Evil at Heart

by Chelsea Cain

  Then he felt Jeremy rub something cool on his back.

  “Antibacterial solution,” Jeremy said. He cleaned up the blood and then continued to massage Archie’s back, working up his spine and rubbing his neck and shoulders, rubbing his fingers up the back of Archie’s skull through his hair.

  “Did Gretchen touch you like this? . . .” Jeremy asked softly.

  “Yes,” Archie said. “The carvings you made on the guy with the teeth, you remember Gretchen doing that to Isabel?”

  “I watched her do it.”

  “Do you want to tell me what happened, Jeremy?”

  “Yes,” Jeremy said. “But I want to get the scalpel first.”

  C H A P T E R 52

  Henry would’ve been happy to go years before seeing the inside of the Providence psych ward again. He didn’t like the way it smelled. He didn’t like the security cameras and locked doors. He didn’t like the nurses. And he didn’t like the fact that his best friend had spent two months there.

  “This better be good,” Henry said to Claire. He was standing with Claire next to Archie’s psychologist, Sarah Rosenberg, in the hall. They were looking into the activities room, where a department shrink sat across the table from Archie’s old roommate, Frank. The shrink was interviewing all the mental patients about Courtenay Taggart’s death. The hospital would only approve professional crazy wranglers to wrangle its crazies.

  Henry thought it was all bullshit.

  “Frank doesn’t have a sister,” Rosenberg said.

  Henry let that soak in. “Fuck,” he said.

  “Your psychiatrist saw it in his file,” Rosenberg said, looking through the glass at Frank. “No one ever thought to check.”

  Claire stood with her arms crossed. Henry could see the concern tightening the corners of her mouth. They both knew what this meant.

  “It’s her,” Claire said.

  Henry turned to Rosenberg. “Take me in there,” he said.

  “He won’t admit it,” Rosenberg said. “He’s adamant.”

  Henry looked through the glass at Frank. He was slumped over the table, his patient scrubs too big, white tube socks pushed down around his ankles. He was weak and vulnerable. Just the kind of man Gretchen preyed on. “Let me talk to him,” Henry said.

  Rosenberg looked at him for a moment and then nodded. “I’ll take you in,” she said. She hesitated. “He is a patient,” she said. “If you cause him any trauma at all, I will lose my position here.”

  “I won’t use the boiling oil,” Henry said.

  “Be nice,” Claire said.

  “I’m always nice,” Henry said, following Rosenberg into the room.

  Frank looked up immediately and waved. “Hi, Henry,” he said.

  Henry put on a big fake grin. “Hey, buddy,” Henry said. He pulled up a chair and sat down next to Frank. Rosenberg sat in a chair next to the other shrink. That was good. It was Henry and Frank against the doctors. That would create an alliance. Just friendly old Henry and his buddy Frank against the big bad medical establishment.

  The department shrink—a middle-aged man in a golf shirt and pleated shorts—shifted uncomfortably in his plastic chair.

  “I missed you this morning,” Henry said to Frank. “I missed visiting my buddy Frank.”

  “Archie’s gone,” Frank said.

  “Yeah,” Henry said. “But hey, I can still visit you, right? I can still visit my buddy Frank.”

  Frank smiled shyly. “Okay.”

  “But I bet you get lots of visitors, right, Frank?” Henry said. “I bet your sister’s here all the time.”

  Frank’s face faltered.

  “No?” Henry said.

  Frank looked away. “She gets busy,” he said.

  Henry folded his hands in his lap and smiled. “Do you have a sister, Frank?”

  Frank’s forehead wrinkled and he swatted at the air with his hand. “Stop asking me that,” he said.

  Henry saw Rosenberg lay a palm down on the table.

  “Who else has asked you that?” Henry said.

  “Him,” Frank said, pointing at the golf-shirted shrink. “And Archie.”

  Henry tried to keep his voice even, his demeanor neutral. “When did Archie ask you that?”

  “After I took his phone,” Frank said. He shook his head sadly. “I didn’t mean to. I heard it.” He covered his ears. “Buzz. Buzz.” He let his hands drop. “I found it in his dresser. He was so mad. He made me give it back. That’s when he asked me. ‘Do you even have a sister, Frank?’ ” He sank down in his chair, shoulders hunched. “He was so mad,” he said again.

  “Did you talk to anyone on that phone?” Henry asked.

  “No,” Frank said. “I was going to call my sister, but I couldn’t remember her number.” He bit his lip. “I think she’s mad, too. She stopped calling.”

  “What’s your sister’s name, Frank?”

  Frank turned away, hunching further down in his chair. “I don’t want to talk to you anymore,” he said.

  “When was the last time she called?” Henry asked.

  Frank covered his ears again. “Buzz, buzz, buzz.”

  Rosenberg stood.

  “We’re done,” she said.

