Kill You Twice (17 page)

Finally.

Susan opened her purse, pulled out a sheaf of paper, and spread it on the desk. “News stories,” she said, trying not to sound excited. “Seven murders over six years. All
children. Different states. All unsolved.”

Everyone leaned forward and studied the articles on Archie’s desk, except for Susan—who couldn’t see over everyone else’s heads and knew the articles now by heart anyway.
She dug at the tempeh between her teeth with her fingernail.

Archie sat back and did a quick search for a phone number on his computer. Then he picked up his phone and dialed it. “This is Detective Archie Sheridan with the Portland Police
Department. I’ve got a question about a cold case. The detective in charge was”—he glanced at the article—“Lew Ellis.”

He kept the phone in the crook of his shoulder while he continued to scan through the pages on his desk.

After a few minutes, he said, “Detective Ellis? Hi.” He paused. “Yeah. That’s me.” Nodded. “Thank you.” He picked up one of the articles.
“I’ve got a question about an old case of yours,” he said. His eyes searched the article and then stopped on a name. “Calvin Long. I’m wondering if there were any
details that you didn’t release to the press.”

Everyone in the room leaned a millimeter closer.

“Really?” Archie said. He looked up, right at Claire. “What kind of flower?”

CHAPTER

A
rchie listened as
Gretchen’s voice filled the break room. He was used to her voice. For a long time, after she’d almost killed him, he’d heard it in his head, reassuring him, comforting him, as if his inner voice had become hers. He could
conjure that voice in an instant, he knew it so well. Even muddied by the medications, he’d know her voice anywhere.

She was detailing how she’d gutted and dismembered James Beaton. He’d listened to this part seven or eight times, but it still made the hair on his arms stand up. It wasn’t the
content or the brutality of her words—he’d heard and seen worse—it was the way she talked about it, determinedly remorseless.

Archie looked around the conference table. They had all stayed late.

Michael Flannigan, his cap pulled low, fingers tugging on a recently grown beard; Josh Levy, back from a year working Vice, where he’d gained twenty pounds and stopped wearing a tie; Greg
Fremont, who rode a recumbent bicycle to work and a button on his lapel—an outline of the state of Oregon with a green heart in it; Martin Ngyun, in his ubiquitous Blazers cap, so comfortable
at a computer that when he wasn’t, he drummed his fingers on a phantom keyboard. Then there were Henry and Claire, who, despite the fact that there was no one who hadn’t figured out
they were a couple, still sat as far apart from each another as possible.

Everyone in the room had been on the Beauty Killer Task Force except for Mike Flannigan, and he’d helped them catch four killers since. These people knew Gretchen. They had met her when
she’d infiltrated the task force as a psychologist who had volunteered to work with them. They knew her murderous handiwork from scores of crime scenes. They had seen Archie consumed by her,
nearly killed by her.

They listened in silence.

Henry chuckled when Gretchen brought up Susan’s daddy issues. Archie saw Claire kick Henry under the table.

Then the recording ended.

No one said anything for a while. The only sound was Flannigan scratching his chin.

Archie cleared his throat. “What you don’t hear on the recording is what Gretchen said after it was turned off. She told Susan that a man named Ryan Motley is behind the murders of
Jake Kelly and Gabby Meester,” Archie said. “Gretchen claims he was an associate of hers at one point, and she gave us these.” He fanned out the stack of articles Susan had
printed. “We know that lilies were left at the scene of at least three of these murders. Different varieties, but all Asiatic.”

The others reached for the printouts, their heads down, scanning them.

After a few minutes, Flannigan looked up at Archie. He touched the brim of his cap. “How does this relate to James Beaton?” he asked.

The others looked up. Claire gave Archie a look as if to say,
See?

“I have no idea,” Archie said honestly. “Beaton went missing eighteen years ago. His wife thinks he ran off, and there’s some evidence to support that. I have no idea if
he was really murdered or, if so, that Gretchen did it. Don’t focus on that. Focus on Ryan Motley. If these are all his victims, it gets us that much closer to catching him.”

“But what’s her game?” Levy asked. “Why confess to killing Beaton?”

