A flash went off. Archie blinked, momentarily blinded. As his eyes refocused he saw a state trooper with a big digital camera. The trooper was in his late twenties, Archie guessed, his dark hair receding prematurely above each temple, his face a little doughy. But he had even features and straight teeth and the build of an ex-jock, and the silver, five-point badge pinned to his chest was polished to a high sheen. The state-trooper uniform was ridiculous—the big hat, the epaulets, the blue pants with light-blue stripes down the sides; they looked like park rangers who’d lost a fight with a blueberry. But this guy wore it well. He almost looked like a real cop. The trooper looked up and lifted his thick eyebrows at Archie. “Hey,” the trooper said. “Hey, it’s you.”
Archie tried to force his mouth into a friendly smile. It had been like that since Gretchen had taken him captive, this sort of morbid celebrity. There had been a paperback bestseller, The Last Victim, about his kidnapping, and a TV movie. Gretchen’s escape from prison and their subsequent second run-in had only made it worse.
“Let him look around,” Henry told the trooper.
A leathery-skinned man dressed for a day hike stood by the sink.
“Can I go now?” he asked Henry.
“A few more minutes,” Henry said.
Archie reached into his pocket looking for the brass pillbox of Vicodin he usually had. It was reflex. He knew it wasn’t there. They had taken it at the hospital, along with his cell phone and the belt Debbie had given him on their last Christmas together. He hadn’t known what to do with his hands since. He settled on putting both of them in his pants pockets and focused on taking in the scene. The bathroom was familiar. The scratched sheet-metal mirror.The too-bright white walls. The fluorescent lights. It was not unlike his room at the psych ward. With at least one noticeable difference. The bathroom had been trashed. “Malicious mischief,” they called it, a term that Archie had always liked. Of the six stalls, five had been deliberately clogged with toilet paper and feces, a stew of brown sludge and disintegrating paper. The metal stall doors hung off their hinges. Someone had urinated on the floor. The porous concrete had absorbed most of it, but there were still a few standing puddles, reflecting the jumpy white fluorescents above. Pipe noise echoed in the room, water rushing, footsteps, everything louder, distorted. Archie leaned across the overflow to peer into the last stall, the one where they’d found the body parts. It was the cleanest of the stalls, the toilet seat still attached, the hinges intact. They had wanted someone to use that stall, to flush, to find the bloody surprise. They had wanted the drama.
An iPod in a yellow jelly case lay facedown on the floor at Archie’s feet.
Another flash went off. Archie turned to see the state trooper lower his camera. “Sorry,” the trooper said.
Claire Masland walked in. He hadn’t seen her in two months, but she didn’t let on. She smiled briskly, ran a hand through her short dark hair, and said, “Hi, Archie.”
She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt with a picture of a bear on it and black motorcycle boots. Archie took a step toward her and picked a cat hair off her shirt. Henry had cats. “Hi, Claire,” Archie said.
Claire broke the seal on a water bottle she had in her hand and took a slug. “You seen the wall?” she asked.
“Show me,” Archie said.
It looked like the hearts had all been drawn by the same person. The same shape, two plump humps, a sharp point. The marker line thickness was consistent. It must have taken whoever did it a while, because there were a couple hundred hearts. Careful, methodical. Not the same person who’d torn apart the bathroom. Someone else.
Another flash.
If Gretchen had done this, there would be more. This was a woman who’d pulled a victim’s small intestine out with a crochet hook. Her aim was not to disturb. Her aim was to terrorize. A spleen in a trashed public toilet was gross. But it was not up to Gretchen’s pay grade. “Anyone check the back of the toilet?” Archie asked.
The others looked at each other. The state trooper shrugged.
Archie went back to the stall, stepped over the iPod, and walked through the overflow to the toilet. Most public restrooms these days had tanks built into the wall, steel bowls, and lasers that could tell when you’d gotten off the pot so the automatic flusher could kick in.
The great toilet-upgrade revolution had not yet reached this particular Gorge highway rest stop. This toilet had a tank on the back. Archie picked up the heavy porcelain lid and slid it over, resting it perpendicularly on the back of the tank.
What he saw in the water made his stomach turn.
Henry, Claire, the ME, and the state trooper all crowded in as close as they could come without getting their feet wet.
“Well?” Claire asked.
“Hand me a container,” Archie said. His voice was calm. He was glad he could still do that. He could see something horrible and not let it show. He’d learned a long time ago that the more dangerous the situation, the more crucial it was to remain in control.
The ME disappeared for a moment and returned with a six-inch clear plastic tub, the sort of thing a deli might pack potato salad in. Archie stretched an arm back for the tub, and then lowered the tub into the back of the tank and scooped up a healthy amount of the contents.
He held it up for the others to see.
The state trooper lifted his hands to his face, scrambled to the next-door stall, and vomited.