Detective Jeff Heil trotted up. Archie recognized him from his stride. The sky was a thick frosting of clouds that blotted out the moon and stars and seemed to have its own vast unnatural glow. It wasn’t enough to see by. And even the buildings that lined the waterfront were dark—lights normally left on at night had been turned off, electrical box switches thrown to prevent short circuits.

Heil lifted his flashlight beam, illuminating his long face. His dark blond hair was so wet it looked painted on, and the shadows of the beam made his chiseled cheekbones look even more hollow than usual. Heil had joined Archie’s task force a year and a half ago, when Archie had come off his two-year post-Gretchen medical leave. Archie had been popping Vicodin all day long back then. Heil had to have known it. But as far as Archie knew, he’d never said anything.

“So?” Archie said, wiping rain from under his eyes.

Heil lowered the light. “We’ve searched it all,” he said. “There was nothing there. Bird shit. Mud.” He held something up. “And this.”

Archie swung his own flashlight up to see that Heil was holding a plastic evidence bag.

It was empty.

“Is it an invisible clue?” asked Archie.

“It’s a plastic bag,” Heil said. He caught himself. “I mean, inside the plastic bag.”

Heil focused his light on the bag, too, and gave it a little shake.

Archie took it and gave it a closer look. There was something plastic inside, almost exactly the same size as the evidence bag itself. From the looks of it, it was a plastic Ziploc freezer bag.

It looked clean. No drug residue. No crumbs from a sandwich. “Dog walker might have dropped it,” Archie said.

Portlanders were zealots about scooping up their dogs’ poop. The bags of choice were biodegradable store-bought ones designed for waste retrieval, or the blue plastic sleeves that The New York Times came in. Somewhere there was a landfill brimming with knotted blue plastic shit-filled NYT bags.

“Sure,” Heil said. “But I wanted to show you something, and it’s all we’ve got.”

An empty Ziploc bag. If that was a metaphor, they were screwed.

“Where’s the guy who had Henry’s phone?” Archie asked.

“Under the bridge.”

Heil led Archie up the promenade, shifting to get between the volunteers and guardsmen still hoisting sandbags into place in their race against time. Archie was grateful for the crowd. There were still local news teams around, and he didn’t want to get spotted. They would have been on him in an instant, cameras rolling, wanting details of the rescue.