Evil at Heart (59 page)

           
“Sir?” one of the SWAT officers said.

           
Archie leaned close to Gretchen. “I’m breaking up with you,” he whispered in her ear. And he lowered his gun.

           
C H A P T E R 64

           
Archie could see Venus from the porch of the house on Fargo. It was the brightest light in the night sky. Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty.The flytrap.So often depicted in paintings with red hair.

           
“We may never know what really happened to Isabel,” Henry said. “Or the others.”

           
Jeremy was dead. Shark Boy was dead. Pearl was on her way back to her parents. The two other goons from the boiler room might never be found.

           
“I know,” Archie said.

           
Henry had arrived behind the SWAT team, unarmed, as he was officially on desk duty. That left Claire in charge, and she had banished them both to the porch, where Henry had taken Archie’s statement.

           
News vans crowded the street, their satellite dishes battling for the best signal. The empty lots on either side of the house were filled with TV correspondents reporting live. The lights from their cameras looked like stars.

           
Gretchen was gone, bound on a stretcher, and carried off by four anxious-looking EMTs and six cops. The cops had had to fight their way through the media horde that had set upon Gretchen like paparazzi on a movie star.

           
“Gretchen could have proof,” Archie mused. “One way or another.”

           
“No,” Henry said, shaking his head. “You’re not reinstituting the victim-identification project. It’s not worth it. There is no information she can give us that is worth you having to see her ever again.”

           
Archie reached into his pocket for the flash drive Gretchen had given him back at Henry’s house, and held it up. “She gave me this,” Archie said, examining the small device. “Information on a guy named Ryan Motley.” He didn’t know whether to believe her, if this guy even existed, or if it was just another game. “She said she trained him, that he’s a child killer.”

           
Archie held the flash drive out to Henry.

           
“Goddamn it,” Henry said, taking the drive.

           
Archie patted him on the shoulder and stood up. They both knew that Gretchen Lowell was not done with them, but for the moment at least, Archie was done with her.

           
There was really only one person he wanted to see right now.

           
He found Susan leaning against the side of the house, smoking a cigarette. The light coming from the old living room window illuminated the side of her face.

           
The SWAT team had shown up just in time. And there was only one way they could have gotten there that soon. “You called Henry,” he said.

           
“You were in trouble,” she said.

           
Archie leaned up against the house next to her. Gretchen was in custody. They were safe. He was alive.

           
“Thank you,” he said.

           
Susan took a drag off her cigarette. “Four hundred and forty thousand,” she said.

           
“What?” he said.

           
“That’s how many people die of tobacco-related deaths in the U.S. each year.” She looked at the cigarette. “I’m going to quit.”

           
She didn’t move to extinguish the cigarette.

           
A news helicopter hovered in for an overhead shot of the house and they were quiet until it lifted and went off east.

           
“You were going to leave your wife for her, weren’t you?” Susan said.

           
“Absolutely,” Archie said.

           
He still didn’t know what she’d heard down there in the basement. What she knew about what he’d done. “The Taser was named after a Tom Swift book,” Archie said. “Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle. They added the a.”

           
Susan brushed a stray purple lock behind her ear. “And you’re telling me that because?”

           
“Because I want to tell you things,” Archie said.

           
She nodded and seemed to consider that. “Do you know what the most popular line in movies is?” she asked. “ ‘Let’s get out of here.’ ” She smiled in the dark. “Seriously,” she said. “Listen for it. It’s in every movie. It doesn’t matter what kind of movie it is. You’ll be amazed.”

           
The puncture wounds in her face had bruised and her eyelid was a shiny purple. “You have a black eye,” Archie said.

           
Susan took a drag of her cigarette and blew the smoke in his face. “You have hook holes in your back,” she said.

           
There was a loud sustained car honk and Archie turned to see a shuttle bus trying to force its way past several emergency vehicles in order to get closer to the house. A bus wrap graphic covered the entire shuttle. Archie couldn’t make all of it out, but in the headlights and flashing emergency lights he could see Gretchen’s face

           
on the side of the bus, and on the hood below the windshield, a scalpel.

           
“What the hell is that?” Archie said.

           
“That,” Susan said, “is the midnight Beauty Killer Body Tour. Thirty-five bucks. Twenty crime-scene stops.No-host bar.” Her mouth turned up wryly. “They got their money’s worth tonight.”

           
The bus hopped the curb across the street and people started to file out and spill into the street. Regular people, people who’d read The Last Victim and saw an article in Vanity Fair, and wanted a piece of the fun. They hollered and pumped their fists in the air.

           
“Free Gretchen,” they yelled.

           
Archie stepped back into the shadows.

           
“Are you hungry?” Susan asked. “I have some potato chips in my car.”

           
Archie suddenly couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten. He extended his arm and Susan took it.

           
“Let’s get out of here,” he said.

           
A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

           
Special thanks to Karissa Cain, for her invaluable assistance and for putting up with me. My editor, Kelley Ragland, is the super smartest. I am so lucky to be with St. Martin’s Press, and everyone there deserves fancy presents and excellent wine, especially Andrew Martin, George Witte, Sally Richardson, Matthew Shear, Hector DeJean, Tara Cibelli, Nancy Trypuc, Matthew Baldacci, and Matt Martz.

           
Several friends have wasted time reading this book-in-progress. They include LidiaYuknavitch, Andy Mingo, Chuck Palahniuk, Monica Drake, Mary Wysong, Diana Jordan, Erin Leonard, Jim Frost, Suzy Vitello, Cheryl Strayed, and my husband, Marc Mohan. They have each made this book better.

           
I would not be anywhere without Joy Harris and Adam Reed at the Joy Harris Literary Agency. I also want to thank the Men and Women of the Multnomah Corrections Department because I told them I would and because those people don’t get thanked enough. Thanks to my book group—or rather Tracey Massey’s book group—for letting me come only when my own books are on

           
the docket. Caroline Schiller and Claus-Martin Carlsberg, you two still have the very best story. I used many fun death facts that I found in Final Exits: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of How We Die by Michael Largo, and recommend it highly for the paranoid or merely curious.

           
And last, I want to thank Nancy Eris Hebert, a reader and flight attendant who made sure my name reached the sky, and who died before I could thank her.