The Night Season (11 page)

CHAPTER

21

The Eastbank Esplanade
had been finished in 2001—one and a half miles of concrete trail shoehorned between the interstate and the east side of the river, and connected to the west side with pedestrian walkways on the Steel and Hawthorne bridges.

Archie parked in the esplanade’s public lot, which had been tucked under a knot of freeway overpasses near the Hawthorne Bridge, and looked over at Heil. He would have come alone if he could have gotten away with it. Heil was a good cop. But he wasn’t Henry. And he talked too much.

“You know two feet of water is enough to wash away a car,” Heil said.

“Good to know,” Archie said.

Heil peered up at the dark sky. “Sun will be up in four hours,” he said.

Not soon enough
, thought Archie.

They got out of the car. The freeways overhead blocked the rain, but water fell in sheets along every edge. The streetlights were still working. The water that flowed across the surface of the parking lot reflected their white glow.

“Four inches of moving water can knock someone off their feet,” Heil said.

An empty shopping cart sat alone in the parking lot. A few more, loaded with bundles, were pushed behind a concrete pillar. A blue tarp lay nearby.

There didn’t appear to be anyone around.

No sandbagging here. There wasn’t as much at stake. The firehouse at the river’s edge had been evacuated hours before. The water would continue to rise, to flood east-side streets and warehouses, but the potential property damage was nothing compared to what it was on the west side.

The water under their feet seeped east, away from the river. It wasn’t deep—only a few centimeters—but it was definitely traveling. Whether it was the river’s current or just the wind, Archie couldn’t say.

“There,” Heil said, and Archie turned in time to see a flash of light, like someone flicking a lighter on and then extinguishing it. It had come from a crevice where the elevated northbound lanes of I-5 met a concrete incline. They headed for it, passing eight blue plastic portable toilets that stood back-to-back, four on each side, one twisted slightly out of alignment.

Sound echoed down there, bouncing off the concrete that surrounded them, only to be almost simultaneously muted by the layer of water beneath their feet.

Archie was ahead when they heard the snarl coming from the dark crevice of the underpass. He froze and swung his flashlight just in time to see the brown shape barreling at him. The dog was all muscle, its gums peeled back around vibrating teeth.

“Pit bull,” he heard Heil say in a low, urgent voice.

No shit,
thought Archie.

The dog had stopped two feet in front of him, head level, eyes trained on Archie. He could feel its growl in the center of his spine.

Archie found a spot forty-five degrees to the left and looked at it, keeping the dog in his peripheral vision, avoiding direct eye contact.

Just don’t move
, he told himself.

The dog inched forward. Archie could feel all the hair on his arms stand up.

“Do you want me to shoot it?” Heil asked from somewhere behind him.

Dogs had short attention spans. As long as Archie didn’t give it a reason to attack, the dog would get bored and move on.

Archie tried to keep his tone low and calm and casual. “If it attacks me, then yes,” he said, his voice almost singsong.
Everything’s fine! No worries here!

“I don’t think I can hit it if it’s moving.” Heil paused. “I mean, not without hitting you.”

Great.

The dog growled and sniffed at the knees of Archie’s pants. Archie could smell it, wet dog, like his wool sweater. Archie closed his eyes and waited.

“Gigi,” a voice said.

Archie opened his eyes and looked back at the dog, ninety pounds of snarling, rippling killing machine.

Gigi?

The dog lowered her head, spun around, and barked once into the dark crevice at the crook of the underpass.

A young man stepped forward into the light and the dog ran to him and turned around and sat at his master’s feet, facing Archie.

“We’re not leaving,” the man said.

He looked to be in his twenties, Latino, clean-shaven, dressed in jeans and cowboy boots and a dirty denim jacket buttoned up to the neck. He was short, but he held himself with an easy authority. He was used to being in charge.

“You must be Nick,” Archie said.

The dog looked up at the man, thumped her tail against the pavement, and whined. Any hint of aggression had vanished. He rubbed her head. “She’s not usually like that,” he said. “The weather has her freaked out.”

Heil stepped forward, and Archie caught a flash of his gun, still drawn, held against his leg. Archie could hear Heil breathing, short and fast.

“You can put your weapon away,” Archie said to Heil. “The dog’s okay now, right, Nick?”

“Yeah,” Nick said.

Heil hesitated, his eyes still fixed on the dog.

“Put your gun away,” Archie repeated calmly. He didn’t look at Heil. He kept his focus on the man and the dog. No sudden movements. Calm and casual. Dog attack. Man with a gun. The rules for de-escalation were pretty much the same.

A minute ticked by. Archie counted. A minute, with a pit bull and a gun, is a very long time.

Then, after a slow glance around, as if he were pocketing something he’d shoplifted, Heil holstered his weapon.

Archie released the breath he’d been holding.

Nick hadn’t flinched. If he’d had any idea his dog had almost gotten shot, he didn’t show it.

“What are you doing here?” Archie asked him.

“We live here,” he answered, the obvious implication being:
What are you doing here?

“Maybe you haven’t heard the news,” Heil said, “but the river is flooding. That seawall they’re building over there? That may keep the west side dry. But you don’t see them building a seawall over here, do you?”

It was a fair point.

“I said we’re not leaving.” Nick’s voice was weighty with determination, but under that Archie could detect a thread of anxiety. “Now, maybe you guys don’t like to sleep, but we do. It’s been a long day. So why don’t you just move on, okay?”

“How many of you are there?” Archie asked.

Nick looked back into the darkness from which he’d come. “It’s okay,” he said.

