C H A P T E R 2
Detective Henry Sobol lifted the evidence bag out of the rest-stop bathroom sink. The contents, four fistfuls of severed flesh, three of which had been plunged from the toilet, glistened under the clear plastic. It was heavier than it looked—dark, almost purple—and the large medallions of flesh were frayed, like they had been cut with a serrated blade. Blood and toilet water formed a triangle of pink juice at the corner of the bag. It didn’t have the sanitized look of the clean, plump, pink meat under Saran Wrap at the supermarket; something had been killed for this. Or someone had tried to make a kebab out of roadkill.
“Tell me again where you found this?” Henry said.
The state cop who’d called him stood next to Henry with his “Smokey Bear” hat in his hands. The bathroom’s fluorescent lights gave his skin a pale green sheen. “The john,” the state trooper said, tilting his head toward an open stall. “Got a nine-one-one call. Family reported some blood in the bathroom. I responded.” He shrugged. “Plunged it. That came up.” Maybe it wasn’t the lighting, Henry thought. Maybe the trooper was green because he was sick to his stomach. The trooper swallowed hard. “Medical Examiner thinks it’s a spleen.”
The HoodRiverCounty medical examiner stared at Henry, nodding slightly. He was wearing a DaKine T-shirt and cargo shorts, and had the weathered skin that everyone in Hood River seemed to have, thick from snowboarding and windsurfing and whatever the hell else they did out here.
Henry scratched the top of his shaved head with his free hand.
“It doesn’t look like a spleen to me,” Henry said.
Claire Masland appeared next to him, her gold badge on a lanyard around her neck. Two hours ago they had been at his apartment. She’d had fewer clothes on then.
The ME lifted his hands to his hips. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Let me clarify.” He made a chopping motion with one hand. “It’s a spleen that’s been cut up. And jammed in a toilet.”
Henry laid the gory package back into the sink.
This is what it had been like over the past two months, since the Beauty Killer, Gretchen Lowell, had escaped. The Beauty Killer Task Force worked around the clock, tracking down tips. It had taken them ten years to catch her the first time. This time they knew what she looked like. The task force had doubled. And still Henry wasn’t sure they’d ever catch her. They wasted too much time following false leads. A suicide in the river.A drive-by in North Portland. It didn’t matter what it was, people thought that Gretchen Lowell was behind it.
Henry knew it was hysteria. Gretchen didn’t have a victim profile. She’d claimed to have killed two hundred people. They’d convicted her of killing twenty-six, adding another twenty to the list once she was in jail. Men, women, black, white, it didn’t matter. Gretchen was an equal-opportunity serial killer. But she was also a megalomaniac, and she always left a signature.
Claire wandered away. Henry was already thinking about getting home. Co-ed Confidential was on Cinemax at eleven and Claire had said she’d watch it with him. He cleared his throat. “Some kids probably bought an organ at a butcher shop,” he said. “Thought they’d scare the crap out of someone.”
“Maybe,” the ME said. “Can’t tell until I get it back to the lab. But the size looks right to be human.”
The state cop gripped his hat a little tighter. “We figured we should call you guys,” he said.
Gretchen had removed some of her victims’ spleens. Both pre-and postmortem. But she left bodies in her wake, not organs. “It’s not Gretchen Lowell,” Henry said. It wasn’t right. No body. No signature. “It’s not her style.”
“Henry,” Claire said. “Look at this.”
Henry turned toward Claire. She was facing the opposite wall, past the stalls. There was seepage where the toilet had flooded onto the concrete floor and Henry had to navigate around it, his attention shifting between his new black cowboy boots and the reflection of his large frame in the puddle. When he got to Claire, he looked up.
The graffiti was recent. Other penciled and scratched musings had been marked over by the thick, neat red lines. The same shape, rendered over and over again. The hairs on the back of Henry’s neck stood up, his shoulders tightened. “Fuck,” he said.
“We need to tell Archie,” Claire said softly.
“Archie Sheridan?” the state cop asked. He stepped forward, his black boots slapping through the puddle.
Archie had run the task force that had hunted Gretchen. It had made him the most famous cop in the state. For better or worse.
“I heard he was getting inpatient treatment,” the ME said from the sink.
Inpatient treatment, Henry thought. That was a nice euphemism for it. “Officially he’s a citizen until he gets his psych clearance,” Henry said.