The Night Season (26 page)

CHAPTER

59

He’d heard her
voice.

No one else in the boat had. But Archie was certain that he’d heard Susan calling his name.

“Quiet,” he said.

The soldier piloting the Zodiac shut off the outboard motor, and Archie called back to her. But there was nothing. Only the choppers. The endless staccato of the rain. The crescendo of the current.

Archie searched the blackness and tried to pinpoint the location.

“That way,” he yelled, and the outboard kicked once again to life and headed twenty feet up and west until Archie said, “Here.”

One of the soldiers was on his radio calling in a dive team and directing a helicopter to their position. Someone threw a life preserver into the water. It made a dead splash. Someone else swung the boat’s spotlight around, scanning the surface of the water. But they didn’t have time for all that.

Archie jumped off the boat and went under.

It wasn’t the first time he’d plunged into this kind of darkness.

In Gretchen’s basement, when she’d cut into him, the blackness had been an enveloping comfort; and later, after she’d let him go, all those nights when he’d fallen asleep with seven Vicodin in his system, he had longed to let his mind go again to the abyss.

The floodwater was that place, given physical form and weight.

He reached clumsily, feeling around underwater, fingers splayed. His ears pounded and ached from the cold. He dove deeper.

A martyr with a white knight complex, Anne had said.

Except that the people he tried to save died.

Even underwater he could hear the roar of the river. The current twisted around him, nearly turning him over. His inner ears ached from the cold water. He opened his eyes under there and saw only blackness. He propelled himself deeper, struggling against the current. He could feel it moving him. His lungs pulsed with pain.

He dug through the water, stretching his arms and legs, hoping to make contact with her.

But he needed air.

He swam up, breaking the water with a sputtering cough.

He looked around. The boat was a hundred feet away. The current had washed him downriver fifty yards in just a few minutes.

And then, all at once—light.

He was bathed in it. He had to squint against it for a moment before he could see. The light was filled with a trillion tiny glittering raindrops. The beam encircled him and went straight up into the sky.

He was in the spotlight of a Coast Guard helicopter.

The chugging rotors that had become such white noise over the past several days sounded like the trumpet of a cavalry charge.

Then, from above, he saw something in the light. They were lowering a rescue basket. They were trying to rescue him.

No.

Archie couldn’t even get a full breath anymore—his lungs were too tired, too full of muck. But he took in as much air as he could.

He’d promised himself that he could save her.

He dove straight down, pushing the icy water with all his strength, and as he did, his hand brushed against something.

He flailed toward it, grabbed hold, and swam for the surface.

CHAPTER

60

Susan’s first awareness
was of vomiting water.

It splashed onto the pavement beside her like coffee poured out the window of a moving car. Her belly cramped as she gagged, and she had a splitting headache. Her body hurt all over. And she was chilled to the bone, every muscle clenched with cold.

She could hear a noise. The same sound over and over again, and after a while she realized what it was:

“Susan?

“Susan?

“Susan?”

Why was someone saying her name? She was hungover. Or had the flu. Or was having a terrible dream. She needed her rest.

“Can you hear me?” the voice said.

It was Archie’s voice.

“Leave me alone,” she said.

“Do you know who I am?”

She mumbled his name.

“Do you know your name?”

What was his problem? “Susan,” she said.

And then it all came back. The river. The flood.

She looked around, her consciousness straining through the fog, grappling for details.

She was on her back on pavement. On a bridge. There were people kneeling around her. Archie. Random, clean-cut National Guard faces. They were all beaming, like they’d baked a pie.

Something felt funny on her chest and she reached her hand for it, and found a giant sticker, some wires. She saw the automatic external defibrillator on the pavement beside her, wires leading to her chest.

They’d resuscitated her.

Holy fuck. She’d been dead.

“You’ll be okay,” Archie said.

He was soaking wet. He’d done it. He’d found her and pulled her out in time.

Her brain felt like pudding.

“Thanks,” she said. And then she vomited all over his feet.

“That’s all right,” he said. “I’m wet anyway.”

She saw the lights of the ambulance before she heard the
whoop-whoop
of its siren. Her senses felt jumbled like that, her brain still struggling to organize information.

“Where’s Patrick?” she tried to ask. But it came out more like “Werspatick?”

Somehow, Archie seemed to know what she was talking about. “We haven’t found Patrick yet.”

The EMTs arrived with a rush of comforting efficiency. They peeled off the AED pads, wrapped Susan in blankets, and strapped her to a gurney.

“Carey’s dead,” Archie said as they wheeled her away.

“Good,” she said.

She turned her head and looked out into the blackness. The EMTs loaded her in the ambulance. She’d been through this routine before, and surrendered to it.

