C H A P T E R 40
How long do we have?” Gretchen asks.
Archie takes his jacket off and lays it on the back of the chair. “An hour,” he says.
They are in her home office, where she sees patients. It is gray outside. The rain falls in steady cold sheets against the window behind Gretchen’s desk. Through the window Archie can see the plum trees in Gretchen’s backyard bend, their purple leaves trembling in the downpour.
Gretchen walks to the window and pulls the velvet curtains closed. “That long?” she says, walking back to him.
It is ten in the morning, and Archie has been up for six hours, most of it spent standing outside in the rain. He has left his muddy shoes inside the front door and is standing in his wet brown socks.
She stops a step in front of him and leans her head against his chest, like she’s listening for a heartbeat. The smell of her hair slows everything down. When he is with her he can almost forget the death that surrounds him. It’s one of the ways he justifies coming here. She keeps him sane. He can do his job better. Moral relativism.
Archie holds up the folder at his side. “I told Henry I was getting a consult,” he says. He tosses the folder on her desk.
She lifts her head and reaches up to touch his wet hair. “What happened to you?” she asks.
“I came from a crime scene,” he says. It was the third body in four weeks.
Her eyes soften and fill with tenderness. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I hate that you have to see that.” She kisses him on the cheek and then takes him by the hand and guides him to a chair. He sits down and Gretchen sinks to the floor in front of him. She takes one of his feet in her hands and peels off a wet sock.
She runs a finger down the top of his naked foot, to the tip of his toe. “You have beautiful feet,” she says.
He knows she’s lying—his feet are pale and calloused, with bunions the size of marbles.
“Anne thinks you’re right,” he says. “About the possibility of the killer being a woman.” Even at a time like this, his mind returns to work. “If it is a woman, Anne thinks she might have help. She says that dominant serial killers will sometimes take on partners with less powerful personalities.”
“Not partners,” Gretchen says, peeling off his other sock. “I’ve read the literature.” She drops the sock on the floor. “They’re more like apprentices.”
Archie shrugs. “Henry thinks it’s bullshit,” he says. “It challenges everything we know about serial killers. They’re supposed to be pudgy forty-year-old white guys with mother issues and panel vans.”
“Maybe they’re just the ones who get caught,” Gretchen says, climbing into Archie’s lap. She is settling in when she suddenly looks down and smiles. “You came ready to go,” she says, arching a teasing eyebrow.
“That’s my gun,” Archie says.
“Your gun,” Gretchen says, reaching to his right side and patting the leather gun holster on his belt. “Is over here.”
She unclips the holster, lifts it off his pants, and sets it on the end table next to the chair.
Then she reaches into his pants pocket and pulls out his cell phone, his keys, and his small field notebook, setting them all next to the gun.
After sliding her hand in the other pocket, she comes out with a pair of latex gloves.
“They’re for handling evidence,” Archie explains.
“Uh-huh,” she says. She tosses the gloves on the table with the rest, then unbuckles his belt, slides it out of the loops, holds it off to the side, and drops it on the floor.
The belt had been a gift from Debbie.
What was he doing here?
Archie takes Gretchen’s face lightly in his hands. His voice cracks with despair. “We need to talk,” he says. “I can’t keep doing this.”
She moves his knees apart and eases down between them, back onto the floor in front of him. He doesn’t stop her. They have done this before. But it still mesmerizes him. He can’t believe his luck, to be wanted by a woman like her.
She unbuttons and unzips his pants and her face disappears in a tangle of blond hair as she lowers her head to his lap.
The rain stops. Archie leans his head back and closes his eyes.
C H A P T E R 41
Someone had turned the lights out. When she’d fled into the hallway she had been met with a wall of inky black. Susan had never experienced darkness like that. She froze for a second, unsure of what to do. Then she ran to her left, tracing her hand along the concrete wall. It was cool to the touch and pitted where pieces of concrete had crumbled off over the years. She concentrated on that. It kept her from being enveloped by the darkness.
In all that black, noise overwhelmed her. Pipes knocking. Water gurgling. The slap of her boots on the concrete. She could hear her heart beat and her face throb. She had never breathed so loud in her entire life. Every sound was someone coming up behind her, someone ready to lay a hand on her shoulder, drive her head back, and slice open her throat.
She heard her little voice in her head. The voice sounded a lot like Archie’s.
Just keep moving.
Don’t panic.
Get out. Call for help.
Her phone was in her purse back in the boiler room, along with her mace. But Archie had put his phone in her glove box.
