He can hear her breathing—short, rapid inhalations, her trepidation palpable. “Are you trying to scare me away?” she asks.
“This isn’t a hobby,” Archie says.
“I’m not a dilettante.”
“What are you?”
She perches on the front edge of his desk, sets her mouth in determination, and fans out all the photographs from the autopsy file.
Her body trembles as she scans the images, and her hand finds the soft curve of her throat. But she keeps looking. And after a minute, she places a manicured finger on an anterior shot of Matthew Fowler’s head. “What are these marks, here?” she asks.
Archie glances down. “Part of his scalp was surgically removed,” he says. “And the skull beneath was shaved down.”
Her eyes are suddenly huge and animated. She grins and gives the photograph a triumphant tap. “Amativeness,” she says. “It’s a concept in phrenology. The brain is the organ of the mind. Certain areas have specific functions, as reflected by the cranial bone.”
Archie looks at the picture. He feels the throb of her excitement. It has been months since they’ve had a good lead. “Amativeness?” he says.
She takes his hand in hers, bends her head down, and lifts his hand to her head to illustrate. Her emotion—the fever of discovery—courses between them like a current. It’s intoxicating. “This spot back here,” she says, moving his fingers in her hair between her ear and neck, exploring the edge of her skull. He feels the bony lump, hard and warm beneath his fingertips. “It’s the amativeness module,” she says. “It correlates with sexual attraction.”
Archie pulls his hand away and clears his throat.
Gretchen sweeps her hair back and lifts her head. “All that fury,” she says, “and you still think the Beauty Killer is a man?”
Archie looks at Gretchen Lowell, just a few feet away from him, and he knows that he can never allow her into the investigation. He will just have to tell Buddy no. It’s too dangerous. But not in the way he first thought.
“Hi,” says a voice from the doorway.
Archie’s heart skips. Debbie.
He turns, and there, in the doorway, stands his wife carrying a bag of takeout.
She holds it up and smiles, and then raises a quizzical eyebrow at Gretchen.
How to explain this?
“This is Gretchen Lowell,” Archie says. “She’s a psychiatrist. She’s going to be consulting with us.” He pushes back his chair, gets up, walks over to his wife, and kisses her lightly on the lips. “My wife, Debbie.”
C H A P T E R 21
It had been fifteen minutes since Archie had taken the pill.
Bedtime at Bedlam was nine o’clock. Sedatives were passed out at eight-thirty. Archie didn’t need to stay up long. He just needed to stay up longer than Frank. He was hoping that the five cups of coffee he’d had since dinner would buy him some time.
Unlike regular meds, which they made you line up for, the night nurse delivered the sedatives right to the room. They didn’t want you taking a sleeping pill and then falling flat on your face before they could tuck you in. It was the same every night. This time, Archie needed it to be different. Frank and Archie were in their respective beds. Frank’s light was off; Archie kept his on. He usually read in bed, but he couldn’t risk dozing off. Instead Archie rested on his side, listening to the sound of Frank breathing.
The pill made his blood feel warm. He had to fight it. Concentrate on blinking, prying open the lids that wanted to stay closed.
Frank shifted in his bed, sighing and chomping.
Frank, who had arrived two weeks after Archie checked himself in, and who was always around, just in earshot.
Archie’s eyes closed. He liked the sedatives. It was the closest feeling to Vicodin that they allowed him. He liked the feeling of his body letting go, of giving in.
Frank took in a great rattling breath and released a slow snore.
Archie opened his eyes, glanced up at the surveillance camera in the corner of the room, and reached up and turned off the light.
With the lights off, the camera was useless.
He waited, counting Frank’s snores.
When he got to ten, Archie got out of bed and felt his way around the perimeter of the room to Frank’s built-in Formica dresser. Archie slid the drawers out slowly, as quietly as he could, and felt inside, running his hands along the sides of each drawer and shuffling through the clothing. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but if Gretchen had gotten a phone to Archie, maybe she had gotten something to Frank, too.
But Archie found nothing.
He got down on the floor and ran his hand underneath Frank’s bed. Frank made a garbled noise and turned over on his side. Archie froze. And waited. When Frank’s snoring became rhythmic again, Archie got up, went back to his own bed, sat down, reached under the blanket and felt around until he found the phone he’d hidden there.
Gretchen had him chasing his own shadow.
Archie sat there, in the dark, for a long time. Then he looked down at the phone, highlighted the single number in the log, and pressed call.