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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Acknowledgments
Also by Chelsea Cain
About the Author
Copyright
CHAPTER
1
Archie Sheridan had a paper birthday hat on his head and six bullets in his front pocket. The bullets rattled when he moved, making a clinking sound that no one else seemed able to hear. The hat’s tight elastic band dug at his neck. He pulled at it, feeling the imprint of a ligature mark forming.
“How was the bridge traffic?” Doug asked. Archie guessed that Debbie had sent him over. Go make small talk with the awkward guest. That’s what he was now, a guest. It still took some getting used to.
“Fine,” Archie said. He rolled the bullets between his fingers. It was a lie; the bridge had been backed up for miles.
Archie saw Doug’s face light up and then turned to see Debbie coming toward them from the kitchen. She was wearing a white chef’s apron and licking frosting off her thumb. Her hair was dark and very short and her body was strong and lean, though Archie supposed he wasn’t supposed to notice that anymore. Doug reached to put his arm around her waist as she stepped next to them, but she gave him a quick look and he pretended to do something else with his arm. No public displays of affection in front of the guest. He might feel bad.
“Archie says the bridge was clear,” Doug said. He was tall and long-limbed, with light brown hair and a wispy beard that made him look like a graduate student. He looked ten years younger than Archie even though they were the same age.
Debbie gave Archie a knowing smile. “Really?” she said. “At this time of day? That would be a first.”
Archie shrugged. He’d grown a beard once, but it had just made him look like a rabbi.
He could hear the kids in the kitchen, but he couldn’t see them. They had stationed him in front of a window in the far corner of the living room, while they frosted the cake. The apartment still smelled like the lasagna Debbie had made for dinner. There were dirty dishes on the table.
The window looked south, over downtown Vancouver. Archie could see the red taillights of airplanes lining up to land at the Portland airport, a barge making its way east down the river, the lights of the new Vancouver library, Fort Vancouver, a movie theater, a digital bank tower clock. Oregon was just on the other side of the Columbia River, a distant, indistinct horizon. Archie lived in Portland. He knew its topography, its skyline, its bridges and landmarks. But the view from Debbie’s window was an unfamiliar landscape.
“It’s not as far as people think,” Debbie said. “If you can avoid rush hour.”
“I know,” Archie said. But the truth was, he wondered sometimes if she had moved far enough. He missed his family, but he knew that the farther away from him they were, the safer he could keep them.
Debbie’s condo was on the tenth floor of a secure building. The kids didn’t have a yard anymore, but no one got in or out of the building without being buzzed in. The elevators required a keycard to operate. Security cameras monitored the hallways. Two security guards were on duty in the building around the clock.
The kids could live without a yard.
“Sara wants to be Gretchen Lowell for Halloween,” Debbie said.
Archie inhaled quickly and coughed.
Debbie patted him on the back. “I already said no,” she said with a glance toward Doug, who was staring at his shoes. “I just wanted to give you a heads-up. In case she brings it up.”
Archie’s fingers tightened around the slick brass cartridges in his pocket. “She’s seven years old,” he said.
“She wants to be something scary,” Debbie said. “It has nothing to do with you. Most of her friends don’t even know.”
It had been over a year since Archie and Debbie had split for good and she had enrolled the kids in school in Washington under her last name. It made sense for security reasons. It also required fewer explanations. Archie had been a public figure during the years he ran the Beauty Killer Task Force, but after Gretchen Lowell had kidnapped him and tortured him for ten days, he had reached a new infamy. Since her escape ten weeks before, the media had been revisiting every horrific detail.
Doug’s eyes darted around for something to say. “I hear you got a dog.”
“Sort of,” Archie said, not wanting to explain.
“The kids are excited,” Doug said.
Archie didn’t need Doug to tell him anything about his kids, but he decided that now maybe wasn’t the time to broach that particular topic.
“We’re ready,” Ben hollered from the kitchen.
Debbie pressed some matches into Doug’s hand. “Can you help the kids with the candles?” she asked him.
He smiled, happy to have been given something to do, and pattered off to the kitchen.
“He’s nice,” Archie said. He was making an effort to be pleasant, but he also meant it. Doug was dependable, good with the kids, kind to Debbie. Doug engineered wind turbines, a profession with limited exposure to serial killers. Archie liked him. When he could force himself to forget that Doug was having sex with his ex-wife and spending quality time with his children.
“Are you seeing anybody?” Debbie asked gently.
Archie’s fingers tightened around the bullets, and for a moment he thought that Henry might have told her about Rachel. But when he looked at Debbie’s face, he saw only tentative concern. The question wasn’t loaded.
“Not really,” Archie said.
She frowned skeptically. “What does that mean?” she asked.
