The Night Season (19 page)

CHAPTER

38

This is how
you kill someone
, he thought.

You let them experience it slowly. By natural means. You let them move through terror to understanding. He liked to step back and watch their eyes as they felt the poison’s first effects. They all panicked. Stumbled. Fell. Struggled. It was the human condition to fight. To rage against the dying of the light. Just as it was in our nature to let go. The body knew when to give up the ghost. The brain released endorphins. Pain vanished.

He watched their chests rise and fall, slower, slower.

Peaceful at the end.

Their eyes smiling.

And through it all, they were silent as mice.

It was a lot like drowning.

The Willamette had been killing people, one way or another, for a long time. Toxic pollution, heavy metals, PCBs, dioxin, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Industrial and urban waste; agricultural runoff. A six-mile stretch of the river through Portland was considered a Superfund site. The river violated temperature, bacteria, and mercury standards. You couldn’t eat most of the fish.

It was a lovely sight, to see her rise up. He had waited a long time for it.

He was patient. They had been standing there for almost an hour, his steel-and-nylon-mesh-gloved hand on the boy’s shoulder, both their backs up against the brick wall of the empty fire station.

The boy was entirely cloaked in rain gear—rain pants, hooded slicker, rain boots. All dark colors. The coat was too big and the cuffs hung over his hands. The hood fell over his forehead and obliterated his profile.

The man wore green waist-high rubber waders under a light jacket, and a black baseball cap.

They were dressed for the weather.

He had let two National Guard soldiers pass by. They had trotted down the esplanade. One carried a long pole, one looked to be on patrol. They couldn’t see him or the boy. People didn’t see things they weren’t looking for.

Water sloshed at the man’s boots. The world had never been louder. The throb of helicopter blades in the sky above the city; the thunder of the brimming, surging river; the static of rain hitting standing water. The noise seemed to be building to a fever pitch.

The man looked down at the boy to see if he could hear it, but the boy didn’t look up. The boy was very quiet. Some days he didn’t say a word.

Movement caught the man’s eye and he glanced up at the esplanade and saw another National Guard soldier loping in their direction. The soldier’s hat was pulled low. He was on his way somewhere, head down.

The man pushed the boy forward with his heavy-gloved hand.

“Can you help my son?” the man called.

The boy stumbled, the weight of the bucket throwing him off balance.

The soldier stopped and looked up. He was still a good thirty feet away.

The man waved.

The soldier grinned and waved back.

He came over to them in a slow jog. When he got within a few feet he stopped, put his hands on his thighs, and bent down so that he was eye-level with the boy. “What’s the problem, kiddo?” he asked.

The boy didn’t answer.

The man nodded at the bucket. “He found this on the sidewalk,” he said. “We think it’s hurt.”

“What is it, buddy?” the soldier said.

“Show him,” the man said.

The boy made a sound. Somehow it bubbled up above the roar of rotors and river. One word. Clear as day.

“Run.”

The man grabbed the bucket from the boy, lifted it, and heaved its contents at the soldier.

The water slopped against the soldier’s face and chest. He cried out in surprise. Then looked at the ground, his face knitted with confusion.

The man was breathing hard, his heart pounding in his chest. The blue-ring lay at the boy’s feet, a soft yellow ball of flesh, its neon rings a bright pulsing blue. He scooped it up in his glove and lowered it gently into the bucket. If they got it back in its tank soon, it might live.

The soldier hadn’t moved.

That was a good sign.

The man looked over at him. The soldier lifted his hand to his cheek, brought it back down, and looked at it. The man could see a small red mark forming. But the injection point was tiny. There wasn’t any blood.

The soldier fell to his knees, facing the boy. He looked surprised.

“You,” he said.

The word hung in the air for a moment before the soldier fumbled for his radio, dropped it, and collapsed.

This time, there wasn’t time to watch.

The man picked up the bucket and put a gloved hand back on the boy’s shoulder. “That’s how you kill someone,” he said.

