Evil at Heart

by Chelsea Cain

  “Look at me,” he told her.

  She looked up at him with her perfect blue eyes. He had wanted to see surprise. He had wanted to do one thing, take one action, that she had not predicted and orchestrated.

  Her lips parted. She tried to speak.

  Jeremy made one last strangled sound and then was silent.

  “Twist it,” she said.

  Archie turned the scalpel and she opened her mouth and cried out, her cheeks flushing. Then she cupped his face with her hands. They were wet with Jeremy’s blood. Archie could smell it.

  “Men are so simple,” Gretchen said. Her hands were warm and her touch soft. “With Jeremy, I just went a little younger. I wanted to see if I could take a child and turn him into a monster. So I took him and his sister to this house and I murdered her in front of him.” She beamed.

  Archie couldn’t think straight. She was lying again. Jeremy was a psychopath. He’d been born that way. He’d killed his sister. He would keep killing. He tightened his grip on the scalpel. “No,” he said.

  Her hands trembled against his cheeks as he pushed the blade in deeper, and he could feel the heat of her blood spreading between them.

  “It was an experiment,” she said, slowly sliding her hands down his neck to his chest. “I wanted to see if I could create something evil. Anyone can be a murderer, given the right set of circumstances.”

  She glanced at Jeremy. “I guess I was right.”

  Oh, God, Archie thought. No. Please.

  She gave Archie’s chest a gentle push, and he stepped back, and the scalpel, his hand still clenched around the handle, slid from her body. “Jeremy didn’t kill his sister,” she said. “He didn’t kill any of them. He was just a poor little boy I manipulated. I talked him into getting his little club to perform the splenectomy. I suspended you from the hooks. I was there the whole time. Jeremy was innocent.” Her smile widened as she reveled in her victory. “And you just let him die.”

  Archie opened his hand and let the scalpel drop. It bounced noisily on the concrete, and as Gretchen glanced down at the sound

  Archie reached behind his back and drew his gun. By the time she glanced up, the muzzle was pressed into her forehead. Archie’s hand was shaking and he had to press the gun to her head hard to steady the thing. He had never wanted anything as badly as he wanted to blow a hole in Gretchen Lowell’s head.

  “You were right,” he said. “I was leaving you. That night I came to your house. I was going to end it and tell Debbie everything.”

  He moved the muzzle down her face, between her eyes, along the bridge of her nose, and pressed it against her closed lips. “Take it,” he said. “Take it.”

  He could see the pulse in her throat flutter as she opened her lips and let him slide the barrel of the gun into her mouth.

  Pull the trigger and he’d rip open the back of her head.

  Who would blame him?

  And then he would be a killer. Just like her.

  He wasn’t going to let her win.

  He pulled out of her mouth slowly and lifted the gun back to her forehead. And in that heartbeat, he felt something unfamiliar. He felt like his old self.

  “You’re under arrest,” he said.

  Archie glimpsed the barest hint of movement to his left before he felt the gun barrel on his ear.

  “I didn’t come alone,” Gretchen said.

  And then Archie caught it. A wave of musk. Patchouli.

  “Neither did I,” he said.

  “If you move,” Archie heard Susan say. “I will stab you in the neck.” She stepped forward into his peripheral vision. She had the knife out of her pocket tool and was holding it to Frank’s neck.

  “Hello, Frank,” Archie said. Frank’s chin was down, his eyes unblinking, and his doughy face was flushed and sweaty. Archie

  had seen him like this before. It usually ended with Frank throwing a chair.

  “Hello, Archie,” Frank said.

  “She’s not your sister,” Archie said. “You know that, right?”

  “Shoot him,” Gretchen said flatly.

  Susan adjusted her stance, angling the knife higher against Frank’s neck. “Don’t even think about it,” she said.

  “Are you still mad at me?” Frank asked Archie.

  “No,” Archie said. “I’m not mad.”

  “Shoot him in the head,” Gretchen said again.

  “Yeah,” Frank said. “Okay.”

  Archie tensed, waiting for the shot, and then he heard it. He’d never been shot before. He’d had nails driven into his ribs with a hammer. He’d been forced to drink drain cleaner. He’d been cut up and sliced and stabbed. But shot? No.

  It didn’t hurt. That’s what they said. People had been shot and gone several minutes before even noticing. Some people described it as a sensation of heat. Other people said the pain was excruciating.

  Being shot in the head, you probably couldn’t feel that. You probably just died.

  And he wasn’t dead.

  Frank was.

  SWAT snipers came through the boiler room doorway in pairs, all in black, headlamps shining. They had probably come in through the basement window. The gunshot Archie had heard was not meant for him—it was a sniper bullet meant for Frank. Archie heard the heavy, running footsteps of reinforcements entering upstairs.

  It was all a fog.

  Archie didn’t move, didn’t let up the pressure of the gun to

  Gretchen’s head, until there were five other weapons trained on her.

  “Sir?” one of the SWAT officers said.

  Archie leaned close to Gretchen. “I’m breaking up with you,” he whispered in her ear. And he lowered his gun.

  C H A P T E R 64

  Archie could see Venus from the porch of the house on Fargo. It was the brightest light in the night sky. Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty. The flytrap. So often depicted in paintings with red hair.

  “We may never know what really happened to Isabel,” Henry said. “Or the others.”

  Jeremy was dead. Shark Boy was dead. Pearl was on her way back to her parents. The two other goons from the boiler room might never be found.

  “I know,” Archie said.

