Evil at Heart (31 page)

           
Susan glanced over at Archie. “Seriously?” she said, but she typed it in anyway. Declined. “Nope,” she said.

           
Susan tried a few other words: Alaska. Harley. Woodworker.

           
Nothing.

           
“Try ‘Claire,’ ” Archie said.

           
“Oh,” Susan said. “That’s romantic.”

           
She typed it in.

           
Declined.

           
“Shit,” she said. “It always looks so easy when they guess passwords in the movies. Want to go to the library?”

           
“I have an idea,” Archie said. He leaned back on the couch, picked up the landline from an end table, and punched in a number. Susan heard Henry’s voice say hello on the other end.

           
“What’s your Wi-Fi password?” Archie asked him.

           
Henry muttered something.

           
“Thanks,” Archie said. “See you tonight.” He hung up the phone. “LynyrdSkynyrd 1,” he told Susan.

           
“He added a one,” Susan said. “So it would be harder to guess.”

           
“He is very clever,” Archie said.

           
“But not as clever as we,” Susan said.

           
She typed in Henry’s password, got online, and went to Google Earth.

           
“What’s your plan?” Archie asked.

           
“The house is on the three hundred block. I could type in every three hundred combination and check street views until we see the house. Or I could zoom into the neighborhood, look for the roof, click on it, and get all the information we need. There. Three-three-three North Fargo.

           
“You can even see the address there,” Susan said, pointing at the screen, where the numbers on the porch clearly read 333. “Someone covered that address with a new one. Changed it to three-nine-seven. Why?”

           
“Because the number was important.”

           
“Again,” Susan said. “I ask why.”

           
“Because it’s not an address,” Archie said. “It’s a date. March 1997. We only found one victim that month. Isabel Reynolds.”

           
“She had dark hair,” Susan said. “Like her brother Leo.”

           
“Yeah.”

           
“I think I saw her picture on one of the fan sites I was researching.” She thought for a minute, trying to recover the name.

           
Then she typed in: www.iheartgretchenlowell.com.

           
“You have got to be kidding me,” Archie said, seeing the URL.

           
The home page came up. A photograph of Gretchen. Click to enter. “Just wait,” Susan said.

           
She clicked on the photograph and went to the menu page. The menu items included Fan Fiction, Poetry, Gallery, Merchandise, Chat Room, and Archie Sheridan.

           
She tried to move the cursor over the Gallery link, but Archie put his hand on her arm. “Click on it,” he said.

           
She rolled the cursor over Archie’s name and clicked. Photographs came up, pictures of his family. The house they had shared in Hillsboro. There were photographs of Archie’s wedding day, his graduations from college and the academy, photographs of him standing at crime scenes, giving press conferences. A biography.A history of his involvement with the task force. There was even a subpage of Fan Fiction.

           
“What’s that?” Archie asked, pointing to the fan fiction link.

           
Susan had been hoping he wouldn’t ask. “People write stories about what they think happened between you and Gretchen,” she said. “When she tortured you.”

           
Archie scratched the back of his neck. “How many of these sorts of Web sites are there?”

           
“I found over four hundred,” Susan said. “Here, this is what I wanted you to see.” She clicked on Gallery, and scrolled down until she found the photograph. It was labeled “Reynolds, Isabel.”

           
It had been taken at the scene. She was curled on her side in the backseat, her arms bound in front of her, her mouth gagged. Her head was bent back, and a black gash marked where her throat had been cut. She had bled onto the seat underneath her head, and the blood had dried and sealed her tangle of brown hair to the vinyl. Her eyes were half open, the lids swollen. Her gray skin was flecked with veins. She looked like something carved out of Italian marble.

           
She’d been dead a few days. And Jeremy Reynolds had witnessed it. How did you ever get over something like that?

           
“Go to the chat room,” Archie said.

           
Susan looked over at him. He was engaged now, sitting forward, elbows on his knees. She navigated to the chat room. There were dozens of posts, most with accompanying icons that were in some way Gretchen-related. Her picture.A cartoon heart.A scalpel.

           
“When the Earth Liberation Front was really active,” Archie said, “their members communicated through chat rooms. That way they didn’t have to use e-mail addresses. They just went to an agreed-upon Web site. And used the chat room to set up meetings.” He reached over her and began to scroll down through the posts. “Here,” he said. He reached forward, touching the screen.

           
Susan read the post aloud: “Produce. Midnight.Tonight.” She looked at him. “Produce what?”

           
“Produce,” Archie said. “As in fruit and vegetables.As in the Produce District. We found one of Gretchen’s victims in the basement of a warehouse there. Good place for a Beauty Killer Elks Club meeting. Want to go?”

           
“Fuck, yeah,” Susan said.

           
C H A P T E R 38

           
Susan spent the rest of the day working. She even knocked on the doors of the orderly’s neighbors. He always seemed so nice. And cold-called Courtenay Taggart’s family. She was such a lovely girl. That night, Susan ate a vegan lasagna with her mother, waited until eleven-thirty, and then went back to pick up Archie.

           
He met her around the block, at the point they had arranged. She didn’t know if he’d sneaked out a back window while Henry was asleep, and she didn’t ask.

           
There was no traffic that time of night and they made it to the Produce District in fifteen minutes. Susan parked under the MorrisonStreetBridge. The tangle of highways overhead made that part of town seem especially gritty and urban. There was usually more car noise, but it was late and only the occasional semi roared past over their heads. Archie emptied his pockets, putting two cell phones in the glove box of her car, and then untucked his shirt, tucked the gun that Jack Reynolds had given him in the back of his pants, and arranged the shirt back over it. Susan inventoried her

           
mace. It was dark in the Produce District at night. And the wide streets and concrete loading docks made the place seem especially empty.

           
“This way,” Archie said. Susan followed him down the street and around the corner to an enormous old warehouse. Inner industrial Southeast Portland was full of them. But this one, at five stories, was especially looming.

           
Archie hopped up onto the loading dock and went to an unmarked fire door.

           
“I went to a show here once in high school,” Susan said, as Archie closed the fire door behind them. “They used to have an all-ages club upstairs.”

           
“Fascinating,” Archie said.

           
The warehouse didn’t store produce anymore. Instead it seemed to be filled mostly with Asian furniture, reeking of orange-oil furniture polish and tatami. A few fluorescent lights flickered overhead, illuminating great stacks of glossy ornate cabinets, Chinese lamps, trunks, Buddha statues, plant stands. Susan didn’t see any security cameras. If they’d been futon thieves, there’d have been nothing to stop them.