  C H A P T E R 53

  There were three elevators at the Herald. Only two of them ever worked at one time. Today, the elevator on the far right was broken, so Susan stood waiting near the other two.

  No sleep and five hours in front of the computer had left her grainy-eyed and exhausted, even with the hour-long nap she’d managed to take in the commissary. She’d gotten her seventy-five inches in, though. It was the best piece of newspaper work she’d ever done. She only wished that Quentin Parker was around to see it.

  With the story in, she was going to go home and take a nap. Leo Reynolds was not returning her calls, which either meant that his low-placed friends had turned up nothing, or they had turned up something and he’d decided not to tell her about it.

  A few hours of sleep, and she would try him again.

  The elevator was taking forever and Susan leaned her head against the wall next to it, and rested her eyes.

  She awoke, with a sudden start, when the elevator doors opened. She blinked, still groggy. There, in the elevator, stood Henry Sobol.

  He held the elevator door open and beckoned her inside. “We need to talk,” he said. “What floor?”

  Susan moved her purse—with Archie’s cell phone in it—to her other shoulder. There hadn’t been a single call since she’d sent her text. “Lobby,” she said.

  Henry pushed the L button.

  Just as the doors started to close, Derek Rogers slipped into the elevator with them.

  “You’re Dick, right?” Henry said.

  “Derek,” Derek said.

  “Over seventeen thousand people a year in the U.S. are seriously injured in incidents involving elevators and escalators,” Susan said.

  Henry did not look remotely amused. His mouth was drawn tight and there were no laugh lines around his eyes. In the elevator light, Susan could see tiny spider veins blooming along his jaw-line.

  “So we finished interviewing the psych-ward inmates this afternoon,” he said.

  “Patients,” Susan corrected him.

  He ignored her. “You ever meet Archie’s roommate?” Henry said. “Name’s Frank. Depressive. A little slow. Gets a lot of calls from his sister, talks about her constantly. Only it turns out he doesn’t have a sister.”

  It wasn’t making very much sense to Susan. But then she was so tired, she wasn’t sure that simple arithmetic would make much sense. “So he lied about having a sister,” she said.

  Henry hit the elevator emergency stop button. The elevator ground to a halt.

  Susan looked up at the floor lights above the doors. Both the two and the three were lit up. They were stuck between floors. She was suddenly feeling more awake.

  “You can’t do that,” Derek said, his voice rising. “There are only two working elevators
. What if there’s a fire?”

  Henry took a step right up against Derek. “If there’s a fire,” he said between gritted teeth, “you’re supposed to take the stairs.”

  Derek backed against the wall. “Okay, sir,” he said.

  Susan’s mind was clearing.

  Henry leaned back on the elevator wall next to Derek. “I’ll tell you what I think,” he said to Derek, giving him a tap on the upper arm. “I think that Gretchen pretended to be Frank’s sister. I think that she was keeping tabs on Archie through Frank. Frank won’t admit to any of this.” He waved a hand in the air. “Swears on the Bible that he has a sister, who loves him very much.” He held up a single finger. “But he did tell me about a phone,” Henry said. “A cell phone. Frank took it out of Archie’s dresser drawer and Archie got mad. What do you think, Susan?”

  Susan was having trouble breathing.

  “You know anything about a cell phone?” Henry asked.

  “No,” Susan said.

  “I’ll tell you what I think,” Henry said. “I think Gretchen is in town.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe she never left. So this Beauty Killer fan club, or cult, or whatever the fuck, may be responsible for much of our city’s recent mayhem. But I can’t find any evidence that our homicidal orderly ever used an Internet dating service. We’ve searched his computer at home. We’ve searched the computers he had access to at work. We’ve even searched the computers at his local library branch, which I can assure you is not easy. Nothing. Jeremy Reynolds didn’t manipulate our orderly into killing Courtenay Taggart. Gretchen Lowell did. I think she used the orderly to get Archie a phone. And then I think she had him kill a patient on the ward because she knew it would get Archie out of there. And if I find out that you knew about this phone, I will rain holy hell on you.”

  “I think I found Pearl Clinton,” Derek said. “I got a call from a woman who runs a store on Hawthorne: From the Earth to the Moon. She said that Pearl used to work for her. I’m supposed to meet her there. You can check it out. If you want.”

  No one said anything for a moment.

  Finally, Susan broke the silence. “Pearl could lead us to Archie,” she said to Henry.

  Henry hit the emergency button with the heel of his fist and the elevator strained for a moment and then started to move.

  C H A P T E R 54

  From the Earth to the Moon was on Hawthorne Boulevard in between a coffee shop and a free-trade store. Susan knew the place. It had been there about a year, replacing a Goth store, which had replaced a head shop.

  If you had a subculture, Portland had a store for you.

  “Here,” Susan said.

  Henry pulled over in a loading zone directly in front of the store. Sometimes Susan wished she were a cop. Or at least had a car with cop plates.

