Susan could hear a child running above the popcorn ceiling over their heads. Archie didn’t seem to notice it. “Okay,” she said slowly. “I guess I’m interested in what was different about you. I mean, the torture was different, right? She killed all the others after a few days, right? You, she kept alive. So you were different. From the beginning. To her.”
“I was the lead investigator on her case. The others were all random. As far we know, except for the accomplices she killed, she didn’t know any of her victims. She and I knew each other. We had a relationship.”
Susan underlined the word relationship in her notebook. “But she infiltrated the case to get to you. I mean, that’s why she came to Portland, knocked on the task force door? She was after you.”
Archie lifted his arms off the armrests and folded and unfolded his hands in his lap. He was looking at the copy of The Last Victim. At Gretchen Lowell. Eyes heavy, unblinking. Susan glanced from Archie to the book and back at Archie. It was like once he looked, he couldn’t look away. “It’s not that unusual for psychopaths to get close to investigations,” he said, gaze still fixed on the thick paperback. “They enjoy watching the drama unfold. It makes them feel superior.”
Susan bent forward, resting her forearms on her crossed legs, and scooted a little closer to Archie. She always seemed to make the first move on first dates. “But she risked a lot,” she said softly. “To get to you. And then she didn’t kill you.” He was still looking at the book. Susan was filled with a sudden impulse to reach out and fling it off the table. Just to see what he’d do. “I’m confused by that. It seems out of character.”
“Excuse me,” Archie said. He stood up quickly and went into the kitchen. Susan twisted awkwardly in her seat so that she could watch him. She couldn’t get a read on his face. He stood with his back to her, hands on his hips, facing a sad bank of white Formica cabinetry. And then he sighed and said, “Will you do me a favor and put the book away?”
The book. Was it the photograph of Gretchen Lowell looking like a Breck Girl on the cover that bothered him, or was it what was inside? “Sorry,” Susan called, pushing the paperback into her purse. She hunched her shoulders a little, feeling like a jerk. “It was just a prop. For the interview.”
He didn’t say anything. A hand went from his hip to the back of his neck. She wished he’d turn around so that she could see his face, see what he was thinking. She wanted to do something other than stare forlornly at the back of his curly head, so she started writing in her notebook. “What isn’t he telling me about Gretchen Lowell?” She circled the question several times, until the pen made an indentation in the paper. The question sat on the page, surrounded by blank paper.
He said something. She looked up, mortified. He was standing at the fridge now, looking at her, a beer in his hand. He had definitely said something.
“Excuse me?” she said, flipping over the page she had been writing on so quickly, it tore a little at the spiral.
“I said, you think she showed me mercy.”
Susan twisted around to face him again, lifting her legs under her on the couch, her motorcycle boots pressing a dent into the foam cushion. “At the end,” Susan said, “she killed everyone else she took. She killed you. But she brought you back. She saved your life even.”
Archie stood alone in the kitchen and took a sip of the beer. She wasn’t sure he’d even heard her. Then he walked back into the living room and sat down, placing the beer carefully on the coffee table in front of him. He did everything carefully. Like someone who expected to break the things he took care of. He looked at his hands, thick, laced with veins, still folded in his lap. And then back at Susan. “If Gretchen had been feeling charitable, she would have let me die,” he said matter-of-factly. “I wanted to die. I was ready to die. If she had put a scalpel in my hand, I would have stabbed myself in the neck and happily bled to death right there in her basement. She didn’t do me any favors by not killing me. Gretchen enjoys people’s pain. And she just found a way to prolong my pain and her pleasure. Believe me, it was the cruelest thing she could have done to me. If she could have thought of something crueler, she would have done it. Gretchen doesn’t show people mercy.”
The heat kicked in. There was a rumble and then the slow blow of hot air from a vent that Susan couldn’t see. Her mouth felt dry. The kid upstairs was still running. If Susan had lived there, she’d have killed that kid by now. “But she ended up in jail. That couldn’t have been part of the plan.”
“Everyone needs a career-exit strategy.”
“But she could have gotten the death penalty,” Susan said.
“She had too many bargaining chips.”
“You mean bodies?” Susan asked.
He took another sip of beer. “Yes.”
“Why do you think she agreed to talk only to you?”
“Because she knew I’d go along with it,” Archie said simply.
“And why did you agree? When your wife made you choose? Why choose Gretchen?”
“She’s my ex-wife. And I did it for the families. Because they deserve some closure. And it’s my job.”