray, was inches from her face.

  When you blush, the inside of your stomach turns red, too. “The Science o
f Emotions” had been Susan’s first story to make the front page of the Living section.

  Archie punched a button labeled talk and said, “It’s Archie Sheridan.” There was no audible response, but a red light above the speaker turned green and the gates fanned open. Archie settled back in his seat.

  “You can go in,” he said.

  Susan coughed. “Right,” she said.

  They drove through the gates and onto a bridge. It wasn’t a long bridge, just twenty feet or so, constructed with big rough-hewn stones.

  “It’s an island,” Susan said. “They live on a fucking island.”

  “Park here,” Archie said, indicating a paved parking area where four cars already sat. There was a silver Volvo, a pair of Priuses, and a pickup truck with the name of a landscape company on the side.

  Susan parked next to the pickup.

  There were a limited number of ways to get island-owning rich in Oregon. Susan guessed this guy had gotten out of high tech just in time. Or invented Polarfleece or something. Whatever he did, he did it well. She wondered if he’d ever been profiled in the Herald.

  “This guy’s related to the kid you recognized in the photograph, how?” she asked.

  “Twelve years ago, Gretchen killed his daughter,” Archie said. “The kid in the photograph is his son.”

  “Do you come out here a lot?” Susan asked.

  “I used to,” Archie said. “But it’s been a couple of years.”

  Two years, Susan translated. Since Gretchen had taken him captive.

  Archie opened his door and got out of the car. Susan did the same. She glanced around. “I guess I don’t need to lock it,” she said.

  It was not a big island. Susan guessed it was about an acre, though she really wasn’t sure exactly how big an acre was. The house was old, or at least it looked old, like a movie-set version of a Tudor mansion. It was brick, with stucco and timber accents, and had steeply pitched roofs, tall windows, several chimneys, and pillared porches. Ye Olde New Money.

  “There,” Archie said. But he wasn’t looking at the house. He was looking to the left of the house, where a dock extended into the lake, and a man in a suit was waving.

  He didn’t look old enough to have a twenty-year-old kid. “Is that him?” Susan asked.

  “That’s his lawyer,” Archie said.

  As they got closer, Susan saw another man, hosing down the deck of a small sailboat. He was in his sixties, tan and handsome with longish gray hair and rugged symmetrical features. He was wearing cutoffs and an old T-shirt, and he was barefoot. He saw Archie and grinned.

  “Hi, Jack,” Archie said. He turned to the lawyer. “Leo,” he said.

  Leo held out a hand and Archie shook it. “It’s been too long,” Leo said. “We sent flowers to the hospital after Gretchen was caught.”

  “I remember,” Archie said. “That was very thoughtful.” He nodded in Susan’s direction. “This is Susan Ward,” Archie said. “She’s a reporter for the Herald.”

  “Journalist,” Susan said. “But what ever.”

  Jack Reynolds winked at her. He looked sort of like a middle-aged George Hamilton. “Of course,” he said to Susan. “I read your stuff. You do good work.”

  Susan felt her stomach turn red.

  Jack hopped off the boat with the hose and walked over to a spigot and turned it off. “Took her for a spin around the lake,” he said. He looked up at the clear sky, framed by the ridge of evergreens around the lake. “Got to enjoy the weather while we can.”

  “We need to talk about Jeremy,” Archie said.

  Jack looped the hose around a nail that was driven into the dock railing. “Is he okay?” Jack asked.

  Susan suddenly felt superfluous, like she was intruding on a private conversation. She took a tiny step back. And then, feeling self-conscious about that—she was a journalist, after all—she took a tiny step forward.

  Archie shot her a look and then continued. “I think he might be involved with some people who have a dangerous interest in Gretchen Lowell.”

  Jack finished winding the hose and turned around to look at Archie. The last of the water trapped in the hose leaked from the nozzle in a slow drip onto the dock.

