Evil at Heart

by Chelsea Cain

  “Don’t leave,” Archie said. But it came out “doneeeiliv.”

  Jeremy stepped away, into the darkness. “I don’t want to go to jail,” Archie heard him say in the black. “They won’t let me bring my toys.”

  Archie tried again to speak. But his tongue was too huge, too thick, his mouth too dry, and Jeremy was gone into the dark.

  It was only one sentence. Three words. But he couldn’t form them in his mouth.

  Turn me over.

  Gretchen Lowell had been a nurse. She knew how to use Phentobomine. Jeremy had probably ordered it on the Internet. He was a kid. He was scared. He didn’t know.

  He didn’t know that he shouldn’t leave Archie on his back. That he couldn’t move. That he couldn’t clear the saliva that was pooling in his throat.

  The lights flickered, as Archie listened to the rattling of his labored breaths. He tried to expand his lungs slowly, to draw in as much oxygen as he could. But his body was betraying him. His heart rate increased. He focused on that, counting beats, trying to

  stay alive another twenty beats, another ten. His lungs ached. The rattle turned to an ugly hum. Every cell of his body wanted to take a great gasp of air, and he could do nothing but lie there, drowning in his own spit.

  A pleasant black whirlpool enveloped him, as his lungs surrendered their last store of oxygen.

  Archie fought it. He willed his body to breathe, to stay alive just a few minutes more. He struggled and strained and raged, and forced his lungs to draw in a thin thread of air.

  As he did, a pair of hands pressed against his body and rolled him over on his side.

  C H A P T E R 57

  Susan clutched her purse on her lap. Mace, to be most effective, should be held upright and sprayed in short half-second bursts at the assailant’s face. Eyes and noses are especially good targets. Range is ten to twelve feet (more or less, depending on canister pressure and wind conditions). Spray and move. Then spray again. If you keep moving, you lessen the likelihood of being a victim of your own chemical attack. Done right, mace causes immediate capillary dilation, temporary blindness, and instant inflammation of the breathing-tube tissues. It also burns like a motherfucker.

  Henry slid her a look. “You’re staying in the car,” he said.

  Fuck that, Susan thought, gripping her purse full of self-defense sprays a little tighter. “Right,” she said.

  Jeremy’s squat was in Portland’s Northwest Industrial District. Years ago it had been a swamp. Then someone had gotten the fine idea to put in a great big rail yard, and after that folks from the Lewis and Clark Exposition of 1905 saw the land and they thought

  it would be just perfect for their fair, waist-high stagnant water notwithstanding. The fair was a big success, and folks from all around came to Portland for the pavilions, and stayed for the cheap beer and strapping lumberjacks. The fairgrounds’ structures rotted away. The lumberjacks went back to the woods, and the area was built up with light industrial businesses that didn’t make anything, but made parts for a lot of things.

  “That’s it,” Pearl said from the backseat. Henry slid the car in front of it and parked. The building was blue, one story, with no windows. The remnants of a hand-painted sign of some long-dead business still hung above the old office.

  Pearl pointed to a beater parked on the street. “That’s Jeremy’s car,” she said.

  Henry’s mouth flattened and he snatched the radio receiver off the dash console and called for backup.

  Goose bumps rose on Susan’s arms. Wheat-pasted along the entire length of the building’s buckling loading dock were posters for the upcoming Gretchen Lowell episode of America’s Sexiest Serial Killers.

  Henry hung up the radio and looked over at Susan. “Let me go in first. Stay in the car with the doors locked. Don’t touch anything.” And then, as if anticipating her protest, he threw a glance back at Pearl. “You need to stay with the girl.”

  Susan held her purse tighter and looked out the window at the building, Gretchen’s face on the posters, the axe on the old sign. If Archie was in there, he needed help. There wasn’t time to argue.

  She bit her lip and nodded.

  Henry unholstered his gun, treated her to one last stern look, and then got out of the car.

  She didn’t take her eyes off Henry as he walked toward the building in a low crouch, gun angled at the ground in front of him.

  The loading-bay door was open a foot and she watched as Henry pounded on it and shouted something and then, with one last glance back at the car, slipped inside.

  They were alone. A trickle of fear inched down Susan’s arms and she reached into her bag and got out one of the spray cans and pushed the purse on the floor in front of her.

  Susan glanced in the car’s rearview mirror, looking for telltale flashing blue and red lights. There would be sirens any minute. There were probably dozens of cop cars headed to that intersection.

  Henry would secure the situation. You could count on Henry for that—securing situations. Jeremy didn’t stand a chance. She almost smiled. She’d like to see him try to pierce Henry.

  “Jeremy has a gun,” Pearl said from the backseat.

  Susan snapped her head around. “What?”

  Pearl sat, cross-armed, slumped in the back, her goggles on the top of her head like a pair of sunglasses. “I just thought of it,” she said. “He showed it to me once. Said he got it from his father.”

