Henry leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms, and rested his chin on his chest. “So are you just going to hide out here the rest of your life?” he asked.
Archie didn’t have an answer.
Henry watched him, jaw working, the muscle popping under the skin. Archie could almost see him trying out different arguments. “No one knows,” Henry said finally. “You clear a psych exam you can come back to work. You’re still a fucking hero out there. Fucking Philip Marlowe.”
Frank’s eyes shot up, alarmed, from behind his glasses. “No bad language here.”
“Sorry, Frank,” Henry said. He leaned forward and worked his jaw some more before continuing. “Don’t leave the ward,” Henry said to Archie. “I need to know that you’re safe.”
Archie had hospital privileges. He could roam anywhere he wanted, as long as he was back for evening meds. They called it Level Four. Archie had been a Level One when he’d checked himself in. He’d clawed his way up from high risk to mildly disturbed.
“Never,” Archie said. “Who’d hang out with Frank?”
Frank had started folding the clay snake he’d made back on itself, back and forth, again and again.
Henry raised an eyebrow and looked over at Frank. “What are you working on there, buddy?” Henry asked him.
Frank’s eyes flicked up to the TV, and then he smiled down at his clay. “Cat intestines,” he said.
Henry threw a glance at Archie. “Nice,” he said.
The door to the balcony opened and people started coming back in, their blank stares momentarily enlivened by nicotine. There was a group therapy session starting in a few minutes. “You need to go,” Archie said to Henry.
Henry stood up. He hesitated. “Susan Ward’s out there,” he said.
“I know,” Archie said. “She likes to steal the Wi-Fi.”
“You don’t want to see her?” Henry said.
The truth was that Archie had come close to letting her in a few times. But he’d always caught himself. Entangling Susan in his life was the last thing she needed. “I want to finish my craft project,” Archie said.
Henry planted his hands in his pockets and turned to leave. “Think about what I said,” he said to Archie, starting for the door. “I hear fall’s nice in New England.”
“Henry,” Archie said, stopping him. His voice was steel, the clay strangled in his hand. “You need to issue a shoot-to-kill order. We can’t let her get away again.”
“That’s the sanest thing you’ve said in months, my friend,” Henry said.
Frank chuckled. It was the first time Archie had ever heard him laugh. It was an unsettling sound, like a child crying.
C H A P T E R 8
The Beauty Killer Body Tour stopped four times a day at PittockMansion. Randy pulled the bus over, and all the tourists would file out with the guide, pay their admission to the mansion, and then be led through the house to the spot on the grounds where Gretchen Lowell had dumped the body of a disemboweled oral surgeon named Matthew Fowler. The guide would point to the spot in the grass where they’d found him, and the fuckers would take pictures of it.
Randy waited in the bus.
Portlanders had been getting their wedding pictures taken at the 1914 stone palace since one of the Pittock grandsons had sold the house to the city in the sixties.
He wondered how many wedding photos now had assholes in RUN, GRETCHEN Tshirts wandering around in the background.
It was ten o’clock. The next stop was a motel in North Portland where Gretchen had jammed some poor schmuck’s dismembered penis in an ice machine. Randy liked that one. He liked to see the faces on the tourists when the guide flipped open the lid on the ice machine and they saw the rubber dildo the motel owner kept in there for laughs.
Laughs.
He needed another job.
He pulled off his BEAUTY KILLER BODY TOURS T-shirt, turned it inside out, put it back on, and got out of the bus for a cigarette. He wasn’t supposed to leave the bus unattended, but fuck it. What were they going to do? Dismember his penis?
The tourists were inside, no doubt admiring the curved marble staircase at seven bucks a pop, so Randy lit up and walked around to the front of the house. They didn’t charge admission into the yard. The Beauty Killer Tour could have taken tourists right to the spot where Fowler had died, but instead they made the tourists pay to go inside the mansion first. It kept the Pittock people happy, and everyone got a little bit richer thanks to Portland’s favorite serial killer.
The mansion was a thousand feet above Portland, and on a clear day the view was something spectacular. Today you couldn’t see shit. Not Mount Hood. Not Mount Saint Helens. Definitely not Adams.Just gray clouds that looked to be about a mile thick. It was for the best. They needed the rain. The whole city had shriveled up over the last few months.