Authors: Chelsea Cain
She stared back at him, expressionless, that way she had of seeing right through you. It wasn’t just Henry. She didn’t have time for anyone but Archie.
“You think this will get him back here?” Henry said. “That he’ll be at your beck and call again? You’re wrong. He’ll see through it.”
She just blinked.
He turned and took a step to catch up with the others.
“Henry,” she said.
He froze at the sound of her voice saying his name. He turned back. She tilted her head and raised an eyebrow. “It will be interesting to see which one of us knows him better,” she said.
Christ, she was smug. Henry had spent years blaming himself. For not suspecting Gretchen in the first place. For not finding Archie sooner. For endorsing the insane plea bargain that would send his friend into her clutches week after week. He had known Archie before. He knew how he had changed. The plea bargain wasn’t worth it. It didn’t matter how many bodies she could produce. Gretchen Lowell was a poster girl for the death penalty. He learned forward. “Whoever did this to you,” he said flatly, “deserves a fucking medal.”
Archie appeared around the curtain. “You coming?”
Henry straightened up, flustered. “Yeah,” he said. He followed Archie around the curtain. Out of the corner of his eye, Henry thought he’d seen Gretchen wink at Archie, but he couldn’t be sure.
T
he guard hadn’t been dead long. But it was long enough. He’d hung himself in the locker room, one of the few spaces in the prison without security cameras. It was a thin, long room, now crowded with people standing close, but not too close, to the body that was hanging from an overhead sewer pipe.
“His name is B. D. Cavanaugh,” the warden said to Archie. “He’s been here nine years. Clean file.”
Hanging was the second most popular means of suicide in the U.S., after guns. Archie didn’t see the appeal. It was too hard to control. Sure, if you were lucky, your spinal cord snapped, and you were dead in an instant. Even in the absence of a fracture, obstruction of the carotid arteries or vagal collapse could lead to a relatively peaceful death. Quick unconsciousness, followed by a massive coronary. But if you were unlucky, your neck didn’t snap, and your carotid arteries kept pumping and you died a slow, agonizing death from strangulation.
The guard hadn’t been lucky. His face was engorged and discolored, his eyes filled with blood, his tongue protruded between blue lips, and a stream of sweet-smelling urine ran down the tan pants of his uniform and pooled where his toe brushed the carpet below.
“He the guy who assaulted Gretchen?” Archie asked. The smell of urine mixed with the pungent floral-mothball bouquet of pink urinal cakes.
“He had access,” the warden said. “He was on shift. And look at his hands.”
The guard’s fingertips were blue, and his forearms were webbed with fine red scratches.
The warden’s gaze drifted to where the bulge of the guard’s erection pressed against his pants. He cleared his throat. “You ever seen anything like that?”
“It’s caused by blood pooling in the lower half of the body,” Archie said matter-of-factly. “Tissues expand to their maximum capacity. It’ll go down as soon as he’s horizontal.”
“So it’s not a woody?”
“Get a penis swab,” Archie said. “I want a DNA match to the rape kit.”
Archie wasn’t sure what he’d expected to feel when faced with Gretchen’s attacker. But he felt unsatisfied faced with this dangling corpse. Because he couldn’t throw him against a wall? Arrest him? Because he couldn’t be Gretchen’s white knight?
Archie couldn’t shake the feeling of responsibility for what had happened. Gretchen wasn’t in the women’s prison. She was on the solitary ward, which was on the men’s section of the campus, so her guards were mostly male. Gretchen was slender, but she was dangerous. She had found a hundred different ways to kill people. But the guard was big, two hundred forty at least, and Archie could see how he might have overpowered her.
“He used a choke hold,” the warden said. “Cracked her collarbone. The doc thinks she was unconscious through most of it.”
“Jesus,” Archie said.
“And then he offs himself?” Henry said with a snort. “Convenient.” Archie threw him a look. “What?” Henry said. “You think she’s not capable of setting this up?”
“She’s a victim until proven otherwise.”
Henry lifted his chin toward the body. “Divorced recently?” he asked the warden.
The warden nodded. “His wife left him last year.”
Henry looked at Archie. “Fits her profile.”
