by Chelsea Cain
“Oh,” Susan said.
“Oh?”
“Just, oh.”
Derek squinted at her. “How much do you make?”
Susan made forty-two thousand. And the advance for her soon-to-be-released book about weird ways people die had been a hundred thousand. She shrugged. No point making him feel bad. “About that,” she said.
“How’s the Gretchen Lowell book?” he asked. Susan’s skin prickled. He knew she’d given up on the Beauty Killer book. He was just being catty.
“I’m kicking a new idea around,” she said.
“About?”
“Fighting crime in Portland, Oregon.”
“So, true crime?”
Susan felt a twinge of embarrassment. “More like a detective story.”
He blinked at her. He’d played college football. And those concussions add up. “So, fiction?” he said.
“Creative nonfiction,” she said.
He narrowed his eyes. “Who are the main characters?”
Susan smiled resplendently. “A plucky girl journalist with a chip on her shoulder and a recovering Vicodin-addicted cop with a dark secret who solve crimes together.”
“You’re writing a book about you and Archie Sheridan?”
“My agent says it’s very marketable.”
Derek lifted his hand and laughed into it until his eyes watered. “What does that make you?” He cackled some more, already pleased with what he was about to say. “Dr. Watson?”
Susan gave him a hard look.
His hand dropped and he cleared his throat. “Seriously. What if nothing exciting happens?”
Susan reached up and touched the pea-sized scar on her cheek where a crazy masked murderer had stabbed her with a piercing needle. When she didn’t cover it with makeup, it looked like a huge zit.
“Something exciting always happens,” she said.
And then, as if Susan had willed it, her phone rang.
CHAPTER
5
Stephanie Towner had been murdered. This was the only fact that Archie had been able to make out when Lorenzo Robbins had called him. It wasn’t even a fact; it was conjecture. But Robbins liked to be dramatic. Once, he had announced that an eight-year-old boy had been murdered by his ten-year-old sister. When he got everyone’s attention, he went on to explain that the sister had unwittingly passed along the parasite that had spread to the boy’s brain and killed him. So when Robbins reported this news about Stephanie Towner, Archie knew to follow up.
“Define ‘murdered,’” Archie said, holding his cell phone to his ear with his shoulder. He unlocked the door to his apartment, walked inside, tossed that day’s mail in a pile of other unopened envelopes, and took off his coat. He’d left the lights on. It was something he did now. He hadn’t mentioned it to Rosenberg.
There was noise on the phone line: voices, what sounded like furniture scraping. “I don’t have time to talk on the phone,” Robbins said, “just get down here as soon as you can.”
The line went dead.
Archie’s windows looked north, toward industrial Portland, where ships loaded with grain from the Midwest set off for Asia and then returned loaded with Toyotas. The port hadn’t flooded yet. That was something.
Farther north was the Columbia River, and across it, Vancouver, Washington, where his family lived. “The ’Couve, as it was known, was one-third the size of Portland, and seemed even smaller. A lot of Portlanders had never been to Vancouver, except to drive through it on the way north to Seattle, or to chaperone a school field trip to historic Fort Vancouver. It was twenty minutes from Archie’s apartment to Debbie’s house, but it felt like another country.
His kids liked Debbie’s new boyfriend. He worked in the wind industry. He’d gotten the kids composting. He probably recycled his used Q-tips.
Archie punched Henry’s name on his autodialer.
It rang once.
“Yeah?” Henry said. There was always a trace of panic in his voice when Archie called, like it could only be bad news.
“Robbins thinks Stephanie Towner was murdered,” Archie said.
“The girl on the ostrich? She drowned. They found the skid mark. Open-and-shut.”
“Except for the ostrich thing,” Archie said.
“I’ll meet you down there.”
Archie took off his sweater. It smelled like a wet dog. That’s what happened when wool got wet. It stank. Some people thought it smelled like a drenched sheep, some people thought barnyard, urine, mold. Archie liked the smell. It reminded him of when he was a kid, when that’s what Oregon had smelled like in the winter—one big wet dog. Now, with the advent of Polarfleece, everything had changed.
