Susan felt her shoulders knot. She’d played a game once like this in college. A scavenger hunt, where every location yielded another clue. But the object back then had been to find hidden yard gnomes.
Archie dropped the envelope into his jacket pocket, closed his fist around the key, and knocked on the blue door. “It’s the police,” he called. “It’s Archie Sheridan. Anyone there?”
But no one answered the door.
Archie gave Susan a shrug and pushed the key into the lock. “Stay here,” he said.
It was dawning on Susan that Archie was a recently discharged psych patient and that they were about to open the door to who-knows-what and that they had no backup, no gun, and no one who even knew where they were. She was not used to being the voice of reason, but this was not a good idea.
“Don’t you need a warrant?” she asked.
“I’ve been invited,” Archie said, slipping his shoes off.
“What are you doing?”
Archie lined his shoes up, heel to heel, the way someone might leave his slippers at the end of his bed. “Trying not to contaminate a potential crime scene.”
Susan’s throat constricted. “I’m not sure this is such a good idea,” she said.
Archie stood there in his socks for a second, looking like he was deciding what to order off a menu, and then turned the doorknob and went inside, closing the door behind him. The prayer flags on the railing moved gently in the breeze. Susan didn’t know what to do. Wait there, like Archie had asked her? He was crazy. Like, literally. Go inside? That was crazy, too. She glanced down at Archie’s shoes, still laced, sitting side by side next to the terra-cotta pots that lined the stoop. The plants in the pots had hairy, clam-shaped leaves; their insides were an engorged waxy pink, like something fleshy and alive. She looked back up at the blue door, her mouth dry. “Archie?” she called hoarsely.
Every plant, in every terra-cotta pot, was a Venus flytrap.
C H A P T E R 30
Photographs of Gretchen papered the wall. They were cut out of magazines, newspapers, and books, and had been tacked to the white drywall with a colorful array of plastic thumbtacks. The pictures had been cropped carefully, surgically, nothing torn or hurried. It had been done with love. The collage was in the living room. Public space. You saw it the second you entered the apartment. Archie had once tacked up a photograph of Gretchen, but at least he’d had the sense to put it on the back wall of his bedroom closet.
He made himself secure the apartment before he returned to the collage. One bedroom. Futon used as a couch. Bed unmade. A bedside table with a glass half full of water on it. A white pressboard dresser. No one hiding in the closet.
The bathroom was tiny and free of frills. No one hiding in the shower. A medicine cabinet hung above the sink and Archie opened it. No Vicodin. It was worth a shot.
He returned to the living room.
And now, at least nominally sure that no one was going to jump out and shoot him, Archie looked for clues. White electrical heating units hugged the baseboards, shiny white venetian blinds hung over sliding vinyl windows. White walls. Gray carpet. It was the efforts at personalization that were interesting. A feather-trimmed dreamcatcher spun slowly on fishing line over the sink. Purple batik draped the couch.
The smell of peppermint filled the room. Archie could taste it in his fillings.
He stood in the center of the living room and turned around slowly. He spotted the anatomy book on the coffee table first, one of those big full-color hardbacks. Other medical books lined the bookshelves, next to self-help tomes by Deepak Chopra and Eckhart Tolle. On the mantel, side by side, sat a Buddha, a plaster Shiva, and one of those plastic anatomy models with removable organs. On the walls, on either side of the Gretchen collage, were laminated posters of anemic-looking angels.
The general effect was “New Age bookshop meets medical-student dorm room.”
It felt desperate.
It felt familiar.
He let his gaze return to the collage. Gretchen had used accomplices, men she’d seduced into killing for her. He had thought they were all dead.
Archie walked toward the pictures. There was no furniture in front of that wall. You could walk right up to the collage. The carpet was flattened there, as if someone had stood in the same spot for hours on end. Archie stood there, too, and lifted his hand up, almost touching Gretchen’s face, but keeping a millimeter between them, to preserve any fingerprints the collagist might have left.
He felt the calmness settle on him.
“Hello, sweetheart,” he said.
He smiled. He could look at her image now without feeling the burning in his stomach.
“You’re losing your touch,” he said.
The pictures were in black-and-white and in color, on newsprint and glossy magazine stock—Gretchen lovely in every one. Archie knew them all. Gretchen’s face through the back window of a squad car. Gretchen’s mug shot. Gretchen smiling at the crowd that had waited through the night to catch a glimpse as she was transferred to Salem. Part of Henry’s shoulder in one, as he moved her toward the idling prisoner van.
What did the collagist see when he looked at her?
Then Archie smiled. In every photograph, she was looking at the camera. She was looking at him.
The collagist liked that. A man. It had to be a man. Whoever had put up all those pictures wanted Gretchen in control. He felt weak. It was a weakness particular to a certain kind of male experience.
Archie shook his head. “You poor fuck,” he said.