CHAPTER

39

The press conference
was at the hospital. It was a compromise. The press had descended on Emanuel after they’d learned that Henry had been poisoned. The hospital had responded by bringing in extra security to keep them out. This way, the press would get their hospital shots.

The public information officer was at the mike giving flood updates, with Robbins, the mayor, the chief, and Archie standing behind him. Patrick Lifton’s parents sat holding hands in the front row.

Apparently the media had gotten the press release. There were a hundred chairs in there, and it was still standing room only.

Archie had been met with a barrage of questions when he’d entered the room.

“Have you seen Gretchen lately?”

“How are you feeling?”

“Should she get the death penalty this time?”

They were always the same.

The PIO continued. The number of sandbags that had been filled. The number of volunteers who’d participated. The press dutifully took notes.

Then it was the mayor’s turn. He gave the no-need-to-worry-everything-is-under-control speech. The seawall was holding. The city had a crack task force headed up by Archie Sheridan on the trail of the killer. They had some good suspects. (
Now, that would be news,
thought Archie.) It would all be resolved shortly.

He didn’t take questions.

Chief Eaton stepped up. He had to adjust the mike down a foot. The lights in the room dimmed, the chief clicked a remote in his hand, and a projected image appeared on a screen behind him, above Archie’s head.

“This is a blue-ringed octopus,” Eaton said matter-of-factly. “They are currently recognized as one of the world’s most venomous animals. They can be recognized by their characteristic blue and black rings and yellowish skin. They hunt small crabs, hermit crabs, and shrimp, and may bite attackers, including humans if provoked.” Archie knew the material—it was the exact wording from the Wikipedia page. “Our medical examiner has discovered a toxin from this animal in the bodies of four people recently believed to have drowned in the Willamette. Dennis Keller. Stephanie Towner. Zak Korber. And Megan Parr. It was also the toxin that was used to poison Detective Henry Sobol, who remains in critical condition upstairs.”

The hands were already up. Twenty, thirty. Everyone straining to be highest.

“We believe that someone is using the octopus as a weapon,” Eaton continued. “These are saltwater creatures which require a very specific habitat to survive. They cannot live in our waters.” A few of the hands went down. “The person we are looking for is someone with an interest in aquariums. He or she has at least one saltwater tank.”

Eaton took a breath and glanced back at Archie. Archie gave him a nod.

The chief turned back to the microphone. “The suspect is also a person of interest in a missing persons case.” He hit a button on the remote and the image above Archie’s head changed. Archie saw the boy’s parents flinch and their grip on each other tighten. The room got louder. “Patrick Lifton,” the chief said, quieting the press with a hand. “Age nine. He went missing from Aberdeen, Washington, a year and a half ago. We believe that this is the boy that Detective Sheridan rescued from the river last night.” He paused. “As you know, the boy went missing from Emanuel Hospital several hours after that.”

Archie wondered how that was going to play in the media.

Eaton must have wondered, too. Because this was when he decided to turn things over to Archie.

Archie stepped forward, adjusted the microphone, and looked out at the crowd. Fifty flashbulbs went off. Archie cleared his throat. He had prepared remarks. They were on index cards in his pockets. But he was having second thoughts. This guy wanted control. It’s what fed him.

Someone needed to challenge that. Archie needed to fight him for the boy.

“Patrick Lifton is alive,” Archie said into the mike. “He is either wandering the streets or he is in the custody of the serial killer who stole him from his parents. Either way, I will find him.” Archie looked directly at the boy’s parents sitting in the front row. “I. Will. Find. Him.” He looked back up at the crowd, and this time addressed the row of TV cameras. “Patrick Lifton is going home.”

Archie sighed. His head hurt.

“Any questions?”

CHAPTER

40

Susan had to
stand at the back of the hospital conference room during the press conference. Archie had taken questions for twenty minutes. She had kept the Patrick Lifton angle off the record, and now Archie and the chief had announced it to the world without so much as a heads-up. She was a little bitter about that before she remembered that her problems were petty compared to Patrick Lifton’s. The mood in the room was grim, but once the press conference ended, it was Armageddon as everyone scrambled to get stories in. Susan managed to get a chair in the chaos. She was sitting cross-legged on it, with her laptop on her knees, typing up a stringer piece on the press conference for the
Times
, when she smelled Stetson.

