Heartsick

CHAPTER 18

The first thing Susan did when she arrived home from Sauvie Island was to unzip her tall, black leather boots, kick them off, and fling them on top of a pile of other shoes that had been abandoned at the door. Stained and reeking of bleach, the boots were ruined.

Susan lived in what she liked to call a loft but what was actually a large studio apartment in the Pearl District, just north of downtown on Portland’s west side. The building, once a turn-of-the-century brewery, had been redeveloped several years before. The facade still stood, hulking and brick, along with the old smokestack, but the rest of the structure had been replaced to provide residents with the most modern amenities. Susan’s loft was on the third floor. Technically, it belonged to an ex-professor of hers who was on a yearlong sabbatical in Europe with his wife, writing another book. He lived in Eugene, where he was the lauded head of the M.F.A. writing program at U of O, but he kept the place in Portland ostensibly as a writing getaway, though it was rarely used for literary pursuits. Susan had wanted it to be hers from that first weekend she’d spent there. The open kitchen had the latest appliances, a stainless-steel fridge and an impressive, gleaming range. It was everything the house she had grown up in wasn’t. Sure, the countertops were Corian, not granite, and the range was a Frigidaire knockoff of a Viking, but from a distance, the place still looked chic and urban. She loved the Great Writer’s blue desk. She loved the built-in bookcase that took up an entire wall and was stacked with the Great Writer’s books, two layers deep. She loved the framed photographs of the Great Writer with other great writers. The bed was walled off with a Japanese screen, leaving the rest of the space a living area, which consisted of a blue velvet sofa, a red leather club chair, a coffee table, and a small TV set. Everything that was actually hers in that apartment could fit in two suitcases.

She pulled her shirt over her head, pulled off her black pants, her socks, her underpants, her bra. She could still smell it, the bleach. It was on everything, soaked into everything. God she had loved those boots. She stood for a moment naked, shivering, her clothes a pile at her feet, and then she wrapped herself in the kimono that hung on a brass hook on the bathroom door, gathered up her clothes, the expensive beautiful boots, walked barefoot out into the hallway, down to the small rectangular door marked GARBAGE by the elevator, opened it, and threw the whole bundle down the chute. She didn’t wait like she usually did to listen to the bundle fall; she went straight back to her apartment, into the bathroom, turned on the tub, let the kimono fall in the corner next to the door. Only an inch of steaming water had accumulated, but Susan climbed into the tub anyway, squatting in the hot water and watching her feet redden. She sat down slowly, wincing a little as she did, and then inched backward, stretching her skinny legs out in front of her. Her naked body only made her think of them. Does he bleach them in a tub like this? The waterline was just at her hips now and she leaned back against the cold porcelain, forcing herself to press against it until it warmed to her body temperature. Her arms were covered with goose bumps, and no matter what she did, she couldn’t seem to stop the damn shivering. She turned the faucet off with her toes, closed her eyes, and tried not to think about the pale, bruised thing that had once been Kristy Mathers.

Archie sat at his new desk, listening to his taped interview with Fred Doud. Kristy Mathers was dead. And now the clock restarted. The killer would take another girl. It was just a matter of time. It was always a matter of time.

The office lights were on, but Archie had turned off the fluorescent overheads in his office and now sat in near darkness, the only light streaming in from his open door. He had finally sent Henry to drive Susan Ward back to her car, and he and Claire Masland had followed the medical examiner’s vehicle to the morgue, where they met Kristy’s father and he identified her body. Archie had become an expert at shattering families. Sometimes he didn’t have to say a word. They just looked at him and knew. Other times, he had to say it over and over again, and still they blinked at him dumbfounded, heads shaking in disbelief, eyes stubbornly bright with denial. And then, like a wave, it would crash and the truth would flood in. It took a lot of effort to remind himself that he was not the cause of their anguish.

But Archie did not mind being around grief. Even the most blatant assholes seemed to function in a state of grace when confronted with the brutal loss of a loved one. They moved through the world differently than other people. When they looked at you, you had the feeling that they were really seeing you. Their entire universe was just this one thing, this one event, this one loss. They seemed, for a few weeks, to have things in perspective. Then the inconsequential shit of their lives would start to seep back in.

He looked up. Anne Boyd was leaning in his doorway, watching him in that way she had, like a parent waiting for a confession.

He rubbed his eyes, smiled wearily, and waved her in. Anne was a smart woman. He wondered if her psychological training allowed her to see through his pretense of sanity. “Sorry. Daydreaming.” He punched the tape recorder off. “You can get the light,” he added.