From behind him, he heard Susan ask, “What are you doing?”
She’d let herself into the apartment. He’d been so absorbed he hadn’t heard her open the door. That sort of inattention got you killed in his line of work.
“I’m talking to a collage,” he said, “of a serial killer.”
Susan looked at him for a moment, and then let her eyes slide around the apartment. “Who lives here?”
Archie shrugged.
“I was calling you,” Susan said.
“I don’t have my phone,” Archie said. His hand went to his pocket, where the phone from Gretchen was, and then he realized that Susan had meant she’d been calling his name. His eyes went to the floor. “Close the door,” he said.
Susan pushed the door closed behind her with her elbow. “Those plants on the stoop?” Susan said. “They’re Venus flytraps. Venus was the Roman goddess of love. Known for her beauty.” She flailed an arm in the direction of the collage. “Make you think of anyone?”
“I’m drawing a blank,” Archie said.
“Are you crazy?” Susan asked. “Are you, like, actually crazy now?”
She started to take a step toward Archie.
“Don’t move,” he said. “Or touch anything.”
“Do you smell that?” Susan said, wrinkling her nose. She sniffed the air and grinned. “Dr. Bronner’s.”
“I smell peppermint,” Archie said.
Susan shook her head. “It’s Dr. Bronner’s peppermint all-in-one liquid soap,” she said. “We used it for everything when I was kid. Shampoo. Toilet cleaner . . . This guy was a clean freak.” She started walking toward the TV hutch.
“You’re moving,” Archie said. “I said no moving.”
She didn’t even slow down.
“Check it out,” she said. She reached the hutch and ran her finger along one of the wooden incense trays that lined the shelf above the television.
“That would be touching,” Archie said.
Susan lifted her finger and showed it to Archie. It was clean. “Who wipes down their incense trays?”
There was a photograph on the shelf, too. Archie couldn’t make out the image from where he was standing, just the bamboo frame. But when Susan saw it she inhaled sharply.
Archie was at her side in four steps.
“It’s him,” Susan said, indicating the picture. “That’s the guy I found in the house.” She ran her hands over the goose bumps that ha
d appeared on her arms. “He did live here.”
The photograph showed three young men, outdoors in the woods, squinting into the sun. They were teenagers, seventeen, eighteen, their bodies not quite formed, T-shirts and cargo shorts exposing skinny legs and soft, sunburned arms. They had posed for the shot, but they weren’t smiling. The middle kid’s T-shirt had an Outward Bound logo on it. The kid on the left wore the bill of his red baseball cap low enough that Archie couldn’t make out his face. But the kid on the right, shaggy-haired and slight with tattoos decorating one arm, Archie recognized. He looked over at Susan to see if she’d seen the flicker of surprise on his face. She hadn’t. Her attention was still fixed on the photo.
“Which one?” Archie said.
“The one in the middle,” Susan said.
“Good,” Archie said.
“Good?” Susan said.
“It’s good that we’ve identified him.”
She turned to look at him. “No ‘Are you sure it’s him?’ ” she asked.
Archie humored her. “Are you sure it’s him?” he said.
“He was older,” Susan said. “Early twenties, maybe. But it’s the same face.” She narrowed her eyes. “You don’t seem that surprised.”
“It makes sense,” Archie said. “We were supposed to find out who he was. That was the idea.”
“Why not just leave a wallet in his pocket?” Susan muttered.
“There’s a story,” Archie said. He looked around the apartment again. The smell of peppermint was strong and recent.
That kind of cleaning took effort. It was obsessive. But he didn’t find time to make his bed? So why go to all the trouble in here? The blinds had even been dusted. The electric heaters gleamed. No coffee-cup rings on the kitchen counters; no crumbs on the coffee table. The TV screen, on the other hand, looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in years.
Archie stepped to the side so he could get the right angle and then he saw it—letters where a finger had drawn in the dust. PLAY.
“People need to tell stories,” he said. He peered behind the TV and saw the tiny DV camera tucked in the corner of the hutch, a black cord snaking up to the TV’s video input. “It makes their lives seem important.”
The DV remote was on the coffee table, next to the TV remote. Archie took the pen out of his pocket and used it to turn the remote to on and then depress the play button on the DV remote.
A cockeyed image of the room they were in appeared on the TV. A chair had been dragged in front of the collage wall. Suddenly a young man appeared on camera. He was older, his brown hair longer, his body filled out a bit, but Susan was right, he was the middle kid from the photograph.
The man fiddled with the camera for a minute, until it was level and then backed up and sat down in the chair. Gray T-shirt. Jeans. Barefoot. Beads around his neck.
“Jesus Christ,” Susan said. She dug her notebook out of her purse, opened it, sat down on the couch, and stared at the screen. Archie thought about telling her to get up, lecturing her about all the trace evidence she was getting on her pants, but he didn’t really have the energy.
