Evil at Heart Read online

  “Let me guess,” Henry said. “Give him a badge.”

  Susan dropped her hands back in her lap. “You’ve heard it,” she said.

  Henry pressed the buzzer. “Mine was better,” he said.

  “I can write a good book about this case,” Susan said. “Something important even, maybe.” They both knew what that meant. Not like The Last Victim. “Gretchen is a celebrity to some people. I want to explore that. I want to understand the cultural fascination with violence.”

  “Come on, Susan,” Henry said, lifting his hand to the back of his neck. “Let him move on.”

  “You know what I’m working on now?” Susan said. “It’s a bathroom book. A thousand weird ways people die. Like how many people a year are killed by falling coconuts.”

  “How many?” Henry asked.

  “About a hundred and fifty,” Susan said. “They’re really dangerous.” She raised her finger again. “The point is I can’t do this Gretchen book without him.” She gave Henry a pleading look.

  A female voice cracked over the intercom. “Can I help you?” the voice said.

  “Finally,” Henry muttered. “It’s Henry Sobol to see Archie Sheridan,” he said.

  “I’ll be right there,” the voice said brightly.

  Susan wasn’t ready to give up. “I watched her cut his throat,” she said. She and Henry had both been there. Susan had held a dish towel on Archie’s neck, felt his warm blood soak the cloth. She blamed herself for Gretchen’s escape. She wondered if Henry blamed her, too. Susan had, after all, in a blaze of panic, provided Gretchen with access to a gun.

  Henry looked her up and down and then frowned. Susan thought he was going to say something snarky about her hair. But instead he squinted at her and said, “You take care of yourself, right?”

  “I take vitamins,” Susan said.

  Henry sighed. “I’m talking about varying your route to work,” he said. “Locking your door at night. That sort of thing.”

  The hair on Susan’s arms stood up. Henry would only ask her that if he thought there was a chance she might be in danger. “Oh, God,” she said. “You think it might actually be her.”

  “Just take precautions,” Henry said. “Can you do that?”

  A knot of anxiety tightened around Susan’s throat. Take precautions? She’d moved back in with her mother. They hadn’t locked the front door of their house for as long as Susan could remember, until two months ago. Since then, Susan’s mother, Bliss, had lost eight keys. “What happened out there?” Susan asked. “Is there something you guys aren’t releasing?”

  The door opened and a nurse appeared.

  “I shouldn’t have said anything,” Henry said to Susan.

  “You think I don’t think about her all the time?” Susan said. “I see her face everywhere I go. It’s on every channel. I saw a kid downtown yesterday selling RUN, GRETCHEN T-shirts. They sell these heart-shaped digital key chains that count the days since she’s escaped. In L.A., you can get a Gretchen Lowell manicure. French pink with bloodred tips.”

  The nurse stared at Susan. Susan didn’t care.

  “If she’s back in the area,” Susan said, “the people have a right to know. You have to go public.”

  Henry walked through the door.

  “I’ll wait here,” Susan said. The door closed. Susan sank back in her chair. If Gretchen was back, she’d pick them all off one by one, just for fun.

  She called Derek again.

  He didn’t pick up.

  Susan dug into her purse, pulled out her car keys, and checked the digital readout on the key chain. Gretchen had been at large for seventy-six days and counting.

  If she made it a hundred, a bar downtown had promised to serve free Bloody Marys to the first one hundred blondes who walked through the door.

  If you were going to be murdered, you might as well be drunk.

  C H A P T E R 7

  The clay was the last thing on Archie’s mind, but he rolled it under his hand anyway, until it was a smooth ball. They were ten minutes into morning craft period. Archie was sitting across the table from his roommate, Frank. Craft period. Gretchen was out there somewhere killing again, but safe inside the funny farm, he was playing with clay.

  Archie didn’t mind the craft projects. He didn’t mind Frank’s snoring, or the group therapy sessions, or the slippers. He had come to like being told when to eat and when to sleep. The fewer responsibilities he had, the less chance there was he’d fuck them up.

  He was locked up. And he was free. His team, the task force he’d led for the better part of his career, was out there looking for Gretchen Lowell without him. And for the first time in forever he didn’t care. If Gretchen wanted him dead, she’d kill him. It didn’t matter where he was. They wouldn’t catch her. Not unless she wanted to be caught.

  Then Henry walked in. And Archie felt, despite himself, a stirring of his old obsession.

  Henry dragged a seat over from another table and sat down with Archie and Frank.

  “Goat spleen,” Henry said. “Human eyes.”

  Most of the other patients were outside on the caged balcony smoking, and, except for the TV blasting Animal Planet, the common room was quiet. Archie looked across the table at Frank. He was concentrating on his clay and didn’t look up.