She did, and the room was flooded with jumpy white light, causing the vise of pain that gripped Archie’s head to crank a turn tighter. He stiffened, and stretched his neck until he heard a satisfying pop.

Anne flung herself down in one of the chairs facing him, crossed her legs, and flopped a fifty-page document on his desk. She was one of the few female profilers at the FBI, and the only black woman. Archie had known her for six years, since the Bureau had sent her out to profile the Beauty Killer. They had spent hundreds of hours in the rain going over crime sites together, staring at photographs of wound patterns at four o’clock in the morning, trying to get into the mind of Gretchen Lowell. Archie knew that Anne had kids. He had heard her talk to them on the phone. But they had never once, he realized, in all the time they had worked together, talked about their respective children. Their professional lives were too ugly. Talking about children seemed crude.

“That it?” he asked, nodding at the document.

“The fruit of my labors,” Anne said.

Archie’s ribs hurt from sitting so long and acid burned in his stomach. Sometimes, he would wake up in the middle of the night and find himself in the right position, and realize that he wasn’t in pain. He’d try to remain still, to stretch out the blissful interlude, but eventually he’d have to turn over or bend a knee or stretch an arm out, and then there’d be that familiar twinge or burn or ache. The pills helped, and sometimes he told himself that he was almost getting used to it. But his body still proved a distraction. If he was going to concentrate on Anne’s profile, he needed some air. “Let’s take a walk. You can give me the topic sentences.”

“Sure,” she agreed.

They walked through the empty squad room, where a custodian was uncoiling a vacuum cleaner cord, and Archie held the big glass bank door open for Anne and then followed her out onto the sidewalk. They started walking north. It was cold and Archie tucked his bare hands in the pockets of his jacket, and there were the pills. He was, as usual, underprepared for the weather. The streetlights looked blurry in the dark, and the city looked dirty in the flat yellow light that they threw on the pavement. A car went by, going ten miles over the speed limit.

“I think we’re dealing with a budding sociopath,” Anne said. She was wearing a long chocolate-colored leather trench coat and leopard-print boots. Anne always could put together an outfit.

“You like them?” Anne asked, noticing him looking at her feet. She stopped and lifted her long knit skirt a few inches to show off the boots. “I got them in the ‘large and in charge’ department. They’re extra wide. For my enormous calves.”

Archie cleared his throat. “You said he was a budding sociopath?”

“You don’t want to talk about my calves?” Anne asked.

Archie smiled. “I’m just trying to avoid a sexual harassment lawsuit.”

Anne let the skirt drop and grinned at Archie. “I do believe that’s the first time I’ve seen you smile in two days.”

They started walking again and Anne continued her profile: “He raped and murdered these girls but he feels remorse,” she said, her demeanor serious again. “He cleans them up. Returns them.”

“But he kills again.”

“The need overpowers him. But it’s about the rape. Not the murder. He’s a rapist who kills, not a murderer who rapes. It’s not part of his fetish. It’s not necrophilia. He kills them to spare them from experiencing the rape.”

“What a guy,” said Archie.

They walked past a darkened paint store, past a shuttered espresso drive-thru booth, past a hipster dive bar. The window of the bar was filled with neon beer signs: PBR, RAINIER, SIERRA NEVADA. A half-assed marquee advertised a band called Missing Persons Report. Nice. Archie glanced inside as they went past and caught a flash of people, mouths open wide, laughing, the sound of drunken levity.

Anne continued: “I don’t think the murder gives him pleasure per se. He doesn’t linger with it. He doesn’t use his hands. I think we need to look at where he came from. I think he’s raped before. And if he has, it will be within the victim profile.”

Archie shook his head. “We’ve pulled every unsolved rape over the last twenty years. No good fits.”

They came to an intersection. If Archie had been alone, he would have walked against the light, but because Anne was there, he pushed the pedestrian button and waited.

“Look out of state. If you can’t find anything, it means that the rapes weren’t reported, which is useful in itself.”

Archie considered this. “He has power over women.”

“Or used to,” Anne commented.

“He loses his power; he compensates with violence.”

Anne nodded several times, her jaw working. “I’m thinking a steady evolution of sexual assaults, followed by some sort of stresser at work or home. He’s probably had violent sexual fantasies since he was a child, but he was able to quell them with porn and the early rapes. Then he decides to take it further. Plans it. Carries it off. And he gets away with it.”

