“I want to know,” she says firmly. “I want to try to understand the killer.”

“The killer.” Never “him.” Never “he.” Gretchen is always gender-neutral. “You’re avoiding pronouns again,” Archie says.

“You don’t know it’s a man,” Gretchen chides him. “That’s your assumption.”

The spider on the ceiling seems to crawl as the crystals on the chandelier tremble gently in the breeze. “Women don’t kill like this,” he says.

She rolls over, so the back of her head is now resting on his chest, and she looks at him. “What did he do?” she asks.

“He poisoned her,” Archie says. “We found a half-empty bottle of drain cleaner and a spoon on the bedside table. And she was cut. All over. With a scalpel, it looks like. Superficial. Just enough to hurt and to make her bleed a little, but not enough to kill her. He must have cut her a thousand times. Working up one leg, then the other. She would have anticipated each incision.” That would be the worst part, knowing it was coming, knowing it would go on and on.

“It must have taken hours,” Gretchen says.

Each cut had been deliberate. “There was a pattern to it,” he says. It was as if her flesh had been decorated, each incision a new detail in a grisly textile. “He carved column after column of curved slices that intersected like segments of a chain.” Archie curls his hands and hooks them together in front of Gretchen to illustrate.

Gretchen frowns. “Like pieces of a heart?”

“Maybe,” Archie says. “The incisions covered every inch of her, except for an area right here”—he places his palm lightly at the base of Gretchen’s throat—“about the size of my hand.” That area of the body had been clean, except for one delicate incision in the shape of a heart. He can feel the pulse of Gretchen’s carotid artery under his touch. “That’s where he carved his signature,” he says.

Gretchen threads her fingers through his hand and lifts it from her throat.

“She had a poster of Multnomah Falls on the wall of her bedroom,” Archie continues. “You can buy them at the gift store.” How many times had he and Debbie taken out-of-town guests to Multnomah Falls, and then the gift store at the base of the waterfall? How many of them had bought that very poster? “And a lot of books,” Archie says. “She snowboarded. That’s what her mother told me. She just moved here two months ago. Her mother said she spent all her tip money on a season pass for Mount Hood.”

“You’ll catch the Beauty Killer,” Gretchen says. She says it with so much conviction that Archie almost laughs. But her expression is completely serious. “I know you will,” she says.