They weren’t in the water. The chief hadn’t made the leap yet.

“Octopuses live in the ocean,” Archie said. He scanned the Wikipedia paragraph on habitat, the page already soft and damp in his hand. “These blue-ringed octopuses, their habitat is temperate salt water. They wouldn’t last more than a few minutes in the Willamette.”

Eaton’s phone rang. He didn’t pick it up. He put his hand to his upper belly, like it hurt. “So where are these people picking them up?” he asked. “Off the sidewalk?”

Archie thought about it. “Maybe someone hands the thing to them.”

“What?” Robbins said dryly. “Like, ‘Here, hold my octopus.’”

Archie’s mind was working now. He didn’t feel cold anymore. It was like everything else fell away and the world narrowed to this one task, this one job—find the answer. It’s what made him good at being a detective, and bad at being a husband. “Where do you get these things? Besides Australia?”

“You can buy them on eBay,” Robbins said. “I checked.”

Eaton shook his head slowly. “Some nut is using a goddamn fish to kill people?”

“Not a fish,” Robbins said. “A cephalopod.”

Archie remembered the empty plastic bag they’d found at the Japanese American Plaza.

“How big are these things?” Archie asked Robbins.

“Roughly?” Robbins said with a shrug. “The size of a golf ball, maybe.”

Archie stepped away from the back of the idling command center and peered around to where Heil, Ngyun, and Flannigan were standing, waiting for news of Henry and the toxin. All three rolled up on the balls of their feet when they saw Archie look their way.

“Heil,” Archie called. “Get that bag tested for traces of salt water.”

Archie gazed past the chief, past Robbins, past the sandbaggers and the National Guard, past the seawall, and over the river. The Eastbank Esplanade was made up of a series of promenades and floating docks, metal-grated overpasses and dark underpasses—it had already started to flood. The lights that usually lit the walkway at night had shorted out. Parts of the esplanade were reportedly already underwater. It was dark and wet and cold.

Someone had to have seen something.

“What are you thinking?” Robbins asked.

Archie looked down at his wrong shoes, and wrong jacket, and wrong pants. He sneezed. Then he looked back across the dark Willamette.

It wasn’t like he was going to get any sleep anyway.

“That I want to move to the desert,” Archie said.

Chapter 20

CHAPTER

20

Susan had taken her flowers with her. It had taken six trips. Seven, including the box with all her desk crap in it. A Hooters mug. A ceramic phrenology head. The Dictionary of American Slang. Two bottles of unopened red wine. These things took up room.

What kind of person fires someone in the middle of the night? In the rain?