Star climbed off of him and sat down on the bench at his side. She had instantly transformed. The parted lips, the heavy eyelids, the blank expression—all vanished. With a natural expression, her features looked different. She looked younger. She lifted a foot up and started unbuckling a shoe. “My feet are killing me,” she said.

Archie’s groin throbbed.

He looked at his watch. They needed to stay in here long enough to sell it.

“How long does this usually take?” he asked her.

“With someone like you?” she said with a smile. “Not long.”

Chapter 5

CHAPTER

5

It was Saturday morning and Archie had retrieved his newspaper and was sitting in his living room reading it over a cup of coffee. Ginger was stretched out on her side on the floor, her foxlike head resting on Archie’s bare foot. Every so often she lifted it and looked at him with her plaintive brown corgi eyes and then, when she wasn’t invited up onto the couch, exhaled loudly and lowered her chin back on his foot.

Richmond’s death was on the inside page of the Metro section. He was described as the owner of a pawnshop and his death by gunshot was characterized as possibly drug-related. The entire incident had warranted one paragraph of coverage. No photo. This was good. Archie leafed through the rest of the paper. The quality of the Herald had gone downhill since Susan had been fired, but he hadn’t gotten around to canceling his subscription. These days, most of the front section was dedicated to the manhunt for Gretchen Lowell. It had been ten weeks since she’d escaped the state mental hospital, and she was probably halfway around the world, but the breathless stories continued at a frantic pace. The Beauty Killer industry was back in full force. The Dead Body Bus Tour. The T-shirts. Salons had started offering Beauty Killer manicures again. At least some people were happy that she was at large. Portland’s cottage industry around the Beauty Killer dropped off considerably when she was locked up. Now they seemed to be making up for lost time. And with Halloween just two days away, it would only get worse.

Archie closed the paper and saw his own photo on the back page of the front section. It was part of a story about the history of the task force. The photo was a younger version of himself—back when he’d first taken over the Beauty Killer Task Force, when he was still married, before the gray in his hair, and the scars that Gretchen Lowell had left on his chest. He had never been handsome. His nose was crooked from a car accident when he was a teenager. His features were just asymmetrical enough to appear off-kilter for no identifiable reason. His eyes were dark and deep-set, so that he never really looked happy even when he was.