Evil at Heart

by Chelsea Cain

  “She wants to help you,” Buddy says.

  “Thanks,” Archie says. He sits back down and opens a crime report, hoping they’ll get the message. “But I don’t need therapy.”

  Buddy elbows Gretchen Lowell and winks. “Archie Sheridan is solid as a rock. Married his college sweetheart. I don’t think the guy’s ever been drunk.”

  “I’ve been drunk,” Archie says.

  Buddy suddenly taps his pocket, pulls out a cell phone and frowns. He holds up a finger and slides past Gretchen out of the room. “Hey, honey,” he says into the phone. “I’m with Archie.”

  Archie sighs.

  Gretchen doesn’t move. She just looks at him and smiles.

  “How do you know the mayor?” Archie asks.

  “I can be of use to you,” she says.

  This was all he needed—the mayor’s latest conquest hanging around the task force, giving pep talks. His team would never speak to him again. But the mayor allocated task force funding. If she was sleeping with Buddy, in the end Archie probably wouldn’t have any say.

  “You’ve all been at this for what, ten years?” she asks.

  “Some of us,” Archie says.

  “I’m just offering coping skills. Not counseling. Just talk.” She pushes herself off the door and walks forward, her high heels making her hips swing.

  She leans forward and turns around the photograph that he keeps framed on his desk. “Your family?” she asks.

  “Yes,” he says.

  She turns it back to face Archie. “They’re lovely.”

  “Thank you,” Archie says.

  “I’m not sleeping with him,” Gretchen says.

  Archie coughs. He glances out his office door for the mayor, but he is still down the hall on the phone.

  “Not that it’s any of your business,” she adds.

  Archie shakes his head. “No, of course not.”

  She spins the open file on his desk around and picks up an autopsy photo of the Beauty Killer’s latest victim. Her eyes get large. “Who’s this?” she asks.

  Archie is grateful for something else to talk about. “His name’s Matthew Fowler. We found his body up at Pittock Mansion last week.”

  “I heard about that,” Gretchen says. Her bottom lip quivers slightly as she examines the color image of Matthew Fowler’s open chest cavity. She shudders. “What happened to him?”

  Archie takes the photograph from her and puts it back in the file. “I don’t think you want to know,” he says gently.

  Gretchen lowers her gaze at Archie. “Try me.”

  Archie sits back in his chair and looks at her. She has no idea what he’s seen. She’s read the sanitized newspaper accounts and watched the true-crime shows on TV and thinks she can spend a few weeks on the case and then write a paper for some academic journal. “He was disemboweled,” Archie says.

  She lifts her hand to her mouth and turns her head away.

  “This sort of work isn’t for people with delicate stomachs,” Archie says.

  She turns back to him and lowers her hand, straightening up a little, as if to steel her resolve. “How?” she asks.

  Maybe Archie had underestimated her. “Disemboweled” was usually a conversation stopper. “Transanally,” Archie says. “With the aid of an unidentified suction device.”

  Gretchen’s eyelids flutter. Archie had stopped sharing crime-scene details with Debbie years ago. Those images stayed with you. The fewer you had floating around the better. He readies the coup de grace.

  “Then the Beauty Killer shoved a glass rod up his penis and shattered it,” Archie adds.

  He can hear her breathing—short, rapid inhalations, her trepidation palpable. “Are you trying to scare me away?” she asks.

  “This isn’t a hobby,” Archie says.

  “I’m not a dilettante.”

  “What are you?”

  She perches on the front edge of his desk, sets her mouth in determination, and fans out all the photographs from the autopsy file.

  Her body trembles as she scans the images, and her hand finds the soft curve of her throat. But she keeps looking. And after a minute, she places a manicured finger on an anterior shot of Matthew Fowler’s head. “What are these marks, here?” she asks.

  Archie glances down. “Part of his scalp was surgically removed,” he says. “And the skull beneath was shaved down.”

  Her eyes are suddenly huge and animated. She grins and gives the photograph a triumphant tap. “Amativeness,” she says. “It’s a concept in phrenology. The brain is the organ of the mind. Certain areas have specific functions, as reflected by the cranial bone.”

  Archie looks at the picture. He feels the throb of her excitement. It has been months since they’ve had a good lead. “Amativeness?” he says.

  She takes his hand in hers, bends her head down, and lifts his hand to her head to illustrate. Her emotion—the fever of discovery—courses between them like a current. It’s intoxicating. “This spot back here,” she says, moving his fingers in her hair between her ear and neck, exploring the edge of her skull. He feels the bony lump, hard and warm beneath his fingertips. “It’s the amativeness module,” she says. “It correlates with sexual attraction.”

  Archie pulls his hand away and clears his throat.

  Gretchen sweeps her hair back and lifts her head. “All that fury,” she says, “and you still think the Beauty Killer is a man?”

  Archie looks at Gretchen Lowell, just a few feet away from him, and he knows that he can never allow her into the investigation. He will just have to tell Buddy no. It’s too dangerous. But not in the way he first thought.

