Authors: Chelsea Cain
“Pairs,” Archie said. “That’s good.” He smiled at Henry. “Otherwise we’d be looking for pirates.”
Henry continued. “The ME thinks they were preserved in formaldehyde before they were dumped in the tank.”
Archie continued to rotate his palm over the orb of clay on the table. “Match anything?” he asked. He kept his face neutral and his eyes on his hand, trying to focus on the clay.
“Nothing in the regional database. We’re looking wider. You thinking we’ll turn up some corpses to match?”
“Gretchen never took out anyone’s eyes.”
“Gretchen never did anything,” Henry said, “until she did.”
Archie rubbed his eyes with his hand. They’d given him a sedative when he’d gotten back the night before, and he still felt groggy from it. “Beef up Debbie’s protection detail,” he said with a sigh. He didn’t think Gretchen would go after Debbie and the kids again. She had already terrorized him once with that trick, and she didn’t like to repeat herself. But the protection might buy his family some peace of mind.
“Already done,” Henry said. “Vancouver PD’s got a car outside her house. The kids get escorts to school. Everything we talked about.” Henry spread his mustache with a thumb and forefinger. “I want you to consider leaving town.”
“Boca Raton’s nice,” Frank said.
“Gretchen will find me anywhere I go,” Archie said. There was no emotion to it. It was merely a fact.
Henry folded his big arms on the table and leaned forward. “But the press might not,” he said. “You don’t know what it’s like out there. The city council is considering a curfew. There’s a company that gives goddamn Gretchen Lowell tours.” His neck reddened as he talked. “They’ve got these buses with her face painted on the side. Why do you think Debbie moved to Vancouver? Property taxes?”
On Animal Planet, a vet was trying to save a cat who’d been hit by a car. Archie had seen the episode eight times before. The cat ended up dying.
The killing wasn’t going to stop until Gretchen wanted it to.
“I want to help,” Archie said. “I’ll consult from here.”
Frank hunched over the table across from Archie, working his clay into a two-foot-long roll the width of a thumb.
“Leave town. I’ll find another bughouse for you, if you want. In New Hampshire.Somewhere far away.”
The truth was, New Hampshire sounded nice. Far away sounded nice. But no one knew the Beauty Killer case files like Archie did. Henry needed Archie. And Archie knew it. “Call me if anything develops,” Archie said. “I’m around.”
“The last time I called,” Henry said, “some woman told me she was going to get you and then wandered away and never came back.”
There was only one phone patients were allowed to use. Incoming calls only. When it rang, everybody lunged for it.
“They shouldn’t let crazy people answer the phone,” Henry said.
Frank looked up from his clay roll and smiled.
“Crazy people are the only people here,” said Archie.
Henry leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms, and rested his chin on his chest. “So are you just going to hide out here the rest of your life?” he asked.
Archie didn’t have an answer.
Henry watched him, jaw working, the muscle popping under the skin. Archie could almost see him trying out different arguments. “No one knows,” Henry said finally. “You clear a psych exam you can come back to work. You’re still a fucking hero out there. Fucking Philip Marlowe.”
Frank’s eyes shot up, alarmed, from behind his glasses. “No bad language here.”
“Sorry, Frank,” Henry said. He leaned forward and worked his jaw some more before continuing. “Don’t leave the ward,” Henry said to Archie. “I need to know that you’re safe.”
Archie had hospital privileges. He could roam anywhere he wanted, as long as he was back for evening meds. They called it Level Four. Archie had been a Level One when he’d checked himself in. He’d clawed his way up from high risk to mildly disturbed.
“Never,” Archie said. “Who’d hang out with Frank?”
Frank had started folding the clay snake he’d made back on itself, back and forth, again and again.
Henry raised an eyebrow and looked over at Frank. “What are you working on there, buddy?” Henry asked him.
Frank’s eyes flicked up to the TV, and then he smiled down at his clay. “Cat intestines,” he said.
Henry threw a glance at Archie. “Nice,” he said.
The door to the balcony opened and people started coming back in, their blank stares momentarily enlivened by nicotine. There was a group therapy session starting in a few minutes. “You need to go,” Archie said to Henry.
Henry stood up. He hesitated. “Susan Ward’s out there,” he said.
“I know,” Archie said. “She likes to steal the Wi-Fi.”
“You don’t want to see her?” Henry said.
The truth was that Archie had come close to letting her in a few times. But he’d always caught himself. Entangling Susan in his life was the last thing she needed. “I want to finish my craft project,” Archie said.
Henry planted his hands in his pockets and turned to leave. “Think about what I said,” he said to Archie, starting for the door. “I hear fall’s nice in New England.”
“Henry,” Archie said, stopping him. His voice was steel, the clay strangled in his hand. “You need to issue a shoot-to-kill order. We can’t let her get away again.”
“That’s the sanest thing you’ve said in months, my friend,” Henry said.
Frank chuckled. It was the first time Archie had ever heard him laugh. It was an unsettling sound, like a child crying.
C H A P T E R 8
The Beauty Killer Body Tour stopped four times a day at PittockMansion. Randy pulled the bus over, and all the tourists would file out with the guide, pay their admission to the mansion, and then be led through the house to the spot on the grounds where Gretchen Lowell had dumped the body of a disemboweled oral surgeon named Matthew Fowler. The guide would point to the spot in the grass where they’d found him, and the fuckers would take pictures of it.
Randy waited in the bus.
Portlanders had been getting their wedding pictures taken at the 1914 stone palace since one of the Pittock grandsons had sold the house to the city in the sixties.
He wondered how many wedding photos now had assholes in RUN, GRETCHEN T-shirts wandering around in the background.
It was ten o’clock. The next stop was a motel in North Portland where Gretchen had jammed some poor schmuck’s dismembered penis in an ice machine. Randy liked that one. He liked to see the faces on the tourists when the guide flipped open the lid on the ice machine and they saw the rubber dildo the motel owner kept in there for laughs.
Laughs.
He needed another job.
He pulled off his BEAUTY KILLER BODY TOURS T-shirt, turned it inside out, put it back on, and got out of the bus for a cigarette. He wasn’t supposed to leave the bus unattended, but fuck it. What were they going to do? Dismember his penis?
The tourists were inside, no doubt admiring the curved marble staircase at seven bucks a pop, so Randy lit up and walked around to the front of the house. They didn’t charge admission into the yard. The Beauty Killer Tour could have taken tourists right to the spot where Fowler had died, but instead they made the tourists pay to go inside the mansion first. It kept the Pittock people happy, and everyone got a little bit richer thanks to Portland’s favorite serial killer.