“She said she would stop killing,” Archie said. The corner of his mouth twisted. “She promised me.”

“Maybe she had her fingers crossed,” Henry said.

Archie’s eyes fell back to his book, and then he slowly closed it and set it on the table next to his bed. He lifted his chin. “You still there?” he said in a loud voice.

There was a split-second pause and then the night nurse appeared in the doorway.

“They never go far,” Archie told Henry with a faint smile. His eyes flicked to the nurse. “I’ll need to get a day pass,” he said. And then, almost as an afterthought, “And shoes.”

“He’s needed at a crime scene,” Henry said.

“You don’t have to convince her,” Archie said. “I’ve been here two months. They want me out of here. Thing is, they can’t make me leave the ward until I tell them I won’t kill myself. And I’ve got excellent health insurance.”

“A pass shouldn’t be a problem, Mr. Sheridan,” the night nurse said.

“Detective Sheridan,” Henry said. The night nurse looked at him, an eyebrow raised. “It’s ‘Detective,’ ” Henry said. “Not ‘Mister.’ ”

C H A P T E R 4

Archie had been to that rest stop before. He remembered the brown picnic tables out front, where he and Debbie had sat, slowly getting soaked in the drizzle, while the kids ran in circles on the grass. They had been on their way up to Timberline Lodge, to take the kids up to see snow. Eighty-four was not the fastest route, but it was the most scenic. They had made it as far as Hood River when Archie got a call about another victim. A sixty-two-year-old black man had been found in a Target parking lot, filleted from sternum to pelvis, his small intestine stuffed in his open mouth. It was like Gretchen had known that Archie was going out of town and wanted to teach him a lesson.

“Well,” Debbie had said as they pulled around to head home. “It was a pretty drive.”

There were nice rest stops along the Gorge, WPA projects that looked like stone cottages plucked from an enchanted forest. This wasn’t one of them. This rest stop was a cinder-block rectangle, painted Forest Service brown, an entrance for men on one side, women on the other. No free coffee here. There were two patrol cars out front, but they didn’t have their lights on. They had closed the women’s entrance off to the public, but the men’s room was still open. Archie counted four more cars in the parking lot. A man in a baseball cap headed into the men’s room. A woman threw a ball for her dog. A second woman, a blonde, got into a dark Ford Explorer. Archie felt his body stiffen. He was careful not to look back, not to let Henry notice him react.