“Who’s that doofus?” Susan asked. Archie followed her gaze farther up the stairs, where a man was gazing out over the river with his hands on his hips. Archie was excellent at noticing small details about people. He could recall the curve of a person’s earlobe, the angle of a stance, the pattern of the freckles on an exposed clavicle. He knew body language. Facial expressions. The sentence structure people turned to when they lied. He could read people. But social categorization escaped him.

Still, Archie could see what Susan meant with this guy.

“I called him,” Robbins said before Archie could comment.

Their visitor looked to be in his mid-thirties. He was wearing a red scarf knotted nattily around his neck, and the type of plaid newsboy hats that enough young men in Portland had started wearing so that even Archie had noticed.

He saw Archie looking up at him, waved heartily, and started trotting down the stairs.

“Is he a haberdasher?” Archie asked.

Robbins was busy directing his minions. “You wanted an expert,” Robbins said. “This is the part of the case where you call them in, right?” He tilted his hooded head at Anne. “Criminal Psychologist, meet Octopus Guy.”

Octopus Guy realized he was being talked about and hurried down the remaining stairs.

“This is Any Mingo,” Robbins said as Octopus Guy approached. “He teaches marine biology at Portland State.”

Archie was hoping for someone from the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport. Professionals told you what you needed to know. Academics told you what they wanted you to know they knew.

Mingo wiped his hand on his pant leg and offered it. “I teach freshwater invertebrate zoology,” he said. He was wearing glasses with lenses the size of coasters, which, based on the lack of refraction, he didn’t seem to need. He had a broad, fleshy face with delicate features and a pronounced chin highlighted by sideburns that stretched to his jawbones. He wore a woven leather cuff snapped around each wrist.

Archie shook his hand. Mingo’s fingertips were callused—the fronts, not the tips. Stand-up bass, Archie guessed. “Thanks for helping us out.”

“I’m Susan,” Susan said. “I like your hat.”

“Agent Boyd,” Anne said. “FBI.”

Mingo sniffed the air. “That smell,” he said, “reminds me of a giant octopus I discovered in Tasmania. Twenty-one feet. Washed up dead on a beach.” He leaned in near Susan. “The sperm packet that a giant male octopus deposits in a female is nearly one meter long.”

Susan looked over at Archie and raised an eyebrow.

Robbins lifted one of the corpse’s hands and leaned in close to examine it. “Professor Mingo likes himself some cephalopods,” he said. “I’ve informed him about our octopus problem.”