Four people shuffled forward, circled by two more dogs. Two men and two women, each wrapped in a tarp or blanket. Their eyelids were heavy and their faces puffy from sleep. Archie could make out shapes behind them, and it took him a moment to realize that it was stuff—Hefty bags teeming with clothes, bicycles, folded-up tents, shopping carts holding all of someone’s worldly possessions.

All that stuff, you couldn’t take it to a shelter.

These four and Nick were staying put to keep an eye on what had been left behind.

They were all young. The four who had just appeared wore hooded sweatshirts layered under other clothing. The men had beards, one shaggy, one that had been divided into tiny braids. The women were small, the quilts they were wrapped in muddy and dragging on the ground.

“That’s everyone,” Nick said. He said it with confidence, like a captain who’d evacuated a boat, then walked every deck to make sure no hands were left behind.

He felt responsible for these people. Archie recognized the impulse.

It wasn’t about the stuff.

There had to be another reason. Archie tried to put himself in Nick’s shoes. What would keep him there? And then it occurred to Archie. “Are you waiting for someone?” he asked.

Something in Nick’s posture changed, and Archie knew that he was right. “This is where we’re supposed to meet,” Nick said. “We have this plan, for emergencies. If we get raided, whatever. We meet here. We wait for everyone.” He paused and his shoulders slumped. “I didn’t think about the river flooding when I was making the plan.”

“Otter’s not coming,” Archie said. “He’s safe. He’s at the Mission.”

Nick straightened up. “You’ve seen Otter?” he said. The other four exchanged looks.

“We had to question him,” Archie said. “A police detective was hurt earlier tonight. Otter had his cell phone.”

One of the young women protested. “Otter didn’t hurt him,” she said.

“No,” Archie said. “I don’t think he did. But we had to talk to him, to see if he’d seen anything. He’s at the Mission. He’s safe. We can take you over there.”

Nick glanced at his charges, and then gently placed his hand on the top of his dog’s head. “I’m not leaving Gigi or the other two,” he said.

“Other two what?” Heil said.

Archie wished Heil would stop talking. “Dogs,” Archie said.

He saw Heil look down at the dogs with the four river people, and then back at Nick and Gigi. “Oh,” he said.

“What if I can make arrangements for you and your friends and your dogs?” Archie said.

“What about the stuff?” one of the women asked.

Nick ignored her. “You think you can make that happen?” he asked Archie.

Archie beckoned Heil over and found Mary Riley’s card and handed it to him. “Call her,” Archie said. “Explain the situation.”

“And what if she says no?” Heil said.

“Then they all stay at your house,” Archie said.

“I’m on it,” Heil said, and he took a few steps away to make the call.

“I need to ask all of you some questions,” Archie said to Nick. Nick and his friends looked at Archie. Archie tried to figure out a way to phrase what he needed to know without sounding like a lunatic, and then decided that there wasn’t one.

“This is going to sound a little crazy,” Archie said, “but that cop I mentioned earlier? He was poisoned by an octopus.”

The man with the bushy beard said, “Octopuses live in the ocean, dude.”

Great. A marine biologist. “That is true,” Archie said. “We think someone was carrying an octopus, maybe in a plastic bag. This isn’t the first poisoning. And they’ve all happened by the river.”

“So,” Nick said slowly, “you want to know if we’ve seen anyone with an octopus?”

“Pretty much.”

One of the women frowned. “There’s that guy who always fishes down on the dock. He has a bucket.”

“He’s there every day,” the other woman said. “Has been for years. I’ve never seen him catch anything.”

“Like you’d want to eat anything out of this stinking river,” Bushy Beard said.

“What’s his name?” Archie asked.

“We don’t talk to him,” Bushy Beard said.

“I don’t think he speaks English,” the first woman said.

“Is he Mexican?” Archie asked.

“No, like Estonian or something,” the other bearded man said. He fiddled with one of the braids that sprouted from his chin.

“Estonian?” Archie said.

“I knew a guy whose family was Estonian,” the man explained. “He sounds the same.”

This wasn’t really going anywhere. “Anyone else?” Archie could hear Heil on the phone, his voice plaintive.

“This time of year,” Nick said, “unless the weather’s weirdly nice, it’s mostly the hard-core outdoorsy types. They run, you know. They don’t carry extra stuff. Maybe an iPod. And their clothes are skintight, so we’d see anything they had on them. Some of the dog walkers are still out. They’ve got pockets full of plastic bags to pick up after their dogs.”

“You get the lunch people,” the second woman said.

“The lunch people?”

“The people who work downtown,” she said. “Some of them walk at lunchtime instead of eating. You can always pick them out because they have on the stupidest sneakers.”

The others nodded in agreement.

“You haven’t seen anyone acting strangely?” Archie asked.

“People who walk instead of eating lunch are strange,” the woman said.

“Besides that,” Archie said.

“Esplanade’s been closed for two days,” Nick said. “Only people we’ve seen since are utility workers and social workers. We haven’t been to the west side since they raised the bridges this morning. Otter must have gotten trapped over there.”

Heil was still on the phone. Archie had one more angle. He got out the picture from the hospital security camera and handed it to Nick. “What about this kid? Does he look familiar to anyone?”

Nick glanced down at it and handed it to one of the women, who looked it and passed it along. No one’s hand shot up.

“Was he alone?” the bearded man with the braids asked, looking at the picture.

“Probably,” Archie said.

Heil returned, phone back in his pocket.

The man stepped forward and handed the image of the kid back to Archie. “We would have noticed a kid alone,” he said.

That was it. Archie took the photo and folded it into quarters, half to fit it back in his coat, half to hide his disappointment. “So?” Archie said to Heil.