The FBI’s Portland office was in the Crown Plaza building downtown, within walking distance of the Willamette. It wasn’t a pretty building, or really notable in any way. Just a concrete gray box filled mostly with law offices, except for the fourth floor, which housed the FBI.

Since it was Sunday, most of the building’s other tenants were closed, and the place was empty except for a uniformed security guard whom Archie had passed smoking outside in front of the massive revolving doors of the main entrance, and who had waved Archie by with barely a glance.

Archie walked through the lobby, past the shuttered café, to one of the banks of elevators, and then punched a security code into the elevator keypad. When the elevator doors opened on the fourth floor, Sanchez was waiting for him. Compared to most government facilities, the Portland FBI offices were rather stately. There were marble floors, orange and gold hall carpet runners, and glossy maple doors. But scratch the surface and it was just like any other office: steel drinking fountains in the hallway, emergency floodlights mounted on the walls, a paneled drop ceiling cluttered with fluorescent lights and fire sprinkler heads. Archie could hear the drinking fountain humming.

Sanchez looked alarmed.

“She’s sick,” he said. “She said she’s having a really bad period. In the car on the way over she said her cramps hurt so bad she couldn’t even talk. I found her some Midol. But now she says she feels like she might vomit.” Sanchez’s eyes flashed with concern. He was a man who only had sons. “Is this normal?”

Archie had to work hard to suppress a smile. “Where is she?” he asked.

Sanchez led Archie down the orange and gold carpet, through a pair of maple double doors with gold letters that spelled out FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION, past an American flag planted in a floor stand, to a door with a women’s restroom symbol on it.

“I’ll check on her,” Archie said.

He approached the door. Sanchez hung back, pacing. Archie knocked. “Susan?” he called.

“Um, I’m really bleeding a lot,” Susan’s voice called through the door. “And throwing up. You don’t want to come in here. It’s like The Exorcist.”

Archie opened the door a crack. “It’s me,” he said. He could smell cigarette smoke and quickly entered the bathroom before Sanchez caught a whiff of it.

The bathroom had one sink and three metal stalls. Two of the stall doors were open. The other one creaked open as Archie walked in. He could see Susan’s feet under the partition, two dirty Converse All Stars.