  Henry had arrived behind the SWAT team, unarmed, as he was officially on desk duty. That left Claire in charge, and she had banished them both to the porch, where Henry had taken Archie’s statement.

  News vans crowded the street, their satellite dishes battling for the best signal. The empty lots on either side of the house were filled with TV correspondents reporting live. The lights from their cameras looked like stars.

  Gretchen was gone, bound on a stretcher, and carried off by four anxious-looking EMTs and six cops. The cops had had to fight their way through the media horde that had set upon Gretchen like paparazzi on a movie star.

  “Gretchen could have proof,” Archie mused. “One way or another.”

  “No,” Henry said, shaking his head. “You’re not reinstituting the victim-identification project. It’s not worth it. There is no information she can give us that is worth you having to see her ever again.”

  Archie reached into his pocket for the flash drive Gretchen had given him back at Henry’s house, and held it up. “She gave me this,” Archie said, examining the small device. “Information on a guy named Ryan Motley.” He didn’t know whether to believe her, if this guy even existed, or if it was just another game. “She said she trained him, that he’s a child killer.”

  Archie held the flash drive out to Henry.

  “Goddamn it,” Henry said, taking the drive.

  Archie patted him on the shoulder and stood up. They both knew that Gretchen Lowell was not done with them, but for the moment at least, Archie was done with her.

  There was really only one person he wanted to see right now.

  He found Susan leaning against the side of the house, smoking a cigarette. The light coming from the old living room window illuminated the side of her face.

  Th
e SWAT team had shown up just in time. And there was only one way they could have gotten there that soon. “You called Henry,” he said.

  “You were in trouble,” she said.

  Archie leaned up against the house next to her. Gretchen was in custody. They were safe. He was alive.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  Susan took a drag off her cigarette. “Four hundred and forty thousand,” she said.

  “What?” he said.

  “That’s how many people die of tobacco-related deaths in the U.S. each year.” She looked at the cigarette. “I’m going to quit.”

  She didn’t move to extinguish the cigarette.

  A news helicopter hovered in for an overhead shot of the house and they were quiet until it lifted and went off east.

  “You were going to leave your wife for her, weren’t you?” Susan said.

  “Absolutely,” Archie said.

  He still didn’t know what she’d heard down there in the basement. What she knew about what he’d done. “The Taser was named after a Tom Swift book,” Archie said. “Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle. They added the a.”

  Susan brushed a stray purple lock behind her ear. “And you’re telling me that because?”

  “Because I want to tell you things,” Archie said.

  She nodded and seemed to consider that. “Do you know what the most popular line in movies is?” she asked. “ ‘Let’s get out of here.’ ” She smiled in the dark. “Seriously,” she said. “Listen for it. It’s in every movie. It doesn’t matter what kind of movie it is. You’ll be amazed.”

  The puncture wounds in her face had bruised and her eyelid was a shiny purple. “You have a black eye,” Archie said.

  Susan took a drag of her cigarette and blew the smoke in his face. “You have hook holes in your back,” she said.

  There was a loud sustained car honk and Archie turned to see a shuttle bus trying to force its way past several emergency vehicles in order to get closer to the house. A bus wrap graphic covered the entire shuttle. Archie couldn’t make all of it out, but in the headlights and flashing emergency lights he could see Gretchen’s face

  on the side of the bus, and on the hood below the windshield, a scalpel.

  “What the hell is that?” Archie said.

  “That,” Susan said, “is the midnight Beauty Killer Body Tour. Thirty-five bucks. Twenty crime-scene stops. No-host bar.” Her mouth turned up wryly. “They got their money’s worth tonight.”

  The bus hopped the curb across the street and people started to file out and spill into the street. Regular people, people who’d read The Last Victim and saw an article in Vanity Fair, and wanted a piece of the fun. They hollered and pumped their fists in the air.

  “Free Gretchen,” they yelled.

  Archie stepped back into the shadows.

  “Are you hungry?” Susan asked. “I have some potato chips in my car.”

  Archie suddenly couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten. He extended his arm and Susan took it.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

  A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

  Special thanks to Karissa Cain, for her invaluable assistance and for putting up with me. My editor, Kelley Ragland, is the super smartest. I am so lucky to be with St. Martin’s Press, and everyone there deserves fancy presents and excellent wine, especially Andrew Martin, George Witte, Sally Richardson, Matthew Shear, Hector DeJean, Tara Cibelli, Nancy Trypuc, Matthew Baldacci, and Matt Martz.

  Several friends have wasted time reading this book-in-progress. They include Lidia Yuknavitch, Andy Mingo, Chuck Palahniuk, Monica Drake, Mary Wysong, Diana Jordan, Erin Leonard, Jim Frost, Suzy Vitello, Cheryl Strayed, and my husband, Marc Mohan. They have each made this book better.

  I would not be anywhere without Joy Harris and Adam Reed at the Joy Harris Literary Agency. I also want to thank the Men and Women of the Multnomah Corrections Department because I told them I would and because those people don’t get thanked enough. Thanks to my book group—or rather Tracey Massey’s book group—for letting me come only when my own books are on

  the docket. Caroline Schiller and Claus-Martin Carlsberg, you two still have the very best story. I used many fun death facts that I found in Final Exits: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of How We Die by Michael Largo, and recommend it highly for the paranoid or merely curious.

  And last, I want to thank Nancy Eris Hebert, a reader and flight attendant who made sure my name reached the sky, and who died before I could thank her.