Susan closed her eyes and concentrated on her hand moving along the wall. There was a comfort to the dark canvas of her eyelids. Her darkness. Her control. She forced herself to clear her senses, to ignore the building’s noises and the beating of her heart, and to remember only the route they’d taken to get there—the route that, if reversed, would get her out.
She felt some pipes she remembered passing. She was close. Then her hand brushed against something. She stopped and ran both hands along the wall. Then she found it—a lever-style doorknob. The stairwell. She turned the knob, pushed the door in with her shoulder, slipped through, and pulled it closed behind her.
The quality of the dark was different. Susan could make out the shape of her body, the angle of the stairs, and at the top of the stairs, another door. This door was not entirely airtight, and through the broken seals of its perimeter shone ribbons of bright, milky, marvelous light. There were lights on. There were lights on in the hall upstairs.
She ran up the stairs, into the fluorescent-lit expanse of lacquered coffee tables, cabinets, and geisha screens. She didn’t stop. She kept running. Out the door, and into the night and down the dead-quiet middle of the street, and all the way to the car.
It was only then that she realized she didn’t have her keys.
She was locked out. And she couldn’t help but think that fate was punishing her for buying that fucking Beauty Killer key chain.
She rested her head against the top of the Saab, and fought back tears.
He’s counting on you.
She did a story on a car thief once. He’d stolen two hundred cars by the time he was sixteen. She stood up and started walking
around the car, searching for something that would help her get inside.
To break into a car you need a rubber doorstop, a wire hanger, and a rubber band. You straighten the hanger, and bend a ninety-degree angle about a half-inch from one end. Wrap the rubber band around the tip. Jam the doorstop into the gap where the car door meets the body, so you have room to slide the wire in. If the doorstop doesn’t seem to work—jam a smaller plastic wedge in first, and then the doorstop. Insert the wire and use the rubber tip to hit the unlock button inside the door.
You learned a lot writing features for a newspaper.
Most of it was useless.
Susan picked up a piece of an angle-parking curb that had broken off and hurled it through her car’s passenger-side window.
The window shattered, sending beads of auto glass all over the inside of the car. Susan reached in, unlocked the car, opened the glove box, and got out the phone that Jack Reynolds had given Archie.
She called 911.
&nb
sp; And she called Henry.
This time she didn’t call the paper.
C H A P T E R 42
Susan sank down low in the driver’s seat of her car, and waited, like Henry had told her to. She had cleared most of the glass off her seat, and shaken a few stray pieces off the front of her shirt. It was dark under the bridge. Susan wished she’d parked near a streetlight. The car shook as trucks passed overhead. She was almost grateful for the wailing of approaching sirens. It turns out that when you call 911 for help in the middle of the night they get anxious and go all Hill Street Blues.
Susan peeked her head up. Cops were descending on the warehouse like Black Friday shoppers at a Wal-Mart. They went in through every door.
She sank back down until her face was next to the gearshift. There was an old Burgerville napkin that had been on her car floor for two weeks and she grabbed it and held it to her cheek. It smelled like ketchup.
More sirens were arriving. Her rearview mirror reflected the red, white, and blue lights, filling the car with stutters of color.
“Go to your car and stay there until I get there,” Henry had said. “Promise me.”
Susan fiddled with the door handle.
But all those cops didn’t know where Archie was. She did.
So what? She just runs up and explains the whole thing? She tried to imagine the scenario. It ended with both her and Archie getting arrested for trespassing. What if Archie had ended up cutting the guy? How would they explain that?
Fuck.
She glanced down at the phone in her hands. She had called the cops from a phone that Archie had gotten from a drug dealer.
Maybe not the smartest move.
She reached back over to the glove box and dug out the other phone she’d seen Archie stow in there.
Its red message light was blinking. Why did Archie need two phones? Maybe it wasn’t Archie’s. Maybe he was holding it for someone. She was always accidentally stealing people’s phones. There were probably three or four phones floating around the backseat. There were probably old rotary phones in her backseat. It had been that long since she’d cleaned out her car.
She hit the phone’s answer button and a text message sprang up.
“
HOW ARE YOU FEELING, DARLING?”
Susan’s throat tightened.
She could barely steady her thumb enough to scroll down through the text history.
There were hundreds of texts. All from the same number. All the same message.
“
HOW ARE YOU FEELING, DARLING?”
“
HOW ARE YOU FEELING, DARLING?”
“
HOW ARE YOU FEELING, DARLING?”
Darling. That’s what Gretchen called Archie.
She was trying to contact him.
She looked at the call log. There was an outgoing call to the number that had sent the texts. He had called her.
There was a tap on the car window and Susan almost dropped the phone. She looked up to see Henry.