“So he does it again.” Archie sighed. The light changed, finally, and they walked across to the other side of the street and started heading back south. It wasn’t much of a walk. But it felt good to move.

“Yes. And gets away with it again. So now the societal boundaries that he’s always been uncomfortable with are seriously eroding. I think that part of him, that first time, fully expected to get caught. Maybe he even wanted to get caught, to be punished for his deviant fantasies. But he wasn’t. So now he’s thinking that the law doesn’t apply to him. He’s feeling special.”

“And the bleach? Is it a purification ritual, or is he studiously destroying forensic evidence?”

He could see Anne bite her lip. “I don’t know. It doesn’t fit. If he cares about them enough to kill them, why is he bathing them in corrosive chemicals? But it’s overkill as a cleansing agent. And I think our guy is meticulous enough to avoid overkill. He would know exactly how much, and not use any more.”

“He dumped a body the day before Valentine’s Day,” Archie said.

“It’s not a coincidence.”

“The murders are intimate for him,” Archie said softly. “He’s choosing them.”

“This guy’s smart,” Anne said. “He’s educated. He’s got a job. He’s transporting the bodies, so he has access to a vehicle. And probably to a boat. Based on his victim window, I’d say he works banker’s hours. White, male. He would look unremarkable. Functional. Presentable. If it is an evolution, he’s well into his thirties, possibly forties. He’s detail-oriented and manipulative. He’s taking an enormous risk snatching these girls off public streets. He’s confident, arrogant even. And he’s got a ruse. He’s got a ruse to get these girls to go with him.”

“Like Bundy’s cast?”

“Or Bianchi playing cop, or car trouble, or he says he’s a modeling scout, or says that the parents have been in an accident and offers to take the girl to the hospital.” She shook her head dismissively. “But it’s better than that. It’s brilliant. Because whatever he’s using, he got Kristy to go with him, after two girls had already been murdered.”

Archie thought of plump, brown-haired Kristy Mathers dragging her broken bike across the street, just blocks from home. Where was the bike? If he’d grabbed her, why take the bike? And if he did take the bike, then his car had to be big enough to get it in quickly. “If she went with him voluntarily, she had to know him.”

“If we accept that premise, yes, she had to know him.” They were standing in the bank parking lot. “This is me,” Anne said, putting her hand on the roof of a rented burgundy Mustang.

“I’m going to interview the teachers and staff again tomorrow,” Archie said. “Just the men who fit the profile.” His headache was getting bad. It was like having a permanent hangover.

“You going home tonight, or are you going to sleep in your chair?”

Archie glanced at his watch and was startled to see that it was 11:00 P.M. “I just need another couple hours to finish up,” he said.

She clicked the car door unlocked and threw her purse in on the passenger seat and then turned back to Archie. “If you ever want to talk,” she said with a helpless shrug, “I am a psychiatrist.”

“Who specializes in the criminally insane.” He smiled wanly. “I’m going to try not to read into that.”

He noticed then, under the harsh security lights of the parking lot, how much she had aged over the last few years. There were lines around her eyes, and a few fine strings of gray in her hair. She still looked better than he did.

“Did she fit it at all?” she said.

Archie knew whom she meant. “She manipulated the profile, Anne. You know that.”

Anne smiled darkly. “I was convinced the killer was a man. That he was working alone. I didn’t even consider the possibility of a female. Yet you suspected her. Despite the bad profile. The way she infiltrated her way into the investigation, it’s textbook psychopathic behavior. I can’t believe I didn’t see it.”

“She fed me exactly enough that I would need to go to her, and not enough that I would be careful. It was a trap. I went there because she played me. Not because of my investigative prowess.”

“She knew you wanted to solve that case more than anything. Psychopaths are excellent at reading people.”

You have no idea, thought Archie.

“In any case,” Anne said, sighing, “I’m at the Heathman. If you change your mind. About talking.”

“Anne?”

She spun back. “Yes?”

“Thanks for the offer.”

She stood there for another moment in her leopard-print boots, as if she wanted to say something more. Something like “Sorry your life went to shit,” or “I know what you’re thinking about doing,” or “Let me know if you want a referral to a nice quiet institution.” Or maybe she was just thinking about getting back to the hotel so she could call her children. It didn’t really matter. Archie waited for her to drive off and then he went back into his office, snapped the tape recorder back on, closed his eyes, and listened to Fred Doud talk about Kristy Mathers’s terrible corpse.