Evil at Heart

by Chelsea Cain

  Fucking perfect.

  Archie pulled his top left desk drawer open. He reached in and felt around for the bottle of Vicodin he’d kept in there, but it was gone.

  The office was almost exactly as Archie had left it.

  Henry appeared in the doorway. He’d been in the conference room with Internal Affairs for the last two hours and he looked tired. Archie slid the drawer back closed.

  “You know Frank doesn’t have a sister,” Henry said.

  “I had an inkling,” Archie said.

  “A woman called the Herald, claiming to be the owner of a shop on Hawthorne,” Henry said. “Said Pearl worked for her. But when Susan and I went there, the owner said she’d never made the call. But she did lead us to Pearl, which is how we found you.”

  Archie leaned back in his chair. “You think Gretchen is my guardian angel now?”

  Henry put his palms on the desk and looked, for a second, like he might push the thing through the floor. “Do you have a phone from her?” he asked.

  Archie looked him right in the eye. “Nope,” he said.

  He wasn’t lying. As far as he knew, it was still in Susan’s car.

  Henry took a step back and sat down in one of the armchairs. “Claire said you refused medical care.”

  “I refused to go to the hospital,” Archie said. “I let them treat

  me at the scene. Don’t worry. I have an appointment with Rosenberg in the morning. And an NA schedule in my bag.”

  Henry folded his hands in his lap and looked at them. “What did he do to you?” he said gruffly.

  Archie had been tempted to omit some details. By the time he had recovered enough movement to lift his head the suspension gear was gone. He wasn’t sure he wanted them to know what had gone on between him and Jeremy. But he was tired of keeping secrets.

  “I gave Claire a statement,” Archie said. “Go ahead and read it. But I’m not pressing charges.”

  Henry lifted his head and glanced up at the ceiling as if for guidance. “What is it with you and psychopaths?”

  “Jeremy confessed,” Archie said. “He took responsibility for the rest stop, and Fintan English, and the other three. You have him for four murders—everyone but Courtenay. You don’t need me.” Archie sat forward and folded his hands on his desk. “He remembers his sister’s murder. He told me everything.”

  “You buy it?” Henry asked.

  “He knew about the triangles, the contusions,” Archie said. “He remembers. He watched Gretchen kill her. He spent almost two days in that car.” He wanted Henry to see what this meant, to know that everything had changed. “She made him what he is.”

  “You went through worse, and you’ve managed not to carve anyone’s eyes out.”

  Archie shook his head. “I didn’t go through worse,” he said. Jeremy had watched Gretchen torture his sister. Archie had survived his own torture. But Jeremy had been innocent. Archie had brought it on himself. “It was just a different kind of bad.”

  “No,” Henry said. “You aren’t like him.”

  Jeremy had committed murder. Archie had merely killed his marriage, his sense of self, his job. All without firing his weapon.

  He couldn’t imagine what it would feel like, to actually do it, to take someone’s life, what might drive a person to cross that line.

  He couldn’t imagine. But Henry could.

  “Are you okay?” Archie asked him.

  A faint smile crossed Henry’s lips. “That’s a switch. You asking me that.”

  Shark Boy had swung at Henry when he’d come in, and Henry had fired at him and given chase. “He was going to kill us,” Archie said.

  Henry stared into space for a moment, then frowned. “I’m on desk duty, pending official clearance,” he said. “But it’s a formality.” He scratched the back of his neck. “They identified him. His name was Troy Lipton. Twenty-seven. Worked as a fry cook at a roadhouse out in Sherwood. He’s got a record in Idaho. Robbery. Assault.” Henry coughed and stood up. “You should go back to the house,” he said, waving a hand in Archie’s direction. “Get some rest.”

  Archie looked down at his wrinkled clothes, the shirt spotted with blood. “I could use a shower.”

  “I’m sending someone with you,” Henry said. “Gretchen’s still out there, and now Jeremy.”

  “Agreed.”

  Henry took a step and stopped in the doorway, his back to Archie, head down. “I’ve killed people before,” he said.

  C H A P T E R 59

  Archie stood in Henry’s shower, eyes closed, letting the hot water run down his back. The bandages had come off in the water and circled the drain of the tub. Archie turned up the hot water. He stayed like that for another few minutes, until his skin burned and the steam was thick enough that he could barely breathe, and then he opened his eyes and took a step out of the shower stream. He opened the plastic curtain a few inches, to let in some fresh air, and he examined his wounds. The Taser had left a vicious-looking bruise on his side. It was the size of a handprint, hard and tender to the touch, with two dark red circles, like teeth marks, where the electrical current had entered his body.

  His back and legs still stung from the hooks, but he wasn’t bleeding anymore. He lifted his foot and put it on the edge of the tub so he could examine the triangle he’d cut into his thigh. The sliced skin hadn’t required stitches. He rubbed his hand on a bar of soap in the tub’s soap dish and then moved his fingers over the cuts in his skin. Triangles. Isabel had been the only victim Gretchen had ever carved that shape into. Strange that it would be what

  captured Jeremy’s attention. That he would carve it on his own body so many times. He had not seen the wounds on her other victims. He would have no way of knowing that it was special.

