The Night Season (16 page)

CHAPTER

31

Susan put together
a bare-bones outline of the facts of the case for
The New York Times
on Archie’s computer—he’d made her leave the room while he typed in his password. Someone else would get quotes. And a third person would make it all sound good. The three of them would share a byline.

It was not the way Susan had imagined her first story for the
Times
going, but the national editor wanted it up on the Web site ASAP, and this, apparently, was the fastest way to do it. She hoped they didn’t list the byline names alphabetically. She was always getting screwed by that.

The expanded story—the one that would run in tomorrow’s print edition—that was all Susan’s. And she had the rest of the day to get it in.

She hit send, and waited for the editor to e-mail her back.

Susan, then, found herself with a moment of idle time alone in Archie Sheridan’s office. She did not decide to snoop. It just happened. She looked down and she’d opened Archie’s desk drawer. She was that kind of person. The kind of person you didn’t want house-sitting.

There, inside the desk drawer, along with all the paper clips and pens and notes on official-looking stationery, under a flash drive, was a photograph of Gretchen Lowell. It was not such a strange thing, for a detective who’d spent most of his career hunting a killer, to have an image of that killer in his office. It was a famous case. A lot of detectives probably had a photo of Gretchen Lowell in their offices—hung on the wall, with darts sticking out of it. But Susan also knew that part of Archie’s recovery process was that he was supposed to move on. It’s not like anyone could totally avoid Gretchen’s image. But he didn’t have to see her every time he needed a paper clip.

Susan heard a voice from the doorway say, “Find anything interesting?”

She shut the drawer, nearly snapping off her fingertip in the process. “Ouch,” she said.

Anne Boyd had arrived from Washington, D.C., and now stood in the doorway to Archie’s office. Susan gave Anne a sheepish smile, embarrassed to be caught snooping by anyone, but especially a criminal psychologist.

Anne was the only black female profiler in the FBI and, as she had once told Susan, she was also “the most stylish.” She cinched the belt of her patent leather trench coat the color of grape jelly and grinned. “He still keep a pictures of her in there?” she asked.

Anne had worked on the Beauty Killer case. She knew what it had done to Archie. Perhaps better than most. But Susan still sidestepped the question. “I was just looking for a pen,” she said.

Anne looked at her for a second, and then smiled. “Good answer,” she said finally. Her attention was drawn down the hall. “Here comes our fearless leader now.”

Susan pulled her hand down from her mouth just as Archie appeared next to Anne.

“You’re late,” Archie said. There was no pleasure in his expression. No hey-how’s-it-going-welcome-back.

Susan knew that face.

She could tell by Anne’s shift in posture that Anne knew it, too. “What happened?” Anne asked.

“National Guard called in another body,” Archie said.

An e-mail popped up on the computer screen—a response from the
Times
editor.

“Let’s go take a look,” Anne said.

Susan glanced at the e-mail’s subject line. “Need more detail,” it read.

Susan stood up, knocking her knees on Archie’s desk. “Can I come?” she said.

Archie hesitated.

“I’d like to stick with you,” Susan said. She tried to look vulnerable and a little scared. It wasn’t hard.

Archie’s shoulders dropped. “Fine,” he said.

Susan set about gathering up all her personal items—phone, cigarettes, notebook—and then hurried around the desk after them.

“How are you doing?” Anne asked Archie.

“How do I look?” Archie said.

Anne took a step back and looked him up and down. “Better,” she said. “Bad for most people. But good for you.”

CHAPTER

32

The river was
a monster. The break in the rain had done nothing to calm it. If anything, it seemed even fiercer. The water churned with eddies and whirlpools, and ribbons of debris bumped along on the surface.

“So tell me,” Anne said. “What is it you people have done to piss off the good Lord?”

Archie parked next to the patrol car on the east side of the Burnside Bridge. He had filled Anne in on the case en route. Susan had been weirdly quiet, scribbling notes in the backseat.

Heil, who’d followed them from headquarters, pulled up beside them in a green Nissan Cube. It wasn’t police-issue. But it was new, and Heil insisted on driving it.

The bridge was up, always a strange sight, four lanes of road and sidewalk, all at nearly a ninety-degree angle, streetlights almost parallel to the earth. It was closed to traffic, but the caution sawhorses had been blown over and were easy to drive around.

The rain had slowed to a light drizzle—the kind of rain you couldn’t see fall if you looked out a window from inside.

Archie was silent. He didn’t know what to say. Both Anne and Susan occasionally looked at him a little too closely for comfort.

They took the staircase that jackknifed down from the bridge’s pedestrian walkway to the esplanade below, where Officer Chuck Whatley was unspooling yellow plastic crime scene tape with the help of a National Guard soldier.

The sky was the texture and color of freshly poured concrete. This part of the esplanade was high enough that the river lapped at it, but didn’t overflow. The body was under a blanket on the dry side of the pavement. The blanket was the same gray as the sky.