Gretchen had used the Internet to troll for lonely men whom she could manipulate. She traveled with them for a while, got them to kill for her, and then executed them. She’d done it at least three times. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that she’d somehow convinced this man to die for her, or because of her. “He leave a note?” Archie asked.
The warden lifted his eyebrows toward the bathroom, which was directly off the locker room. Archie and Henry followed him in. The bathroom had two showers, three toilet stalls, a row of urinals, and a counter with two sinks and, above it, a mirror onto which someone had drawn, with a felt-tip marker, a heart.
Archie realized that he had subconsciously lifted his hand to the heart scar on his chest, the skin raised beneath the cotton cloth of his shirt. He forced his hand into his pocket, only to find the pillbox.
“It’s her signature, right?” the warden was saying. “A heart?”
“Right,” Archie said. He pulled the pillbox out, opened it, put three pills in his mouth and swallowed them. His hand was trembling. “You need to rotate all her guards. It was a mistake to allow her contact with men. She’s assigned women, from now on.” He held the pillbox out to the warden. “Tic Tacs,” Archie said. “Want one?”
The warden looked at Archie strangely and shook his head.
Archie glanced up at his own reflection, framed in the inked heart. “It’s my fault,” he said. “I should have paid more attention. I should have been here more.”
“She’s playing you,” Henry said softly.
“I needed a break,” Archie said to his reflection, trying to convince himself. “I can handle it now.” He turned to the warden. “Go through the security logs. Review footage. Interview your staff. I want to know if they had a relationship.”
The warden’s ruddy skin colored with the realization of what Archie was driving at. “You think she was fucking him all along?” he asked.
Archie felt his stomach clench. It felt a little bit like jealousy “You better hope not,” he said.
A
rchie had the TV on in his home office, without the volume. It was the first TV he and Debbie had bought together, for their first apartment, back in college. A twenty-seven-inch color Panasonic. It had seemed extravagant then. Now it just looked sort of old and clunky. Debbie had bought a flat screen for the living room. But Archie couldn’t bear to part with the old TV. It had sentimental value.
He had turned on the local news in hopes that there would be some coverage of the remains in the park, but the news had been preempted by continuing coverage of the circus surrounding the senator’s death. They were already talking about changing the name of the airport to Castle International.
Archie wondered what Molly Palmer thought of that.
He had pulled four cardboard file boxes full of missing persons reports out of the closet, and was unpacking the contents of one onto his desk. There were 108 files, all people who had gone missing in the Pacific Northwest between 1994 and 2005, the period when Gretchen was killing. Some were probably runaways, custody disputes, deadbeats. But some had been tortured and murdered, and only Gretchen knew which ones. Archie knew every photograph, every story. He had met with many of the families of the missing, looking for some clue, some indication that this person might have attracted Gretchen’s deadly attention. Something in the way they dressed, or held themselves; a place they frequented. But that was the thing with Gretchen—there was no victim profile. She’d kill anyone.
There was something satisfying about looking at the files again. No one knew them better than Archie did. He couldn’t identify a dead girl in a park, but this was something he could do. He had spent his career working the Beauty Killer case, one way or another. It felt good to be back.
He smiled to himself. He would meet with Gretchen on Sunday and she would give him the location of a body and another family would have answers. Another file would be closed. He and Gretchen could settle back into their routine. The thought made Archie feel … happy.
He put two Vicodin in his mouth and got up to get some water in the bathroom across the hall to wash them down. When he opened the door to leave his office, empty glass in hand, he was surprised to see Henry standing next to Debbie, as if they were preparing to enter.
Archie stopped cold. “I didn’t know you were here,” he said to Henry. Archie glanced at Debbie for some sort of explanation. But she evaded his eye contact.
“I wanted to talk to Debbie,” Henry said.
Archie turned the empty glass in his hand. “What’s going on?” he asked slowly.
Henry leaned forward, glancing back toward the living room. The kids were there. Archie could hear a video playing.
“Can we talk in your office?” Henry asked.
Archie looked down at the glass, smooth under his hands. He could feel the pills—a hard knot in his throat—start to burn. “I was just getting some water,” he said.
“I’ll get it,” Debbie said. She stepped forward and took the glass.
“Are you guys getting married?” Archie asked.
Henry didn’t crack a smile. He glanced back toward the living room, toward the kids, and then back at Archie. “Let’s go in your office,” he said again.
