By now the department would have gone public about the missing boy. The hospital security cameras had captured his grainy image leaving through an exit door, alone. It was a lousy shot—three-quarters profile, still in a hospital gown, barefoot, fleeing into the midnight rain. That was Archie to a tee—save someone and then immediately lose him. Classic.

It took looking at the photograph to make Archie realize how much the kid looked like his son.

He wondered if it was even a top story. Probably no one cared. Probably the news was all flood watch, all the time. The kid’s parents hadn’t even noticed he was gone, why would anyone else?

Archie could still feel the cold of the river in his bones.

“There,” Heil said.

They were under the Burnside Bridge. Archie felt himself exhale, suddenly lighter on his feet, and it took him a moment to realize it was the foreign sensation of being outside without being rained on. The concrete slab of bridge above them was supported by massive concrete pillars. This bridge had been built in the nineteenth century and then rebuilt in the 1920s. It wasn’t bad, with its Italian Renaissance towers and pretty metal railings. But that was up top. Down here it was dank and dirty. Much of the year, weekends brought Saturday Market booths, with their utensil mobiles and hemp necklaces. But in the winter there was no market, and the gap under the bridge became a shelter for homeless people trying to get out of the rain.

It was crowded down there now, but not with the homeless. National Guard trucks, volunteers handing out coffee, Parks and Recreation vehicles—it was a regular tailgate party. At the center of the action—dwarfing all but the largest National Guard vehicles—was the Portland PD’s massive new mobile command center. The only sign of the usual tenants was an abandoned shopping cart. Archie spotted two of his detectives, Mike Flannigan and Martin Ngyun, one on either side of the man who’d had Henry’s phone. Only he wasn’t wrapped in plastic anymore—he was cloaked in a gray wool blanket. There was a woman with them. She worked in social services. Archie wasn’t sure how he knew—something about how she stood, chest wide, feet apart, unintimidated by the ambient chaos.

The lights under the bridge were different than the construction lights illuminating the seawall project; these rotated, white and orange, so that everything shifted color at five-second intervals. The effect was part disaster zone, part nightclub.

Flannigan gave the woman a soft push forward. She gave him a dirty look.

“This is Mary Riley,” Flannigan said to Archie. “From the Mission.”