  Archie brushed a tiny scab off one of the cuts and it started to bleed, mixing with the water and sending a pale pink stream down his thigh and around the back of his knee.

  Triangles.

  He sank to the bottom of the tub and sat there. The bathroom was filled with steam. The mirror was fogged. Archie reached forward and turned off the water. The wound on his leg wasn’t very deep, but it had started to throb.

  Archie pulled himself up, climbed out of the tub, dried off, and wrapped a towel around his waist. Then wiped the condensation off the mirror so he could see himself. His hollow reflection gave him a start. He put his hand on the edge of the mirror and waited a minute, and then opened the medicine cabinet and scanned the shelves. He didn’t see what he wanted. He looked under the sink. No pills there. He wondered if Henry really didn’t have any painkillers or if he’d just hidden them.

  Archie was walking through the living room on his way to search Henry’s kitchen cabinets when he heard her voice.

  “I’m glad you’re all right,” Gretchen said.

  He turned around and saw her sitting in Henry’s chair. She was holding one of Henry’s cats in her lap—a gray tabby he’d saved from a crime scene. Her hair was red and pulled back. She was wearing a black sleeveless cotton dress, bare legs crossed. She looked tanned. He had seen her so many times in his head that it took a minute to sink in that it was really her.

  He wished that he could take that part of himself—the part that remembered her, was connected to her, the part that wanted her—and cut it out and bury it.

  He laughed. “I wish I’d killed you,” Archie said.

  The cat rubbed its head against her hand and purred. “I’d imagine.”

  “There was no reason,” Archie said. “I’ve been looking for a reason why you kept me alive. Some humanity in you. But there was no reason.”

  Gretchen frowned thoughtfully. “Maybe it was love.”

  Archie smiled. He beckoned her over with a finger. “I want to show you something,” he said.

  She didn’t hesitate. She nudged the cat off her lap onto the floor, stood and walked over. She was wearing high heels and her hips swung as she stepped. When she was a few feet away, he dropped the towel.


  “No hard-on,” he said.

  He followed her eyes down to his flaccid cock, and he marveled happily at it. “Do you know how long it’s been since I was in the same room with you, without getting hard?” he said. “Jesus, I couldn’t even look at your picture, think your name, without getting a fucking erection.” He touched it, moving it a little to prove it wasn’t stiff. “I could fill a bathtub with the semen I’ve spilled in your honor.”

  Gretchen reached out and put a hand behind his head and pulled his lips to hers. He let her do it. But he kept his arms at his sides. She kissed him, pushing her tongue into his mouth. And he felt: nothing.

  He laughed again.

  She pulled away, took a step back, and smoothed her hair. “The therapy is paying off,” she said. “You’ve been a good patient. I’ve been very pleased. ”

  “Stop calling Frank,” Archie said. “You’ve got him believing that you’re actually his sister.”

  She smiled and arched a sculpted eyebrow. “Maybe I am.”

  Henry and Claire were at the task force offices, not due back

  for hours. “How did you know I was here?” Archie asked. Henry kept an extra gun in a box in the closet. Archie would have to get to it, open the box, and load it.

  Gretchen leaned her elbows on Henry’s sideboard. “Where else would you go? Vancouver?” She ran her eyes over him and he realized he was still standing there, naked. “I think Debbie’s had enough of your wandering eye.” She ran a fingertip along the top of the sideboard and looked at it. “I can see Claire’s influence,” she said. “It’s much neater.” She was fucking with him. She’d never been in Henry’s house before.

  Archie picked up the towel and tucked it around his waist. “Why are you here?” he asked.

  She smiled her movie-star smile. “I came to save you.”

  He had hoped it wasn’t true. “You called the Herald with the tip about Pearl.”

  “How is Jeremy Reynolds?” Gretchen said. “I see he’s introduced you to body suspension.”

  “He’s what you made him,” Archie said.

  “I’m thinking of suing for trademark infringement. I don’t like being copied.”

  “Yet you had George Hay gouge out Courtenay Taggart’s eyes.”

  “I was copying Jeremy copying me. That’s not copyright infringement. It’s sampling.”

  Henry would have the gun loaded. He didn’t have kids. He didn’t need to worry about that. Boxed, in a closet like that, the gun would be loaded.

  Gretchen glanced down the hall. “Where is it?” she said. “The gun you’re thinking about using. There? You’d never get there in time.” She stepped in front of him and took one of his hands in hers and lifted it to her neck. “You could use your hands,” she said. She held it there for a moment and he could feel the thump thump of her pulse. Then she lowered it and kissed his palm.

  “You’re so confident I won’t do it,” Archie said.