“Okay,” Archie said. He walked back into his office and went to his desk and sat down. The TV was showing color footage of Castle as a young man, when he was first elected into office. The missing persons files were stacked on his desk next to the empty box. He already had some ideas about how to approach Gretchen this time about her crimes, but he had a feeling that this wasn’t the time to bring that up.
Henry didn’t sit. He walked halfway into the room and stood. He ran a hand over his bald head. “I had Gretchen transferred,” he said.
The pills in Archie’s throat felt like a fist. “What?”
Henry looked Archie in the eye. “I put in a transfer order to have Gretchen moved to Lawford.”
Archie searched Henry’s face for some explanation. “But that’s in eastern Oregon.”
Henry didn’t move. “You’re not going to be able to see her anymore,” he said simply. “You’re off her visitor list. No contact. No letters in or out. No phone calls. No visits. Period.”
Archie felt the room start to slip around him. He swallowed hard, willing the pills to go down, feeling the burn of his stomach acid. But the pills held. He shook his head. “You can’t do that.”
“It’s done,” Henry said softly.
“I’ll call the mayor,” Archie said. He coughed and lifted his hand to his sternum.
“Are you okay?” Henry asked.
“I just need some water,” Archie said, his eyes tearing.
“Debbie,” Henry called. “The water?” He turned back to Archie, his big shoulders slumping. Archie had never seen him look sorrier. Or firmer. “I’ve talked to Buddy,” he said. “We’re on the same page on this.”
Mayor Buddy Anderson had been the head of the Beauty Killer Task Force before Archie. He’d kept it funded when he was chief of police, and as mayor he’d made sure that Archie always had everything he needed. It wasn’t altruism. Buddy knew the value of good publicity.
“What about the victim identification project?” Archie asked. They needed him. Buddy needed him. No one knew the Beauty Killer victim files like Archie.
“She can talk to someone else,” Henry said. “Or not. It’s not worth this.”
“I need to see her,” Archie pleaded. He hated how he sounded. Desperate. Frantic. Henry, Debbie, Buddy—they had all betrayed him. He looked up and saw Debbie stopped in the doorway, the glass in her hands. “Please,” Archie begged.
Henry was immovable. “You can’t. It’s done. She’ll be transferred tomorrow. She’s in lockdown until then. It’s over.”
No. Henry couldn’t do this. Archie had been the lead on the Beauty Killer Task Force. They couldn’t just cut him out of the case. Archie stood and picked up the phone on his desk and punched in the prison number he knew by heart. The pills burned. Archie coughed. The TV droned on. Focus. “Hey, Tony. This is Archie Sheridan. I need to talk to Gretchen. I’m leaving now. Can you make sure she’s ready?”
There was a slight hesitation. “She’s in lockdown, sir. No visitors.”
Archie closed his eyes. “Can you take a phone in to her?”
Another hesitation. Archie felt sorry for him. “We’ve got instructions not to let you talk to her,” Tony said.
“It’s okay,” Archie said. He pressed the
END CALL
button on the receiver. “It’s okay.” The pills hurt like heartburn. It was a familiar pain. The drain cleaner that Gretchen had made him drink had burned through his esophagus. It had taken him months to recover from the surgery. He stood there for another moment with the receiver in his hand, and then he heaved it as hard as he could against the white wall of his office. It slammed into the drywall and then fell to the ground in two pieces, the batteries rolling on the carpet. Debbie gasped and dropped the glass of water she was holding. A moment later a framed commendation splintered and the glass fell to the ground in two sharp slices. Debbie dropped to the floor to pick up the water glass. It had fallen on carpet and hadn’t broken. She looked helplessly at the soggy puddle of water soaking into the carpet.
At the moment, Archie hated her. “You knew about this,” he said, coming out from behind his desk.
Debbie looked up, startled. “Henry just told me.”
Her hurt expression cut Archie to the bone. He felt his legs grow weak and he sank to the floor in front of his desk. He hung his head and threaded his hands behind his neck. And still his only thought was of Gretchen. “I know I need help,” he said. He felt desperate, his heart racing, like he might hyperventilate. His mind searched for anything he could say to change Henry’s mind. It didn’t matter what. “Cancel the transfer,” he said. “I can pull myself together. Whatever you want. But I need to see her.”