Randy walked to the edge, overlooking the foliage-thick cliff-side that led down to the city, and tossed his cigarette over the black chain-link fence.
He immediately realized what he’d done. The brush on the hillside was like kindling. An arson rap was the last thing he needed. He stood at the fence and scanned the hillside to make sure the cherry tip had extinguished—and that’s when he saw it. At first he thought it was an old, deflated basketball. It was nestled in the brush, like someone had tossed it from exactly where Randy was standing. But as he leaned over to get a better look, he realized, with unusually sudden clarity, that it was a head.
He lost his footing, and had to scramble, flapping his arms, to keep from falling. When he was upright, he started running, as fast as he could, for the mansion.
He was only vaguely aware of the smoke snaking up the hillside behind him.
C H A P T E R 9
Susan glanced down at the array of self-defense sprays laid out on the passenger seat of her car. Pepper spray. Mace. Some toxic herbal spray her mom had made her out of nutmeg. She swept them into her open purse, started the car, and headed out of the hospital parking garage.
Body parts.
She looked up at the sky. It hadn’t rained since early July, but today there was no blue sky in sight. The Gorge rest stop was forty-five minutes away. She could make it in thirty—unless it started raining.
She fed a Jimi Hendrix CD into her car stereo, and was turning out of the medical campus, when her phone vibrated in her lap and nearly caused her to steer into a Ford Explorer. Susan slammed on her brakes, causing her purse to spew most of its contents onto the floor. The woman behind the wheel of the Explorer had blond hair. Her head was turned, and Susan couldn’t see her face. But there was something about the hair.
Susan’s body went cold.
Gretchen.
Susan couldn’t move for a moment. Her car stalled, and she snapped to and laid on her horn, hoping to get the woman to look up, but the woman kept going.
Susan glanced across the street where a billboard with Gretchen’s face on it advertised a special edition of America’s Sexiest Serial Killers. Another blonde drove by.
Susan shook her head, restarted the Saab’s engine, and pulled onto Glisan Street .
This was ridiculous.
Gretchen was long gone. And if she wasn’t—well, Gretchen Lowell wouldn’t be caught dead in a Ford Explorer.
The phone in her lap vibrated again and Susan flinched.
She closed her eyes. This couldn’t continue. At this rate she’d be dead of a coronary before she turned thirty.
The phone. She picked it up off her lap and answered it. She could barely make out the voice on the other end over the wail of electric guitar coming through her dash speakers. “What?” she said.
The voice got louder. “Hello?” It was a man’s voice. She didn’t recognize it. He sounded confused. “Hello?” he said again.
Susan turned down her car stereo. “Sorry,” she said. “Are You Experienced.”
“Am I what?” he asked.
“Not you,” Susan said. “The album. Hendrix. Are You Experienced.” It must have been lunch break at the hospital because traffic was crawling. “Can I help you?” Susan asked.
“Susan Ward?” the man said.
Her full name. Susan’s fingers tightened around her sheepskin steering-wheel cover. She knew where this was going. “I sent in that student loan payment yesterday,” she said. She was lying. “Swear.”
There was a pause. “What?” the man asked.
This part of Glisan was all flower shops and bars. “This isn’t Sallie Mae?” Susan asked.
“No,” the man said.
Susan mentally inventoried the bills stacked next to the Vogue on her coffee table. “Visa?” Susan guessed.
“I’m not a bill collector,” the man said.
“Oh, good,” Susan said. The light at the upcoming intersection was red and Susan came to a stop behind a long line of cars. It started to rain and she turned on the windshield wipers, which needed replacing and only made visibility worse.
“I want to talk to you about a story,” the man said.
Susan’s fingers tightened again. Another pissed-off reader.Excellent. Why did people feel the need to let her know every time they found her irritating? “If you have a problem with something I’ve written, the best thing to do is write a letter to the editor,” she said.
“You wrote to me on my Web site,” he said. “You said you were interested in writing about our group.”
Susan had written to hundreds of Gretchen Lowell fan sites over the last few weeks asking for interviews and information. “Who are you?” she asked. “What site?”
“There’s a body at three-nine-seven North Fargo,” the man said.
Not funny. “Who is this?” Susan asked.
“Someone who appreciates beauty,” he said.
There was something deadly serious in the man’s voice that gave her a sudden chill.
“Is this for real?” Susan asked.