out and open one of those Forest Service gates. We drove for a long time. She didn’t say anything. Isabel woke up and was crying in the backseat. I could hear her, but I was too afraid to turn around or say anything.”
Archie pressed the blade to his flesh again. There were four children listed as presumed Beauty Killer victims, all subjected to torture and found with Gretchen’s signature heart carved on their chests. Archie could never get Gretchen to confess to any of them. She lorded them over him, the final prize, just out of reach.
“We parked at the side of the road,” Jeremy said. “And Gretchen got in the backseat with my sister.”
Archie pressed the blade in harder. He wanted to feel it. He deserved to feel it. Gretchen had dangled the children like confections. But Archie had never wanted her to confess, because he would have had to hear her confession, to listen to what she had done to them, and to correlate that with all the nights he thought of her, his dick in his hand. Feel it.
“She cut her with an X-Acto blade,” Jeremy said. “She had a package of blades, and when one got dull she’d replace it with a new one. Isabel cried. She looked so afraid. Gretchen cut off one of her breasts. She said that Amazons used to cut off one of their breasts to make it easier to shoot a bow. When she’d freed the flesh from the muscle she threw it out the window and said, ‘Now she’s an Amazon.’ ”
Archie felt something. But it wasn’t pain—it was loathing. And for the first time in years, it wasn’t directed inward. He loathed her. He wanted Jeremy to keep going. He wanted to hear every gory detail. Because every horror she committed just made him hate her more. The rage moved through his veins like endorphins.
“I don’t know how long it lasted,” Jeremy said. “Hours. After a while Isabel’s eyes glazed over and she got really pale and limp. Gretchen put a new blade in and cut her throat. She showed me
how to do it. She said that it was something everyone should know. Little bloody bubbles came out of her neck. After she was dead, Gretchen carved a heart on her. It was only then that I knew who she was. The Beauty Killer. I’d seen some of the stories on the news. We sat there for a long time. It got dark. I started to cry, and Gretchen held me and stroked my hair. She didn’t say anything after that. I thought she was mad at me. We sat in the car the whole next day and night. I got out to pee. And then I got back in. She got out sometimes, too. On the second day I said I was hungry, and she started the car and drove back into town. Then she parked and got out and walked away. I didn’t know if she was coming back. I didn’t know if I was supposed to follow her. So I waited. And after a while I fell asleep again.”
Archie set the bloody scalpel back on the tray.
Jeremy sat shaking his head. “Why didn’t she kill me?”
“I don’t know,” Archie said.
“She took care of me.”
“She tortured you, as much as she tortured your sister,” Archie said gently. “Only you’ve had to live with it. There was no reason.” He was talking to himself now as much as Jeremy. “She didn’t care about you. You don’t owe her anything.”
Jeremy started to sob. “I’m sorry,” he gasped. “I killed those people. I killed a man I found sleeping in a park and a girl I picked up hitchhiking. I tricked another man into getting into my car, by offering him work. I killed them and I kept their eyes. Because their eyes reminded me of Isabel’s. Dead eyes, like hers.”
“You put them at Gretchen’s crime scenes.”
“I wanted her to notice me.”
Archie looked at Jeremy, wasted, wrecked—the garbage Gretchen had thrown to the curb—and he promised himself that he would do everything he could for him. “You’re in trouble,” Archie said. “People are dead. You stabbed a journalist.” Archie could have
gone on, but Jeremy didn’t seem to be in the state of mind to discuss the practicing-medicine-without-a-license charge.
“Help me,” Jeremy pleaded.
“Your dad will get you a good criminal lawyer,” Archie said. They were both damaged goods. Face-to-face, with their ravaged torsos exposed, Archie felt like he was looking in the mirror. “You’ll be okay,” Archie said. “You’re going to be okay. You’ll get help. We’re going to be okay.”
The lights flickered.
Archie looked up. Something was wrong.
The ceiling seemed to bend toward him, and Archie shook his head and looked at Jeremy to see if he had seen it, too. But Jeremy wasn’t looking at the ceiling. He was looking at Archie, a soft smile on his lips.
“We should get out of here,” Archie said. He felt warm, his head muddy. Maybe his blood pressure was still off from the suspension. He tried to stand but his stomach lurched, like the floor had elevated and dropped, or they had hit a swell on a boat, and he fell to his knees.