  “Hi,” says a voice from the doorway.

  Archie’s heart skips. Debbie.

  He turns, and there, in the doorway, stands his wife carrying a bag of takeout.

  She holds it up and smiles, and then raises a quizzical eyebrow at Gretchen.

  How to explain this?

  “This is Gretchen Lowell,” Archie says. “She’s a psychiatrist. She’s going to be consulting with us.” He pushes back his chair, gets up, walks over to his wife, and kisses her lightly on the lips. “My wife, Debbie.”

  C H A P T E R 21

  It had been fifteen minutes since Archie had taken the pill.

  Bedtime at Bedlam was nine o’clock. Sedatives were passed out at eight-thirty. Archie didn’t need to stay up long. He just needed to stay up longer than Frank. He was hoping that the five cups of coffee he’d had since dinner would buy him some time.

  Unlike regular meds, which they made you line up for, the night nurse delivered the sedatives right to the room. They didn’t want you taking a sleeping pill and then falling flat on your face before they could tuck you in. It was the same every night. This time, Archie needed it to be different. Frank and Archie were in their respective beds. Frank’s light was off; Archie kept his on. He usually read in bed, but he couldn’t risk dozing off. Instead Archie rested on his side, listening to the sound of Frank breathing.

  The pill made his blood feel warm. He had to fight it. Concentrate on blinking, prying open the lids that wanted to stay closed.

  Frank shifted in his bed, sighing and chomping.

  Frank, who had arrived two weeks after Archie checked himself in, and who was always around, just in earshot.

  Archie’s eyes closed. He liked the sedatives. It was the closest feeling to Vicodin that they allowed him. He liked the feeling of his body letting go, of giving in.

  Frank took in a great rattling breath and released a slow snore.

  Archie opened his eyes, glanced up at the surveillance camera in the corner of the room, and reached up and turned off the light.

  With the lights off, the camera was useless.

  He waited, counting Frank’s snores.

  When he got to ten, Archie got out of bed and felt his way around the perimeter of the room to Frank’s built-in Formica dresser. Archie slid the drawers out slowly, as quietly as he could, and felt inside, running hi
s hands along the sides of each drawer and shuffling through the clothing. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but if Gretchen had gotten a phone to Archie, maybe she had gotten something to Frank, too.

  But Archie found nothing.

  He got down on the floor and ran his hand underneath Frank’s bed. Frank made a garbled noise and turned over on his side. Archie froze. And waited. When Frank’s snoring became rhythmic again, Archie got up, went back to his own bed, sat down, reached under the blanket and felt around until he found the phone he’d hidden there.

  Gretchen had him chasing his own shadow.

  Archie sat there, in the dark, for a long time. Then he looked down at the phone, highlighted the single number in the log, and pressed call.

  It picked up on the second ring.

  He listened to it for a long moment. He listened for her breathing, for the catch of saliva in her throat, an involuntary sigh. Nothing. Only dead air. He could still hang up.

  Next to him, Frank snored peacefully.

  “Are you there?” Archie said quietly.

  He heard her exhale slowly, as if she’d been holding her breath. “Darling,” she said. “I’ve been worried about you.”

  It had been so long since he’d heard her voice that he had forgotten how lovely it was, her perfect enunciation and honey tones. The effects of the pill vanished. Archie lay back in bed. “We had an agreement,” he said.

  “I’ve been waiting for your call,” Gretchen said.

  “Here I am,” Archie said.

  “Are you having fun?” she asked.

  It was a game to her, like tossing a ball for a dog. She was exercising him. “I’m giving you the chance to turn yourself in,” he said.

  There was a pause. “Or what?”

  Archie gritted his teeth, and his fist tightened around the phone. “I’m coming for you.”

  “Oh, goody,” she said.

  She hung up and Archie rested the phone on his chest under the blanket.

  It was quiet.

  Frank wasn’t snoring.

  “Frank?” Archie said into the darkness. “You awake?”

  Frank didn’t answer. Maybe he was plotting how to murder Archie in his sleep.

  Archie felt the slippery warmth of the sedative take hold again. This time, he surrendered to it. His last awareness was the weight of the phone still sitting on his chest.

  C H A P T E R 22

  Archie bolted upright in bed to the sound of screaming.

  He turned on the light, took a couple of breaths, and tried to order his thoughts. Frank snored softly in his bed. It was dark outside.

  Life in the psych ward was basically made up of long periods of boredom punctuated by shouting.

  Screaming at night? Not so unusual.

  Except that this scream was not the scream of someone ranting. This was authentic terror.

  Archie got up, put on his slippers, and went to the door. The patients weren’t supposed to leave their rooms at night. It was the kind of thing that earned you a demerit and cost you privileges. Archie listened through the door as the conversation outside heightened. He heard the word “police.”

  He opened the door.

  Courtenay’s room was the fourth door on the left. A nurse was sitting on the floor just outside it being comforted by the orderly who’d tried to help Courtenay in the break room. George.

  Courtenay’s door was open.

