“Why the ostrich?” she said. Whoever had put the body there had gone through a lot of trouble. It couldn’t be easy getting a corpse over a fence. “It’s on the inner circle. Why carry her all the way in there?”

“What do they call that color?” Susan heard Henry Sobol ask. He stepped beside Archie, grinning.

Susan blushed and touched her hair, which she had recently dyed raspberry. “You are stealthy, for a large person,” she told him, tucking her hair back under the hood of her slicker.

Henry was wearing a watch cap over his shaved head, and his salt-and-pepper mustache glistened with rain. “Professional training,” he said with a grin. His black motorcycle boots were caked with mud, probably from the picnic area where the body had originally washed up.

“Let me guess,” Susan said. “You were a Navy SEAL.”

“Doorman,” he said. “I learned how to lurk.”

Susan never knew when he was kidding.

But she didn’t let on.

“I liked it purple,” he said. “What did you call that color?”

“Plum Passion,” she said. “It’s Manic Panic. This one’s called Deadly Nightshade.”

“Whatever happened to Clairol?” Henry mused to Archie, and Susan saw Archie smile.

“Moving a body is a crime, right?” Susan asked.

“Abuse of a corpse,” Archie said. “It’s a Class C felony in Oregon. People who really like abusing corpses go to California. There it’s only a misdemeanor.”

“Figures,” Susan said.

She’d already called the paper to get a photographer, but they were all out on assignment covering the flooding. The Herald would run a wire photo of the carousel, or a photo of Stephanie Towner in better days, if they ran a photo at all. Right now readers were more interested in whether their homeowner’s insurance covered mudslides than in women who fell into the Willamette and drowned. Even when they ended up on ostriches.

“Third person who’s drowned in the Willamette in two days,” Archie said.

“The city’s flooding,” Henry said, noticing the mud on his boots with a frown. “And people are stupid around water.”

“Yeah,” Archie said.

Henry gave Archie a look and tapped his watch.

“You sure you can handle things?” Archie said to him.

“Go,” Henry said. He pulled a handkerchief from somewhere in his coat, bent over, and dabbed it at his boots.

Archie turned to Susan. “I’ve got a thing across the river,” he explained.

He tossed his coffee cup in a park trash can, which was immediately beset by gulls, and then headed off in the direction of the parking lot.