Authors: Chelsea Cain
“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.”
“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.
“I don’t know,” Archie said.
Susan looked over at him. There was one thing she was sure of: Archie Sheridan knew more than he was telling.
Henry said, “You going to let us look at your call log now?”
There was no reason not to tell him. “It’s a dead end,” Susan said. “I looked it up. It’s a pay phone on MLK, about a mile from where I found the body.” Good luck fingerprinting that, Susan thought.
Henry brought his fist to his mouth for a minute and pressed it against his upper lip. Then he lowered it. “Let us make a copy of your hard drive,” he said.
“So you can track my Web-surfing history?” Susan said. “Forget it.” The idea of Henry having access to her hard drive, with its novel-in-progress, half-baked poetry, and last month’s flurry of hemorrhoid research made her stomach drop. “I’m working on other stories, with important sources and confidential stuff.” She looked to Archie for some support. He was a reasonable person. He understood. But he was just sitting there on the couch, looking past Henry to the already-dead-looking image of Fintan English. “Journalists can’t just give their hard drives to the police,” Susan said. “There’s a rule.”
“The crime,” Archie said to no one in particular, “is not getting him psychiatric help. He was ill.” He looked up at Henry. “They used him,” he said.
Something passed between them and Henry cleared his throat and then leaned over Susan, his hands on his knees. “I told you to take him home,” Henry said.
“Sorry,” Susan said.
“I don’t know what the fuck is going on,” he said to Susan. “But he can’t be here.” He looked between them. “Take him to my house. If anyone contacts either of you with mysterious addresses, cryptic greeting cards, et cetera, ignore your natural instinct to thwart the letter of the law, and call me.”
Archie gave them a pleasant, distracted smile. “Absolutely,” he said.
“Go,” Henry said.
Susan and Archie stood up and started walking toward the door.
“It’s going to get a lot worse,” Archie called back to Henry as they left. “They’re having fun.” The door was open and he walked through it into the sunshine and onto the stoop full of Venus flytraps. Susan followed him.
C H A P T E R 32
Oh my God,” Susan said as soon as they got in the car. “I thought he might actually arrest us.” She left her car door open, got a fresh pack of cigarettes out of the glove compartment, lit one, and took a drag, feeling her heart rate immediately slow. “Let me just have half of this,” she said to Archie. The car was hot, and she didn’t have air-conditioning. “You can roll down your window if you want.”
Archie pulled his seat belt over his lap and buckled it. “I need you to take me somewhere,” he said.
Susan looked over at Archie. Was he kidding? “Henry said to take you to his house,” she said.
“I know one of the kids in the photograph,” Archie said softly. “His sister was one of Gretchen’s early victims. I want to talk to his family. See if he’s involved. I owe them that.”
Susan’s heart was racing again. She took another drag off the cigarette. This time, it didn’t help. “You didn’t tell Henry,” she said. “We should go back in and tell him. Right now.”
“I want to determine the extent of the boy’s involvement.”
“His involvement in what?” Susan said. “Murdering people?”
“He’s a troubled kid,” Archie said. “Like Fintan English. Only no one helped Fintan.”
Susan took one more hit off the cigarette and then tossed it in the street, closed the door, and started the car. She was supposed to be interviewing the dead orderly’s neighbors right now. But fuck it, she knew what they were going to say. He always seemed so nice. “This book I want to write about Gretchen’s impact on pop culture,” she said. “Will you cooperate?”
Archie sighed and rubbed his eyes with one hand. “Why not?”
“Okay,” Susan said. She pulled forward out of the parking spot, sending a collection of pens cascading from the open glove compartment onto Archie’s lap.
He gathered them up and put them back in the glove box and closed it.
“You know, two hundred people a year choke on pens and die,” Susan said.
Archie reached under his thigh, pulled out a crushed empty cigarette box that had been on the seat, and tossed it on the floor. “How many die from smoking?”
C H A P T E R 33
Lake Oswego was where the rich people lived.
Archie wouldn’t tell Susan an address. Only that it was on the lake. The town was named after the lake. The lake was where the really rich people lived. What was it with rich people and water?
Susan called Derek so the Herald could break the Fintan English story. He’d write it. She’d get a co-byline. The Herald got the scoop. Everyone was happy.
After she hung up, Archie asked to borrow her phone.
“Didn’t they give you your phone back when they released you?” Susan asked him.
“ ‘Checked out,’ ” Archie said, taking her phone. “Not ‘released.’ I wasn’t incarcerated.” He dialed a number from memory. “It’s Archie Sheridan,” he said. “I need to see him. Is he there?” He paused. “Right now,” Archie said. Then he hung up.
It was all very mysterious.
They drove through First Addition. That was the old part of Lake Oswego, where you could still live on a less-than-obscene salary. There were trees and yards, and old Sears mail-order Craftsmans, and a supermarket where you could still buy groceries on account. The town’s claim to fame was that Bruce Springsteen had married local-girl-turned-model Julianne Phillips at a church there. The marriage only lasted four years, but everyone still talked about it.