Evil at Heart (36 page)

           
How old? Sixteen?

           
She Tasered him again. His body jerked involuntarily, causing a tiny dust storm to rise off the cement floor. The yellow bulb on the ceiling got smaller, like it was getting farther away.

           
They’d named the Taser after an old kids’ adventure book: Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle. They’d added the a. It was the kind of useless trivia that Susan would want to know.

           
He felt bad he’d never told her.

           
C H A P T E R 40

           
How long do we have?” Gretchen asks.

           
Archie takes his jacket off and lays it on the back of the chair. “An hour,” he says.

           
They are in her home office, where she sees patients. It is gray outside. The rain falls in steady cold sheets against the window behind Gretchen’s desk. Through the window Archie can see the plum trees in Gretchen’s backyard bend, their purple leaves trembling in the downpour.

           
Gretchen walks to the window and pulls the velvet curtains closed. “That long?” she says, walking back to him.

           
It is ten in the morning, and Archie has been up for six hours, most of it spent standing outside in the rain. He has left his muddy shoes inside the front door and is standing in his wet brown socks.

           
She stops a step in front of him and leans her head against his chest, like she’s listening for a heartbeat. The smell of her hair slows everything down. When he is with her he can almost forget the death that surrounds him. It’s one of the ways he justifies coming here. She keeps him sane. He can do his job better. Moral relativism.

           
Archie holds up the folder at his side. “I told Henry I was getting a consult,” he says. He tosses the folder on her desk.

           
She lifts her head and reaches up to touch his wet hair. “What happened to you?” she asks.

           
“I came from a crime scene,” he says. It was the third body in four weeks.

           
Her eyes soften and fill with tenderness. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I hate that you have to see that.” She kisses him on the cheek and then takes him by the hand and guides him to a chair. He sits down and Gretchen sinks to the floor in front of him. She takes one of his feet in her hands and peels off a wet sock.

           
She runs a finger down the top of his naked foot, to the tip of his toe. “You have beautiful feet,” she says.

           
He knows she’s lying—his feet are pale and calloused, with bunions the size of marbles.

           
“Anne thinks you’re right,” he says. “About the possibility of the killer being a woman.” Even at a time like this, his mind returns to work. “If it is a woman, Anne thinks she might have help. She says that dominant serial killers will sometimes take on partners with less powerful personalities.”

           
“Not partners,” Gretchen says, peeling off his other sock. “I’ve read the literature.” She drops the sock on the floor. “They’re more like apprentices.”

           
Archie shrugs. “Henry thinks it’s bullshit,” he says. “It challenges everything we know about serial killers. They’re supposed to be pudgy forty-year-old white guys with mother issues and panel vans.”

           
“Maybe they’re just the ones who get caught,” Gretchen says, climbing into Archie’s lap. She is settling in when she suddenly looks down and smiles. “You came ready to go,” she says, arching a teasing eyebrow.

           
“That’s my gun,” Archie says.

           
“Your gun,” Gretchen says, reaching to his right side and patting the leather gun holster on his belt. “Is over here.”

           
She unclips the holster, lifts it off his pants, and sets it on the end table next to the chair.

           
Then she reaches into his pants pocket and pulls out his cell phone, his keys, and his small field notebook, setting them all next to the gun.

           
After sliding her hand in the other pocket, she comes out with a pair of latex gloves.

           
“They’re for handling evidence,” Archie explains.

           
“Uh-huh,” she says. She tosses the gloves on the table with the rest, then unbuckles his belt, slides it out of the loops, holds it off to the side, and drops it on the floor.

           
The belt had been a gift from Debbie.

           
What was he doing here?

           
Archie takes Gretchen’s face lightly in his hands. His voice cracks with despair. “We need to talk,” he says. “I can’t keep doing this.”

           
She moves his knees apart and eases down between them, back onto the floor in front of him. He doesn’t stop her. They have done this before. But it still mesmerizes him. He can’t believe his luck, to be wanted by a woman like her.

           
She unbuttons and unzips his pants and her face disappears in a tangle of blond hair as she lowers her head to his lap.

           
The rain stops. Archie leans his head back and closes his eyes.

           
C H A P T E R 41

           
Someone had turned the lights out. When she’d fled into the hallway she had been met with a wall of inky black. Susan had never experienced darkness like that. She froze for a second, unsure of what to do. Then she ran to her left, tracing her hand along the concrete wall. It was cool to the touch and pitted where pieces of concrete had crumbled off over the years. She concentrated on that. It kept her from being enveloped by the darkness.

           
In all that black, noise overwhelmed her. Pipes knocking.Water gurgling. The slap of her boots on the concrete. She could hear her heart beat and her face throb. She had never breathed so loud in her entire life. Every sound was someone coming up behind her, someone ready to lay a hand on her shoulder, drive her head back, and slice open her throat.

           
She heard her little voice in her head. The voice sounded a lot like Archie’s.

           
Just keep moving.

           
Don’t panic.

           
Get out. Call for help.

           
Her phone was in her purse back in the boiler room, along with her mace. But Archie had put his phone in her glove box.

           
Susan closed her eyes and concentrated on her hand moving along the wall. There was a comfort to the dark canvas of her eyelids. Her darkness.Her control. She forced herself to clear her senses, to ignore the building’s noises and the beating of her heart, and to remember only the route they’d taken to get there—the route that, if reversed, would get her out.

           
She felt some pipes she remembered passing. She was close. Then her hand brushed against something. She stopped and ran both hands along the wall. Then she found it—a lever-style doorknob. The stairwell. She turned the knob, pushed the door in with her shoulder, slipped through, and pulled it closed behind her.

           
The quality of the dark was different. Susan could make out the shape of her body, the angle of the stairs, and at the top of the stairs, another door. This door was not entirely airtight, and through the broken seals of its perimeter shone ribbons of bright, milky, marvelous light. There were lights on. There were lights on in the hall upstairs.

           
She ran up the stairs, into the fluorescent-lit expanse of lacquered coffee tables, cabinets, and geisha screens. She didn’t stop. She kept running. Out the door, and into the night and down the dead-quiet middle of the street, and all the way to the car.

           
It was only then that she realized she didn’t have her keys.

           
She was locked out. And she couldn’t help but think that fate was punishing her for buying that fucking Beauty Killer key chain.

           
She rested her head against the top of the Saab, and fought back tears.

           
He’s counting on you.

           
She did a story on a car thief once. He’d stolen two hundred cars by the time he was sixteen. She stood up and started walking