“She sent me instead.” Archie squinted and lined up his shot. “She asked me to kill you.”
Gretchen has been declared insane and sent to the State Hospital, and Archie has been given very illegal control over her medications, leaving her over-sedated and physically deteriorating.
Our latest Killer of the Week is connected to Gretchen’s past, so we get to find out a few things about her adolescence -- starting from the moment she walked out of the woods as a teenager, muddy and bloody and pregnant, into a small town and was fostered by a horrible family that believed in faith healing.
Turns out Gretchen’s daughter is actually one of the Fan Club members from Book 3, but the poor kid gets killed by the end of the book anyway.
Also Bliss’s goat gets killed with a machete, Susan accidentally blows up a priest, and in the end Gretchen escapes from the State Hospital and gives Archie a pet corgi before disappearing again.