Evil at Heart

by Chelsea Cain

  There was no traffic that time of night and they made it to the Produce District in fifteen minutes. Susan parked under the Morrison Street Bridge. The tangle of highways overhead made that part of town seem especially gritty and urban. There was usually more car noise, but it was late and only the occasional semi roared past over their heads. Archie emptied his pockets, putting two cell phones in the glove box of her car, and then untucked his shirt, tucked the gun that Jack Reynolds had given him in the back of his pants, and arranged the shirt back over it. Susan inventoried her

  mace. It was dark in the Produce District at night. And the wide streets and concrete loading docks made the place seem especially empty.

  “This way,” Archie said. Susan followed him down the street and around the corner to an enormous old warehouse. Inner industrial Southeast Portland was full of them. But this one, at five stories, was especially looming.

  Archie hopped up onto the loading dock and went to an unmarked fire door.

  “I went to a show here once in high school,” Susan said, as Archie closed the fire door behind them. “They used to have an all-ages club upstairs.”

  “Fascinating,” Archie said.

  The warehouse didn’t store produce anymore. Instead it seemed to be filled mostly with Asian furniture, reeking of orange-oil furniture polish and tatami. A few fluorescent lights flickered overhead, illuminating great stacks of glossy ornate cabinets, Chinese lamps, trunks, Buddha statues, plant stands. Susan didn’t see any security cameras. If they’d been futon thieves, there’d have been nothing to stop them.

  “This way,” Archie said. He walked through another door and flipped on a light switch. A series of bare compact fluorescent bulbs stuttered to life in a hallway. The wood floors were warped, providing a facsimile of vertigo to Susan as she followed Archie down the hallway. The walls were covered with colorful airbrushed images and scrawled spray-painted signatures.

  “At least the graffiti’s interesting,” said Archie.

  Susan took a closer look at the walls. Next to some of the images were unmistakable round red stickers. “It’s art,” Susan said.

  Archie didn’t answer.

  “Really,” Susan insisted. “See the red dots? It’s a gallery.”

  “It’s a dank hallway,” Archie said.

  “Slash gallery,” Susan said. “Low overhead. A lot of these old warehouses cater to the underground art scene.”

  She thought she heard Archie sigh.

  “This city really needs to start enforcing fire codes,” he said.

  “You know what causes the most house fires?” Susan said. “Cooking. It’s why I don’t do it.”

  “Down here,” Archie said, opening another door and flipping another light switch.

  The door revealed a set of wide fire stairs that led to a concrete floor and another door. Another scary basement. Of course. “You know what I’d like to see?” Susan asked. “More crime involving airy aboveground spaces.”

  Archie started down the stairs. There was a single compact fluorescent bulb at the bottom of the stairwell that made the whole scene look like something out of a Japanese horror film.

  “What makes you think this Jeremy kid will be here?” Susan said. “Maybe he hit an earlier meeting.” Susan had a sudden vision of a group of bloodthirsty cultists sitting in a circle drinking bad coffee and sharing stories from their childhood. Like AA, but with more blood and cackling. You could hit the child-killer meeting in the morning and the support group for sexual homicide fetishists at noon.

  “I don’t think it works like that,” Archie said.

  “Should we make a plan?” Susan asked. “Like what’s our story?” They couldn’t just walk in without a story. “Are we serial-killer enthusiasts looking for the Gretchen Lowell Fan Club meeting? Are we a nice couple who’s run out of gas and wandered inside to look for lodging?” Susan looked at Archie, then down at herself. “Never mind. No one would buy us as a couple.” She considered more options. “I know! Let’s be building inspectors.”

  The door at the bottom of the stairs opened and a girl appeared.

  Susan and Archie froze. The fluorescent bulb made the girl’s skin glow bright and blurry like television static. She was wearing black fishnets, cutoffs, a black tank top, a Goth-looking black lace-up corset over the tank top, and lace-up high-heeled pointy-toed boots that looked like they’d been salvaged from the wreck of the Titanic. To finish the outfit off, the girl wore a pair of antique-looking driving goggles on top of her head.

  Runaway, Susan thought. Hiding out. Probably more freaked out to see them than they were to see her. The whole building-inspector cover suddenly seemed pretty weak. Susan wished she’d had her clipboard.

  Archie was four steps ahead. Susan couldn’t see his face. Susan willed him to say something. He didn’t. “Hi,” Susan said to the girl. “My husband and I ran out of gas.”

  The girl didn’t even look at her. The girl was looking at Archie. Her cheeks flushed. Her stance went a little pigeon-toed, or maybe it was just the boots. And then she squeaked two words—“Archie Sheridan”—followed by a little squeal. Like a kitten, having a nightmare.

  Susan had met Jack White once and reacted much the same way.

  “That’s me,” Archie said.

  The girl had a stud in each eyebrow, and she reached up and twisted one. “You came,” she said. “I mean, wow.”

  Archie took a step down one more stair, moving slowly, like someone approaching a wounded animal. “I’m looking for Jeremy,” he said.

  The girl nodded, but Susan wasn’t sure if she was responding to what Archie had said or was just trembling with excitement.