  Henry leaned forward and tilted his head toward Frank. “Can I talk in front of him?” he asked.

  “Frank and I don’t have secrets,” Archie said. “Do we, Frank?”

  “Clay feels like babies,” Frank said.

  Henry cleared his throat. “Okay, then,” he said. He scratched his ear and looked at Archie. “The ME says we’ve got three pairs of eyes.”

  “Pairs,” Archie said. “That’s good.” He smiled at Henry. “Otherwise we’d be looking for pirates.”

  Henry continued. “The ME thinks they were preserved in formaldehyde before they were dumped in the tank.”

  Archie continued to rotate his palm over the orb of clay on the table. “Match anything?” he asked. He kept his face neutral and his eyes on his hand, trying to focus on the clay.

  “Nothing in the regional database. We’re looking wider. You thinking we’ll turn up some corpses to match?”

  “Gretchen never took out anyone’s eyes.”

  “Gretchen never did anything,” Henry said, “until she did.”

  Archie rubbed his eyes with his hand. They’d given him a sedative when he’d gotten back the night before, and he still felt groggy from it. “Beef up Debbie’s protection detail,” he said with a sigh. He didn’t think Gretchen would go after Debbie and the kids again. She had already terrorized him once with that trick, and she didn’t like to repeat herself. But the protection might buy his family some peace of mind.

  “Already done,” Henry said. “Vancouver PD’s got a car outside her house. The kids get escorts to school. Everything we talked about.” Henry spread his mustache with a thumb and forefinger. “I want you to consider leaving town.”

  “Boca Raton’s nice,” Frank said.

  “Gretchen will find me anywhere I go,” Archie said. There was no emotion to it. It was merely a fact.

  Henry folded his big arms on the table and leaned forward. “But the press might not,” he said. “You don’t know what it’s like out there. The city council is considering a curfew. There’s a company that gives goddamn Gretchen Lowell tours.” His neck reddened as he talked. “They’ve got these buses with her face painted on the side. Why do you think Debbie moved to Vancouver? Property taxes?”

  On Animal Planet, a vet was trying to save a cat who’d been hit by a car. Archie had seen the episode eight times before. The cat ended up dying.

  The killing wasn’t going to stop until Gretchen wanted it to.

  “I want to help,” Archie said. “I’ll consult from here.”

  Frank hunched over the table across from Archie, working his clay into a two-foot-long roll the width of a thumb.

  “Leave town. I’ll find another bug
house for you, if you want. In New Hampshire. Somewhere far away.”

  The truth was, New Hampshire sounded nice. Far away sounded nice. But no one knew the Beauty Killer case files like Archie did. Henry needed Archie. And Archie knew it. “Call me if anything develops,” Archie said. “I’m around.”

  “The last time I called,” Henry said, “some woman told me she was going to get you and then wandered away and never came back.”

  There was only one phone patients were allowed to use. Incoming calls only. When it rang, everybody lunged for it.

  “They shouldn’t let crazy people answer the phone,” Henry said.

  Frank looked up from his clay roll and smiled.

  “Crazy people are the only people here,” said Archie.

  Henry leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms, and rested his chin on his chest. “So are you just going to hide out here the rest of your life?” he asked.

  Archie didn’t have an answer.

  Henry watched him, jaw working, the muscle popping under the skin. Archie could almost see him trying out different arguments. “No one knows,” Henry said finally. “You clear a psych exam you can come back to work. You’re still a fucking hero out there. Fucking Philip Marlowe.”

  Frank’s eyes shot up, alarmed, from behind his glasses. “No bad language here.”

  “Sorry, Frank,” Henry said. He leaned forward and worked his jaw some more before continuing. “Don’t leave the ward,” Henry said to Archie. “I need to know that you’re safe.”

  Archie had hospital privileges. He could roam anywhere he wanted, as long as he was back for evening meds. They called it Level Four. Archie had been a Level One when he’d checked himself in. He’d clawed his way up from high risk to mildly disturbed.

  “Never,” Archie said. “Who’d hang out with Frank?”

  Frank had started folding the clay snake he’d made back on itself, back and forth, again and again.

  Henry raised an eyebrow and looked over at Frank. “What are you working on there, buddy?” Henry asked him.

  Frank’s eyes flicked up to the TV, and then he smiled down at his clay. “Cat intestines,” he said.

  Henry threw a glance at Archie. “Nice,” he said.

  The door to the balcony opened and people started coming back in, their blank stares momentarily enlivened by nicotine. There was a group therapy session starting in a few minutes. “You need to go,” Archie said to Henry.

  Henry stood up. He hesitated. “Susan Ward’s out there,” he said.

  “I know,” Archie said. “She likes to steal the Wi-Fi.”

