Evil at Heart

by Chelsea Cain

  Pearl shrugged. “So? I was into Wicca in junior high. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Where’s Jeremy Reynolds?” Henry demanded.

  Pearl just glared at him.

  “Let me talk to her,” Susan said.

  Henry pointed a finger at Pearl’s nose. “There’s a foster family with your name on it,” he said.

  “Go fuck yourself,” Pearl said.

  Henry’s face reddened and Susan wedged between him and Pearl. “How long have you been a part of the Beauty Killer . . .”—she looked for the right word—“group?”

  Pearl rolled her eyes and sighed. “I met Jeremy at the Country Fair in Eugene,” she said. “He invited me to join. It sounded fun. You hook up in the middle of the night in some scary spot and try to scare the shit out of each other.”

  “They scar themselves to look like murder victims,” Henry said behind Susan.

  “I didn’t know that until last night,” Pearl said.

  “Tell me about last night,” Susan said.

  Pearl stabbed at the sidewalk with one of her pointy shoes. “Look, last night went too far. I didn’t know the guys were going to pull that shit with the needle.” Her voice got small. “I thought they were just trying to mess with you.”

  “Jeremy’s not who you thought he was,” Susan said softly. “Is he?”

  Teenage girls didn’t join clubs because they sounded fun. They joined them because of boys.

  Pearl nodded, and her eyes filled with tears. “After you left, Sheridan pulled a gun,” she said. “Wanted to know where Jeremy was. Which was, you know, freaky, because Jeremy was right there.” She wiped her nose. “And then he got Tasered. Kind of a lot. He might have passed out.”

  “And then?” Henry said.

  “I don’t know,” Pearl said, sniffing. “I ran. I ran out of the building and up to Grand and then caught the number fourteen bus up Hawthorne.”

  Henry turned around and threaded his hands behind his head.

  “Those murders,” Susan said. “The bodies up at the Rose Garden. The head at Pittock Mansion. Gretchen Lowell didn’t kill those people. Jeremy did.”

  Pearl’s mouth got small and she frowned and dropped her head. “I thought he liked me,” she said.

  Susan patted her on the arm. “I know, sweetie.” She let Pearl meditate on her unfortunate love life for a moment, and then Susan leaned in, and in her best big-sister voice, asked, “Did he ever take you anywhere?”

  C H A P T E R 56

  Jeremy had covered Archie’s wounds with gauze and given him a towel to sit on. Archie sat naked, cross-legged, across from Jeremy, who sat naked in the same position. A scalpel case was open on the floor between them.

  “Any chance I can put my clothes back on?” Archie asked.

  “I need to see you,” Jeremy said.

  He picked up the scalpel and held it the way that Archie had shown him in the basement, dinner-knife style, and with his other hand he reached across and ran his fingers over the heart-shaped scar on Archie’s chest.

  Jeremy’s chest was brutalized. Some of the scar tissue looked quite old, pale and stretched, like he’d been cutting himself like this for years. Hash marks climbed his ribs, dashed his belly, and one thin scar ran along his lower rib line on the right side—where a splenectomy incision might be. It wasn’t thick enough to be anything but a surface laceration. Jeremy had cut himself to look like he’d had his spleen removed. To look like Archie.

  And up and down his arms and the insides of his thighs was the

  same triangular pattern they’d found on Isabel, carved over and over again. Some of the scars were barely discernible, some were recent. He’d been self-mutilating for a long time.

  Jeremy’s fingers moved away from Archie’s heart and traced the five-inch scar that ran up his midsection. “What’s this one?” Jeremy asked.

  It was the only scar that Gretchen hadn’t carved on him, a functional bold line, different from the other scars, like someone else’s handwriting. “I was bleeding internally when they brought me to the hospital,” Archie said. “They had to go back in and clean up the damage from when she took out my spleen.” It was the scar Archie felt most disconnected from, because unlike the scars Gretchen had left, Archie had no memory of getting it.