Archie opened his hand and let the bullets drop back to the deep corner of his pocket. “It means I’m seeing someone,” he said. “But I don’t want to talk about it yet.”
Debbie’s face brightened with pleasure. “Is it Susan?” she asked.
“No,” Archie said. “Seriously?”
Debbie narrowed her eyes. “Does Henry like her?”
Archie hesitated.
“Tell me she’s not blond,” Debbie said.
Before Archie could come up with an answer, singing filled the li
ving room and Archie’s children appeared, faces bathed in the glow of lit birthday candles. Doug stood behind them, guiding them forward, protective hands on their shoulders. Sara held one side of the cake plate and Ben had the other. They were dark-haired and freckled, baby teeth giving way to changed smiles. Every time Archie saw them, they looked more like their mother.
They finished singing, and Archie blew out the candles.
As he stepped back from the cake, he felt his phone vibrate.
“Make a wish, Daddy,” Sara said.
He didn’t make wishes anymore. But he pretended. He closed his eyes. When he opened them, Sara was beaming at him. “What did you wish for?” she asked.
“I can’t tell you,” Archie said. He pulled a candle from the cake, and handed it to her to lick the frosting off.
The phone was still vibrating in his pocket.
Archie glanced at the caller ID. It was Henry.
He turned away from the cake, and answered the phone. “Yeah,” he said.
“I’m at the Gold Dust Meridian,” Henry said. “Homicide. You’ll want to see this.”
Archie turned back toward the cake. Sara and Ben were plucking candles off and sucking them clean. Debbie had threaded her hand into Doug’s.
Forty-two candles. Six bullets. Two kids, every other weekend.
“Okay,” Archie said.
He slid the phone back in his pocket and looked over at Debbie. He didn’t have to explain. She knew the drill.
“Do you have to leave?” she asked.
Archie nodded.
“One slice of birthday cake to go,” Debbie said. “Coming up.”
CHAPTER
2
The man lying on the bathroom floor of the Gold Dust Meridian looked to be in his mid-fifties, but it was hard to tell because part of his head had been blown off and was dripping down the wall over the toilet. The killer had used a high-caliber weapon at close range. The wall was spattered with a stew of flesh, hair, and bone. The toilet seat was down, stained with a fine mist of sticky red. The bathroom was small. No window. One toilet and a sink. The body took up three-quarters of the floor space. The crime scene techs had a long night ahead of them.
Archie and Henry stood in the hall, studying the scene over the crime tape across the open door, their gold shields clipped visibly to their belts. The bar was closed. The patrons had been assembled in the seating area, and were waiting to be interviewed. The lights had been turned up and the music turned off, and the place was uncomfortably bright and quiet.
“You know you have a birthday hat on, right?” Henry said. He had a day’s growth of salt-and-pepper stubble on his shaved head, and with his hulking physique he looked more like the bar’s bouncer than a homicide detective.
Archie reached up and touched the conical paper hat on his head, then pulled the hat off and pushed it in the pocket of his blazer. He could hear the toilet in the bathroom running, the hollow sound of water moving through pipes. The blood on the floor gleamed in the fluorescent light.
“Why am I here?” Archie asked Henry. It was an ugly crime scene, but didn’t look like something for the Major Case Task Force.
Henry glanced back down the hall where two uniformed officers stood talking. “You knew him,” he said quietly.
Archie didn’t let himself react. Not emotionally. But he consciously waited a beat before he let his eyes move back to the corpse on the floor. He could make out the man’s jaw and neck, half of an ear, but the face was too damaged. He didn’t recognize him.
Henry pulled an evidence bag with a Visa card in it out of his pocket. “He had a tab open at the bar,” Henry said.
Archie took the bag and examined the name on the card. This time his spine stiffened despite himself. He looked back at the body. Then back at the card. “Shit,” he said.
“What do we do?” Henry asked.
Archie rubbed the back of his neck and tried to think. The cops in the hallway were still talking. Someone from the ME’s office would be here any minute.
“Let’s go for a walk,” Archie said.
Over the years, Archie had gotten good at projecting calm. He’d developed that skill first as head of the Beauty Killer Task Force, dealing with relatives of victims, his bosses, other cops. Then, after he finally went home from the hospital, after Gretchen Lowell had held him captive for ten days while she tortured him, he had again come to rely on that particular expertise, so he could pretend to be normal for his family. Two years later, when he’d come back to work after medical leave, addicted to pain pills, he pretended every day. He could look anyone in the eye and assure that person, with absolute confidence, that he was fine. He had learned to lie.
That skill had come in handy. He had Gretchen to thank for that.