She slipped the phone into her pocket.
“I waited in the car,” Susan said.
“Show me where he is,” Henry said.
Susan got out of the car and slammed the door behind her. Henry was already five steps ahead of her and she had to catch up as they headed toward the warehouse. The streets in the Produce District were wide and scarred with old train tracks. Another patrol car zoomed up and skidded to a halt at an angle.
“When you call nine-one-one, they really send in the army,” Susan said.
“I called in backup,” Henry said. “Not to disillusion you, but the nine-one-one operator who took your call did not consider your report of a crazed masked piercer very reliable.”
It had been a poor choice of words. But she’d been panicked. “Oh.”
Claire came jogging up. “They’ve searched the basement,” she said. “Couldn’t find anyone. But they found this.” She held up an evidence bag with a gun in it. “And this.” She held up Susan’s red purse.
Susan took the purse.
Henry slid her a suspicious look. “You seen that gun before?” he asked.
It was the gun Archie had gotten from Jack Reynolds. Susan was certain of it. “I don’t know a lot about guns,” she said. She turned to Claire. “What do you mean they couldn’t find anyone?”
“They found the gun in the room you said to go to—the old boiler room,” Claire said. “But there’s no one in there. They’re continuing
to search the basement. Then we’ll take it floor by floor. We’ve sealed off the building so if anyone’s still in there, they’re not getting out.”
“You see anyone leave?” Henry asked Susan.
“I was hiding in my car,” she said. She was furious with herself. She should have kept an eye on the building. Henry had said to wait in her car—he didn’t say to cower in the car. Gretchen’s sicko fans knew she was going to go for help. Of course they ran.
“Susan,” Henry said. He took her by the shoulders. “This is important.” She could see him trying to formulate the right words. “Did he go off with them?” he said finally. “Or did they take him?”
It was a fair question. Archie had a history of going off with lunatics. But he’d gotten her out of there. He knew they were dangerous. “I don’t know,” Susan said. She didn’t know what Archie was capable of anymore.
“Either way,” Henry said, “I’m keeping Archie out of this for now.”
“He might have gone with them,” Susan said. “If they’d said they’d take him to Jeremy.”
“Jeremy?” Henry said.
“Jeremy Reynolds,” Susan said.
Henry took a deep breath and exchanged a look with Claire. “Jeremy Reynolds is involved in this?”
“Archie saw his picture at Fintan English’s apartment,” Susan said.
Henry was shaking his head. “He went to see Jack Reynolds,” he said.
Susan gave a noncommittal shrug.
“Are Archie’s prints going to be on that gun?” Henry asked.
Susan looked at her feet and nodded.
If Henry had been a cartoon character, steam would have come out his ears.
Claire lowered her voice. “Go to your happy place,” she said to Henry.
He put his hands on his hips and gazed up at the night sky.
Susan figured she might as well spill everything. “The cult people,” she said. “They said that Jeremy remembers what happened. You know, with Gretchen.”
Henry whipped his head toward her. “That’s bullshit.”
“Archie didn’t think so,” Susan said. “One of the guys had these scars on his chest. Cut marks. A heart. And this weird triangle pattern. He said that Jeremy had carved them.”
“How would he know about the triangles?” Henry said to no one in particular.
A red-haired patrol cop with a badge that read
WHATLEY appeared at Henry’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Detective,” he said. “What crime are we investigating here?”
Henry tilted his head toward Susan. “Assault,” he said.
Whatley gave Susan a slow look. She’d left the Burgerville napkin back in the car. She reached up and touched her cheek. It wasn’t even bleeding anymore. She felt bad. Like she was a disappointment.
“You must be a bigwig,” Whatley said, scratching his chin. “This is a lot to throw at an assault investigation.”
Susan shot him a sparkling smile. “It’s really comforting that our police force is so responsive,” she said.
“Get back to work, Officer,” Claire said.
“Okeydokey,” Whatley said, and he turned around and walked back inside the warehouse.
Henry leaned close to Susan. He hadn’t shaved and his head and chin had the same five o’clock shadow. “Everywhere I’ve gone today,” he said, “I have found you, up to your purple hair, in peril.”
“They wanted Archie and me involved,” Susan said. “They orchestrated this.”
&nb
sp; Henry lifted his hands in frustration. “Gretchen is out there, murdering people. Right now I don’t give a fuck about Fintan English or Jeremy Reynolds. And neither should you.”
“What if it’s connected?” Susan said.
“You’ve got blood on your chin,” he said.
Susan wiped the spot with her finger, looked at it, and put her finger in her mouth. It was tart and sweet. “Ketchup,” she said.