Evil at Heart (14 page)

           
Henry grunted. “You’re getting to be a better reporter,” he said.

           
“Journalist,” she corrected him. She waved a hand at him and took a few steps away from the van.

           
“Wait,” Henry called, and she turned around. He stared at her, working his jaw, one hand behind his neck. Then his hand dropped, and he stepped toward her. “I’m only telling you this because it’s going to come out,” he said. “And it might as well be you.” He sighed. “There are some things about the rest stop we haven’t made public.”

           
C H A P T E R 16

           
Archie sat on the gift-store floor, surrounded by magazines, the Newsweek open on his lap. Pictures of Gretchen smiled up from all around him on the carpet. He’d found twenty-seven stories about her in all. He’d read the Newsweek first. It was full of excuses. She wasn’t to blame. It was society. We were all responsible.

           
Archie didn’t remember society pressing a scalpel into his chest.

           
There were photographs of him, too. Standing at a crime scene.Leaving the hospital. The man she’d tried to kill twice. They portrayed him as some sort of hero. It made better copy, Archie guessed, than the truth. The details about their latest run-in were sketchy. Henry had managed to keep under wraps the specifics of how Archie had again found himself at Gretchen’s mercy. He was recuperating from his injuries. She was at large.

           
Reality was murkier.

           
Archie touched the photograph of her in Newsweek. It had been taken outside the courthouse. She’d been turning away, her wrists in manacles, dressed in prison blue, hair loose, profile perfect, like an image off a coin. He lifted his hand, leaving a fingerprint on the page.

           
He turned over his hands and looked at his palms. He was sweating again.

           
God, he wanted a Vicodin.

           
He wiped his hands on the front of his pants, feeling the phone inside his pocket. He pulled it out. No new messages.

           
“If you’re interested in her, we’ve got the book,” the old woman behind the counter said. Archie looked up. She’d unpacked several angels from the box and had lined them up in front of her on the counter, and now peered over them.

           
Archie saw himself then, sitting there, surrounded by magazines open to articles about the Beauty Killer, what he must look like. He put the phone back in his pocket.

           
The old woman tilted her head toward the window display where a pile of copies of The Last Victim were stacked next to a dozen copies of The Five People You Meet in Heaven.

           
Archie closed the Newsweek, got to his feet, and slid it back on its shelf behind him. “I already own a copy,” he said.

           
He bent down to gather the magazines on the floor so he could reshelve them, and as he did he glanced up at the old woman. The small television still played behind her, and for a second, Archie thought he saw Gretchen’s face on the screen. He stood there, frozen, in a sort of half squat, convinced he was seeing things, still riveted by the TV, as graphics spun onto the screen to form the words BEAUTY KILLER AT LARGE: DAY 76.

           
The graphics burst into flame

           
Archie straightened. “Turn it up,” he said.

           
The old woman looked at him skeptically. Then she slowly turned to glance at the TV screen, then back at him, and down to the magazines at his feet.

           
“Turn it up,” Archie said again. He moved forward, toward the counter and the TV.

           
She raised an eyebrow, paused, lifted another angel out of the box and set it on the counter, and then pulled a remote from the pocket of her polyester vest and hit a button.

           
A newscaster appeared in an electric-blue KGW raincoat holding a mic with PittockMansion in the background. A human head had been found on the grounds. The image cut to another newscaster in another blue KGW raincoat standing in front of a boarded-up house. A body had been found in the house. Police weren’t releasing any details.

           
In a wide shot, Archie caught a glimpse of Henry walking into the house.

           
Archie reached for the cell phone that was usually clipped to his belt, his fingers on the corduroy of his pants, finding nothing. His cell phone was locked away back at the ward.

           
But he had another one.

           
He slid his hand in his pocket and found the cell phone again. But he didn’t pull it out.

           
The old woman was watching the TV now, eyebrows knitted, one hand still wrapped around the feet of the statue of an angel, knelt in prayer, a wire halo stuck into the top of its head.

           
“Can I use your phone?” Archie asked.

           
She had no reason to say yes, but she reached over and lifted the receiver off a beige desktop telephone and set it in Archie’s hand. “Dial nine,” she said.

           
Archie dialed nine, and then Henry’s cell phone number. Henry picked up on the third ring.

           
“What’s going on?” Archie asked him.

           
“Where are you calling from?” Henry asked.

           
“The hospital gift store,” Archie said. “I needed a balloon.”

           
He could sense Henry hedge. Archie was on leave. He had no right to know anything about a police investigation. “Susan Ward got a tip and found a body in an abandoned house on North Fargo,” Henry said. “And someone dumped a head in the yard up at PittockMansion.”

           
They’d found one of Gretchen’s victims on the grounds at PittockMansion just months before she was caught. She’d never repeated herself before. But it couldn’t be a coincidence. “Eyes?” Archie asked.

           
“The head’s too decomposed to tell,” Henry said. “Robbins is looking at it now. Body in the house has eyes. He’s fresh. Killed sometime overnight.”

           
Archie glanced back at the TV screen where KGW news anchor Charlene Wood now stood at the scene interviewing a bystander. “Is it Gretchen?” Archie said.

           
Henry exhaled. “There are hearts drawn on the wall next to the body,” he said. “Like at the rest stop. Susan called the paper. It went out on the wire. There are reporters everywhere.”

           
Archie felt his chest tighten again. “Is Susan okay?” he asked.

           
“She’s a pain in the ass,” Henry said. “Won’t give up the source who tipped her.”

           
Archie couldn’t help but smile. “Parker would be proud.”

           
“Yeah, well, it’s fucking dandy that her journalistic testicles have dropped, but that doesn’t help me much with the crime fighting,” Henry said. “It looks like the victim’s missing his spleen. That’s not public yet,” he added. “But it will be.”

           
The old woman unpacked another angel.

           
“I can send a car for you,” Henry said.

           
Archie turned and glanced behind him, back into the hall. He thought about telling Henry, but he couldn’t without giving up the phone. What was he supposed to say? “I think she’s got someone inside the hospital who’s spying on me”? “I just have a feeling”?

           
He’d sound like a lunatic.

           
“I’m just not up for it,” Archie said. He didn’t need to find her. She would find him. He was sure of it.

           
“Your family still coming tonight?” Henry asked.

           
Debbie brought the kids by every Wednesday. It was something Archie usually looked forward to, but with all the drama, he’d lost track of what day it was. “They’re still coming,” Archie said, rubbing his eyes.

           
“Say hi,” said Henry. He hesitated, and then, in a tone that made Archie wonder if Henry sensed something was wrong, he added: “I’ll check in later.”

           
“Okay,” Archie said. He dropped the receiver back into its cradle and glanced up at the TV. It had already gone back to Perry Mason.