Heartsick

*Heartsick* is the first installment in the Beauty Killer series.

## Pre-Story

Told in flashbacks throughout the book, the pre-story consists of Archie Sheridan's torture by Gretchen Lowell, over the course of ten days in a basement in Gresham, OR.

## Main Story

### Publisher

St. Martin's Press

After nearly two years of medical leave, Archie Sheridan agrees to resume his old job as head of the Beauty Killer Task Force in order to help track down the "After-School Strangler," under the condition that journalist Susan Ward be granted access to the investigation. Over the course of the week Susan interviews Archie, his family, and his doctor. He specifically asks that she not have access to him on Sundays, however, come Sunday, it is revealed that this is because Archie spends Sundays talking with Gretchen Lowell at the State Penitentiary, and that, far from denying Susan access, Gretchen has *requested* that Susan come to see her.

At the Penitentiary, Susan discovers that Archie has been opening up to her specifically with the intention of making Gretchen jealous enough to break her months-long silence and start giving up bodies again as part of the Victim Identification Project. Despite her reservations over having been manipulated thusly, Susan proceeds to interview Gretchen. During the interview it is revealed that when Susan was in high school she was sexually abused by Paul Reston, the drama teacher at Cleveland High School -- thereby making him a suspect in the After-School Strangler Investigation.

However, after Archie pays a visit to Reston and has him followed, he gives up on Reston as a suspect when another girl goes missing while Reston was being followed. Another teacher, Dan McCallum, is then found dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound, turning the investigation on him as a suspect. Archie, however, suspects the suicide was staged, and continues to look for another explanation.

Meanwhile, Paul Reston comes to visit Susan Ward and insists on taking her out to dinner, however, upon getting in his car he drugs her and takes her hostage on the boat he had borrowed from Dan McCallum, where he also has Addy Jackson, the latest missing girl. Meanwhile, Archie and the Task Force puzzle out that Susan is missing and that Reston might be using an old boat of McCallum's with a lapsed registration. They go to the marina, find out that such a boat exists and has been taken out, and go on a coast guard boat to board it.

Archie boards the boat by himself and enters the cabin. There, he briefly considers moving forward and getting himself shot, before deciding against it because Susan and Addy would be the next to be killed. Instead, he concocts a bizarre ruse in which he tells Reston that the Vicodin pills he's taking are pills to make him feel less guilty about evil thoughts similar to those Reston has. Reston demands that he give him some, and Archie drops them on the floor, right in line with where SWAT can take aim through the window and kill Reston.

With Reston dead and Susan and Addy safe, Archie takes off in a cab to the State Penitentiary in Salem, where he meets with Gretchen alone. She unbuttons his shirt, examines his scars, and comes very close to putting her hand down his pants before he stops her, kisses her, and tells her it's over -- he won't be coming back on Sundays anymore. That morning, back at home in Portland, he agrees to spend some time back at home with his ex-wife and kids, in an effort to regain part of his old life and move on from Gretchen.