  Susan lifted her hand over her mouth and sank into her seat, unsure what to do. Henry had gone inside. Did she roll down the window and yell? Get out of the car? Did she call him on his cell phone? Figure out how the fuck to use the radio?

  She twisted around and looked out the back windshield. Where was the backup?

  Then she heard it.

  If she’d been walking by, she would not have known it was a gunshot. It was a dull pop—the kind of thing that could be easily explained away by a car backfire or a firecracker.

  But it wasn’t either of those things.

  Someone inside had been shot, or someone had tried to shoot someone.

  “Shit,” she said.

  “Was that a gun?” Pearl asked, suddenly sounding her age.

  Susan needed to go inside.

  There was no choice now. Henry could be shot, lying in there, bleeding. She grabbed her purse off the floor and tossed it back to Pearl. “Stay in the car. When backup gets here, tell them what’s happening. There’s mace in the bag if you need it. Don’t touch anything else in my purse.”

  Pearl looked pale. “Okay,” she said.

  Susan started walking to the loading-bay door. She moved quickly, the spray can in one hand, thumb on the nozzle. Her entire focus was on the door. Get to the door. Go inside. Don’t get shot.

  Four people were killed every hour in the U.S. by guns. It made her feel better. What were the odds one of them would be Henry? Archie? I mean, four people. It was a big country. Over 300 million people. There were people shooting at each other right this minute in much bigger cities—spurned lovers, crazed high school students, bank robbers, you name it.

  She got to the door. It was still open a crack, but it was dark inside and she couldn’t see anything. “Henry?” she croaked. “Are you okay?”

  No one answered.

  She lifted the spray can and went inside. She was getting to be an expert at entering dirty, unlit rooms, and she paused for a moment just inside the door to let her eyes adjust. There were some broken windows that let in shards of light, and once her pupils dilated, Susan could actually make out quite a bit. Pieces of rotting wooden pallets scattered the floor. Whatever they had made there had once been stored in boxes in this room, then loaded through the door onto trucks and shipped off to long-dead customers.

  She stood perfectly still and listened. Every hair on her body lifted.

  Someone coughed. It was Archie. Susan didn’t know how she

  knew. She didn’t question it. It was Archie’s cough. She was certain of it.
<
br />   Susan searched for the origin of the sound and identified a door that stood open on the opposite wall. She hurried to it, not even trying to dodge the splintered two-by-fours in her path.

  From outside, one siren wailed its approach, and then there seemed to be a thousand all at once.

  But Susan had crossed the room then.

  The next room was bigger, the old manufacturing floor. A single light hung from an extension cord in the center of the room. Archie was naked, on his hands and knees, trying to stand. He looked up and saw her and she ran to him.

  As she got closer she saw the bandages on his back, the white already soaked through with blood. He tried again to stand, putting his hands on his knees for leverage, and he managed to get unsteadily to his feet. His legs were lacerated and bleeding. He was buck naked. But this was not what shocked Susan. What shocked her were the scars. Susan had read the case files, the newspaper clippings—she’d even read The Last Victim. She knew what Gretchen had done to him. She knew about the basement splenectomy. She knew that Gretchen had driven nails into his chest, broken his ribs, played doctor on him with an X-Acto knife and scalpel. She knew she’d cut a heart into his chest.

  But she had never seen the aftermath. His torso was brutalized, webbed with scar tissue; the slight brown hair grew in patches, around slick white new skin. There wasn’t a square inch on his chest that hadn’t been marked by her. The largest scar, the one that split him in two up the midsection, was a knotty pink rope, umbilical-like. But the one that her eyes fell to, that she had to force herself not to stare at, was the heart-shaped scar below his left scapula. Two years old, and it still looked raw, like he had spent months picking at it.

  She stepped close to him, lifted one of his arms around her shoulder, and wrapped her arm around his waist, the spray can still clutched in her hand. He cringed from her touch, and she saw the deep purple bruise on his side where he must have been Tasered, and she adjusted her hand lower on his hip. He swayed and his weight shifted and it was all she could do to hold him up. But his eyes were clear and focused. “I heard a shot,” he said.

  “Henry came in first,” Susan said.

  “I didn’t see him,” Archie said. He nodded, like he was trying to make sense of things. “My legs aren’t working yet.” He looked over at Susan. “Can you get us out of here?”

  A police megaphone crackled to life outside and Susan could hear someone shouting orders, but she couldn’t make out what they were saying.

  She kept her focus on the door. Archie could barely walk, and it took all her effort to guide him, step by step, toward the exit. “Will they come in?” she asked.

  “They need to secure the perimeter,” Archie said. “Determine hostages. They won’t come in unless they hear another shot.”

  To the left of their path, just at the edge of the circle of light, sat a massive pockmarked anvil. It was the only manufacturing tool they’d left in the place, like they’d cleaned out the building and decided it was too heavy to move.

  “What was this place?” Susan asked.