  Archie walked down the hallway. Other doors opened, as patients began to peer out, but none of them dared enter the corridor. Only Archie. George looked up at Archie as he approached, his hand still patting the distraught nurse. Her face was flushed, the color of the scrubs.

  Archie got to Courtenay’s door and looked inside. The mattress on the floor was soaked with blood. And on top of it lay Courtenay. At first glance, she looked like she was sleeping. She was resting on her back, her arms at her sides. Her eyes were closed. Her lips slightly parted. She looked like a fairy-tale princess waiting for a kiss.

  A blanket lay in a pile at the foot of the mattress. Archie could imagine what had happened. The night nurse comes in to check on Courtenay, maybe to give her more meds, thinks she’s asleep, pulls back the blanket, sees the blood . . .

  Once you knew, you could see it on her face—the bluish tint to her lips, the gray skin. Archie squatted next to her and touched her arm. The skin was cool. She’d been dead a few hours.

  Then he noticed something about her face. You couldn’t tell unless you were up close, but there was something about the shape of her profile that wasn’t quite right. Archie reached over with his thumb and very gently lifted one of her eyelids.

  Underneath was an empty cavern of blood and tissue.

  Archie sat back on his heels and looked around the room. It didn’t take him long. There, on the wall directly across, was a single heart that looked like it had been drawn with Courtenay’s blood.

  George was standing in the doorway.

  “Lock down the ward,” Archie told him. “No staff leaves.”

  George didn’t move. “This is because of you,” he said.

  “Yes,” Archie said. Courtenay was in lockdown. Frank wouldn’t have been able to get in. But an orderly would have.

  Archie stiffened and turned around.

  This is because of you. It wasn’t a question. It was a statement.

  He’d been wrong about Frank.

  “Where is she?” he asked George.

  George smiled. “Are you having fun yet?” he asked.

  Gretchen’s words.

  George blinked heavily. “Fun yet?” he repeated.

  He stumbled.

  Archie lunged for him.

  George’s smile spread wider and he lifted an unsteady hand to his forehead. Archie got to him just as he swayed backward, and managed to grab him by the shirt as he fell to the floor. George was on his knees, head back, Archie standing over him, holding him by the neck of his scrubs.

  “Where is she?” Archie demanded, shaking him. George didn’t respond, didn’t react at all. His eyes were already shiny slits, his breathing shallow. Archie was yelling now. But it was useless. Gretchen didn’t leave loose ends. Archie’s shoulders heaved in a dry sob and his voice cracked. “Where is she?”

  Someone took him by the shoulders and pulled him off George. Archie sank back against the wall, just inside the door, a few feet away from where Courtenay lay. The blanket was pulled back and one of her arms was exposed. That arm, still bandaged in white gauze at the wrist, was the saddest thing Archie thought he’d ever seen. It’s down the road, not across the street.

  Archie was helpless. He just sat there, as three nurses laid George out on the floor and worked to save his life. About five chest compressions into CPR, one of the nurses stopped and looked at her hand.

  “He’s bleeding,” she said.

  Archie sat forward to get a better view. Sure enough, the nurse had blood on the heel of her hand and a red stain had bloomed on George’s chest, where the nurse had been compressing it. She pulled his shirt up, but his chest appeared uninjured.

  “Check his pocket,” Archie said, sitting back against the wall.

  The nurse slid a hand into the breast pocket of George’s scrubs.

  Archie didn’t see what was in her hand when she pulled it out, but he saw her mouth open and the skin of her face stretch back in horror.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered.

  That kind of delicate tissue probably squashed easily.

  “It’s her eyes,” the nurse said.

  C H A P T E R 23

  When Archie woke up, he thought for a second that it had all been a dream. Then he saw Henry sitting on the plastic chair by his bed. The sun was not yet up, but the sky was a pretty shade of pale violet.

  “You crawled in here and fell asleep,” Henry said. “You’ve been out cold.”

  Archie rubbed his face and looked over at Frank’s bed. He was gone. “It must have been the sedative,” he said. He didn’t remember ev
en coming back into his room.

  “George Hay is dead,” Henry said. “Vicodin overdose.” He glanced up at Archie. “Nice touch, huh?”

  “He must have taken more than I did,” Archie said.

  Henry looked at Archie without a hint of amusement. His reading glasses were up on his forehead, and he flipped them down to his nose and glanced at the notebook open in his lap. “We reviewed the security tapes,” he said. “Hay went into her room at 8:49, out at 8:52.” Four minutes. That was all it took to snuff out a life. Henry continued. “She’d been sedated at 8:30. She was lying on her stomach. The security camera in her room went out at 8:46. He must have disabled it before he went in.” Henry waved his hand in the air, not looking up. “Apparently that happens sometimes—the camera feed goes static—which is why the nurses weren’t concerned.” He scanned another page of the notebook. “Looks like the first cut severed her spinal cord, which is why she didn’t cry out. He stabbed her multiple times in the back and then must have flipped her over and covered her with the blanket. She bled out pretty quickly.”