He had a button-down shirt on under the sweater. He’d put it on ten hours earlier and its smell was not as pleasant as the wet wool. He unbuttoned it and tossed it in the laundry hamper that Debbie had bought him when he’d moved out. Then he got another button-down out of the drawer and put it on. He didn’t examine himself in the mirror anymore. His scars were as much a part of him as his eye color. The heart-shaped scar that Gretchen Lowell had left on his chest nearly three years before served only as a reminder of his failings. If he didn’t look at it, he could pretend it wasn’t there. He could avoid thinking about her. It was the only way he could function.
He buttoned the second shirt as quickly as he could and pulled the sweater back on. He hadn’t eaten all day, but there was nothing to grab to go, and no time to make anything.
Rain splattered the window, causing rivulets of seagull shit to run like white threads down the glass.
Archie put his coat back on. He left the lights on when he went out.
CHAPTER
6
The Multnomah County morgue was downtown, just across the Willamette from Archie’s apartment. Portland had a pretty downtown, with restored brick and sandstone storefronts, lots of public art, and bike racks and coffee shops on every corner. In the summer flower baskets were hung from the lampposts, in the winter the trees were strung with white lights.
Most of the inner west side was laid out on a grid, numerical avenues parallel to the river, and alphabetical streets perpendicular. The blocks were short—dollhouse blocks, they called them—so the city founders could sell plenty of corner lots. The morgue was on Fourth Avenue, which meant it was four dollhouse blocks west of the river, uphill, well above flood stage.
But it was also, as morgues tended to be, in a basement.
It had flooded.
Archie knew it the moment he arrived. The first-floor hallway was already filled with equipment and gurneys, boxes and computers. Two morgue employees, pathology assistants, red-faced and puffing, lugged a heavy steel device that looked like it had been stolen from a butcher shop. A bone saw sat next to a drinking fountain. An organ scale sat in front of an elevator. The hallway was tracked with wet footprints.
“Where’s Robbins?” Archie asked the pathology assistants as they squeezed by him.
“Downstairs,” one of them said. “Follow the screaming. And take the stairs, the elevator’s shorted out.”
Archie worked his way through the obstacle course of hallway debris and found the stairs, where a dozen people had formed a chain to pass up contents from the morgue. Archie couldn’t help wondering what was sloshing around in the Tupperware containers that were being stacked at the top of the line. Someone’s lunch? Or someone’s stomach?
Robbins bellowed up at him from below. “Get down here!” he said.
Archie flashed his badge and ducked past the people on the stairs. Robbins was at the bottom, standing in a foot of water.
“Can you believe this shit?” Robbins said.
The lights must have shorted out, because the overhead emergency lights flickered, giving everything a sci-fi-green tint. Several alarms pulsed from various directions. Robbins was in his civilian clothes, no lab coat, his shirt unbuttoned to mid-chest. Sweat stained his pits. His pants were tucked into the tall black rubber boots that Ar
chie had seen him wear at crime scenes. His dreadlocks, which he usually wore tied back with a rubber band, dangled loose against shoulders. The light made him look like he was vibrating.
“Where are the bodies?” Archie asked.
“I was thinking I’d stack them upstairs in the hall,” Robbins said, wiping his dark brow with a latex-gloved hand, “and then I remembered that thing about decomposition I learned in medical examiner school. We’ve got to keep them refrigerated. Gets real stinky otherwise. Emanuel and OHSU have offered to take them. We’re still figuring out the best way to transport them. Did you drive?”
Archie thought of his police-issue Cutlass upstairs, and wondered if he could fit a corpse in the backseat. “Could I use the carpool lane?” he asked.
Robbins smirked. Then his eyes flicked down to Archie’s feet, and he was all business. “Good, you’re wearing boots. Don’t touch the water.” He headed off, beckoning for Archie to follow him. “C’mon.” The water throbbed as Robbins plodded through it.