“She wants him caught,” Archie said. “The disappearance of James Beaton is connected to Ryan Motley somehow.” He looked at Levy. “You’re right,” he
said. “This is a game to her. She wants to make us work. But she’s given us the pieces. We just have to put together the puzzle.”

They didn’t look convinced.

Henry took his feet off the table. “Listen,” he said. “Archie can read her. If he says her information is solid, it is. Whoever killed these kids, killed our victims, or at
least is trying to make it look like he did. We follow his lead. You don’t have to understand it.”

Archie slid over the laptop that had been playing the MP3, and brought up an image from Google Earth. He turned the laptop around to face the others. “This is the Hamlet Inn. These are
train tracks. I think she cut Beaton up and carried him in pieces over here, and when the train went by, she tossed the body parts on as it went past.” He looked at Ngyun. “Martin, I
want you to track the lines that went past that day and see if there were any remains found in the cars or along the tracks. Those tracks run across the country, so the remains could have been
discovered several states away and were never traced back.”

“Okay,” Ngyun said.

“We need to determine if these earlier murders were committed by our killer. Contact all the investigators who worked these cases, and review all the case files. Maybe we’ll find a
common suspect, or a name that keeps popping up as a witness. You don’t kill this many people without making a mistake.”

“On it,” Levy said.

“Maybe,” Flannigan said, “Gretchen knew about the lilies because she killed these kids.”

Archie picked one of the printouts up off the table and slid it over to Flannigan. “The most recent one,” he said. “Look at the date.” A child had been murdered and left
in a park in Illinois in November, almost four years before. “She was busy carving me up,” he said. He shook his head at the irony of it. “I’m her alibi.” She had
almost never left his side during the ten days he spent strapped to a gurney under her scalpel. She was certainly not gone long enough to get to Illinois and back. “Look,” Archie said.
“She’s a liar. She’s lying about some of this. But not everything. She didn’t kill Kelly or Meester. I think she knows who did.”

“She must have an angle,” Flannigan said.

Archie looked at his hands. Of course there was an angle. Gretchen always had an angle. “She says that she didn’t kill any of the children we’ve accused her of
murdering,” Archie said. “She says that she’s never killed a child, and that Ryan Motley is behind all of those murders. That,” he said, “is her angle.”

Flannigan nodded. “Okay,” he said.

“Okay,” Archie said.

“I just wanted to know,” Flannigan said. “So that I could be sure that you knew.” He started stacking the printouts on the table. “I’ll work with Levy on
reviewing the case files.”

Everyone but Archie and Henry started pushing their chairs out and packing up.

“No media on this,” Archie told them. “Not until we know what we’re dealing with.”

Archie watched them all walk out. Except for Henry. Henry still sat at the table, his hands folded on his belly, his gaze leveled at Archie. His blue eyes were cloudy. The bristles on his shaved
head were turning white. He had started to look like an old man.

Archie picked a dog hair off his pants and waited for Henry to ask.

“You went and saw her, didn’t you?” Henry said.

Archie exhaled slowly. “Susan called me after the interview,” he said. “I knew you wouldn’t like it, so I lied to you about it. I went and saw Gretchen to tell her to
stay away from Susan.”

Henry’s face reddened. He moved his jaw around and then pushed his chair out and stood up. He stalked back and forth for a few moments and then picked up the chair and slid it hard across
the linoleum. It skidded and fell on its side. “Bullshit,” Henry said.

Archie had seen Henry lose his temper only a few times. It had a way of drawing all the oxygen out of a room. Archie kept his eyes on the table. “I wanted to see her,” he said.
“I knew you’d stop me.”

Henry leaned in close to Archie, his flushed face inches from Archie’s nose. “Better,” Henry said.

“She’s in bad shape,” Archie said. He’d meant it as an objective report, but he couldn’t suppress a slight smile.

Henry saw it. He shook his head and pointed a finger in Archie’s face. “I’m not doing this again,” he said. “You and her.” His eyes went to the ceiling in
exasperation. “Your
thing
. I’m not doing it.”

Archie didn’t know what to say. He had lied. But he had lied about much worse, and Henry knew it. This was about something else.

“I can’t take care of you right now,” Henry said. “I have other responsibilities.” He lowered his chin to indicate his leg. “I’m not at a hundred
percent here.”