“Oh,” she said, as Derek took a seat on one of the plastic folding chairs next to her. “That’s good. You’re alive.”

“You finally noticed,” he said. He worked his jaw a little. “Saw the online piece for the
Times
.”

“Yeah,” Susan said. She gestured to the press badge on the lanyard around her neck. “I’m covering the press conference,” she said.

Derek examined the badge. “You totally printed that out on your computer,” he said.

She pulled it away from him. “They haven’t sent me a stringer badge yet.”

“Ian’s pissed,” Derek said. “You should have come to us.”

“Ian fired me,” Susan said. She finished typing the sentence she was writing and clicked send.

“I have to go,” she said, snapping her laptop shut. She lifted her chin at Archie and Robbins, who were in conversation near the podium. “I have to talk to my vast array of insider sources.”

She left Derek and made a beeline for the front of the room, which required a lot of dodging and weaving. She tripped on one laptop cord, stepped on three feet, and beaned a kneeling KGW cameraman with her elbow. Archie and Robbins were leaning up against the wall. They stopped talking when they saw her. People did that a lot.

“Any news on Ralph?” she asked Robbins.

He squinted at her. “I really only understand about twenty percent of what you say.”

“The Vanport skeleton,” Archie said.

Robbins blinked. “Since when have we decided he had anything to do with Vanport?”

“Timing’s right,” Susan said. “Location’s right.”

“Give or take ten years and five miles,” Robbins said. “The age of the bones is an educated guess. I’ve been busy with the fresher bodies. There’s a nine-year-old boy missing, you know. Not sixty years ago. Right now.”

Susan’s face burned.

“I got a tip,” she said. “From a reader.”

Robbins crossed his arms. Archie was silent.

“She gave me a name,” Susan said. “McBee. Fifteen bodies were recovered after the Vanport flood. Fourteen more were reported missing and never found. Elroy McBee. He was a firefighter with the Vanport Fire Department. Last seen two hours before the dike broke. His body was never recovered.”

“Is this supposed to matter to me because I’m black?” Robbins asked.

Susan sputtered for a second. “No.” She dug around in her bag. “Look at this,” she said, holding out the page she’d printed in Archie’s office. “A lot of people wonder why it took so long to sound the alarm when the dike broke? I found this story.” She told them the story of W. E. Williams and the stockyards, and searched for a moral that would serve her purpose. “He didn’t have to call back. He’d done his part. But he went the extra mile.”

“Her source suffers from dementia,” Archie said.

Susan slid him a look. “It comes and goes,” she said.

“We have more important business right now,” Archie said. “This can wait.”

They still didn’t get it.

“Find out anything about those keys?” Susan asked.

“Flannigan is on it,” Archie said. “He showed some pictures to a locksmith, but didn’t turn up anything.”

“You know how everyone has a tiny talent?” Susan said. “Like parallel parking? Or catching serial killers? Mine is Googling. I am a really excellent Googler.” She opened her laptop, hopped on the hospital wi-fi, and opened an eBay page. It was a listing for a key. She flipped it around so they could see.

Archie’s mouth opened.

“It’s a mailbox key,” Susan said. She glanced around at the screen—and the photograph of a small black key that had three bidders for a total of $4.50. “From Vanport. They salvaged hundreds of them from the mudflats after the flood. People collect them.”

Archie looked off, his eyes darting back and forth. He rubbed his face. “When did your column run, on the skeleton?”

“Thursday,” she said.

He sighed and turned to Robbins. “The day before the first murder.”

“I sent the bones up to Lewis and Clark,” Robbins said.

“Get them back,” Archie said.

“I was going to go talk to Gloria Larson,” Susan said. She widened her eyes innocently at Archie. “Did you want to come?”