“Jesus,” Claire said.
It looked like eyeball soup. Archie had managed to scoop up four eyeballs, and he could see at least two more still in the tank. They had been cleanly removed from their sockets—whole, plump, iridescent white orbs, mottled with red tissue, each iris a pupilless pale blue. Some floated. Some just sort of hung in the water, like pearl onions in a jar.
The plastic tub had a recycling symbol on it. Archie wondered if the ME would rinse it out and reuse it when they were done.
He handed the tub to the ME. “Why don’t you keep an eye on this,” Archie said.
The trooper came back around, wiping his chin with a paper towel he must have picked up off the floor.
Archie walked back over to the wall of hearts. No rapid pulse, his breathing normal. It must have been the antianxiety meds. Gretchen was out there. She was killing again. And he wasn’t afraid.
Archie laughed.
Two months earlier, in a hospital bed, his throat cut, nearly dead, he and Gretchen had made a deal. He’d tried to sacrifice himself to catch her. But once again, she’d managed to pull him back from the brink of pastoral darkness. She wanted him alive. So he agreed not to blow his brains out, and she agreed not to murder anyone.
Now the deal was off.
Archie felt Henry’s hand on his shoulder.
No one moved. The only sound was the steady hum of one of the toilets running.
“I shouldn’t have brought you here,” Henry said.
The ME held the plastic tub of eyes up to the flickering light. The eyeballs bobbed and spun.
“So what do we do now?” the trooper asked finally.
“Seal the scene,” Archie said. “Call in the task force.” Archie looked around the bathroom. “See if you can turn up any more parts.”
The trooper’s face glowed. “It’s her,” he said. “Gretchen-fucking-Lowell.” He slowly shook his head and tried to hide his lopsided grin.
Archie had seen it before. The naked exhilaration young cops brought to the Beauty Killer crime scenes. Like they were in on something special.Like they might be the ones to catch her.
“I didn’t mean”—the trooper hesitated, his cheeks coloring—“I thought it was exciting.” He glanced down at his boots, then back up at Archie. “Did she do that to your neck?”
“Yeah,” Archie said, not moving. “She did that to my neck.”
The trooper’s eyes darted away again, somewhere over Archie’s shoulder. “Sorry,” he said.
“Don’t be,” Archie said. “I was unconscious.”
The trooper’s hand went up past the knot of his blue tie, to the collar of his dress shirt, and Archie noticed a high school ring. “You’re lucky,” the trooper said. And then, after a brief pause, the trooper clarified, “To be alive.”
Lucky. The trooper didn’t want to catch Gretchen. He just wanted to meet her. “You can ask me if you want,” Archie said.
“Archie, come on,” said Henry.
“No,” Archie said. He beckoned with his hand. “Go ahead. Ask me.”
Someone flushed a toilet in the men’s room on the other side of the wall and the tinny sound of rushing water filled the room. Archie could see Claire in the periphery of his vision give Henry a look. Henry didn’t move.
The trooper’s cheeks were scarlet now. He looked down again, then up. His eyes shone. A high-school football player, Archie decided. A quarterback. You didn’t have to have a college degree to join the state cops.
“What’s she like?” the trooper asked.
Archie stepped forward and took the trooper’s free hand in his and lifted it to his own neck. “Feel that,” Archie said gently, guiding the trooper’s fingertips over the thick scar on his neck. The trooper didn’t pull away, didn’t cringe, instead he leaned forward, his eyes following the line of Archie’s scar, still raw and fibrous, still sensitive to the touch. Archie could see the pulse in the trooper’s neck quicken. Archie moved the trooper’s hand over an inch. “The jugular is here,” he said, pressing the trooper’s fingers into his neck so he could feel the arterial cord pulsing beneath the flesh. “Gretchen knows where to cut,” Archie said. “I didn’t get lucky. If she’d wanted me dead, I’d be dead.” Archie let go of the trooper’s hand and the trooper slowly withdrew it. “What’s she like?” Archie repeated softly. He put his hand on the trooper’s shoulder and leaned forward, so his face was inches from his. Gretchen was a beautiful, sensual, charismatic, manipulative bitch, the object of Archie’s sexual obsession, his torturer, and the person who knew him best in the world. “She’s a serial killer,” Archie said. He smiled and gave the trooper’s shoulder an avuncular pat. “If you ever lay eyes on her, shoot her.”
Archie turned to Henry. “I’m ready to go back to the loony bin,” he said.
C H A P T E R 5