Archie wanted to say the right thing. “Can I help?” he asked.

Henry chuckled. “You want to help me?” he asked. “Here’s an insight. Every lie you’ve ever told me has something to do with Gretchen Lowell. Someday, when it
matters, I want you to lie to her, and tell me the truth. Let’s start there.”

“Okay,” Archie said.

Henry put his fists on the table and leaned on his knuckles. “Things are different now,” Henry said. “I have a person. I have Claire.”

“I know,” Archie said.

“I would still jump in front of a bus for you,” Henry said.

“I know,” Archie said.

“A short bus,” Henry said.

“Right.”

Henry glanced behind him at the chair on the floor.

Archie hesitated. The black plastic chair lay on its side, metal legs in the air. Was this a test? “You want me to get that?” Archie asked.

“I can get my own fucking chair,” Henry said. He didn’t move. “But if it will make you feel better.”

Archie got up and walked over and picked up the chair and carried it back to the table. Henry sat down with a groan, and started rubbing his leg. “You still have the Beauty Killer files at
home?” Henry asked.

“Not everything,” Archie said. “Just what I need.”

Henry raised his eyebrows at him.

Archie didn’t say anything.

“She killed those kids, Archie,” Henry said.

Archie felt his stomach tighten. He couldn’t believe he was going to say it out loud. “What if she didn’t?”

CHAPTER

I
t was almost
eight o’clock and Susan was on her fourth cigarette when Archie came out of the task force building.
She had been waiting an hour—rehearsing what she was going to say—when he fled out the front door and, without even a glance at her, made a beeline for his car.

“Hey!” she said, running after him in the parking lot. He stopped, and she saw his shoulders slump, and then he turned around. “Susan,” he said, making her name sound
like a sigh.

The speech she’d been rehearsing went out the window. “You played my recording for them,” she said.

“You gave it to me,” he said.

God, he was dense sometimes. “I gave it to
you
,” Susan said. “My
friend
. Not the Portland Police Department. You passed out my printed copies. I didn’t give
those to you. I
showed
them to you. There’s a difference.”

“I’ll print you out more,” Archie said. “It’s the principle,” Susan said, exasperated. “I can’t turn over investigative material to the police.
She called me as a journalist.”

Archie didn’t look all that impressed by her outraged reporter act. He got his car keys out of his pocket. “She called you because she couldn’t get to me,” he said.
“She knew you’d give me the information, and she knew I’d use it. She knew I would go down there. You performed your role.”

Susan knew he was right, but she didn’t like hearing it. She took a drag off her cigarette. “I’m writing the story,” she said.

Archie shook his head. “Not Ryan Motley. You need to leave him out of it. Write about seeing her. Print every word on that tape. But do not mention Motley. You’re dealing with the
parents of murdered children here. We cannot make this public until we are certain. At this point he’s a phantom. All we have is her say-so. And it’s very likely polluted by some
deranged agenda that you don’t understand.”

And you do?
thought Susan.

Archie had said himself that Gretchen had given him the flash drive a year ago. He’d had 365 days to follow up on it. But it had been Susan who’d finally plugged the thing into a USB
port. If it hadn’t been for her, it would still be sitting in Archie’s desk with his Wite-Out collection. And now she was being sidelined. Sometimes Susan felt like Archie didn’t
appreciate her at all. “Why did you wait so long to look at the flash drive?” she asked.

“We knew we couldn’t trust the information,” Archie said. “Henry and I agreed not to play her games.”

Except that Archie had been champing at the bit to learn what was on that memory stick, once Susan had seen it. He’d known that Susan had taken the flash drive from his desk. But he
hadn’t been angry. He hadn’t yelled at her once. “You wanted me to steal it,” Susan said. “You’d promised Henry you wouldn’t look at it. You were stuck.
But if I opened it up, if I saw what was on the flash drive, then you could find out what was on it without breaking your promise. You left me in your office. You know I snoop. I told you over the
phone that Gretchen had mentioned Ryan Motley. You knew I’d seen that flash drive, and you knew I’d take it. You set me up. You refused to play Gretchen’s games. But you played
me.”