Now Archie forced himself not to hurry. He relaxed his limbs. Henry transferred the evidence bag to one of the patrol cops and Archie and Henry exited through the side door. Archie searched for anyone watching, anyone out of place. It was almost eight P.M. on Friday night. Four patrol cars were parked in front of the Meridian on Hawthorne Boulevard. If Portland was hipster central, then the Meridian was Portland condensed down to its hipster nucleus. The vibe was midcentury, but the zeitgeist was 1970s cocktail lounge. An oil portrait of a topless pinup girl hung just inside the door. There was a crowd out on the sidewalk most nights. But tonight’s crowd was different. The patrons who’d been interviewed and released were now milling around out front. Many were in costume. A man dressed like Jesus Christ was hitting on a young woman in braids and a brass breastplate. Thor was arguing with a woman whose costume of strategically placed green fabric led Archie to presume that she was either a superhero or some kind of saucy leprechaun. Cleopatra was taking video with her cell phone. Three zombies stood chain-smoking on the sidewalk. The bar had clearly been hosting some sort of Halloween event. Then there were the array of pedestrians who’d stumbled upon the scene—people with take-out boxes, cyclists, dog-walkers, and diners from nearby restaurants who’d wandered out to rubberneck. Some of them had cell phones out and were taking pictures. Cars slowed as they passed.
Archie and Henry walked around the corner past a Lebanese restaurant housed in a restored Queen Anne Victorian. In the restaurant’s yard, stainless steel patio heaters glowed dark orange over the outside dining area.
As they rounded the corner, the street turned residential. There were fewer people around. Maybe someone was watching; maybe someone wasn’t. But Archie didn’t want to take chances. He unlocked his car, and they got in. He didn’t turn on the car. He didn’t want the dash lights to illuminate their faces.
The dead man in the bathroom was Carl Richmond. He was a DEA agent.
“We can’t blow his cover,” Archie said.
“I’m guessing it was already blown,” Henry said.
Archie rubbed his face with his hands. “We don’t know that.”
“This was an assassination, Archie,” Henry said. “The bartender saw him. Says he was alone. He met someone in that bathroom. The toilet lid was down. He wasn’t in there pissing. He met someone, and that someone shot him in the head. No one heard anything, so I’m guessing our killer used a silencer. No one saw anything. Body was discovered by the next guy who went in there to expel some Miller Lite. This was planned. It was a hit.”
Henry was right. But it didn’t change anything. Richmond had been running a deep cover operation. Drugs. Dirty cops. It had been years in the making. Henry didn’t know the half of it. “We don’t do anything,” Archie said. “We follow DEA’s lead on this.” If they didn’t know Richmond was dead, they’d know soon enough. “We let this play out,” Archie said. He peered out the car window. An upstairs light was on in the house across the street.
“You think they’re watching?” Henry asked. He wasn’t talking about the DEA.
“If I imported massive amounts of heroin,” Archie said, “and I suspected someone was a cop, and I had him killed, that’s what I’d do.” A woman walked by t
he car with a black Lab. “I’d wait for twenty guys in DEA jackets to show up. Because if they do, I know for sure that I was right.”
“Either way, everyone your buddy worked with is in danger.”
“He wasn’t my buddy,” Archie said. He’d known Carl for fifteen years. But he had never liked him. Carl put his investigations ahead of everything, and he was willing to sacrifice anyone to make the case. A decade before, Archie had delivered Carl an intelligence jackpot—Leo Reynolds, the twenty-one-year-old heir apparent of the family that had controlled the drug business in the Pacific Northwest for the last quarter century. Leo had come to Archie for help getting away from his father; instead Archie and Carl had sent Leo back to operate under deep cover for the DEA. Ten years later, Leo Reynolds was still living a lie. If Archie had it to do over, he would have told the twenty-one-year-old Leo Reynolds to change his name and walk away.
Leo.
“Carl was Leo’s only contact,” Archie said, feeling his stomach tighten. If they had gone after Carl, Leo might be next. Archie fished his phone out of his jacket pocket and started to punch in Leo’s number. But halfway through pressing the digits, Archie stopped, his fingers hovering uncertainly over the phone’s keypad.
A couple walked past the car, holding hands. She was already a little tipsy, and stumbled and then laughed.
It gave Archie an idea. He deleted the partial number he’d entered, and called a different telephone number instead.
Susan Ward picked up right away.
“Hey,” she said. “You never call me. Have you noticed that? I am always calling you. But you never call me. Is that weird?”
“Is Leo with you?” Archie asked.
“Seriously?” Susan said. “You’re calling my phone and it’s not even to talk to me? Do you know how strange that is?”
“Is he with you?” Archie asked again. He glanced over at Henry, who was sitting in the passenger seat, watching him. It was chilly. The car was dark. The windows were fogging up.
“Yeah,” Susan said. “Why?”
Archie could hear her reporter’s instincts kicking in and knew he had to get off the phone before she got too interested. The last thing he wanted was Susan getting involved in this.