  “What is with this place?” Henry asked.

  “It’s steampunk.”

  “Steampunk?”

  “It’s a subculture,” Susan said. “Sort of Victorian. Sort of sci-fi. The world as imagined by Jules Verne.”

  Henry looked at her blankly.

  “Have you ever read The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen?”

  “Is it a baseball book?” Henry said.

  “Never mind,” Susan said. “Pearl was wearing a corset and a

  pair of goggles. This place sells that kind of thing. It makes sense that she worked here.”

  They got out of the car and went inside the store.

  It was like a jewel box. The walls were painted sea-serpent green, the wood floors were painted black, the cashier’s counter was covered in red velvet, and the light fixtures appeared to be made of old brass watch parts. Brass pipes hung on chains from the ceiling, adorned with gowns, corsets, petticoats, and bustles; gentlemen’s suits with vests, coats, and spats; old-fashioned military uniforms. Antique dark wood shelving displayed quirky pocket watches, old-fashioned parasols, goggles, and ray guns.

  The woman standing behind the red velvet counter was wearing a black Edwardian gown under a black leather corset. Around her neck was a magnifying glass and, in a glass relic locket, what looked to be a human tooth. She was wearing a leather gun belt with a Flash Gordon ray gun in each holster.

  “I’m with the Herald,” Susan said. “Derek Rogers sent me.”

  “Good for you,” she said.

  “You called him earlier today,” Susan said. “We’re looking for Margaux Clinton. Goes by ‘Pearl.’ Sixteen. About five feet four. Skinny. Short dark hair. Goggles”—she pointed to the goggles displayed on the shelf—“like those. You told Derek Rogers that she used to work here.”

  “I don’t know anyone named Derek Rogers,” the woman said. “And I don’t read the Herald.”

  “You didn’t call the Herald today?”

  “No. But Pearl did work here. I fired her for shoplifting about a month ago.” The woman slid a glance at Henry, and then back at Susan. “She a runaway?” she asked.

  “She’s wanted in connection with several murders,” Henry said.

  The woman gave Henry a disapproving look. “He the father?” she asked Susan.

  “I’m a cop,” Henry said.

  “She’s involved with some bad people,” Susan explained. She got a business card out of her wallet and set it on the counter. “Journalist,” she said. As if that might help cancel out the cop thing.

  “If she ran away,” the woman said, “she probably had a reason.”

  Henry looked around the store. “Maybe her parents wanted her to dress like a normal person,” he said.

  The woman gave Henry a once-over. He was wearing black jeans and a sweat-stained, faded black T-shirt. The woman seemed unimpressed. “People look at you, they frown,” the woman said to Henry. She posed, Vogue-style, and fluttered her eyelashes. “They look at me, they smile.”

  Henry stepped in front of her, drawing to his full, barrel-chested height. “Look at me,” he said. “I don’t give a shit if you smile. I don’t give a shit if you wear dumb-ass goggles. What I care about is finding Pearl Clinton.” His shaved head was beaded with sweat. “And I’m going to give you ten seconds to tell us where she is.”

  C H A P T E R 55

  The intersection of Thirty-eighth Avenue and Hawthorne Boulevard was prime panhandling real estate, and according to the manager of From the Earth to the Moon, Pearl had been a regular, hitting up Hawthorne shoppers for cash.

  “Jesus, watch out,” Susan said, as Henry barely avoided sideswiping a bicyclist.

  Henry grumbled something under his breath and then did a double take out the windshield. “There,” he said.

  Pearl was just rounding the corner onto Thirty-eighth.

  “Hold on,” Henry said. He screeched the car to a halt halfway up on the curb, opened the door, and lunged out after her.

  Susan braced herself on the dash, and then got out and sprinted after Henry.

  By the time she got there, Henry already had Pearl by the arm.

  “I want a lawyer,” Pearl said.

  Henry gripped her arm tighter, and the muscles in his bare upper arm bulged. “If I take you in and dial you up a lawyer,” he said, “it will mean calling your parents and child services. Still want one?”

  A small crowd had gathered. There was always plenty of foot traffic on Hawthorne. A couple of other street kids had come up, a few people with shopping bags, a couple of bicyclists who had stopped and were standing with their helmets on—all watching. Some of them were taking cell-phone video.

  “Ordinary citizen, here,” Pearl cried, “getting harassed by the fuzz.”

  “Henry,” Susan said.

  Henry let go of Pearl’s arm. She rubbed the spot where he’d been holding her and then crossed her arms defiantly.

  “This isn’t a game,” Henry said. “Tell me where Archie Sheridan is.”

  “I haven’t done anything wrong,” Pearl said, loud enough that the bystanders could hear.

  Henry blinked in disbelief. “Nothing wrong? You’re part of a ser
ial-killer fan club.”