Archie knew it the moment he arrived. The first-floor hallway was already filled with equipment and gurneys, boxes and computers. Two morgue employees, pathology assistants, red-faced and puffing, lugged a heavy steel device that looked like it had been stolen from a butcher shop. A bone saw sat next to a drinking fountain. An organ scale sat in front of an elevator. The hallway was tracked with wet footprints.

“Where’s Robbins?” Archie asked the pathology assistants as they squeezed by him.

“Downstairs,” one of them said. “Follow the screaming. And take the stairs, the elevator’s shorted out.”

Archie worked his way through the obstacle course of hallway debris and found the stairs, where a dozen people had formed a chain to pass up contents from the morgue. Archie couldn’t help wondering what was sloshing around in the Tupperware containers that were being stacked at the top of the line. Someone’s lunch? Or someone’s stomach?

Robbins bellowed up at him from below. “Get down here!” he said.

Archie flashed his badge and ducked past the people on the stairs. Robbins was at the bottom, standing in a foot of water.

“Can you believe this shit?” Robbins said.

The lights must have shorted out, because the overhead emergency lights flickered, giving everything a sci-fi-green tint. Several alarms pulsed from various directions. Robbins was in his civilian clothes, no lab coat, his shirt unbuttoned to mid-chest. Sweat stained his pits. His pants were tucked into the tall black rubber boots that Archie had seen him wear at crime scenes. His dreadlocks, which he usually wore tied back with a rubber band, dangled loose against shoulders. The light made him look like he was vibrating.

“Where are the bodies?” Archie asked.

“I was thinking I’d stack them upstairs in the hall,” Robbins said, wiping his dark brow with a latex-gloved hand, “and then I remembered that thing about decomposition I learned in medical examiner school. We’ve got to keep them refrigerated. Gets real stinky otherwise. Emanuel and OHSU have offered to take them. We’re still figuring out the best way to transport them. Did you drive?”

Archie thought of his police-issue Cutlass upstairs, and wondered if he could fit a corpse in the backseat. “Could I use the carpool lane?” he asked.

Robbins smirked. Then his eyes flicked down to Archie’s feet, and he was all business. “Good, you’re wearing boots. Don’t touch the water.” He headed off, beckoning for Archie to follow him. “C’mon.” The water throbbed as Robbins plodded through it.

A young man in a lab coat walked past carrying an aluminum roasting pan with a human skull in it. The skull was stained with age, almost the color of tea.