The dead man looked at someone off camera. “Is it recording?” he asked. The person must have nodded, because the dead man smiled shyly at the camera. “Okay,” he said. He crossed his legs at the knees, gripped the top knee with threaded fingers, and leaned forward. “If you’re seeing this, well, things went wrong.” He took a breath, ballooned out his cheeks, and then exhaled with a sigh. “So, I guess I should explain,” he said. “When I was eight my brother got mono. He was twelve at the time. We didn’t know he had mono. He’d been complaining about a sore throat for a month, but my parents thought he had a cold. The thing about mono is that it can cause your spleen to enlarge. This is why they tell you not to engage in strenuous activities for six weeks. My brother was in a PE class when some kid ran into him. It was one of those freak things.”
Archie sat down on the couch next to Susan.
“You can live without your spleen,” the dead man said.
“That’s what they do when your spleen ruptures. They just take it out. A splenectomy.
“He was in the hospital for a week. Everyone in his class made him a card.
“That’s when I started thinking about it.”
One corner of the dead man’s mouth lifted. “God, that sounds crazy, doesn’t it?”
“Can you pause it?” Susan asked, scrawling notes.
“No,” Archie said.
“I used to play hospital. Pretend I’d had a splenectomy, too. I wore a bandage and everything.
“Eventually, it stopped being a game. I wanted it out of me. It felt dirty. Like this foreign thing that was stuck inside of me, like a tumor. I just got really sort of obsessed with it. Listen, I know how it sounds. I’ve had all kinds of therapy.”
The dead man lowered a hand to his rib cage and held it over his spleen, and Archie realized that he was in the same pose, his own hand finding the scar Gretchen had left on him. Archie put his hand between his thighs and held it there.
“I found a doctor in Tijuana who said he’d do the operation,” continued the dead man. “And after he bailed at the last minute, I got really depressed. Then a friend hooked me up with this Web site, and they said they could help me. I’m sorry, Mom, Dad, everyone. I know I could die.” He licked his lips. “But if I can just get it out of me, I’ll feel better.”
The video ended and the screen went blue.
Susan was still scribbling. Archie could see the pulse throbbing rapidly in her throat.
“It wasn’t Gretchen,” Archie said. “She didn’t kill him.”
“They’re fans,” Susan said, not looking up. “Wannabes.” She stopped writing, set the pen on her notebook and turned to Archie. Her face was pale. “They’re auditioning.”
Archie shook his head. “And you think I’m crazy.”
C H A P T E R 31
The tendons in Henry’s neck bulged and his ears were pencil-eraser pink. Susan tried not to cringe as he towered over her and Archie, still sitting on the couch. “Have you two lost your minds?” Henry said. Behind him, the dead guy sat frozen on the TV screen. They’d watched the video twice more since Henry had shown up. It didn’t get any less weird.
Henry turned his square head toward Archie, and held his hands palms up. “Breaking and entering?”
“I had a key,” Archie reminded him.
Henry had arrived with Claire and four patrol cops who were now poking around the apartment like boys who’d broken into a girls’ dorm. They’d already found the dead guy’s passport in his dresser drawer. His name was Fintan English.
“Where’s your warrant?” Susan muttered.
Henry whipped his head around at her. “I’m investigating a B and E,” he said. “There’s been a string of them in the last two days.” He put his hands on his hips and settled his exasperated gaze on Archie. “How do I explain this in court?”
Archie shrugged. “There’s no crime here, Henry,” he said.
Susan pointed a finger at the TV. “Dead guy?” she said. If her name had been Fintan English, she’d probably have snapped, too.
“He was mentally ill,” Archie said. “He wanted his spleen out. He found some people on the Internet to do it. You can find people on the Internet to do just about anything.” He twisted his mouth. “Haul yard debris. Cut out organs. You should be happy. This is one murder Gretchen didn’t do. Maybe everyone will relax a little.”
Henry gave a heavy sigh and scratched his throat. “So he Googled ‘People Who Think Gretchen Lowell Is Awesome,’ and ended up on your Gretchen Lowell fan site.”
“It’s not my fan site,” Susan said flatly.
“Posted his sad-as-shit story,” continued Henry. “And found some assholes psycho enough to be up for the job. He didn’t want his spleen. They wanted to play serial killer. Match made in nutjob heaven. They used the abandoned house as their OR. But they didn’t have the practice Gretchen did. And the kid died.” br />
“Maybe that’s what the goat spleen in the Gorge was,” Archie said. “Practice.”
“And the head?” Henry said. “The two bodies up at the Garden? Courtenay Taggart? You’re saying this is all the work of some deranged fan club? That Gretchen is in a yurt somewhere catching up on her reading?”
Susan glanced up at the TV screen again. The pause had caught Fintan English with his eyes closed. She’d seen him dead yesterday morning, and now here he was, soon to be another morbid YouTube sensation.