  “You don’t want to see her?” Henry said.

  The truth was that Archie had come close to letting her in a few times. But he’d always caught himself. Entangling Susan in his life was the last thing she needed. “I want to finish my craft project,” Archie said.

  Henry planted his hands in his pockets and turned to leave. “Think about what I said,” he said to Archie, starting for the door. “I hear fall’s nice in New England.”

  “Henry,” Archie said, stopping him. His voice was steel, the clay strangled in his hand. “You need to issue a shoot-to-kill order. We can’t let her get away again.”

  “That’s the sanest thing you’ve said in months, my friend,” Henry said.

  Frank chuckled. It was the first time Archie had ever heard him laugh. It was an unsettling sound, like a child crying.

  C H A P T E R 8

  The Beauty Killer Body Tour stopped four times a day at Pittock Mansion. Randy pulled the bus over, and all the tourists would file out with the guide, pay their admission to the mansion, and then be led through the house to the spot on the grounds where Gretchen Lowell had dumped the body of a disemboweled oral surgeon named Matthew Fowler. The guide would point to the spot in the grass where they’d found him, and the fuckers would take pictures of it.

  Randy waited in the bus.

  Portlanders had been getting their wedding pictures taken at the 1914 stone palace since one of the Pittock grandsons had sold the house to the city in the sixties.

  He wondered how many wedding photos now had assholes in RUN, GRETCHEN T-shirts wandering around in the background.

  It was ten o’clock. The next stop was a motel in North Portland where Gretchen had jammed some poor schmuck’s dismembered penis in an ice machine. Randy liked that one. He liked to see the faces on the tourists when the guide flipped open the lid on the ice machine and they saw the rubber dildo the motel owner kept in there for laughs.

  Laughs.

  He needed another job.

  He pulled off his BEAUTY KILLER BODY TOURS T-shirt, turned it inside out, put it back on, and got out of the bus for a cigarette. He wasn’t supposed to leave the bus unattended, but fuck it. What were they going to do? Dismember his penis?

  The tourists were inside, no doubt admiring the curved marble staircase at seven bucks a pop, so Randy lit up and walked around to the front of the house. They didn’t charge admission into the yard. The Beauty Killer Tour could have taken tourists right to the spot where Fowler had died, but instead they made the tourists pay to go inside the mansion first. It kept the Pittock people happy, and everyone got a little bit richer thanks to Portland’s favorite serial killer.

  The mansion was a thousand feet above Portland, and on a clear day the view was something spectacular. Today you couldn’t see shit. Not Mount Hood. Not Mount Saint Helens. Definitely not Adams. Just gray clouds that looked to be about a mile thick. It was for the best. They needed the rain. The whole city had shriveled up over the last few months.

  Randy walked to the edge, overlooking the foliage-thick cliff-side that led down to the city, and tossed his cigarette over the black chain-link fence.

  He immediately realized what he’d done. The brush on the hillside was like kindling. An arson rap was the last thing he needed. He stood at the fence and scanned the hillside to make sure the cherry tip had extinguished—and that’s when he saw it. At first he thought it was an old, deflated basketball. It was nestled in the brush, like someone had tossed it from exactly where Randy was standing. But as he leaned over to get a better look, he realized, with unusually sudden clarity, that it was a head.

  He lost his footing, and had to scramble, flapping his arms, to keep from falling. When he was upright, he started running, as fast as he could, for the mansion.

  He was only vaguely aware of the smoke snaking up the hillside behind him.

  C H A P T E R 9

  Susan glanced down at the array of self-defense sprays laid out on the passenger seat of her car. Pepper spray. Mace. Some toxic herbal spray her mom had made her out of nutmeg. She swept them into her open purse, started the car, and headed out of the hospital parking garage.

  Body parts.

  She looked up at the sky. It hadn’t rained since early July, but today there was no blue sky in sight. The Gorge rest stop was forty-five minutes away. She could make it in thirty—unless it started raining.

  She fed a Jimi Hendrix CD into her car stereo, and was turning out of the medical campus, when her phone vibrated in her lap and nearly caused her to steer into a Ford Explorer. Susan slammed on her brakes, causing her purse to spew most of its contents onto the floor. The woman behind the wheel of the Explorer had blond hair. Her head was turned, and Susan couldn’t see her face. But there was something about the hair.

  Susan’s body went cold.

  Gretchen.

  Susan couldn’t move for a moment. Her car stalled, and she snapped to and laid on her horn, hoping to get the woman to look up, but the woman kept going.

  Susan glanced across the street where a billboard with Gretchen’s face on it advertised a special edition of America’s Sexiest Serial Killers. Another blonde drove by.

  Susan shook her head, restarted the Saab’s engine, and pulled onto Glisan Street.