  “Fintan would have done it anyway,” Jeremy said. “He would have done it himself.”

  Archie glanced down at the scalpel in Jeremy’s hand. He needed to stall. “You met Fintan English at camp,” he said.

  Jeremy’s face was slack, his eyes distant. “We were in high school,” he said. “Fintan was as fucked-up as me.” He moved his free hand to his upper arm, and absentmindedly rubbed the triangle-shaped scars, as if they were the source of an old itch. He still held the scalpel in his other hand, wrist resting on his knee. “He wanted his spleen out,” Jeremy said. “It was all he talked about. No one took him seriously. Except for me. I read some books. And looked on the Internet. I printed out instructions.”

  Archie thought about the goat spleen that had been left in the rest-stop toilet. “You practiced on goats.”

  “Their spleens are about the same size,” Jeremy said. “I read that on the Internet, too.”

  “How’d the goats do?” Archie asked.

  “They all died,” Jeremy said. He leaned forward, so close to Archie that Archie could feel Jeremy’s breath on his face, and he

  put his mouth near Archie’s ear. “I wanted to know what it was like to be her,” he said. “To be Gretchen Lowell.” His lips brushed Archie’s ear. “And I liked it. I liked cutting into him. Reaching into his body. I liked the smell of it.” Jeremy paused. “It reminded me of Isabel.”

  Archie tried hard not to react. Jeremy was testing him.

  Jeremy sat back and looked at Archie for a long moment. “You can leave,” he said.

  Archie nodded. “I know.”

  “But you’re still here,” Jeremy said.

  “Because I’m interested in you, Jeremy.”

  Jeremy looked down at the scalpel. “You were nice to me when I was a kid,” he said. “My father and brother—I just reminded them of what had happened to Isabel. I could see it when they looked at me.”

  Jeremy’s upper lip started to twitch, and Archie could see the kid he’d met so long ago in the young man sitting in front of him. Lost, damaged, angry. Jeremy’s eyes narrowed with accusation. “I wanted you to take me away,” he said. The corners of his mouth went down and his lips trembled, as he fought back tears. “You know what they do.” His voice rose. “They’re criminals.” His face was so full of pain, it broke Archie’s heart. “Why didn’t you take me away?”

  Archie had never thought about it. He’d been so focused on catching the Beauty Killer, on solving Isabel’s murder, on protecting Jeremy from Gretchen and from the press, that he’d never really thought about protecting him from his father. “I’m sorry,” Archie said. It was really all he could think of to say.

  Jeremy started to cry. He cried like a child, body rocking, nose running, face pink and ugly. Gretchen had fucked Archie up, but she had broken Jeremy Reynolds.

  Jeremy took several gasping breaths, sat perfectly still for a moment,

  and then calmly lifted the scalpel and pressed it into his chest below his left nipple.

  “Don’t,” Archie said. “Please.” He watched as Jeremy dragged the blade over the heart scar that was there, in an effort to more approximate the scar on Archie’s own chest. But Jeremy was pushing too hard, and the skin split and spread apart, blood oozing from the fatty gash.

  Archie put his hand around Jeremy’s wrist. “It’s too deep, Jeremy,” he said. Jeremy was trembling, his face feverish, the scalpel still sliding through flesh and muscle. Archie had to get the scalpel out of Jeremy’s hand. “Why don’t you let me cut myself to look like you?” Archie said.

  Jeremy froze and glanced up. It was the first time that Archie saw something clear and solid in his gaze. It wasn’t too late.

&nb
sp; Archie held his hand out, palm up. “Give it to me,” he said.

  Jeremy lifted the scalpel out of his flesh and looked at it, blinking. Then he wiped the bloody blade on a corner of the towel he was sitting on, and handed the scalpel to Archie.

  And waited.

  “Okay,” Archie said.

  Jeremy was close. Archie felt like he had won his trust. Passed his tests. Now he could do this. Archie had survived ten days of torture at the hands of Gretchen Lowell. What were a few more scars?