  She smiled and turned away from him. “You’re close, darling. Don’t worry. You’ll get there. But first you want to ask me about Isabel Reynolds. What is it that’s nagging at you? The triangles?” She touched the towel over his thigh, where he had cut himself for Jeremy.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll play. Did you kill Isabel Reynolds?”

  Gretchen lifted her finger to her chin thoughtfully and seemed to consider the question. Then she shook her head. “No,” she said. “I don’t kill children.”

  “Fuck you,” he said.

  “There you go,” Gretchen said. “That’s what you need. Anger. The psych ward took some of your edge, didn’t it? We need to get that back.”

  “You think I won’t kill you? I daydream about killing you.”

  She stepped away from the sideboard. “It’s in the drawer,” she said. “Go ahead. I put it there for you.”

  Archie went to the drawer and pulled it open. There, lying on a stack of cloth Christmas napkins, was Henry’s gun.

  Archie picked it up and pointed it at Gretchen.

  She smiled.

  “Did you kill Isabel Reynolds?” Archie said.

  Gretchen looked him in the eyes. “I don’t kill children,” she said.

  She was lying. There were three children on the Beauty Killer victim list besides Isabel Reynolds. All tortured and left with hearts carved on their chests. “I saw the bodies,” Archie said.

  “I had an apprentice,” Gretchen said with a dismissive motion of her hand. “His name is Ryan Motley. I couldn’t control him. When he left my orbit he embraced his own work.”

  Archie didn’t believe her. Sometimes he wondered if everything out of her mouth was a lie.

  “You’re saying he killed Isabel?” Archie said.

  “No,” Gretchen said. “He didn’t kill Isabel Reynolds.”

  “Who did?” Archie asked. And even as he said it, his gut twisted, because somehow, deep down, he already knew.

  “I always assumed it was the brother,” Gretchen said.

  She’d had access to the confidential case files when she’d infiltrated the case as a psychiatrist. She could have read everything they had on Jeremy, even his psych reports.

  “He killed her,” she continued, “and carved a heart on her and then screamed Beauty Killer. I don’t mind usually when I get credit for other people’s work. But Jeremy Reynolds was a psycho little shit who killed his sister and got away with it.”

  Archie fought it. He shook his head. “No,” he said. “No.” She was fucking with him. She was manipulating him. She was trying to take Jeremy away from him.

  “Why now?” Archie asked. “You’ve let us think you killed those children. Why deny it now? You expect me to believe there’s some moral line you won’t cross? That you have rules?”

  “You know I’m telling the truth. Because if I did kill children, you know—in your heart—that I’d have killed yours.”

  Archie pulled the trigger. The hammer came down harmlessly. The chamber was empty.

  “That was fun, wasn’t it?” Gretchen said.

  Archie snapped. He lunged for her, knotted his fist in her hair, and pushed her against the wall. She laughed at him, and it fueled his rage. He used his body as leverage against hers, pinning her. Then he placed his free hand on her throat and pushed. She didn’t struggle. She just looked at him. Her face reddened and she gasped involuntarily against his grasp. Saliva pooled at the corners of her mouth. Her eyes widened.

  He could smell her, the sweet stink of their sweat intermingled.

  Her dress was torn at the shoulder from when he’d grabbed her. Her hair was mussed.

  She didn’t look so beautiful anymore.

  His chest heaved and she arched her back, pressing her breasts into him. He lifted her up off her feet, sliding her up against the wall, until they were face-to-face. Her lips parted and her hands lifted and wrapped around his wrists. He knew those hands.

  It had not been Jeremy who had saved him from choking, it had been Gretchen. Her hands. She had been there. She had rolled him over. She had been watching over him. Jeremy had left Archie to die.

  Archie hated her for that, and he pushed harder into her, feeling her body letting go, sinking into his, her life evaporating.

  And it made him hard.

  The sensation of desire at that moment was so disorienting that Archie nearly vomited.

  He let Gretchen drop to the floor and stumbled back away from her, gathering the towel around his waist.

  She lifted a hand to her neck and coughed, and the red drained from her face. There was merriment in her blue eyes when she looked up at him. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and laughed. “Don’t worry,” she said, flicking her amused gaze to his groin. “It happens to everyone.”

  She smoothed her hair and got up. She took a step, stumbled, then straightened up, walked over, and picked her purse up off the couch. Then she walked over to him and stuck him with something below his rib cage.

  His body jerked and seized and he fell to th
e ground. He choked with laughter as his muscles jerked. She’d fucking Tasered him.

  “I’m going to go now,” she said. She tossed him a black pouch. “Here’s a package. A few special presents, plus a flash drive on the

  table with everything I know about Ryan Motley on it. You might want to do something about him.” She took a few steps toward the door and then turned back. “You thought you had a little friend, didn’t you, darling?”

  She knelt down next to him, the smell and heat of her again filling his senses. “Here’s something to remember him by,” she said, and she put something wet and slippery in Archie’s clawed hand.