“Yeah?” Henry said. There was always a trace of panic in his voice when Archie called, like it could only be bad news.

“Robbins thinks Stephanie Towner was murdered,” Archie said.

“The girl on the ostrich? She drowned. They found the skid mark. Open-and-shut.”

“Except for the ostrich thing,” Archie said.

“I’ll meet you down there.”

Archie took off his sweater. It smelled like a wet dog. That’s what happened when wool got wet. It stank. Some people thought it smelled like a drenched sheep, some people thought barnyard, urine, mold. Archie liked the smell. It reminded him of when he was a kid, when that’s what Oregon had smelled like in the winter—one big wet dog. Now, with the advent of Polarfleece, everything had changed.

He had a button-down shirt on under the sweater. He’d put it on ten hours earlier and its smell was not as pleasant as the wet wool. He unbuttoned it and tossed it in the laundry hamper that Debbie had bought him when he’d moved out. Then he got another button-down out of the drawer and put it on. He didn’t examine himself in the mirror anymore. His scars were as much a part of him as his eye color. The heart-shaped scar that Gretchen Lowell had left on his chest nearly three years before served only as a reminder of his failings. If he didn’t look at it, he could pretend it wasn’t there. He could avoid thinking about her. It was the only way he could function.

He buttoned the second shirt as quickly as he could and pulled the sweater back on. He hadn’t eaten all day, but there was nothing to grab to go, and no time to make anything.

Rain splattered the window, causing rivulets of seagull shit to run like white threads down the glass.

Archie put his coat back on. He left the lights on when he went out.

Chapter 6

CHAPTER

6

The Multnomah County morgue was downtown, just across the Willamette from Archie’s apartment. Portland had a pretty downtown, with restored brick and sandstone storefronts, lots of public art, and bike racks and coffee shops on every corner. In the summer flower baskets were hung from the lampposts, in the winter the trees were strung with white lights.

Most of the inner west side was laid out on a grid, numerical avenues parallel to the river, and alphabetical streets perpendicular. The blocks were short—dollhouse blocks, they called them—so the city founders could sell plenty of corner lots. The morgue was on Fourth Avenue, which meant it was four dollhouse blocks west of the river, uphill, well above flood stage.

But it was also, as morgues tended to be, in a basement.

It had flooded.