Authors: Chelsea Cain
Henry stepped in front of her, drawing to his full, barrel-chested height. “Look at me,” he said. “I don’t give a shit if you smile. I don’t give a shit if you wear dumb-ass goggles. What I care about is finding Pearl Clinton.” His shaved head was beaded with sweat. “And I’m going to give you ten seconds to tell us where she is.”
C H A P T E R 55
The intersection of
Thirty-eighth Avenue
and
Hawthorne Boulevard
was prime panhandling real estate, and according to the manager of From the Earth to the Moon, Pearl had been a regular, hitting up Hawthorne shoppers for cash.
“Jesus, watch out,” Susan said, as Henry barely avoided sideswiping a bicyclist.
Henry grumbled something under his breath and then did a double take out the windshield. “There,” he said.
Pearl was just rounding the corner onto Thirty-eighth.
“Hold on,” Henry said. He screeched the car to a halt halfway up on the curb, opened the door, and lunged out after her.
Susan braced herself on the dash, and then got out and sprinted after Henry.
By the time she got there, Henry already had Pearl by the arm.
“I want a lawyer,” Pearl said.
Henry gripped her arm tighter, and the muscles in his bare upper arm bulged. “If I take you in and dial you up a lawyer,” he said, “it will mean calling your parents and child services. Still want one?”
A small crowd had gathered. There was always plenty of foot traffic on Hawthorne. A couple of other street kids had come up, a few people with shopping bags, a couple of bicyclists who had stopped and were standing with their helmets on—all watching. Some of them were taking cell-phone video.
“Ordinary citizen, here,” Pearl cried, “getting harassed by the fuzz.”
“Henry,” Susan said.
Henry let go of Pearl’s arm. She rubbed the spot where he’d been holding her and then crossed her arms defiantly.
“This isn’t a game,” Henry said. “Tell me where Archie Sheridan is.”
“I haven’t done anything wrong,” Pearl said, loud enough that the bystanders could hear.
Henry blinked in disbelief. “Nothing wrong? You’re part of a serial-killer fan club.”
Pearl shrugged. “So? I was into Wicca in junior high. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Where’s Jeremy Reynolds?” Henry demanded.
Pearl just glared at him.
“Let me talk to her,” Susan said.
Henry pointed a finger at Pearl’s nose. “There’s a foster family with your name on it,” he said.
“Go fuck yourself,” Pearl said.
Henry’s face reddened and Susan wedged between him and Pearl. “How long have you been a part of the Beauty Killer . . .”—she looked for the right word—“group?”
Pearl rolled her eyes and sighed. “I met Jeremy at the Country Fair in Eugene,” she said. “He invited me to join. It sounded fun. You hook up in the middle of the night in some scary spot and try to scare the shit out of each other.”
“They scar themselves to look like murder victims,” Henry said behind Susan.
“I didn’t know that until last night,” Pearl said.
“Tell me about last night,” Susan said.
Pearl stabbed at the sidewalk with one of her pointy shoes. “Look, last night went too far. I didn’t know the guys were going to pull that shit with the needle.” Her voice got small. “I thought they were just trying to mess with you.”
“Jeremy’s not who you thought he was,” Susan said softly. “Is he?”
Teenage girls didn’t join clubs because they sounded fun. They joined them because of boys.
Pearl nodded, and her eyes filled with tears. “After you left, Sheridan pulled a gun,” she said. “Wanted to know where Jeremy was. Which was, you know, freaky, because Jeremy was right there.” She wiped her nose. “And then he got Tasered. Kind of a lot. He might have passed out.”
“And then?” Henry said.
“I don’t know,” Pearl said, sniffing. “I ran. I ran out of the building and up to Grand and then caught the number fourteen bus up Hawthorne.”
Henry turned around and threaded his hands behind his head.
“Those murders,” Susan said. “The bodies up at the Rose Garden.The head at PittockMansion. Gretchen Lowell didn’t kill those people. Jeremy did.”
Pearl’s mouth got small and she frowned and dropped her head. “I thought he liked me,” she said.
Susan patted her on the arm. “I know, sweetie.” She let Pearl meditate on her unfortunate love life for a moment, and then Susan leaned in, and in her best big-sister voice, asked, “Did he ever take you anywhere?”
C H A P T E R 56
Jeremy had covered Archie’s wounds with gauze and given him a towel to sit on. Archie sat naked, cross-legged, across from Jeremy, who sat naked in the same position. A scalpel case was open on the floor between them.
“Any chance I can put my clothes back on?” Archie asked.
“I need to see you,” Jeremy said.
He picked up the scalpel and held it the way that Archie had shown him in the basement, dinner-knife style, and with his other hand he reached across and ran his fingers over the heart-shaped scar on Archie’s chest.
Jeremy’s chest was brutalized. Some of the scar tissue looked quite old, pale and stretched, like he’d been cutting himself like this for years. Hash marks climbed his ribs, dashed his belly, and one thin scar ran along his lower rib line on the right side—where a splenectomy incision might be. It wasn’t thick enough to be anything but a surface laceration. Jeremy had cut himself to look like he’d had his spleen removed. To look like Archie.
And up and down his arms and the insides of his thighs was the
same triangular pattern they’d found on Isabel, carved over and over again. Some of the scars were barely discernible, some were recent. He’d been self-mutilating for a long time.
Jeremy’s fingers moved away from Archie’s heart and traced the five-inch scar that ran up his midsection. “What’s this one?” Jeremy asked.
It was the only scar that Gretchen hadn’t carved on him, a functional bold line, different from the other scars, like someone else’s handwriting. “I was bleeding internally when they brought me to the hospital,” Archie said. “They had to go back in and clean up the damage from when she took out my spleen.” It was the scar Archie felt most disconnected from, because unlike the scars Gretchen had left, Archie had no memory of getting it.
“Fintan would have done it anyway,” Jeremy said. “He would have done it himself.”
Archie glanced down at the scalpel in Jeremy’s hand. He needed to stall. “You met Fintan English at camp,” he said.
Jeremy’s face was slack, his eyes distant. “We were in high school,” he said. “Fintan was as fucked-up as me.” He moved his free hand to his upper arm, and absentmindedly rubbed the triangle-shaped scars, as if they were the source of an old itch. He still held the scalpel in his other hand, wrist resting on his knee. “He wanted his spleen out,” Jeremy said. “It was all he talked about. No one took him seriously. Except for me. I read some books. And looked on the Internet. I printed out instructions.”
Archie thought about the goat spleen that had been left in the rest-stop toilet. “You practiced on goats.”