A young man in a lab coat walked past carrying an aluminum roasting pan with a human skull in it. The skull was stained with age, almost the color of tea.
Robbins took the pan out of his hands. “I’ll take that,” Robbins said. “Get the computers. The equipment. Biohazards. And make sure you get the TV out of my office.” He leaned in to Archie. “Flat-screen,” he explained.
They heard a splash and both turned to see Susan Ward appear at the bottom of the stairs. She was wearing rainbow-striped rubber boots tucked into jeans and a knee-length yellow rain slicker. It was unzipped, revealing a blue T-shirt with white bubbly writing that read CONSERVE WATER, SHOWER TOGETHER. She kicked at the water like a kid in a wading pool and grinned at them. Her lipstick was the same bright berry color as her hair. “Whoa,” she said. “Cool.”
Robbins lifted his fingertips to his temple. “This is still a secure area, people,” he hollered up the stairs. He gave Archie a tired look. “You told her Stephanie Towner was murdered?”
“Stephanie Towner was murdered?” Susan said. There was a series of splashes as she sloshed over to them. Her face glowed pink under her freckles.
Archie hadn’t told her anything. She just had a way of showing up. Sometimes Archie wondered if she ever went to the Herald offices at all.
Robbins stared at Archie, waiting for an answer, still holding the pan with the skull.
Archie shrugged. “I didn’t tell her,” he said.
“I came because I heard the morgue was flooding,” Susan said. She leaned close to Archie and said out of the side of her berry-red mouth, “I got a tip from someone I know at Emanuel.”
Then something seemed to occur to Susan and she glanced down at the water they were all standing in. “Are we going to get electrocuted?”
“Probably not,” Robbins said.
“Electrocution is the second leading cause of fatalities during floods,” Susan said.
“We’re not going to get electrocuted,” Robbins insisted. “Power’s shorted out. The emergency lights run on batteries.”
Archie wondered why so many alarms were going off, if there wasn’t any power.
Robbins seemed to read his mind. “The alarms all are coming from very expensive equipment that doesn’t like getting unplugged.”
Susan opened her mouth to ask another question, but then Archie saw her eyes travel to the aluminum pan. She did a double take. “Is that a skull?”
“Some dog walker found it in West Delta Park,” Robbins said.
“Oh,” Susan cried in recognition. “I wrote about him.” She bent her knees so her face was level with the skull. “I wrote about you,” she said to the skull.
Archie had read that column. No, Archie remembered—Henry had read the column to him. Susan had come up with some theory that the dog park skeleton had something to do with the Vanport flood. Henry had been irritated by it.
But that was not why they were here.
“Talk to me about Stephanie Towner,” Archie said.
Robbins jerked his head in Susan’s direction. “You okay with her listening in?”
Susan had no business being there. If this was actually a homicide investigation, which Archie wasn’t sure it was—if it was just Robbins wanting to show off, then what did it matter? “It’s off the record until I say it isn’t,” Archie told her.
Susan bounced her chin up and down.
“You trust her?” Robbins asked dubiously.
“I do,” Archie said. He surprised himself at how easily he said it.
Susan beamed. The bleeping of alarms continued all around them. There was a vague smell of decomp in the air. Archie wondered bleakly if it was the water.
Robbins sighed and shook his head. “This way.” He led them down the green shimmering hallway, past an office where two morgue employees were rescuing a flat-screen TV, and into the autopsy room.
The water was deeper in there, only a few inches below the top of Archie’s boots. It bubbled and gurgled at four distinct points in the center of the room.
“Water’s coming up through the floor drains,” Robbins explained.
Archie had seen what went into those floor drains. He could only imagine what might come back up. “Along with what?”
“A whole host of biohazards,” Robbins said. “I told you not to touch the water.” He held the skull out in Susan’s direction. “Here, hold this.”
Susan took the pan. “Where’s the rest of him?” she asked.
“Around,” Robbins said.
Susan lifted the skull so she could look him in the eye sockets. “I think I’ll call him Ralph,” she said.
