Evil at Heart (24 page)

           
“How’s he doing?” she asked.

           
“He’s going to stay with me for a while,” Henry said.

           
“So I shouldn’t leave my panty hose hanging in the shower?” Claire asked.

           
“You don’t wear panty hose,” Henry said.

           
“I know,” she said. “But it sounded funny.”

           
They cleared a hedge and Henry could see a group of cops gathered around a couple sitting on a bench.

           
Henry popped a piece of licorice gum and snapped on a pair of latex gloves. “What do we have?” he asked Claire.

           
They rounded the bench. The other cops stepped back. “Meet Mr. and Mrs. Doe,” Claire said.

           
Henry took in the gruesome scene. The bodies had obviously been buried. They were practically mummified in grave wax, a sign they had been buried somewhere moist, probably sealed in something that protected them from bacteria. The features on the faces were beyond recognition, grins revealing brown teeth. That was good. That made dental records a possibility.

           
“Obviously not the clothes they died in,” Claire continued. “I checked the labels and pockets. Nothing. But I did find this.” She held up an evidence bag with a tiny thread of plastic in it. “It’s one of those plastic thingies that hold tags.”

           
“Plastic thingies?” Henry said.

           
“I don’t think that’s the technical name,” Claire said. “But they use them a lot at thrift stores to attach price tags. So I’m sending a few units around to some of the major stores to see if any of these lovely items seem familiar.”

           
“She bought them outfits and dressed them up so it would take longer for them to get noticed?” Henry said. It didn’t make sense. The smell was sure to tip someone off pretty quickly.

           
Claire looked down at the bodies. She wasn’t chewing gum. Henry had always admired that about her. She had a stomach of steel. “You think they’ll match the victim list?” she said.

           
Gretchen had confessed to a lot of murders, but she’d committed even more. And the task force maintained a list of people who’d gone missing during her ten-year killing spree. None of it made sense. Why would Gretchen be digging up her old victims? Unless they weren’t victims.

           
“You have anyone checking with the cemeteries?” Henry asked.

           
“Already on it,” Claire said. “So far, no one’s reporting any unauthorized exhumations.”

           
Henry smacked his licorice gum and leaned in close to get a look at the bodies.

           
It was impossible for him to tell if they’d had eyes when they were buried.

           
Henry heard Lorenzo Robbins’s voice behind him. “Easy there, Quincy,” he said. “That’s my job.”

           
Henry stepped aside and Robbins knelt down in his white Tyvek suit next to the corpses. Robbins tied his dreads back with a rubber band that looked like it had come off a newspaper, pulled on a pair of purple latex gloves, and gave the bodies a visual once-over.

           
“They didn’t die at the same time,” Robbins said. “One, maybe three or four years ago, the other more like two.”

           
Henry squinted at the corpses. They looked the same to him. “How do you know?” he said.

           
“Because I’m an ME,” Robbins said. “And you’re not.” He pulled out a penlight and shone it in the eye sockets of each body. “Also,” he said, “someone took their eyes out.”

           
Henry leaned in close to look in the eye sockets.

           
Robbins shooed him away. “Go do cop stuff,” he said.

           
Henry turned to Claire. “What’s our time frame?”

           
“Park opens at seven-thirty,” Claire said. “Not hard to get in before then. You just have to jump the gate. Groundskeepers say they cleared the park at closing last night—nine P.M. So the bodies were set up sometime between nine and when the old lady found them just after eight. She hit her medic alert alarm. The site was pretty well trampled. She told them what she’d found and they thought she’d had a stroke. Sent fire trucks.EMTs.The whole nine yards.”

           
Henry looked out over the grand vista of Portland. The city skyline.The mountains. Take away the news helicopters he could see approaching from the distance, and it was something to behold. Henry ticked off the crime scenes on his hand. “The Gorge,” he said. “PittockMansion.The Rose Garden. What do all of them have in common?”

           
Robbins looked up. “The letter O?”

           
Claire glanced out over the city. “They all have great views,” she said.

           
“And no eyes to see them,” Henry said.

           
“They couldn’t see anyway,” Robbins said. “They’re dead.”

           
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Henry said. “It’s a metaphor.”

           
C H A P T E R 29

           
The address on Susan’s card was on the other side of the river in Southwest Portland in a neighborhood that didn’t have trees or sidewalks. They’d had to take three freeways to get there. Susan peered through the windshield at the squat, ugly building. The windshield was dirty—you could trace the arcs of eyelash-sized legs and yellow juice where the wipers had ground dead bugs into the glass. That’s what rain did in the summer—it just sort of smeared everything around.

           
“Sorry about the windshield,” she said.

           
Archie didn’t answer. He looked at the valentine in his hand and then up at the building. “This is it,” he said.

           
“Which side?” Susan asked. The square, flat-roofed 1980s duplex sat at the end of a dead-end street. Nothing about the place worked. The first floor’s multicolored bricks didn’t match the second story’s gray vinyl siding. There were two front doors, one gray, one blue, each with a concrete stoop. The stoop with the gray door was bare; the stoop with the blue door was lined with plants in terra-cotta pots. Tattered Buddhist prayer flags fluttered from the railing.

           
“Four-A,” Archie said.

           
The blue door.

           
He started to get out of the car.

           
“Wait,” Susan said. “Don’t you have a gun?”

           
Archie gave her a patient smile. “The psych ward isn’t really big on guns,” he said. “Besides, I turned mine in when I took my leave of absence.”

           
“Well, go buy one at Wal-Mart or something,” Susan said.

           
Archie raised his eyebrows.

           
“Fine,” Susan said. “But I’m coming with you. Someone needs to keep you from getting murdered.”

           
He didn’t seem in the mood to argue. Susan had a special way of wearing people down like that. She got out of the car and followed him up the concrete walkway to 4A. There was no one around. A single squirrel ran across the yard and under a dying laurel hedge by the street.

           
Archie climbed the three steps up to the stoop and rang the doorbell. Susan heard it—an insistent buzz, like an oven timer—coming from the other side of the door. But no one answered.

           
“You’re not going to break in, are you?” Susan asked. “Because I’ve already broken into one house this week.” She choked back a nervous laugh. Archie wouldn’t break into a house. He was a grown-up. And a cop. He’d call Henry. Any minute now.

           
Susan glanced back at the street. Still no one around. No cars. The squirrel was gone.

           
Archie dropped to his haunches. Susan’s stomach knotted. He was going to break in. He was going to pick the lock. She imagined him asking her for a hairpin. That’s what they always did in the movies. She felt bad. She didn’t have a hairpin. He’d have to use a credit card.

           
But he didn’t ask for a hairpin. He flipped up the doormat. It was made of hemp fiber—she’d know it anywhere. Underneath the mat was an envelope. The corner of the envelope had been exposed, she now realized, though she hadn’t noticed it.