  “Do you know Jeremy?” Susan asked the girl.

  The girl’s pierced brows furrowed, and she shot Susan a concerned look. “I’m not sure if you’re allowed a guest,” she said to Archie.

  The story of Susan’s life. She couldn’t even get a plus one to a serial-killer sect.

  Archie took another step toward the girl, all nonthreatening confidence. “I’m sure it’s fine,” he said.

  The cheeks deepened another shade. “I guess,” the girl said. She shrugged and Susan noticed how bony her shoulders were. What was she? Sixteen? “Come this way,” the girl said. She swung the door open with a self-conscious flourish that made her seem even younger. “Everyone’s waiting.”

  Archie descended the final three stairs and stood face-to-face with the girl. She was small and seemed to shrink more in his presence. With her cinched corset, teetering boots, and brass goggles, she looked like a tiny awkward insect. Susan clomped down the stairs after them, her arms crossed.

  “They’re waiting,” the girl said again.

  “Is Jeremy waiting?” Archie asked.

  “We love Jeremy,” the girl said. She smiled and her eyes suddenly shimmered. “Just like we love you, Archie.” Susan would have laughed if the whole thing hadn’t been so entirely creepy. She looked for some sign from Archie, a wink or nudge, something that would reassure her that they were in on this together, but she got nothing. She clutched her purse full of mace closer.

  The girl sniffed noisily, and wiped her nose with her forearm. “You have no idea,” she said. “We’re your biggest fans.” Then, with an apologetic gesture toward a stain on the concrete floor, she stepped through the door at the base of the steps and into a dimly lit basement hallway. “Watch the blood,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “It’s kind of slippery.”

  “Blood?” Susan said.

  The girl laughed. “I’m kidding,” she said. “God.”

  C H A P T E R 39

  Archie matched his gait to Susan’s, so that they were side by side, a few steps behind the girl. He knew where they were going. He’d been in this basement a dozen times. He’d walked down those stairs, down this hallway, around the corner, into the old boiler room.

  Seven years ago, Gretchen had killed a man here. Archie had examined the crime scene. Taken inventory of every lesion on the corp
se. Watched the man split open on the ME’s table. Seven years ago, Archie had notified the dead man’s wife and children. He’d gone to the house, rung the doorbell in the middle of the night, and broken the news that their husband and father was dead.

  Back then the main floor of the warehouse had been a used-office-furniture outfit. Metal desks, filing cabinets, stacks of steel-case cubicle components, and hundreds of pale blue and plum-colored office chairs arranged in rows three hundred feet long.

  No makeshift gallery. The upper floors were empty, the windows boarded up.

  “Are there still rats down here?” Archie asked the girl.

  Susan stiffened.

  The girl shrugged. “You see them once in a while,” she said.

  There was a persistent drip coming from a pipe somewhere that echoed off the concrete. But the air down there was cool and pleasant. The ceiling was low, but looked even lower than it was, and Archie found himself reflexively hunching over a little as they walked.

  The gun was tucked into his waistband, under his shirt, at the small of his back. He ordinarily wore his gun in a shoulder holster, but that was in a box in a storage unit. He could feel the gun at his back now, like someone’s hand pressing him along, guiding him deeper into the basement. It would be hard to get at in a hurry, but it was there if they needed it and it was in a place that amateurs might not check. It was that or duct tape it behind his neck—he still couldn’t really figure out exactly how people pulled that off on cop shows. Besides, he didn’t have any duct tape.

  “You guys are quiet,” the girl said.

  “We’re concentrating on being led to our doom,” Susan said.

  They got to the boiler-room door. It was easy to spot. There was a big yellow sign on it that said

  BOILER ROOM in all-cap black letters. The door was gray steel. The girl knocked on it twice, then once, then twice more.

  “Seriously?” Susan said, rolling her eyes at Archie. “A secret knock?”

  “They’re here,” the girl called. “Detective Sheridan and some chick friend.”

  “Susan Ward,” Susan called.

  The door opened.

  Susan turned to Archie. “I wonder how many people die in basements every year,” she said.

  The boiler room was dark. Archie and his team had set up high-wattage lights when they were down there, illuminating every

  cobweb and blood spatter. Without all those high-powered bulbs defining every corner and crack, the room seemed larger, amorphous, every corner curved. The light from the hall seeped in, a warped yellow rectangle on the floor. Dust hung in the air. Water moved in pipes overhead.

  The person who’d opened the door had moved back into the shadows, over by the hulking decommissioned boiler. It had taken him five steps. Archie had counted, listening for the soft shuffle of sneakers on cement. The boiler was the size of Archie’s first car. Archie could make out the shapes of three people beside it.

  A flashlight beam hit him in the face. He turned his head and squinted, then forced his gaze straight ahead, into the light. Susan was standing next to him, and he put his hand out and touched her wrist with his fingertips, so she’d stay close to him. He could feel the gun digging into the small of his back.

  He’d thought that Gretchen had left the bodies in the park and at the mansion to get his attention, but these people had been doing it to get hers. They wanted to impress her. They wanted to get closer to her. They wanted to use him. To get to her.

