Susan looked at Henry, half dead in his hospital bed. Archie had already noticed that Derek, not Susan, had written the story about Henry. He’d have to know that had cost her. But she didn’t want him to know how much. He’d feel responsible somehow. “Ian didn’t like my Vanport story. I wanted to follow up on it. He thought it was bad timing.” It was partially true. Ian hadn’t liked her Vanport story. It was the wrong flood. Old news. Just like Ralph. No one cared. Not when their riverside condos were flooding.

“It would have been a great story,” Susan said. And she believed it, too. “Identifying the skeleton. Especially if it turns out that he died in the flood. You know, some people think thousands died at Vanport? That the government covered it up. Stacked the bodies in the ice-storage building downtown. Buried them in school buses. Some people even thought they shipped them to Japan to be returned as dead soldiers.”

Archie looked skeptical. “But the official count was, what, fifteen?”

“Yeah. They only found fifteen. But there were so many people in Vanport who were there for work, didn’t have families, didn’t have anyone to report them missing. I mean, the river swept away the whole town. Everything. There were fifteen thousand people there. They found fifteen bodies. How many more were washed out to sea? Or ended up in the mud of the slough?”

Susan was getting excited, her voice rising.

“Ian acted like no one cares,” she continued. “Like it was so long ago. But it’s this amazing story. This entire town built for shipworkers during the war, integrated, working-class. Snowmelt. Unseasonable warmth. Rain. Sound familiar? They were told they were safe. The morning the levy broke, they were told they were safe, that it would hold, that there was nothing to worry about. Then fifteen feet of water washed away houses, cars, everything. It was chaos. But a lot of them managed to save each other. To get the children out. They formed human chains to pull people to safety. Black and white, working together. And people in Portland now? They know nothing about it. It’s been expunged from our history. Imagine if I could identify that skeleton. It could be some small bit of closure. Someone knew him. If nothing else, it will show that we still care.”

Archie put some muffin in his mouth, chewed slowly, and shook his head. “Cold cases like this, they hardly ever get solved. Witnesses are dead. Paperwork gets lost. There’s no physical evidence. You don’t even know if this guy died at Vanport. Maybe he was fishing and died of a heart attack years before Vanport was even built?”

Susan could barely contain herself. “I have a lead.”