by Chelsea Cain
“Let me guess,” she said. “Lewis and Clark?” All the lawyers in town went to Lewis and Clark. Sometimes Susan thought it must be a requirement in the state bar exam.
“Go Pioneers,” he said.
“They should have gone with Seaman,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
“They should have made the mascot Seaman. After Lewis’s Newfoundland. He was right there with them, blazing the Oregon Trail.”
“Is Archie in trouble?”
Susan rolled her eyes. “Compared to . . .”
He got his wallet out, extracted an expensive-looking business card, and put it in her hand. “You can always call me,” he said. “I am a lawyer.” The corner of his mouth twitched up. “And I’m discreet.”
Susan couldn’t quite figure him out. And she didn’t like that. She looked at her shoes. “It’s pretty out here.”
“As a picture.” He took the cigarette out of her hand, took a drag off it, and handed it back.
Susan looked at the cigarette.
“Thanks,” he said. “I’m quitting. But I sneak one once in a while.”
Another gull landed on the dock and pecked at some old bait that lay baking in the sun.
“What was his daughter’s name?” she asked.
The lawyer gestured to the boat. On the back, above the rudder, was a girl’s name painted in glittery gold and black cursive letters. “Isabel,” he said. “She was my sister.” He took the cigarette out of her hand again and took another drag. “Jack Reynolds is my father. Jeremy is my little brother.” He sucked down the rest of the cigarette, tossed it on the dock, and stepped on it. “One big happy fucking family.”
C H A P T E R 35
Are we not talking?” Archie said.
They were driving south on Highway 43, the LO alpine shopping mall on their left, heading back toward Portland. Susan didn’t answer him. A DJ on the alt rock station yammered on about LASIK surgery.
Archie shrugged. He had the gun and cell phone he’d gotten from Jack Reynolds on his lap. He emptied the chamber of the gun and then put the bullets in a dash cubby intended for loose change, and the gun and phone in Susan’s glove box.
“What are you doing?” Susan asked.
“In case we’re pulled over,” he said.
“No,” Susan said. “In the larger sense. What the fuck are you doing?”
“I’m trying to get a lost kid out of a bad situation.”
Susan flailed a hand at the glove box. “You got a gun. An unregistered gun.”
“Yes,” Archie said.
“Who is that guy?”
Archie smiled. “He’s in real estate.”
Susan could feel her jaw tighten. Someday she was going to take Archie Sheridan by the shoulders and shake the truth right out of him. Until then, she’d have to rely on more subtle manipulation.
“His lawyer’s cute,” she said.
She saw Archie slide her a look out of the corner of his eye. “Don’t even think about it,” he said.
“Why?”
“Leo,” Archie said slowly, “works for Jack.”
“Doing what?” Susan said. “Real estate contracts?”
Archie pulled at his ear. “Jack is responsible for importing most of the heroin that comes through the West Coast.”
“You don’t have to make fun of me,” Susan said.
“I’m serious.” He reached for the stereo. “Do you mind if I change the station?”
She swatted at his hand. “I like this song.”
Archie sighed and sat back.
They were through First Addition now and on the stretch of 43 that wound alongside the river, connecting Lake Oswego and John’s Landing. “He’s a drug dealer?” Susan said.
“He’s the drug dealer,” Archie said. “The rectangle at the top of the org chart.”
Susan asked the obvious question. “Why don’t you arrest him?”
To the left, beyond the old-growth cedars and mountains of En glish ivy, were some of Portland’s fanciest houses, and beyond them, up the hill, the bucolic campus of Lewis and Clark College. The truth was that Susan had applied there as an undergraduate, but hadn’t gotten in.
“His daughter was murdered,” Archie said.
“So he gets a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card?”
“He’s smart,” Archie said. “It’s not like he’s in Old Town palming rocks to crackheads. He’s well insulated.”
Susan looked over at Archie. He was losing it.
“What?” Archie said.
“You just got a gun from a crook,” Susan said, her voice rising. “You’re trying to help his crazy son, who may or may not have been involved in cutting some poor hippie’s spleen out.” Plus there were other bodies—a head, for Christ’s sake. “Possibly more.”
Archie was quiet for a moment. “He was there,” he said softly.
Susan glanced over at him. He was facing the passenger window, looking at the river.
“Jeremy,” Archie said. “We found him in the car. Gretchen took them both. We found him in the passenger seat. The girl was in the backseat. He was thirteen years old.”
Another secret. They’d had a witness. Someone who’d seen the Beauty Killer. Someone who could identify her, long before they even knew that the killer was a woman. And they’d covered it up. “Why didn’t she kill him?”
“Why didn’t she kill me?” Archie said. “Why does she do anything?”
