He frowned and thought for a moment. “It happens fast,” he said. “A lot of people, they don’t even know they’ve been bit. It doesn’t hurt. They suddenly feel nauseated. Their vision blurs. They’d be blind within a few seconds. They lose motor skills, their senses of touch, smell, their ability to speak. They find themselves unable to swallow. Within ten minutes they experience total body paralysis. They might be aware of what’s going on around them. But they can’t move, their lungs stop working.” He looked around at the group. “Basically, they suffocate.”

The logjam groaned, straining against the force of the river, and Archie heard the crack of timber as it broke free.

That’s why Henry had dropped his phone. He’d pulled it out to call for help, but had lost motor function and dropped it. Then stumbled and collapsed. He was probably just feet away when Otter had found it, but had been unable to cry out.

“How is Henry still alive?” Susan said. “If he was bitten at least an hour before we found him.”

“He must not have gotten a full dose of venom,” Mingo said. “The venom is in the saliva. It’s not injected by the beak. The beak pierces the skin. But it’s not like a snakebite. If the detective was able to react quickly, disrupt the attack and apply pressure to the wound, he might have bought himself some time. Is he a big guy?”

Archie nodded.

“That would help, too.”

Henry had been on the ground, unable to move or speak, barely able to breathe, yet completely aware. Archie knew what that was; he had experienced it in Gretchen’s basement. It was one of the reasons he left the lights on when he went out.

“Do you know how the octopus is being transported?” Mingo asked.

“We found a Ziploc freezer bag near where Henry was found,” Archie said. “Smelled like salt water. We’re having it tested.”

“It was empty?” Mingo said.

They all looked at each other, the question so obvious no one bothered to say it. Where was the octopus? If the bag had been used to transport the octopus, and Henry had disrupted the attack, and the killer hadn’t stayed to watch, had instead fled, leaving behind the bag—

He’d left the octopus behind.

They all turned and looked across the river, in the direction of the Japanese American Plaza. The seawall was high enough that Archie couldn’t make out the people closest to the river, only their heads and arms as they stacked the last layer of sandbags. But he could see the tops of the emergency vehicles that still crowded the park, the white festival tents set up as volunteer stations, the hundreds of people that still milled around farther into the park. “How long can one of these things live outside the water?” he said.