The air had that stillness of fall to it—Archie could almost hear individual leaves falling and settling on the grass. He and Henry had parked behind the four Lake Oswego police patrol cars that were neatly parallel-parked along the road in front of a Cape Cod–style home a half mile past Jack Reynolds’s place. There was no activity in the front yard. The house’s shingles were stained gray, and its trim was painted white, though the New England theme seemed to end at the yard, which was planted with Japanese maples, neatly trimmed evergreen shrubbery, and variegated grasses. A four-foot-tall stone pagoda rose from a bed of chartreuse hostas. A small man-made pond with a bamboo fountain was lined with round stones and filled with fat orange koi. Ugly metal fencing had been erected around the pond in a desperate effort, no doubt, to keep the raccoons at bay.

Archie could see a man staring through the front window. The glass reflected the sky and the grass, and the man was a ghost behind it, but Archie was able to make out a few details. He was light-skinned, clean-shaven, with glasses, tall and thin, with sloped shoulders and long face, and he was standing next to a large dark dog. Both were looking through the glass at Archie and Henry with the same wary expression. But they didn’t open the front door, and Archie and Henry didn’t knock. Instead, he and Henry followed a path of paving stones around the side of the house toward the lake.

The house’s backyard sloped down to a residential dock that extended into the lake like an accusatory finger. The day had warmed into the high fifties and Archie could feel the heat of the sun on his face, but the lake looked dark and cold. The backyard and the dock were peppered with fall leaves. Not the pretty red and yellow ones—these were brown and dead and shredded by the wind. There was no crime scene tape, no flash of crime scene photography. Only several people standing around on the dock who at first glance might be preparing for a rowboat outing, but in this instance were probably more interested in the corpse at their feet.

People drowned in Oregon all the time. Most of them drowned in rivers. Some drowned in the Pacific. Some drowned in lakes. A lot of the fatalities were due to unpredictable accidents—floods, capsized boats, sneaker waves—but there were also a good twenty people every summer who just went out for a swim and never made it back to shore.