The significance of all this was dawning on Susan. Archie wasn’t the only one. Gretchen had let someone else live, too. “People think you were the only one of her victims who survived.”
“We kept him out of the papers,” Archie said. “The shrinks said that he was in a fugue state. He didn’t remember anything that happened.”
“Did she ever confess to it?” she said.
“No,” Archie said. “It was one of the files I couldn’t close.”
He glanced at the car’s digital clock. It was almost lunchtime. “Don’t you have a story due?” he asked.
C H A P T E R 36
Susan dropped Archie off at Henry’s two-story Craftsman, and waited until he waved to the patrol cops in the car out front and went inside. Then she called Ian to check in. He was eating at his desk—something he only did when they were swamped—she could hear the wet smack of his chewing. It made her stomach growl.
“Where’s the psych-ward story?” he asked.
Ian had two other reporters covering Courtenay Taggart’s murder. He didn’t need her interviewing the orderly’s neighbors and cold-calling Taggart’s family.
Susan dug under her seat for a bag of potato chips. “I thought I could pursue the fan angle,” Susan said, opening the bag. “Did Derek post the Fintan English story?” She put a chip in her mouth. Kettle brand salt-and-vinegar flavor. Her car was full of them. They gave them away with the sandwiches at the bakery she went to for lunch, but she always got full before she got to them. There were bags under her seat, in the backseat, in the trunk. If her car ever broke down and she was stranded in the woods, she’d feast for days, but get very thirsty. “This is big, Ian,” Susan said. “Gretchen Lowell might not have anything to do with this. It’s her fans. That’s why they’re dumping bodies places where she’s already committed crimes.”
Ian paused a beat. “Today’s headline says BEAUTY KILLER STRIKES AGAIN,” he said. “We stick with that until we know something different.”
Susan sputtered and then spat out a mouthful of chips. “You’re telling me not to investigate the fan-club angle?”
Ian lowered his voice. “I’m telling you to do your job and get me thirty inches on the psych-ward murder by the end of the day.” She heard him get up and close the door to his office. “Gretchen sells papers. Our newsstand sales have doubled since last week.”
“Psycho copycats will sell papers,” Susan said. “If we break the story, we’ll get the paper’s name all over the world. That’s good for ad sales, right?”
“Ps
ycho copycats sell papers,” Ian agreed. “For a couple of days. Then no one cares. Psycho copycats do not have Gretchen Lowell’s legs. I need a few more days of rates like we’ve been having. All of our jobs are on the line, Suzy.” Susan flinched at the “Suzy.” “But if I can show these numbers, I can save some of us,” Ian said. “I’m talking about major layoffs. Management has a list. And you and I are both on it.”
He hung up on her.
Susan looked at her phone for a moment and then threw it in her purse.
So she was supposed to do reporter grunt work on a story they might be getting wrong, instead of investigating the angle that might actually reveal the truth. Meanwhile, Archie Sheridan had a gun and he was going to do something. She didn’t know what. But he was going to do something. He was going to help that kid.
She got out of the car, walked back to Henry’s house, and knocked on the door.
Archie answered, holding a phone, like he was just about to make a call. Susan only vaguely noticed that it was not the phone that Jack Reynolds had given him.
She held out her bag of Kettle chips. “Want a chip?” she asked.
Archie put the phone in his pocket. “You came back to ask me that?”
“I want to help,” Susan said. “I don’t know what this means, but it’s not the right address. I mean, that house shouldn’t be there.”
Archie looked confused.
“Three-nine-seven North Fargo,” Susan said. “The house where I found the body. I looked it up on Google Earth and that address doesn’t exist.”
Archie glanced behind her at the patrol car. “Get in your car and pick me up around the block. I’ll go out the back.”
Susan held up her laptop. “Or we can just go online.” She rolled her eyes and walked past him into the house. “You are so old.”
C H A P T E R 37
Susan sat down on the couch and put the laptop on Henry’s coffee table. The coffee table was made from a massive piece of driftwood that had been sanded, shellacked, and put on legs. Issues of American Rider magazine, Popular Woodworking, and Harper’s sat on top, along with an empty bottle of Arrogant Bastard Ale. There were posters of Alaska on the wall, and framed photographs of a biplane, a fishing vessel, and Henry Sobol, looking thirty years younger, standing in a group next to Jimmy Carter.
Susan opened the laptop and checked for Wi-Fi networks, feeling only a little nervous when Archie sat down right next to her. The only network that came up was called “northstarwarrior.” That had to be Henry. But the network listing had a padlock next to it.
“His Wi-Fi is password protected,” she said.
“Try ‘Lynyrd Skynyrd,’ ” Archie said.
Susan glanced over at Archie. “Seriously?” she said, but she typed it in anyway. Declined. “Nope,” she said.
