Evil at Heart (15 page)

           
“You’re him, aren’t you?” The old woman tilted her head again in the direction of the front window display.

           
“No,” Archie said.

           
She nodded. “You’re that detective.”

           
She picked up one of the angels and held it out to him. There was a brass plaque at the angel’s feet with a pretty script. Three words.

           
WATCH OVER ME.

           
She set it in his hand.

           
C H A P T E R 17

           
A sign posted in the elevator up to the psych ward read:

           
SHOULD THE ELEVATOR DOORS FAIL TO OPEN DO NOT BECOME ALARMED. THERE IS LITTLE DANGER OF RUNNING OUT OF AIR OR OF THIS ELEVATOR DROPPING UNCONTROLLABLY.

           
“That’s reassuring,” Archie said to the candy striper riding in the elevator next to him.

           
Her eyes widened.

           
“It’s for the crazy people,” Archie explained. “We panic easily.”

           
He wasn’t making her more comfortable. He decided to stop talking. Then he noticed that she was holding an envelope in her hand with his name on it. The envelope was big and square and pink and hard to miss. The candy striper was fanning her face with it. They weren’t called candy stripers anymore. Archie didn’t know what they were called.

           
“That’s for me,” Archie said.

           
She wasn’t a teenager. College, maybe. She shot Archie a reflexive smile. “I have to deliver it to the ward,” she said. “Before I can go to lunch.”

           
The elevator doors opened and they both stepped out into the psych ward’s minuscule lobby. The girl was hesitant.

           
“You’ve never been up here before,” Archie said.

           
“Are there psychos?” she whispered.

           
“Tons,” Archie said. He pressed the call buzzer. “It’s Archie Sheridan,” he said.

           
“Just a minute, Mr. Sheridan,” a nurse’s voice responded.

           
The girl looked down at the name on the card. “I guess you are you,” she said.

           
“I’m pretty sure I still am,” Archie said. He noticed her nails then. French pink with bloodred tips. Women liked it when you complimented them. Archie didn’t know much about women, but he knew that. “I like your nails,” he said.

           
Her cheeks dimpled and she inspected a fluttering hand. “It’s called a ‘Beauty Killer,’ ” she said. “My manicurist says all the celebrities are doing it.”

           
Archie nearly choked. A Beauty Killer manicure? Everyone had lost their minds.

           
“Are you okay?” the girl asked.

           
Muffled hollering echoed from behind the door. Archie recognized the bellicose ranting of his roommate, Frank.

           
The girl drew a sharp breath.

           
“He’s harmless,” Archie assured her.

           
The girl tapped a foot and bit her bottom lip. “What’s taking them so long?”

           
“They’re distracted,” Archie said. It took a few minutes and several staff members to subdue one of Frank’s tantrums. He gave the girl what he hoped was a sane smile. From inside the ward, Frank howled something about devils. The girl stiffened. “Why don’t you just give me the card?” Archie suggested.

           
She considered it for a split second, then pushed the card into Archie’s hand.

           
“Okay,” she said, hitting the elevator button. The doors opened immediately and she leaped inside. “Nice angel,” she said as the doors slid closed.

           
Archie set the angel down on the table of Al-Anon brochures and examined the envelope.

           
There was no postmark, which meant that it hadn’t come through the mail—someone had dropped it off at the hospital. The return address was 397 North Fargo. No name. The body had been found on Fargo. The address wasn’t in Gretchen’s handwriting, but it would not have been hard for her to find someone else to write it. Archie worked his finger under the flap and along the glue line, and pulled out the card.

           
The card was old-fashioned, the paper softened with age. Two red hearts were connected by a gold chain. Below the hearts was a white ribbon emblazoned with the words A VALENTINE MESSAGE. Archie opened the card. Printed inside, in pretty cursive, was a poem: “May this chain/Be the one sweet tether/That binds your heart/And mine together.”

           
She could get to him anywhere. It was just a matter of time.

           
Frank’s screaming quieted, and a nurse came and opened the door. Archie walked inside.

           
He left the angel on the table.

           
C H A P T E R 18

           
Susan sat glued to her computer at the Herald. She had copy due at two. And it was already quarter of.

           
Eyeballs in a toilet tank. Susan wondered if Gretchen had gouged them out while the people were still alive, or waited until after she’d murdered them. Either way, it made Susan’s eyes ache just thinking about it.

           
The Pittock Mansion Head, as everyone was already calling it, had made national news. CNN quoted a source at the ME’s office saying that the head’s eyes were missing. They were running an online poll where you could guess what color they were going to turn out to be. Brown was winning two to one.

           
The Herald was abuzz. The TVs bolted to the ceiling were all tuned to live reports from the house on Fargo and from the Gorge and from Pittock. There was talk already of doing another special issue. Susan was working on a first-person account of finding the body; Derek was working the news angle and Ian had sent two other reporters up to the mansion. Thanks to Henry, Susan had broken the additional details about the rest-stop story on the Herald Web site. The eyeballs.The hearts on the wall.The spleen. They’d go big on it the next day—front page, above the fold. Henry had promised a sketch of the dead guy in the house by deadline, so they could run it and see if anyone recognized him.

           
The cops had their Beauty Killer Task Force; the Herald had its own version—Susan and Derek, plus two other reporters, two editors, two photographers, a copy editor, and an intern. They’d profiled the families of victims. They’d tracked down people who claimed to have seen Gretchen Lowell since her escape. They’d interviewed anyone and everyone who’d ever had contact with her and lived. The only thing they hadn’t done was a background on her. No one knew where Gretchen Lowell came from. There was a record of her being picked up for writing a bad check in Salt Lake City when she was nineteen. That was it. No school records. No birth certificate.

           
Just a lot of bodies and the few biographical details Gretchen had doled out in prison, most of which were probably lies. The lack of information had left the reporters covering the manhunt with little choice but to recycle the same interviews, the same experts, over and over again.

           
The thrill of the hunt had turned tedious and a gallows humor had taken root. A photograph of Gretchen Lowell peppered with darts hung on the wall. Ian had given everyone in the group mugs with Gretchen Lowell’s face on them and the words I’D KILL FOR SOME COFFEE.

           
“What did Gretchen Lowell give Archie Sheridan for Valentine’s Day?” the intern asked. She never remembered his name. She just thought of him as “the intern.”

           
“Not in the mood,” Susan said, eyes on her monitor.

           
“His heart,” the intern said. “Ha!” He was wearing a RUN, GRETCHEN T-shirt and Kissinger glasses that were either incredibly hip or deeply uncool—Susan hadn’t figured out which. She glared at him, and he turned back to his computer.

           
“I’m forwarding it,” he said.

           
“You do that,” Susan said.

           
She went back to cramming her near-death experience into thirty inches. Advertising was tight, and it took more than a dead body and a serial killer to justify space for a story someone couldn’t read, in one sitting, on a toilet.