  He looked at Jeremy’s arms and thighs, the triangle-shaped scars, the scars that Gretchen had carved on Isabel and none of her other victims.

  He lowered the blade to his thigh, on the inside, just above his left knee, and he pulled the scalpel over his skin. It was easy. The blade was sharp and it didn’t hurt. An inch-long line of blood formed instantly.

  “She had a sock with a brick in it and she’d hit Isabel in the head,” Jeremy said.

  Archie looked up.

  Jeremy did remember.

  And although Archie knew he should be thinking about Jeremy’s fragile psyche, about closing the case, about gathering more evidence against Gretchen, all he could think was: I am not alone.

  And he was glad. It was what he was after, wasn’t it? He wanted Jeremy to remember because it would mean that there was someone else who knew. Someone else who had survived. Someone else as damaged as Archie was.

  He didn’t want to be alone.

  Neither of them did.

  Jeremy was staring past him. The half-carved heart on his chest was still bleeding, and Jeremy must have gotten blood on his hands, because it was smeared on his face and arm.

  “She swung it hard,” he said. “It hit her here.” He touched his scalp, behind the left ear. Archie remembered Isabel’s autopsy reports. It matched the site of a small fracture the ME had found on her skull. “Then she tied her up.”

  Jeremy stopped and looked at Archie, his gaze flickering down to the small cut Archie had managed on his leg.

  Archie lifted the scalpel again and drew another line of blood in his thigh. He did it slowly this time. He had to be careful. If he used anything but the lightest touch, the scalpel would cut too deep.

  Jeremy continued. “Isabel was in the backseat. I was in the passenger seat. She didn’t tie me up. We didn’t talk. She drove us to the woods.” His voice was flat now, dissociative, like someone reporting the details of a dream. Archie wiped his blood off the scalpel onto the towel.

  “It must have been a timber road,” Jeremy said. “She had to get

  out and open one of those Forest Service gates. We drove for a long time. She didn’t say anything. Isabel woke up and was crying in the backseat. I could hear her, but I was too afraid to turn around or say anything.”

  Archie pressed the blade to his flesh again. There were four children listed as presumed Beauty Killer victims, all subjected to torture and found with Gretchen’s signature heart carved on their chests. Archie could never get Gretchen to confess to any of them. She lorded them over him, the final prize, just out of reach.

  “We parked at the side of the road,” Jeremy said. “And Gretchen got in the backseat with my sister.”

  Archie pressed the blade in harder. He wanted to feel it. He deserved to feel it. Gretchen had dangled the children like confections. But Archie had never wanted her to confess, because he would have had to hear her confession, to listen to what she had done to them, and to correlate that with all the nights he thought of her, his dick in his hand. Feel it.

  “She cut her with an X-Acto blade,” Jeremy said. “She had a package of blades, and when one got dull she’d replace it with a new one. Isabel cried. She looked so afraid. Gretchen cut off one of her breasts. She said that Amazons used to cut off one of their breasts to make it easier to shoot a bow. When she’d freed the flesh from the muscle she threw it out the window and said, ‘Now she’s an Amazon.’ ”

  Archie felt something. But it wasn’t pain—it was loathing. And for the first time in years, it wasn’t directed inward. He loathed her. He wanted Jeremy to keep going. He wanted to hear every gory detail. Because every horror she committed just made him hate her more. The rage moved through his veins like endorphins.

  “I don’t know how long it lasted,” Jeremy said. “Hours. After a while Isabel’s eyes glazed over and she got really pale and limp. Gretchen put a new blade in and cut her throat. She showed me

  how to do it. She said that it was something everyone should know. Little bloody bubbles came out of her neck. After she was dead, Gretchen carved a heart on her. It was only then that I knew who she was. The Beauty Killer. I’d seen some of the stories on the news. We sat there for a long time. It got dark. I started to cry, and Gretchen held me and stroked my hair. She didn’t say anything after that. I thought she was mad at me. We sat in the car the whole next day and night. I got out to pee. And then I got back in. She got out sometimes, too. On the second day I said I was hungry, and she started the car and drove back into town. Then she parked and got out and walked away. I didn’t know if she was coming back. I didn’t know if I was supposed to follow her. So I waited. And after a while I fell asleep again.”

