Evil at Heart (39 page)

           
The task force at the Herald may have grown bored and

           
dark-witted over the last few months; but the real Beauty Killer Task Force was hard at work.

           
There were three photographs tacked on top of the maps. All three appeared to be booking photos—one was of a young woman, two were of middle-aged men.

           
“Who are they?” Susan asked.

           
“Our victims,” Claire said. “All three were homeless. The man on the left was named Abe Farley.” She stood up and walked over to the photographs. Abe Farley had a long salt-and-pepper beard and a weathered, haggard face. “Fifty-six,” she said. “Last seen December 2004. That was his head rolling around at PittockMansion.” She touched the middle photograph. This man had shoulder-length light-colored hair and a long regal face. “Jackson Beathe,” she said. “Last seen March 2005.Sort of handsome, huh?” Claire took a step to her right. “The woman with him on the Rose Garden bench was named Braids Williams.” Slender and dark-skinned, she smiled from her photo. “She disappeared in 2006. Cause of death is still pending, but it looks like the two on the bench were stabbed.”

           
Susan looked at the three faces, lives reduced to snapshots. “How did you identify them?”

           
“They were missed,” Claire said. “Family.Friends.Social workers. Missing-person reports were filed. We had dental records.” She turned back to face the photographs and raised a hand to tenderly brush against the face of Braids Williams. “Someone stabbed them, removed their eyes, buried them for a few years, and then dug them up. The eyes they kept in a jar of formaldehyde.” She lowered her hand and turned back to Susan. “Braids Williams’s eyes went into Fintan English. The others were dumped in the rest-stop toilet.”

           
Henry stood in the doorway. His sleeves were rolled up and he carried a stack of papers in his hands. “Gretchen didn’t kill the homeless,” he said. “It wasn’t near scary enough.”

           
“So it wasn’t Gretchen,” Susan said.

           
“I’m not ready to rule out anything yet,” Henry said.

           
“We’re going through his computer records now to see if Hay—the orderly—was visiting any Gretchen-related sites,” Claire said. “Could be he’s involved in this group.”

           
Susan’s face ached. The EMTs had irrigated the hole in her cheek and bandaged it up, but no one had offered her any painkillers. She reached up and gingerly touched the white gauze.

           
“Try

           
www.iheartgretchenlowell.com,” Susan said. “That’s the site the freaks at the warehouse were using.”

           
Claire exhaled. “Good,” she said. “Thank you.” She turned to Henry. “I’m going to get that to Martin,” she said. She glanced back at Susan. “Take care of yourself,” she said, and she left the room.

           
Henry fanned the papers out on the table in front of Susan. “Here are photos of runaways that have been reported in the last year,” he said.

           
Susan knew her instantly. She laid her hand on one of the pictures. “That’s her.”

           
“You sure?” Henry asked.

           
Susan took a closer look at the picture. The name over the image was Margaux Clinton. “They called her ‘Pearl,’ ” Susan said.

           
Henry turned the picture around and looked at it. “Maybe it’s a street name,” he said. “She’s from Eugene. I’ll have someone down there go talk to the mother. And I’ll put out a broadcast for her.”

           
“How old is she?” Susan asked.

           
Henry glanced back down at the report. “Sixteen.”

           
There was a knock on the door and a uniformed cop came in, followed by Leo Reynolds. He was wearing a beautifully cut suit, no tie, crisp white shirt open at the neck, and his dark hair was still wet from a shower. Four in the morning, and he’d taken the time to put on cuff links.

           
Henry’s upper lip tightened, and he looked from Susan to Leo and back again. “What’s this?” Henry said, between gritted teeth.

           
“I called him,” Susan said. “He’s my lawyer.”

           
Henry raised an eyebrow at Susan. He was even better at issuing disapproving gazes than her mother.

           
Susan shrank down in her chair a little.

           
“Where’s your crazy little brother?” Henry asked Leo.

           
“I don’t know,” Leo said. “I want him out of this. Believe me, if I knew where he was, I’d tell you.”

           
Henry took a step toward Leo. “We need to talk to Jeremy,” he said. “He knows who these people are.” He waited a beat. “I also need to talk to your father.”

           
Leo’s voice was soft and reasonable, but firm. “My father is dedicating his considerable community organization to locating Jeremy right now,” he said. “It might be better to delay an interview.”

           
“Archie trusts Jack,” Susan piped in. She wasn’t sure that was true. But she needed Jack and Leo Reynolds right now. And Archie needed them, too.

           
Henry rubbed his face with a meaty hand. When he brought it down the skin had reddened. He put both his palms on the table and leaned in close to Susan. “Archie feels bad for Jack because Gretchen carved up and murdered his daughter,” he said. “Archie operates on guilt.” His blue eyes were hard and threaded with red veins. “If you haven’t figured that out yet, then you haven’t figured out anything.”

           
“We’ll find them,” Leo said. “All of them.”

           
He said it with such casual confidence that Susan almost believed him.

           
Leo reached into his suit pocket, withdrew a neatly folded piece of paper and held it out to Henry. “It’s a hotel downtown,” Leo said. “Jeremy was staying there up until three days ago. I paid the bill through tonight, so if you want to go look around his room, you have until noon tomorrow before they clean out his personal possessions.”

           
Henry took the piece of paper and looked at it. He blinked a few times. “Okay,” he said.

           
Susan looked up at the three faces on the wall. “You don’t actually think Archie would go off with these people?” she said.

           
“You don’t know what he went through,” Henry said.

           
She didn’t. But Jeremy Reynolds did.

           
“You could waste time getting a warrant, or I, as the person who has paid the bill, could let you in Jeremy’s hotel room.”

           
“What’s the catch?” Henry said.

           
Leo smiled. “Company,” he said.

           
C H A P T E R 45

           
The JoyceHotel was a seedy joint in Downtown Portland near what used to be called “Vaseline Alley,” due to its many gay bars. It was four stories with a dirty ivory-colored brick frontage, and an aged forest-green awning.

           
Henry, Claire, Leo, and Susan entered through the hotel’s metal-framed glass doors. A sign listed room rates at twenty-five to thirty-five dollars per night. A toothless man behind the check-in counter yawned as they walked by.

           
“Room four-twenty-six,” Leo said to them.

           
They walked through the dingy lobby area, and up the brown-carpeted staircase. The walls had once been white, but were now mottled beige. The handrails and molding were painted forest green.

           
Four-twenty-six was on the fourth floor, just down the hall from the stairwell. A sticker on the door read

           
KIDS NEED BOTH PARENTS! Leo inserted the key, pushed in the door, and they all went inside. There was a double bed, a small nightstand, a dresser, and an old Zenith TV, with the hotel’s name scratched on the side, in case someone got the idea of stealing it.

           
“Well,” Claire said, pulling on a pair of latex gloves. “Let’s take a look.”

           
“You don’t touch anything,” Henry growled to Susan and Leo, as he pulled on his own set of gloves.

           
Susan wandered around the room. The bed was made, and two white towels, bleached so many times they looked like they would crack if anyone ever touched them, were folded and set on the bedspread, as were a plastic cup still encased in its clear wrapping and two matchbox-sized bars of soap.