The guard left as soon as Archie entered the room. Gretchen sat just as she had, in repose, her manacled hands folded on one knee, seemingly undisturbed and unimpressed by Susan’s outburst. Susan’s sleek silver digital recorder still sat in the center of the table where she had left it, still recording. Archie pulled the metal chair out again and sat in it and faced Gretchen. Then, avoiding eye contact with Gretchen, he reached out, turned the recorder off, and slipped it in the inside pocket of his jacket. He could still feel Susan’s tears on his hand.
“You want to tell me how you knew about Reston?” he asked, looking up.
Gretchen’s eyes widened innocently. “Lucky guess?”
“You’re intuitive,” Archie said. “Not psychic.”
Gretchen rolled her eyes and gave him a bored half smile. “She mentioned her dead daddy in a story in the Herald about a year ago. And just look at her. The pink hair. The clothes. She’s completely arrested. It screams sexual abuse.” She leaned forward. “The way she looks at you—that longing for a father figure to take her in his strong, protective arms. It was obvious. I just had to guess the right teacher.” She smiled, delighted with herself. “And, darling, it’s always the English teacher or the drama teacher.”
Archie’s head throbbed. He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “It’s a coincidence. That it might be related to a case I’m working on.”
“You’re tired.”
That was a safe bet. “You have no idea.”
“Maybe you should up your antidepressant dosage.”
“I’ll defer to Fergus for my medical advice, thank you.”
She put her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her manacled hands. Then she glanced at the observation window before settling her attention back on Archie. “I pulled her small intestine out. I cut an inch-wide hole in her abdominal wall with a scalpel and I pulled her small intestine out inch by inch with a crochet hook, slicing it from the mesentery an inch at a time. An H crochet hook. You want something big enough to be able to get a grip on the intestine because it’s slippery and you don’t want to perforate it.” She never looked away during the confessions. She maintained eye contact with Archie always. She never glanced to the side to recover some memory; never looked away in revulsion at what she had done; never allowed him a moment’s respite. “Seven meters. That’s what they say the average length is. I’ve never been able to pull out more than three.” She smiled, licking her lips as if they were dry. “It’s beautiful, though. So pink and delicate. Like something waiting to be born. The metallic smell of blood? Remember it, darling?” She sat forward, a blush of pleasure settling in her cheeks. “When she begged me to stop, I started burning her.”
He tried to tune out for the confession. To shut off. Ignore the graphic images she tried to paint for him. He just watched her. She was very beautiful. And if he could manage to stop himself from hearing her, he could enjoy this part. He could enjoy the excuse to just sit and look at a beautiful woman. But he had to be careful when he did. That his eyes didn’t slip from her face, didn’t slide down her neck to her collarbone or breasts.
She knew, of course. She knew everything.
“Are you listening?” she asked, a smile flirting on her lips.
“Yeah,” he said. He pulled the pillbox out of his pocket and set it back on the table. “I’m listening.”
CHAPTER
33
S usan rolled off Ian and onto her back. She had called him as soon as she’d gotten home and he’d come over within the hour. She’d had him in her mouth before she even said hello. Susan found that sex was an excellent reliever of stress, and if Gretchen Lowell had anything to say about that, she could go fuck herself.
Ian picked his glasses up off the bedside table and put them on. “How’d it go?” he asked.
Susan did not consider for a moment telling Ian about Reston, or how Gretchen had emotionally filleted her without even looking like she was trying. “It could have gone better,” she said. She rifled around on her bedside table until she found a half-smoked joint on a saucer on top of a paperback volume of William Stafford poetry. She lit it and inhaled. She liked smoking pot naked. It made her feel bohemian.
“Ever think you smoke too much dope?” Ian asked.
“We’re in Oregon,” Susan said. “It’s our main agricultural export.” She smiled. “I’m supporting local farmers.”
“You’re not in college anymore, Susan.”
“Exactly,” Susan said, annoyed. “Everyone smokes pot in college. It’s totally average. Smoking dope after college, now that takes a certain level of commitment. Besides, my mother still smokes pot.”
“You have a mother?”
Susan smiled to herself. “I’d introduce you, but she distrusts men who don’t have beards.”
Ian found his boxers on the floor beside the bed and pulled them on. He didn’t seem that disappointed about not getting to meet Bliss. “Did you learn anything from the serial killer beauty queen?”
Susan felt a wave of nausea at the thought of her run-in with Gretchen and pushed it aside. “It took you long enough to ask.”
“I was playing it cool,” Ian said. “As if I might be more interested in your body than one of the biggest stories I’ve ever edited.”
Susan delighted in the double compliment, striking a cheesecake pose, arching her back and placing one hand on her nude hip. “As if.”