Evil at Heart (56 page)

           
He doesn’t take them for the pain anymore.

           
She lifts her cuffed hands and gestures to the chair across the table from her. “Do you want to sit down?”

           
His broken ribs are still healing, making sitting difficult. The cotton of his shirt chafes his raw scars. The heart-shaped scar on his chest still bleeds sometimes. “I think I’ll stand,” he says.

           
She nods in understanding. “Of course,” she says.

           
It’s warm in there, and Archie pulls at the collar of his shirt. He is there for the victims. This is what he’s told himself, what he’s told Henry, Debbie. No one expected him to give in to her crazy demands to meet with him. She’d nearly killed him. But he’s dragged himself there to help with the identification project, for the victims.

           
The victims.

           
It wasn’t the whole truth.

           
It has been two months since her arrest, and he’s gotten tired of waiting for the other shoe to drop. She hasn’t told anyone about

           
their relationship. He is prepared to deny it. He can explain the time they had spent together in the context of the case. But wondering why she has remained quiet is killing him.

           
“What do you want from me?” he asks Gretchen.

           
“You’ve read the plea agreement,” she says. “I’m going to confess. I’m going to tell you everything, every person I murdered. You can close all the cases.”

           
“Just like that.”

           
“You’ll earn it,” she says, and Archie feels the promise of that statement heavy in the room.

           
“Why did you do it?” he asks her. He doesn’t mean the murders. He means the affair.

           
“For fun,” she says. But he’s not sure which question she’s answering.

           
He leans back against the door, feeling weak.

           
“Sit down,” she says again. “Please.”

           
He does this time, making his way to the table and lowering himself painfully onto the chair.

           
“Don’t be sad,” she says. “You caught me. You’re a hero. You got exactly what you wanted.”

           
A hero. He’s been manipulated from the start. Amativeness. He wonders if it is even a real thing.

           
“Name a case you want to close, a case that’s important to you.”

           
Archie rolls his head back and looks at the ceiling. His scalp tingles from the Vicodin. He just wants to go home. To beg for forgiveness. It’s all right, she had said when he was dying in her arms. And he’d believed her. He lifts his head and glances over at the one-way glass. Something good might as well come out of all this.

           
“Isabel Reynolds,” he says.

           
Something changes in Gretchen’s face—a tiny lift of her eyebrows, a minuscule furrow between them. Her mouth tightens almost imperceptibly.

           
“She’s special,” Gretchen says. “She will be a prize. I’ll tell you about her, darling. When you’re ready.”

           
Archie sits up a little. Gretchen’s face has reverted to a convivial mask. But for a second, he’s seen through her.

           
She had manipulated him, toyed with him, tortured him, but in the process she’d let him see her. He knows her—at least some small part of her. And it might be enough to work to his advantage.

           
“Matthew Fowler,” Archie says.

           
Gretchen smiles. “You called it a glass rod,” she says. “It was a swizzle stick.” She lifts a hand and rotates a finger in the air. “I worked a swizzle stick up Matthew Fowler’s urethra.” She looks off in the middle distance, a slight smile on her face, as if she is reliving a fond memory. “It took almost half an hour. I had to be very delicate, very precise. Once it was completely inserted I wrapped my hand around the bottom of the shaft and I broke it.” Her hand tightens into a fist. “I just kept squeezing. I could feel the snap inside him under my hand.” She relaxes her hand and her smile widens. “All at once, this blood full of tiny pieces of glass came pouring out of the tip of his cock.”

           
Archie reaches into his pocket, gets his new pillbox out, dumps some Vicodin in his hand and swallows them.

           
She looks up. “Should I continue?” she asks.

           
“I’m here,” he says.

           
C H A P T E R 63

           
The house on North Fargo was dark. There were two streetlights on the block, one at each corner. The abandoned house sat in the middle of the block, with two empty lots on each side and a new FOR SALE sign in the yard. An enterprising billboard company had erected a standing billboard on the left-most lot, nearest the freeway exit. Plastered on it was a huge photograph of a woman jogging. EXERCISE CAN SAVE YOUR LIFE read the slogan along the bottom.

           
“Twelve hundred people die every month jogging,” Susan said.

           
Archie held Henry’s gun on his lap. The perimeter of the house was taped off with crime tape tied to wooden stakes. The front door would be sealed with more crime tape. But Archie couldn’t see it. It was too dark.

           
“How did you get in before?” he asked.

           
“Through a broken basement window,” Susan said.

           
Archie raised an eyebrow at her.

           
“I didn’t do it,” she said.

           
“Show me.”

           
They got out of the car. Susan’s Saab was the only car parked on that block. He held the gun at his side, but he disengaged the safety. She was in there. He could feel her.

           
Susan directed him up the mossy concrete steps, through the overgrown yard, around the side of the house. As he followed her lead, he managed to keep a step ahead, one arm out in front of her, as if that small attempt at protection would make a difference.

           
They got to the window. It had been covered with new plywood. Archie sank to his knees in the soft dirt in front of it.

           
The plywood was screwed on tight, no way to pry it off. All the windows had probably been reinforced. The front door was certainly padlocked.

           
“Here,” Susan said. She knelt beside him, rummaged through her bag, and came up with a pocket tool. She opened it with a flick of her wrist, folded out the screwdriver, and set about unscrewing the screws that held the plywood in place.

           
He watched her in amazement as she quickly twisted out the screws and then lifted the plywood aside.

           
Susan’s face was suddenly flooded with color, her hair a blaze of purple. There was a light on in the basement. Archie pushed Susan to the left of the window, out of view of anyone watching, and held the plywood back in place.

           
“She’s here,” Susan whispered in the darkness.

           
Archie reached out and sealed her lips with his finger.

           
He waited a moment, letting his heartbeat slow. Then he moved the plywood back aside, and peered in the window. He could see broken glass below on the basement floor. The light wasn’t coming from the main room. There was another room. Off the basement stairs.A boiler room.

           
Archie tucked the gun in his pants, placed his hands on either side of the window, and lowered himself through.

           
The glass crunched under his feet. He looked back at Susan, concerned face framed in the window, and motioned for her to stay there. He drew the gun and moved toward the light.

           
The door to the old boiler room was open, and light from it spilled in a warped rectangle on the concrete floor. The room was large, maybe a quarter of the basement’s square footage. The boiler was long gone, replaced by a dust-covered furnace. There were fixtures for a washer and dryer and a hot water heater. A laundry line stretched across one corner, wooden clothespins clipped along it in a neat row.