  “They made axes,” Archie said.

  She saw the glint of it before she saw the weapon itself. The steel head was orange with rust and the wooden handle had faded to a soft gray. Jeremy was moving fast, and the axe was held high. He came at them, a blur. Susan thought Jeremy screamed, but it was so loud in her head, the scream might have been coming from her.

  She untangled her arm from Archie’s waist, held the spray can high, squeezed her eyes shut, and pushed down on the nozzle.

  Spray. Move.

  She couldn’t move. She tried, but she was rooted to the floor, bracing for the blow from the axe. She could still hear the screaming.

  Lizzie Borden took an axe.

  And gave her mother forty whacks.

  And when she saw what she had done.

  She gave her father forty-one.

  Lizzie Borden had murdered her stepmother, not her mother. And she’d done it with just nineteen whacks.

  Archie threw her to the ground. How he did that, since he could barely walk, she didn’t know. Maybe he just stopped trying to stand and took her with him when he fell.

  She opened her eyes just as the axe hit the concrete by her head. The floor shook and sparks exploded from the blade.

  The axe lifted again and she covered her head with her hands.

  And then there was another gunshot—this one much, much closer—and then the thud of a body hitting concrete along with the metallic slap of an axe head.

  Susan did a quick mental inventory of limbs. No blinding pain. Her head still seemed attached to her neck.

  She opened her eyes and lifted her head. She was panting. Archie was on top of her, shielding her from the axe blow. He rolled off her and sat up.

  Henry was moving toward them, his gun still trained on Jeremy, who now lay facedown on the floor.

  Cops rushed in from everywhere—impressive, because as far as

  Susan could tell, there were only two doors. They had their guns drawn and it seemed as if all of them were shouting, only Susan’s head was spinning so hard she still couldn’t absorb any of the content.

  “It’s okay,” Henry yelled at no one in particular. He put his gun down and lifted his arms. “We’re okay.” He lowered his gaze at Susan. “I told you to wait for me.”

  Susan, for once, didn’t have a comeback.

  “She doesn’t do that,” Archie said. He crawled over to where Jeremy lay facedown on the floor. “She doesn’t wait.”

  “Is Jeremy dead?” Susan asked.

  “It’s not Jeremy,” Archie said.

  Claire burst through a foursome of anxious-looking patrol cops who were standing, guns still at the ready, on the edge of the light. She stopped in her tracks at the sight before her and then said something to the patrol cops that made them lower their weapons.

  Then she moved to the body.

  Susan crawled closer, too, next to Archie, so she could get a better look at the man who’d nearly chopped her up. His head was twisted to the side, eyes open blankly, and his lips fallen apart, revealing a set of sharply filed teeth. The bullet had hit him in the back of the neck. He was definitely dead.

  Archie glanced up at Henry. “Jeremy left,” he said. “About a half hour ago. I don’t know when Shark Boy got here.”

  Susan saw Henry’s face falter. He looked down at the man he’d just killed and cleared his throat. “It’s not Jeremy?”

  “He was swinging an axe,” Claire said. “It was justifiable force.”

  Henry’s face was slack for a moment and then he snapped back into action. “Suspect’s still at large,” he barked to everyone who’d assembled. “His car’s still out front. So he may be on foot. Fan out. He’s got a half hour on us.”

  Someone hit a light switch and fifty caged industrial fluorescents sprang to life overhead, illuminating everything, and everybody. Susan’s eyes stung. Archie lifted a hand to wipe a smear of blood off his forehead. “Would you mind helping me find my pants?” he said.

  C H A P T E R 58

  Archie’s task force office was exactly as he’d left it two months earlier. His cherry-veneer desk, left over from the bank manager who’d had the office before him, was stacked with files. A faint layer of dust covered his computer keyboard. The office was small, just big enough for the desk, a bookshelf behind it, and two cheaply upholstered armchairs in front. The blinds were closed over the small window that looked out over the street. Henry, who’d run the place since he’d left, had locked it and led the manhunt for Gretchen from his own desk in the main room.

  Archie leaned back in his chair, and was instantly reminded of the wounds on his back. He flinched and then eased back slowly. He was bandaged and back in his clothes; he’d washed his face; he’d given his statement; he’d let the EMTs redress his wounds.

  A photograph of Debbie and the kids still sat propped by his desk lamp. Archie ran a finger along the top of the frame, lifting up the dust—Debbie wit
h her mouth open, saying something, an arm around each kid. He realized, sadly, that he wouldn’t tell her about today. She didn’t need to know. She would never see the new scars.

  Looking at the picture, he noticed for the first time that there was a picnic bench in the background. Archie picked up the photograph and squinted at it. They had stopped at a rest stop on their way up to Timberline Lodge. He chuckled darkly with recognition. His smiling family portrait—the only evidence of the only vacation they’d taken that year, and it was taken at the rest stop where Jeremy Reynolds would later spew his carnage.