“I’m glad you made a new friend,” Archie said. “But could we get back to Stephanie Towner?”
Robbins adjusted his posture, straightening up like he was about to give a lecture. “What do you know about drowning?” he asked. Here we go, thought Archie. Water continued to gurgle up from below the floor.
“We’re listening,” Archie said.
Robbins crossed his arms and leaned one shoulder against the morgue cooler. “Stage one is fear. Most people, they don’t flail around and holler. They’re focused on breathing. Stage two, they go under. Take a lungful of water, choke on it, which makes them breathe in more water, which causes their larynx or vocal cords to constrict and seal the airway. That’s called ‘laryngospasm.’ It’s involuntary. Now they’re underwater. Stage three. They’re unconscious and in respiratory arrest.
“Stage four,” he continued. “Hello, hypoxic convulsions. Some jerking. They start turning blue.”
Robbins turned to Susan. “You getting all this?”
“Blue,” she said. “Got it.” She tossed Archie an amused glance. “This is really going to come in handy next time I’m at the pool.”
She was clearly enjoying antagonizing him. “Continue,” Archie said to Robbins.
“Stage five. My old friend, clinical death. Heart attack. Breathing and circulation stop.”
“So what’s stage six?” Susan asked dryly. “Heaven?”
This was all going somewhere, Archie told himself. It had to be going somewhere.
Robbins waved a gloved finger at her. “Aha. That’s where it gets interesting. Stage six is biological death.”
“What’s the difference between clinical and biological death?” Susan asked.
“About four minutes,” Robbins said. “That’s how long you have to start CPR and defibrillation before your brain gets all mushy and there’s no going back.”
He cranked a lever on the morgue cooler drawer he’d been leaning on, and slid Stephanie Towner’s corpse out on a conveyor tray.
As corpses go, she looked better than she had at the park that morning. Her hair was wet and combed back from her face; her flesh was clean of mud and debris. But she was still a disturbing sight. Her face, neck, and upper chest were blotchy with the telltale dusky bruising of lividity. She looked like she’d been punched around. But looks could be deceiving. Bodies floated fa
cedown, the head lower than the rest of the body. What looked like bruising was most likely just where her blood had settled once her heart had stopped pumping. A slight trace of pink foam circled her nostrils. A brutal Y-incision, sealed with industrial-looking staples, marked where Robbins had opened her chest up for autopsy.
Archie checked in on Susan. She was staring at the corpse’s thighs. The flesh was pimply. Goose-skin, Archie had heard coroners call it. That was fine. As long as she wasn’t fixed on the face. As long as you didn’t look at the face, you could pretend that what you were looking at wasn’t human.
Archie knew she tried to seem tough. But the rattling skull in her hands told a different story.
“Here’s the thing,” Robbins continued. “Most people, once they’re unconscious, their larynx relaxes and their lungs fill with water. Your vic? No water in her stomach. No hemorrhages in the middle ears. No water in her lungs. This can happen. Some people keep that seal. Drowning is tricky when it comes to cause of death. But it got me thinking, and I took a real close look at her. And I found this.”
He gestured to the woman like a waiter presenting the catch of the day. Then gently folded open her fingers to expose her palm. Her finger pads were blanched and wrinkled, like she’d been in the tub too long.
Archie and Susan both leaned forward from opposite sides of the conveyor tray, nearly bumping heads. Robbins indicated a tiny brown spot near the center of the palm. It looked like someone had marked her with the tip of a brown felt-tipped pen.
This was Robbins’s big evidence? “What is it?” Archie asked.
“A freckle?” Susan guessed.
“It’s a puncture wound,” Robbins said.
Susan didn’t seem convinced. “It looks like a freckle.”
Archie had to admit, it did look like a freckle. Or a thousand other things. “She was in the water awhile, beaten up,” Archie said. In fact, the body was covered with scratches and lesions where she’d run into who knows what on her way downriver. She’d been lucky she hadn’t ended up in the propeller of a boat. Then there were the fish who’d been feasting on her.
