Authors: Chelsea Cain
Someone else might think Archie was deluded. But Debbie knew what Gretchen was capable of.
Her gaze returned to his, and he could see a glimmer of fear in her eyes. Good. She was taking him seriously.
“Go on a trip,” he whispered.
Debbie gave him the tiniest nod, and he let her arm go.
“Your dad doesn’t feel well,” she called to the kids. “Want to see a movie?”
C H A P T E R 20
This is Gretchen Lowell.”
Archie is sitting in his office and he looks up to see Mayor Buddy Anderson standing in the doorway with a stunning blonde. She is maybe the most beautiful woman Archie has ever seen. Her features are perfect: mouth full, nose straight and sloped, wide cheekbones, and large eyes. The long-sleeved lilac-colored dress she is wearing rounds over her breasts, dips in deeply at the waist, and then curves around her hips to her knees. As she leans against the doorjamb, she crosses her slender legs at the ankles. Her face is shaped like a heart.
“Gretchen,” Buddy says with his wolf grin. “This is Archie Sheridan.”
“Detective,” she says, and she steps forward and offers an elegant hand.
Archie stands and leans over his desk and shakes it, suddenly conscious of the roughness of his palms. “Nice to meet you,” he says.
“She’s a psychiatrist,” Buddy explains. “She thinks she can help catch the Beauty Killer.”
It is eleven at night. Buddy had called and asked if he could stop by. Eleven at night, and Archie is still working. Buddy, clearly, isn’t. “We already have a profiler,” Archie says.
Buddy chuckles. His cheeks are ruddy and he’s not wearing his coat. His bleached white teeth are stained with red wine. “She’s not after Anne’s job,” he says.
“I’m not a criminal profiler,” she explains to Archie. “I specialize in trauma counseling.”
“She wants to help you,” Buddy says.
“Thanks,” Archie says. He sits back down and opens a crime report, hoping they’ll get the message. “But I don’t need therapy.”
Buddy elbows Gretchen Lowell and winks. “Archie Sheridan is solid as a rock. Married his college sweetheart. I don’t think the guy’s ever been drunk.”
“I’ve been drunk,” Archie says.
Buddy suddenly taps his pocket, pulls out a cell phone and frowns. He holds up a finger and slides past Gretchen out of the room. “Hey, honey,” he says into the phone. “I’m with Archie.”
Archie sighs.
Gretchen doesn’t move. She just looks at him and smiles.
“How do you know the mayor?” Archie asks.
“I can be of use to you,” she says.
This was all he needed—the mayor’s latest conquest hanging around the task force, giving pep talks. His team would never speak to him again. But the mayor allocated task force funding. If she was sleeping with Buddy, in the end Archie probably wouldn’t have any say.
“You’ve all been at this for what, ten years?” she asks.
“Some of us,” Archie says.
“I’m just offering coping skills. Not counseling. Just talk.” She pushes herself off the door and walks forward, her high heels making her hips swing.
She leans forward and turns around the photograph that he keeps framed on his desk. “Your family?” she asks.
“Yes,” he says.
She turns it back to face Archie. “They’re lovely.”
“Thank you,” Archie says.
“I’m not sleeping with him,” Gretchen says.
Archie coughs. He glances out his office door for the mayor, but he is still down the hall on the phone.
“Not that it’s any of your business,” she adds.
Archie shakes his head. “No, of course not.”
She spins the open file on his desk around and picks up an autopsy photo of the Beauty Killer’s latest victim. Her eyes get large. “Who’s this?” she asks.
Archie is grateful for something else to talk about. “His name’s Matthew Fowler. We found his body up at PittockMansion last week.”
“I heard about that,” Gretchen says. Her bottom lip quivers slightly as she examines the color image of Matthew Fowler’s open chest cavity. She shudders. “What happened to him?”
Archie takes the photograph from her and puts it back in the file. “I don’t think you want to know,” he says gently.
Gretchen lowers her gaze at Archie. “Try me.”
Archie sits back in his chair and looks at her. She has no idea what he’s seen. She’s read the sanitized newspaper accounts and watched the true-crime shows on TV and thinks she can spend a few weeks on the case and then write a paper for some academic journal. “He was disemboweled,” Archie says.
She lifts her hand to her mouth and turns her head away.
“This sort of work isn’t for people with delicate stomachs,” Archie says.
She turns back to him and lowers her hand, straightening up a little, as if to steel her resolve. “How?” she asks.
Maybe Archie had underestimated her. “Disemboweled” was usually a conversation stopper. “Transanally,” Archie says. “With the aid of an unidentified suction device.”
Gretchen’s eyelids flutter. Archie had stopped sharing crime-scene details with Debbie years ago. Those images stayed with you. The fewer you had floating around the better. He readies the coup de grace.
“Then the Beauty Killer shoved a glass rod up his penis and shattered it,” Archie adds.
He can hear her breathing—short, rapid inhalations, her trepidation palpable. “Are you trying to scare me away?” she asks.
“This isn’t a hobby,” Archie says.
“I’m not a dilettante.”
“What are you?”
She perches on the front edge of his desk, sets her mouth in determination, and fans out all the photographs from the autopsy file.
Her body trembles as she scans the images, and her hand finds the soft curve of her throat. But she keeps looking. And after a minute, she places a manicured finger on an anterior shot of Matthew Fowler’s head. “What are these marks, here?” she asks.
Archie glances down. “Part of his scalp was surgically removed,” he says. “And the skull beneath was shaved down.”
Her eyes are suddenly huge and animated. She grins and gives the photograph a triumphant tap. “Amativeness,” she says. “It’s a concept in phrenology. The brain is the organ of the mind. Certain areas have specific functions, as reflected by the cranial bone.”
Archie looks at the picture. He feels the throb of her excitement. It has been months since they’ve had a good lead. “Amativeness?” he says.
She takes his hand in hers, bends her head down, and lifts his hand to her head to illustrate. Her emotion—the fever of discovery—courses between them like a current. It’s intoxicating. “This spot back here,” she says, moving his fingers in her hair between her ear and neck, exploring the edge of her skull. He feels the bony lump, hard and warm beneath his fingertips. “It’s the amativeness module,” she says. “It correlates with sexual attraction.”