  Archie set the bloody scalpel back on the tray.

  Jeremy sat shaking his head. “Why didn’t she kill me?”

  “I don’t know,” Archie said.

  “She took care of me.”

  “She tortured you, as much as she tortured your sister,” Archie said gently. “Only you’ve had to live with it. There was no reason.” He was talking to himself now as much as Jeremy. “She didn’t care about you. You don’t owe her anything.”

  Jeremy started to sob. “I’m sorry,” he gasped. “I killed those people. I killed a man I found sleeping in a park and a girl I picked up hitchhiking. I tricked another man into getting into my car, by offering him work. I killed them and I kept their eyes. Because their eyes reminded me of Isabel’s. Dead eyes, like hers.”

  “You put them at Gretchen’s crime scenes.”

  “I wanted her to notice me.”

  Archie looked at Jeremy, wasted, wrecked—the garbage Gretchen had thrown to the curb—and he promised himself that he would do everything he could for him. “You’re in trouble,” Archie said. “People are dead. You stabbed a journalist.” Archie could have

  gone on, but Jeremy didn’t seem to be in the state of mind to discuss the practicing-medicine-without-a-license charge.

  “Help me,” Jeremy pleaded.

  “Your dad will get you a good criminal lawyer,” Archie said. They were both damaged goods. Face-to-face, with their ravaged torsos exposed, Archie felt like he was looking in the mirror. “You’ll be okay,” Archie said. “You’re going to be okay. You’ll get help. We’re going to be okay.”

  The lights flickered.

  Archie looked up. Something was wrong.

  The ceiling seemed to bend toward him, and Archie shook his head and looked at Jeremy to see if he had seen it, too. But Jeremy wasn’t looking at the ceiling. He was looking at Archie, a soft smile on his lips.

  “We should get out of here,” Archie said. He felt warm, his head muddy. Maybe his blood pressure was still off from the suspension. He tried to stand but his stomach lurched, like the floor had elevated and dropped, or they had hit a swell on a boat, and he fell to his knees.

  He looked to Jeremy, to see if he’d felt it that time, but Jeremy hadn’t moved. He still sat there, monklike, watching. Then Archie saw Jeremy’s eyes drift to the sports bottle of sugar water.

  “What did you do?” Archie said. A warm tingle gnawed up his spine and down his arms, and he tried again to stand, but his legs were useless.

  It was all sickeningly familiar.

  Archie tried to lift a dead arm, to reach out to Jeremy, but the aperture of his vision was already closing and his head swam. He fell forward into Jeremy’s arms. He heard a fleshy smack and it took a moment to realize it was the sound of his own jaw hitting Jeremy’s bony sh
oulder. Archie’s face slid a few inches and came to a stop pressed against Jeremy’s hairless and scar-ravaged chest. Archie could

  taste the blood from Jeremy’s wound mixed with his own saliva, hear Jeremy’s heart beat, as Archie’s own pulse unnaturally slowed. It took all of his energy just to speak one word. It came out in a thick, barely perceptible rasp: “Phentobomine.”

  “Yes,” Jeremy said. He held Archie, rocking him. Archie couldn’t feel it, couldn’t feel anything anymore, but he could sense the motion through a pinhole vision of color and light. “It’s what Gretchen drugged you with when she took you captive,” Jeremy said. “I read it in The Last Victim.” He slipped out from under Archie’s weight and gently rolled him over onto his back on the floor. “It will wear off in the next half hour,” Jeremy said. He seemed genuinely sorry. Which did not in the least make up for being left drugged and naked on a concrete floor.