The cover of Portland Monthly had an image of a tour bus plastered with Gretchen’s face on it. gretchenlowell, the headline read. PORTLAND’S NEXT BIG TOURIST ATTRACTION?
But the magazine that caught his eye was the current issue of Newsweek. It wasn’t her airbrushed headshot on the cover that made his gut twist. It was the huge bold letter headline—a single word:
INNOCENT?
C H A P T E R 15
The fingerprint tech rolled Susan’s right index finger, left to right, over the sponge of dark purple ink. He’d done her thumb first, and was working his way to her pinkie. Elimination prints, they called them. Next time she broke into a house she was definitely wearing gloves.
“This better come off,” Susan said.
She was perched on the back of a police van, the cab’s double doors open on either side of her, blocking the view of the gawkers who already lined the police tape that had just gone up a half hour ago. The rain had stopped, but not before Susan’s hair had gotten frizzy. Police radios cracked, emergency lights flashed. Everyone walked with purpose. The blood on Susan’s jeans had started to dry, stiffening the denim against her knees. She was trying to ignore it.
The fingerprint tech was sitting next to her, a police fingerprint card on the bed of the van between them. His hooded eyes didn’t waver from his work, his balding head bowed over her hand beside her. “Hold still,” he told Susan.
Henry cleared his throat and tapped his notebook with his pen. He’d come out of the house ten minutes before, mouth set, eyes masked behind sunglasses, and had been grilling her ever since.
“How did this guy get your cell-phone number?” Henry asked.
“Everyone has it,” Susan said. “It’s on my e-mail signature. I’m a reporter. I need to be reachable.” She craned forward, trying to catch a glimpse of his notes. She should be the one asking him questions. For a reporter, she spent an awful lot of time being interviewed. “So, I hear you found a head,” she said.
Henry angled his notebook toward his chest. “I should arrest you for trespassing,” he said. “What the fuck were you thinking?”
“I played the odds,” Susan said. She looked at her boots. They were caked with mud. She had probably tracked it all through the house. “Who’s the dead guy?” she asked.
Henry rubbed the back of his neck like it hurt.
Susan could hear more sirens in the distance. The fingerprint tech moved on to the next finger. She glanced, dismayed, at her purple fingertip. “Seriously,” she said, “that ink washes off, right?”
“The victim doesn’t have ID,” Henry said, and Susan looked back up. “The ME says male in his early twenties. Only been dead two to six hours.” Henry leaned toward her. It was a tiny motion, a shift in his stance of an inch, imperceptible to anyone watching, but Henry was a mountain, and it was all Susan could do not to cower. “Tell me about the caller,” Henry said.
“Tell me about the head,” she said.
“We found a head,” Henry said. “PittockMansion. We had to close off part of the backyard, but you can still take a tour of the house.” He scratched one eyebrow. “I think they’re charging extra.”
Susan pulled at her damp tank top. “He didn’t sound young,” she said of the caller. “He didn’t sound old. He said he was part of a Gretchen Lowell fan group.” She caught herself. “I mean, not specifically. He said I’d written to him on his Web site, wanting to write about his group.” Henry held his pen to his notebook, apparently still waiting for her to say something worth writing down. She wound a piece of purple hair around a finger and tried to remember any other group she might have contacted—she used the Internet endlessly—but came up only with the Gretchen story. “I’ve been contacting Beauty Killer fan sites.” She left out the part about him not recognizing Jimi Hendrix. She didn’t think Henry would be interested.
Henry wrote something down. Susan lifted her chin to read it. “SW PC.” He circled it. “What the hell does that mean?” she asked.
“I’m going to need your hard drive,” he said.
He had to be kidding. “No,” Susan said. And she felt the need to add, “And I have a Mac, not a PC.”
Henry adjusted his sunglasses, pressing them more firmly into place. It wasn’t sunny. But Susan wasn’t sure this was the time to point that out. “We need to trace your Internet history,” he said.
Susan shook her head. “And have you find out how much time I spend Googling myself?” she said. “No way.”