Authors: Chelsea Cain
It was a sergeant from the North Portland precinct. “We have something your task force might be interested in,” the sergeant said. “A Herald reporter found a body that looks like it might be Beauty Killer–related.”
A Herald reporter. Take precautions, he’d told her. Be safe. Don’t do anything stupid. “Let me guess,” Henry said. “Susan Ward.”
C H A P T E R 13
Archie sat on the floor, leaning up against the mauve wall in a bathroom on the first floor of the hospital.
He held the phone in his lap, rereading the text. “DARLING, FEEL BETTER?”
Archie put his head in his hands. Two years had passed and his ribs still ached from where she’d broken them. They probably always would. He moved his hands to his neck, and felt the length of the scar there, his freshest scar, two months old and still tender to the touch. Then he reached under the waist of his shirt and moved one of his hands over his older scars: the one that ran up his midsection, the smaller scars on his flank, and finally the heart-shaped reminder on his chest.
His mind turned to the butchery at the rest stop.
She would not stop killing.
Archie picked the phone up and pressed the top of it against his forehead, digging into the skin until his skull felt like it might split, and his head cleared. Fuck it.
He sat up and punched in a text. “Where are you?”
He hit send and waited.
The toilet was beige with a mismatched white seat. There was a handicap grab bar next to it, and a hook to hang a purse on, and a feminine-hygiene-product waste receptacle. Archie looked up at the ceiling. White corkboard panels. A smoke detector.A sprinkler valve. Two white air vents were layered with years’ worth of dust and grime. No one ever bothered to clean up there.
He glanced back at the phone. Nothing.
The rose-tile floor gleamed, even though the grout was brown. There was a round silver drain in the middle of the floor.
Someone rattled the handle of the bathroom door.
Archie looked up, startled. “Occupied,” he called.
The phone vibrated. He looked at the screen. “Do you miss me?”
Archie stared at the phone, calculating how to respond. A thousand options flew through his mind. He needed her to show herself. He needed her to think he was still in her thrall.
There was a knock on the door. “Just a second,” Archie said.
A small brown house spider crawled out of the drain on the floor and scurried over the tiles toward the sink.
Archie typed, “I WANT TO SEE YOU,” and hit send.
An hourglass rotated on the phone screen. Then popped out of view. Message sent.
He looked up at the door, stood, flushed the toilet, and then held his hands under the faucet sensor to turn on the water. The countertop was speckled peach and black Formica, the same color and pattern that Courtenay had dug into her neck. It had probably come off the same roll.
Archie checked the phone. The only thing on the screen was the time: 11:23, 11:24, 11:25. He dried his hands with a paper towel and threw it in the gray rectangular trash can. A caricature of a lady skunk stared down at Archie from the Aire-Master air freshener.
Someone tried the door again. “Just a second,” Archie called again, this time more loudly.
The door handle jiggled uselessly against the lock.
Archie ignored it this time. It was a hospital. There were dozens of public restrooms.
He set the phone on the speckled Formica and fixed his eyes on the screen, willing Gretchen to respond. “Come on,” he said softly, gripping the edge of the counter. “Come to me.”
The phone buzzed in his hand and a new text popped up.
“KNOCK KNOCK.”
Archie studied the words on the phone, and then, slowly, gazed up at the door. She was in the hospital. She was watching him right now. He put the phone back in his pocket and turned and took a step toward the door.
“Gretchen?” he said.
There was no response. Archie extended his arm, reached his hand out, and carefully turned the lock. Then he folded his hand around the handle, took a deep breath, and pushed the door open.
There was no one on the other side. He turned his head. The hallway was empty. He reached up and touched his forehead. He was sweating. He was letting her get to him again. It was a guess. She’d guessed that he’d call her from a locked room. It hadn’t been her at the door. The person who’d been waiting had gotten impatient and left.
He had enough problems without adding paranoia to the list.
Archie could see a gift store at the far end of the corridor. He squinted at it, and recognized the book displayed in the window—The Last Victim. It had been two months since Archie had read a paper. If he was going to have a chance at finding her, he needed to catch up on the news. He started walking. Halfway down the corridor, he stopped and did a three-sixty. There was no one of interest around, but he could not escape the disquieting feeling that he was being watched.
C H A P T E R 14
Gretchen’s photograph graced the front page of every newspaper the hospital gift store sold.
Archie picked up a copy of the Herald. DAY NUMBER SEVENTY-SIX, screamed the headline below her front-page photo. Archie leafed through it. No story about the rest stop. That would be in tomorrow’s edition. There were four stories about Gretchen. But nothing new.Just the same rehashed details, the same quotes.
Archie closed the paper and looked at her picture on the front page again. It was her mug shot from two years ago. She was wearing the same clothes she’d had on in his final memories of being tortured. When she’d held him, and stroked his head, when he thought he was finally dying, and was so grateful to her for letting him.
Her blond hair was brushed into a smooth ponytail, not a hair out of place.
Gretchen took a beautiful mug shot.
Something caught Archie’s eye inside the gift store. Her image again, multiplied. He put the paper down and stepped inside, and then made his way past the gleaming Mylar balloons, the stuffed animals, the candy and sentimental cards, past the white-haired woman sitting behind a knickknack-jammed counter, watching TV, and stopped in front of the magazine rack.
Twenty different magazines were displayed in plastic pockets on the wall. Almost every issue featured Gretchen as its cover girl.
The press had always loved Gretchen. She’d made headlines around the world. But he had never seen anything like this.
Newsmagazines promised stories of her crimes and updates on the manhunt. Fashion magazines promised to help women make their hair look like hers. Cultural magazines questioned her influence. Entertainment magazines mused about potential casting for an upcoming feature about her.
The cover of Portland Monthly had an image of a tour bus plastered with Gretchen’s face on it. gretchenlowell, the headline read. PORTLAND’S NEXT BIG TOURIST ATTRACTION?
But the magazine that caught his eye was the current issue of Newsweek. It wasn’t her airbrushed headshot on the cover that made his gut twist. It was the huge bold letter headline—a single word:
INNOCENT?
C H A P T E R 15
The fingerprint tech rolled Susan’s right index finger, left to right, over the sponge of dark purple ink. He’d done her thumb first, and was working his way to her pinkie. Elimination prints, they called them. Next time she broke into a house she was definitely wearing gloves.