Susan tried a few other words: Alaska. Harley. Woodworker.
Nothing.
“Try ‘Claire,’ ” Archie said.
“Oh,” Susan said. “That’s romantic.”
She typed it in.
Declined.
“Shit,” she said. “It always looks so easy when they guess passwords in the movies. Want to go to the library?”
“I have an idea,” Archie said. He leaned back on the couch, picked up the landline from an end table, and punched in a number. Susan heard Henry’s voice say hello on the other end.
“What’s your Wi-Fi password?” Archie asked him.
Henry muttered something.
“Thanks,” Archie said. “See you tonight.” He hung up the phone. “Lynyrd Skynyrd 1,” he told Susan.
“He added a one,” Susan said. “So it would be harder to guess.”
“He is very clever,” Archie said.
“But not as clever as we,” Susan said.
She typed in Henry’s password, got online, and went to Google Earth.
“What’s your plan?” Archie asked.
“The house is on the three hundred block. I could type in every three hundred combination and check street views until we see the house. Or I could zoom into the neighborhood, look for the roof, click on it, and get all the information we need. There. Three-three-three North Fargo.
“You can even see the address there,” Susan said, pointing at the screen, where the numbers on the porch clearly read 333. “Someone covered that address with a new one. Changed it to three-nine-seven. Why?”
“Because the number was important.”
“Again,” Susan said. “I ask why.”
“Because it’s not an address,” Archie said. “It’s a date. March 1997. We only found one victim that month. Isabel Reynolds.”
“She had dark hair,” Susan said. “Like her brother Leo.”
“Yeah.”
“I think I saw her picture on one of the fan sites I was researching.” She thought for a minute, trying to recover the name.
Then she typed in: www.iheartgretchenlowell.com.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Archie said, seeing the URL.
The home page came up. A photograph of Gretchen. Click to enter. “Just wait,” Susan said.
She clicked on the photograph and went to the menu page. The menu items included Fan Fiction, Poetry, Gallery, Merchandise, Chat Room, and Archie Sheridan.
She tried to move the cursor over the Gallery link, but Archie put his hand on her arm. “Click on it,” he said.
She rolled the cursor over Archie’s name and clicked. Photographs came up, pictures of his family. The house they had shared in Hillsboro. There were photographs of Archie’s wedding day, his graduations from college and the academy, photographs of him standing at crime scenes, giving press conferences. A biography. A history of his involvement with the task force. There was even a subpage of Fan Fiction.
“What’s that?” Archie asked, pointing to the fan fiction link.
Susan had been hoping he wouldn’t ask. “People write stories about what they think happened between you and Gretchen,” she said. “When she tortured you.”
Archie scratched the back of his neck. “How many of these sorts of Web sites are there?”
“I found over four hundred,” Susan said. “Here, this is what I wanted you to see.” She clicked on Gallery, and scrolled down until she found the photograph. It was labeled “Reynolds, Isabel.”
It had been taken at the scene. She was curled on her side in the backseat, her arms bound in front of her, her mouth gagged. Her head was bent back, and a black gash marked where her throat had been cut. She had bled onto the seat underneath her head, and the blood had dried and sealed her tangle of brown hair to the vinyl. Her eyes were half open, the lids swollen. Her gray skin was flecked with veins. She looked like something carved out of Italian marble.
She’d been dead a few days. And Jeremy Reynolds had witnessed it. How did you ever get over something like that?
“Go to the chat room,” Archie said.
Susan looked over at him. He was engaged now, sitting forward, elbows on his knees. She navigated to the chat room. There were dozens of posts, most with accompanying icons that were in some way Gretchen-related. Her picture. A cartoon heart. A scalpel.
“When the Earth Liberation Front was really active,” Archie said, “their members communicated through chat rooms. That way they didn’t have to use e-mail addresses. They just went to an agreed-upon Web site. And used the chat room to set up meetings.” He reached over her and began to scroll down through the posts. “Here,” he said. He reached forward, touching the screen.
Susan read the post aloud: “Produce. Midnight. Tonight.” She looked at him. “Produce what?”
“Produce,” Archie said. “As in fruit and vegetables. As in the Produce District. We found one of Gretchen’s victims in the basement of a warehouse there. Good place for a Beauty Killer Elks Club meeting. Want to go?”
“Fuck, yeah,” Susan said.
C H A P T E R 38
Susan spent the rest of the day working. She even knocked on the doors of the orderly
’s neighbors. He always seemed so nice. And cold-called Courtenay Taggart’s family. She was such a lovely girl. That night, Susan ate a vegan lasagna with her mother, waited until eleven-thirty, and then went back to pick up Archie.
He met her around the block, at the point they had arranged. She didn’t know if he’d sneaked out a back window while Henry was asleep, and she didn’t ask.