  “I’m here,” he said into the light. “Now what?”

  The light angled down, and a man stepped forward. It took a moment for Archie, blinded by the sudden darkness, to blink the dark spots from his vision. The man was in his twenties or thirties, with a soft untrimmed beard and plugs the size of bottle caps in his earlobes. He looked like he should be bagging groceries at a natural-foods store.

  He smiled at Archie, revealing a mouthful of teeth that had been filed into sharp points. “We weren’t sure you’d come,” he said.

  Susan’s fingers folded around Archie’s hand.

  “It’s been a while since I was down here,” Archie said.

  The teeth were good. The teeth meant they were going to be able to find out who this guy was. Cops loved body modification.

  Tattoos? Half the world had those. You couldn’t throw a Hacky Sack at the U of O without hitting a sorority girl with a butterfly on her ankle. But file your pearly whites into shark fangs and you were special. People remembered you.

  Archie smiled.

  Shark Boy’s face faltered. “What?” he said.

  “You’re not in charge, are you?” Archie asked.

  Susan squeezed his hand. He glanced over at her and she nodded toward the boiler, where one of the shapes had stepped forward.

  “The rest of the fan club?” Archie said.

  “We’re more of a collective,” Shark Boy said.

  The girl laughed.

  Archie squinted at the shape that had stepped forward: tall, male, but Archie couldn’t make out more than that. “Jeremy?” he said.

  The shape didn’t move.

  “I don’t think that’s Jeremy,” Susan said quietly.

  Archie didn’t like where this was going. He turned to the girl. “There still a bloodstain?” he asked.

  Shark Boy lifted his flashlight beam to the floor near the opposite wall. “Over there,” he said.

  Archie pretended not to see it. “Turn on the light,” he said. “The mood is great. Very Nightmare on Elm Street. But if you turn on the light, I can show you what happened.”

  Archie kept his focus on Shark Boy, watching as his gaze flicked over to the man by the boiler, looking for permission. The man must have nodded, because Shark Boy said, “Okay.”

  Someone turned on the lights. Nothing fancy. Three bulbs. No one had bothered to install compact fluorescents down here. Maybe they were waiting for these to burn out first.

  Archie turned back toward the boiler. The man was still standing

  there. He wore black pants and a gray T-shirt and a nylon stocking over his head. He was relaxed. His hands were in his pockets. Behind him were two young men in their twenties. No masks.

  “There you are,” Archie said.

  “Start talking,” the man in the mask said.

  Archie turned his attention to the bloodstain. Susan unfolded her hand from his. “Go ahead,” she whispered, and Archie took a step away from her.

  It had been seven years, but it was still there, much as he remembered it: a bathmat-sized stain, a human body’s length from the wall. Someone had lovingly swept the dust off it.

  Seven years. But it was hard to get blood off concrete. You had to work at it. Sandblast it. Use flame. Grind. Scab. Plane. Scour. Douse with chemicals. No reason to waste the effort in an old boiler room. Who was ever going to see it?

  He hesitated for a second. Susan didn’t need to hear what he was going to say. He looked over at her.

  “Go ahead,” she whispered again.

  “She taped him to a chair,” Archie said. He looked around the room. He wasn’t looking at the people. He was looking for the chair. It was gone. Someone had had the decency, at least, to get rid of that. “An office chair. From a shop upstairs. It was pale blue.” He didn’t know why, but that detail had always struck him, the powder-blue cloth of the chair, dated even then, like something out of a dentist’s waiting room. “She used an entire roll of duct tape.” One hundred and eighty feet. One of the crime techs had measured it. It had taken them forty minutes to peel it off him before he could be sent to the morgue. “Mummified him from his ankles to his neck.” He glanced over at Susan. Her face was a mask of journalistic objectivity. Good girl, Archie thought. And then he mentally kicked himself for being condescending.

  He reached up and touched his chest, feeling the thick scars

  under the cloth of his shirt. “She had carved up his chest. She always did that. But the incisions on this one were unusually passionate.” He shot Sh
ark Boy a wicked grin. “The duct tape stopped him from bleeding out.” The girl had taken a step closer to Shark Boy and was working the stud in her eyebrow again. “Duct tape’s good for that,” he said. “Among other things.” Shark Boy was smiling, but it was a put-on smile, another kind of mask.

  The man in the mask was perfectly still.

  Archie needed to make it worse. Much worse.

  “Then she sliced open his chin,” Archie continued. “About an inch below his bottom lip, a two-inch-wide opening.” He walked over to the girl. She was the one. If he could get to any of them, it would be her. He lifted his hand and brushed his thumb along her bottom lip. She was stock-still, but she didn’t shrink from him. She held her ground. Archie pressed his thumb into her chin. “And she pulled his tongue through the incision.” He let that image sink in for all of them. “And then she pushed piercing needles through the part of the tongue that was exposed.” He moved his hand up the girl’s face and tapped one of the studs that pierced her eyebrows. “Two-inch hollow piercing needles,” he said. “Three of them. She left two of the needles in, so he couldn’t pull his tongue back through the hole. And then she removed the third needle.”