  “I’m sure you’ve been following the news,” Archie continued. He spoke matter-of-factly. “We identified the body that was discovered in the abandoned house in North Portland. It was a young man named Fintan English. We were just at his house, and I saw a picture of Jeremy there. It looks like English found some people on the Internet—fans of Gretchen—to remove his spleen, and that he died in the process.”

  Jack glanced over at his lawyer. “We haven’t seen Jeremy in months,” he said.

  The lawyer nodded his agreement.

  Archie raised an eyebrow. “I assume you have the means to find him,” he said.

  “Is he missing?” Susan asked. “Like Costa-Gavras missing?” They ignored her.

  “How is Jeremy doing?” Archie asked.

  The lawyer hesitated, looking over at Susan for a moment before he continued. “He’s still hung up on Gretchen, if that’s what you’re asking. If anything, it’s gotten worse,” he said. His gaze fell on the dock. “He carved a heart on his chest. When she escaped”—the lawyer looked out over the lake—“he celebrated.”

  Susan realized that her mouth had fallen open. Maybe she’d misunderstood. “Didn’t Gretchen kill his sister?” she asked.

  They all looked at her, a little startled, like she’d pulled down her pants. “Sorry,” she said.

  Jack looked at his boat. The fiberglass hull knocked lightly against the dock. “Jeremy has some challenges,” Jack said. “One of which is obsessive-compulsive disorder. Do you know much about boats?” It took Susan an instant to realize he was asking her.

  “Not really,” she said. The truth was that the whole kidnapped-and-held-hostage-on-a-boat thing a few months ago had sort of soured her on watercraft in general.

  “She’s a sloop,” Jack said. “Pretty, huh?”

  “Sure,” Susan said.

  “Jeremy was thirteen when his sister was murdered,” Jack said. “He developed an interest in following the case.” He paused. A seagull swooped down onto the dock and squawked. “At some point he became confused,” he continued. “He romanticized the Beauty Killer. He drew pictures of him—always a him—what he imagined the Beauty Killer looked like, big black wings, horns. The therapists said he was attracted to the killer’s strength. When Gretchen was caught, Jeremy was in love.”

  “He was a fragile kid,” Archie said gently.

  Jack was still gazing at his boat. “He always worshipped you.”

  The seagull flew off. The boat bobbed. “Do you know where he is?” Archie asked.

  Jack Reynolds’s mouth flattened in determination. “I can find him,” he said.

  Archie took a step toward Jack. “Find him,” he said. “Get him out of this. But first I want to know where he is, and who he’s involved with.”

  Jack smiled, but his eyes flashed with something darker. “Is there anything else I can do for you, Archie?”

  “Yeah. I need a gun,” Archie said. “And a prepaid cell phone.”

  C H A P T E R 34

  The gull had flown off.

  It had been ten minutes since Archie had followed Jack Reynolds into the Tudor château, leaving Susan standing with the lawyer on the dock.

  The lawyer cleared his throat. “So, did you grow up in Oregon?” he asked her.

  Susan had been giving him the silent treatment. Clearly, he wasn’t getting it. “Your client just has extra guns and prepaid cell phones lying around?”

  The lawyer was wearing an expensive gray suit and a black button-down shirt, open at the collar. Susan could admire his clothes and still not like him.

  The lawyer put his hands in his pockets and looked out at the lake. “He likes to be prepared,” he said.

  Right. Susan narrowed her eyes. “What does your client do exactly?” she asked.

 
; The lawyer shot her a reflexive smile. “He’s in real estate.”

  “Uh-huh,” Susan said. She got her cigarettes out of her purse, lit one, and took a drag. Usually, she’d have asked permission. “He and Archie are friends?”

  The lawyer paused and seemed to think about the answer. “Archie has always been generous about keeping the family updated on the case. They’ve known each other for a long time.”

  “How long have you worked for him?”

  “He was my first client. Right out of law school.”