Henry folded his hands in his lap and looked at them. “What did he do to you?” he said gruffly.
Archie had been tempted to omit some details. By the time he had recovered enough movement to lift his head the suspension gear was gone. He wasn’t sure he wanted them to know what had gone on between him and Jeremy. But he was tired of keeping secrets.
“I gave Claire a statement,” Archie said. “Go ahead and read it. But I’m not pressing charges.”
Henry lifted his head and glanced up at the ceiling as if for guidance. “What is it with you and psychopaths?”
“Jeremy confessed,” Archie said. “He took responsibility for the rest stop, and Fintan English, and the other three. You have him for four murders—everyone but Courtenay. You don’t need me.” Archie sat forward and folded his hands on his desk. “He remembers his sister’s murder. He told me everything.”
“You buy it?” Henry asked.
“He knew about the triangles, the contusions,” Archie said. “He remembers. He watched Gretchen kill her. He spent almost two days in that car.” He wanted Henry to see what this meant, to know that everything had changed. “She made him what he is.”
“You went through worse, and you’ve managed not to carve anyone’s eyes out.”
Archie shook his head. “I didn’t go through worse,” he said. Jeremy had watched Gretchen torture his sister. Archie had survived his own torture. But Jeremy had been innocent. Archie had brought it on himself. “It was just a different kind of bad.”
“No,” Henry said. “You aren’t like him.”
Jeremy had committed murder. Archie had merely killed his marriage, his sense of self, his job. All without firing his weapon.
He couldn’t imagine what it would feel like, to actually do it, to take someone’s life, what might drive a person to cross that line.
He couldn’t imagine. But Henry could.
“Are you okay?” Archie asked him.
A faint smile crossed Henry’s lips. “That’s a switch. You asking me that.”
Shark Boy had swung at Henry when he’d come in, and Henry had fired at him and given chase. “He was going to kill us,” Archie said.
Henry stared into space for a moment, then frowned. “I’m on desk duty, pending official clearance,” he said. “But it’s a formality.” He scratched the back of his neck. “They identified him. His name was Troy Lipton. Twenty-seven.Worked as a fry cook at a roadhouse out in Sherwood. He’s got a record in Idaho. Robbery.Assault.” Henry coughed and stood up. “You should go back to the house,” he said, waving a hand in Archie’s direction. “Get some rest.”
Archie looked down at his wrinkled clothes, the shirt spotted with blood. “I could use a shower.”
“I’m sending someone with you,” Henry said. “Gretchen’s still out there, and now Jeremy.”
“Agreed.”
Henry took a step and stopped in the doorway, his back to Archie, head down. “I’ve killed people before,” he said.
C H A P T E R 59
Archie stood in Henry’s shower, eyes closed, letting the hot water run down his back. The bandages had come off in the water and circled the drain of the tub. Archie turned up the hot water. He stayed like that for another few minutes, until his skin burned and the steam was thick enough that he could barely breathe, and then he opened his eyes and took a step out of the shower stream. He opened the plastic curtain a few inches, to let in some fresh air, and he examined his wounds. The Taser had left a vicious-looking bruise on his side. It was the size of a handprint, hard and tender to the touch, with two dark red circles, like teeth marks, where the electrical current had entered his body.
His back and legs still stung from the hooks, but he wasn’t bleeding anymore. He lifted his foot and put it on the edge of the tub so he could examine the triangle he’d cut into his thigh. The sliced skin hadn’t required stitches. He rubbed his hand on a bar of soap in the tub’s soap dish and then moved his fingers over the cuts in his skin. Triangles. Isabel had been the only victim Gretchen had ever carved that shape into. Strange that it would be what
captured Jeremy’s attention. That he would carve it on his own body so many times. He had not seen the wounds on her other victims. He would have no way of knowing that it was special.
Archie brushed a tiny scab off one of the cuts and it started to bleed, mixing with the water and sending a pale pink stream down his thigh and around the back of his knee.
Triangles.