Whatley tied the tape to a stake as he talked. “Just got here about fifteen minutes ago,” he said. He was wearing a bright yellow plastic rain bonnet snapped over his hat, and it was beaded with rain. “A National Guardsman found the body in a logjam about thirty minutes ago.” He caught himself. “Guards
woman
,” he corrected. He lifted his hand in the direction of the person who’d been helping him with the tape. “Anyway, this is her.”

The soldier was a young black woman, and clearly pregnant. She snapped her heels together and stood at attention. She was wearing an orange reflective vest over her maternity fatigues and holding one of the ten-foot steel poles Archie had seen them using to break up the floating debris.

“Private Jen Auster, sir,” she said.

“What were you doing over here?” Archie asked gently.

“Clearing flotsam, sir. They sent us over here to push the larger logs out. Helps break up the smaller stuff. Keep it all moving.”

A massive logjam clotted the area under the bridge, held in place by the massive concrete pilings. The fifty-foot mass of rolling logs and snapping branches was a death trap. Getting a body disentangled from that would have been no easy job. Not with these currents.

“Who got him up on land?” Archie asked.

“Him, sir,” Private Auster said.

A lanky man in National Guard fatigues trotted their way. Archie recognized him immediately.

“Carter,” Susan said.

Carter loped toward them, grinning. “They sent me over here to get me away from the reporters,” he said. “Something easy, they said. Easier than hauling sandbags, I guess.” His eyes brightened. “I lassoed him.”

“Let me guess,” Susan said. “You did rodeo, in addition to lifeguarding.”

“Got a gold belt buckle for calf roping. Grew up in Pendleton, ma’am. Not a lot else going on.”

Archie didn’t have the heart to tell him that he should have left the body to the cops. It would have been nice to at least have a photograph before it had been moved. The retrieval and the blanket may have contaminated evidence. What was it with people moving bodies in this town? They needed to run some public service announcements about that. “You’ve had a busy twenty-four hours,” Archie said.

“You, too, sir. Sorry to hear the kid went missing.”

“You covered him up?” Susan asked Carter.

“Right after we called you all,” Carter said. He gave her an awe-shucks grin. “It seemed like the respectful thing to do.”

“That’s so nice,” Susan said.

Archie turned to Heil. The two soldiers needed to be interviewed before they got to talking and merged details. Even the most well-meaning witnesses, given the chance to exchange versions, would adapt aspects of the others’ memories as their own. It was subconscious. Two people see a bank robber. They talk about it. One saw a man in an orange shirt with a mustache. The other saw a man in an orange shirt, but didn’t see his face. Pretty soon they’ll both swear on their mother’s lives that the guy had a mustache, and they’ll tell you all about it—shape, color, whether it was neatly trimmed. The guy never had a mustache. But the first person gets it wrong, and it goes viral.

Heil seemed to know exactly what Archie was thinking. “I’m on it,” he said, and he pulled out his notebook and led Carter away.

Archie turned to Anne. Having worked the Beauty Killer case, he’d seen more bodies than most detectives saw in their entire careers. He’d never gotten used to it, but he’d learned to mind it less. “Let’s take a look,” he said.

“Thought you’d never ask,” Anne said.

“What about me?” Susan said.

Archie hesitated. He had no reason to let Susan see the body. She wasn’t even a reporter anymore. He’d already exposed her to enough death.

“I found Henry,” Susan said. “I might be able to help. To recognize a clue or something.”

“Fine,” Archie said. He wasn’t in the mood to argue. “Try not to step on any evidence.”

They walked to the body, and Archie pulled the blanket back. The smell of decomposing flesh blew forward, a faint whiff of old meat.

He had smelled much, much worse. This was dank and sour, but not very far along. The body was relatively fresh. The young man still looked human. Archie didn’t see any misshapen flesh where gases had built up. No bluish stains where blood had settled. Rigor hadn’t set in. Cold water could slow that process some. He’d been beaten up a little. There was an open wound on his forehead, deep enough that Archie could see a flash of white skull. But there was little blood, and Archie guessed the wound was postmortem, a result of getting knocked around in the logjam.

“What do you think?” Archie asked Anne. “A few hours?”

“Seems right to me,” she said.

“Me, too,” said Susan. Archie slid her a look. “What?” she said. “I know a little about forensics.”

The blanket was still in Archie’s hand and he pulled it all the way off and dropped it to the side of the body.

A rope was still knotted around the dead man’s ankles from where Carter had lassoed him. Lifeguards tied ropes around their waists during rescues. It would have come in handy the night before. Carter had made sure he’d be ready for the next time.

Corpses lose something they had in life. When the muscles slacken, the face gets soft, wider, dimples and laugh lines vanish. It’s one of the reasons people sometimes misidentify remains, and it’s why Archie didn’t recognize the street kid at first. It was the tribal earring that gave him away. Then the braided beard, the army surplus jacket, the skateboarder shoes. “I know him,” Archie said.

“Freeze,” Archie heard Robbins bellow. “You know I hate it when you peek.” Archie took a small step back from the body, and Susan and Anne did the same. Robbins jogged up from under the freeway, followed by two forensic investigators, all three dressed in identical white Tyvek suits, hoods up. Robbins knelt next to the body, opened up a plastic toolbox, and snapped on latex gloves. He gave Carter’s blanket a disdainful snort. “Tell me some jackass didn’t throw a nasty old blanket on my corpse.”

Susan glanced in the direction where Heil was interviewing Carter. “Not so loud,” she said. “You’ll hurt his feelings.”

“Bag it,” Robbins said to one of his investigators.

Archie, Susan, and Anne took another few steps back. One of the forensic investigators started taking digital photographs of the scene. The other snapped on gloves and carefully folded the blanket into a large evidence bag.

All Archie cared about at that moment was getting a look at the body’s hands. But he knew better than to rush Robbins.

Archie heard a siren approaching, and then saw an ambulance slam to a stop on the bridge above them. Two EMTs hopped out and started down the stairs. “I think it’s a little late for lifesaving measures,” Archie said to Robbins.

“I’m taking him to Emanuel for autopsy. My office, as you’ll recall, is submerged.”

“So you called an ambulance?” Susan said.

Robbins didn’t even look up. “You want to help me get him into my car?” He turned his head back toward the EMTs. “We’re okay here,” he yelled. “Give us a minute.” The two EMTs stopped in their tracks and looked at one another, clearly unsure how to proceed.

Archie sighed and lifted his badge. “Just hang out for a few minutes,” he yelled. “We’re fine. He’s dead. Thanks.”

“Who’s that doofus?” Susan asked. Archie followed her gaze farther up the stairs, where a man was gazing out over the river with his hands on his hips. Archie was excellent at noticing small details about people. He could recall the curve of a person’s earlobe, the angle of a stance, the pattern of the freckles on an exposed clavicle. He knew body language. Facial expressions. The sentence structure people turned to when they lied. He could read people. But social categorization escaped him.

Still, Archie could see what Susan meant with this guy.

“I called him,” Robbins said before Archie could comment.

Their visitor looked to be in his mid-thirties. He was wearing a red scarf knotted nattily around his neck, and the type of plaid newsboy hats that enough young men in Portland had started wearing so that even Archie had noticed.

He saw Archie looking up at him, waved heartily, and started trotting down the stairs.

“Is he a haberdasher?” Archie asked.

Robbins was busy directing his minions. “You wanted an expert,” Robbins said. “This is the part of the case where you call them in, right?” He tilted his hooded head at Anne. “Criminal Psychologist, meet Octopus Guy.”

Octopus Guy realized he was being talked about and hurried down the remaining stairs.

“This is Any Mingo,” Robbins said as Octopus Guy approached. “He teaches marine biology at Portland State.”

Archie was hoping for someone from the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport. Professionals told you what you needed to know. Academics told you what they wanted you to know they knew.

Mingo wiped his hand on his pant leg and offered it. “I teach freshwater invertebrate zoology,” he said. He was wearing glasses with lenses the size of coasters, which, based on the lack of refraction, he didn’t seem to need. He had a broad, fleshy face with delicate features and a pronounced chin highlighted by sideburns that stretched to his jawbones. He wore a woven leather cuff snapped around each wrist.

Archie shook his hand. Mingo’s fingertips were callused—the fronts, not the tips. Stand-up bass, Archie guessed. “Thanks for helping us out.”

“I’m Susan,” Susan said. “I like your hat.”

“Agent Boyd,” Anne said. “FBI.”

Mingo sniffed the air. “That smell,” he said, “reminds me of a giant octopus I discovered in Tasmania. Twenty-one feet. Washed up dead on a beach.” He leaned in near Susan. “The sperm packet that a giant male octopus deposits in a female is nearly one meter long.”

Susan looked over at Archie and raised an eyebrow.

Robbins lifted one of the corpse’s hands and leaned in close to examine it. “Professor Mingo likes himself some cephalopods,” he said. “I’ve informed him about our octopus problem.”

Mingo was standing between Archie and Susan, within two yards of the body, but he seemed to make a point of not looking at it. “These aren’t aggressive animals,” he said. “They basically spend their lives alone, in hiding. The only reports of attacks are when they’re stepped on or handled.”

“He’s got a mark on his hand, just like the others,” Robbins said.

Archie’s throat tightened. That made four. Five if you included Henry. And they still knew next to nothing about the killer.

The forensic investigator beside Robbins slipped a plastic bag over the corpse’s hand and used a twist-tie to secure it around his wrist.

“You said you know him?” Anne asked Archie.

Archie unzipped his coat. He was hot. The humidity was getting to him. “He was at the camp last night,” Archie said. “He knew we were looking for someone, knew about the octopus attacks. I warned them. Specifically.” If they couldn’t protect people who knew to be careful, knew what to look for, how would they protect a city full of people who didn’t even know to be afraid?

“So he wouldn’t have picked it up,” Anne said. “He knew not to. But he might take it in his hands before he knew what it was. If it came from someone who didn’t appear to be a threat. Someone he knew. Or someone he had reason to trust. With the exception of Henry, they’ve all been found in the water?”

She didn’t wait for the answer. She knew it. She was just talking it through now. “The killer waits for them to die, then pushes the bodies into the river,” she concluded.