CHAPTER

61

Archie counted twelve
helicopters now. The river was abuzz with rescue boats and spotlights. Every bridge, from the Hawthorne to the Steel, was lit up with the flashing red and blue of emergency vehicles. No sirens. Standard procedure in a case like this. They didn’t want to muffle the sound of someone yelling for help.

Even with the beating rotors of the choppers, the city felt weirdly silent. The seawall was in shambles. The center of the river still raged from the snowmelt and rain, but the floodwater that had breached the wall had settled into a placid dark lake. The entire landscape of downtown Portland had changed. The Willamette now stretched twice as wide, abutting the facades of the old buildings that fronted the park. It was how Portland had used to look—a hundred years ago, before they had put in the freeway along the west bank and then, decades later, torn it up and replaced it with Waterfront Park, forever separating Portlanders from the river.

Archie had a good view from the top of the Burnside Bridge. The drawbridge had been lowered, and someone had managed to roll the chief’s mobile command center up from the east side of the bridge, which, because it didn’t have an emergency seawall, had suffered less damage.

Archie was wearing National Guard fatigues with a blanket over his shoulders and nothing but cold, vomit-soaked socks on his feet. There were plenty of patrol cars around he could have climbed into to get warm. But he didn’t want comfort. Not until Patrick and Flannigan had been found. He spoke into the walkie-talkie he’d been given. “Anything?”

“Not yet, sir,” a voice answered.

Archie looked south into the night, where, miles away, snowmelt and tributaries met near Eugene, and the Willamette River formed, flowing north to Portland, snaking a path through cities and towns and wine country and farmland. Then he turned to the north, downriver where the Willamette took a left, joined the Columbia, and rolled out to the Pacific.

Almost two hundred miles.

And flooding all along it.

Rescue efforts would continue for days. Cleanup for months, maybe years.

They had already pulled a National Guard soldier out of the water and rescued five people from downtown roofs.

But there was no sign of Flannigan or the boy. And no sign of Carey’s body.

Archie felt a hand grip his shoulder and Chief Eaton stepped next to him.

“How bad is it?” Archie asked him.

“We won’t be able to tell for sure until daylight,” Eaton said. “But there’s water up to Second Ave, from Burnside down to Market. Governor’s asked for federal help. They’re sending more Guard soldiers. Washington and California are sending rescue crews. Thank God we got people out of there.”

“The flooding is only up to Second?” Archie said carefully.

Eaton gave him a knowing look. “We evacuated the jail hours ago.”

Archie had been trying to keep his mind from going to Gretchen. He’d focused on Patrick, and Heil, and Susan. But it had nagged at him. The Justice Center was on Third Avenue downtown. It had been in the flood zone. “Where to?” he asked.

“Down to Salem,” Eaton said. “All the prisoners are accounted for. Including Gretchen Lowell.” He looked Archie up and down and raised an eyebrow. “I can’t tell if you’re disappointed or relieved.”

As with everything that had to do with Gretchen, it was a little of both. Archie gripped the blanket a little tighter. “I just want her locked up,” he said.

“Go home,” Eaton said with a sigh. “It’s been an hour. Anyone in that water would have gone hypothermic thirty minutes ago.”

Home. Archie had left the Cutlass on First Avenue. He guessed that it wasn’t still where he’d parked it. His apartment building probably had a moat around it.

Archie couldn’t leave. He raised the walkie-talkie to his mouth. “Anything?” he said.

“Not yet, sir.”

Archie gazed over the side of the bridge at the darkened western skyline.

“What do you think Carey knocked up against?” Eaton said.

“Parked car, maybe,” Archie said. He had told them Carey was dead. He had left out the part about punching him in the brain. He wondered bleakly if an autopsy would call his account into question if Carey’s body ever washed up. Probably. Archie had learned that the more inconvenient a truth, the more likely it would eventually emerge.

Eaton’s phone rang and he glanced at it and picked it up. “Yeah?” he said. He listened. “Hold on.” He held the phone out to Archie. “It’s for you,” he said.

Archie took it. “Hello?” he said.

“Jesus,” Henry said. “I sound better than you do.”

Archie lifted his hand to his forehead. His voice caught. Now that Susan was safe, the rest was hitting him. “Heil’s dead.”

“I heard.”

“I need to call his wife,” Archie said.

“Wait until morning,” Henry said.

Archie could still feel Susan and Patrick in his arms. Feel them ripped away. “I had the boy, Henry. I had him twice, and I lost him. Susan was underwater. She had to be revived.”

“It’s not your fault,” Henry said. His voice was still hoarse from the respirator tube. “Blame the psycho behind it.”

“I have to find this kid,” Archie said.

“It’s over,” Henry said gently. “There’s nothing you can do there. Let the professionals do their jobs.”

Archie heard a commotion on the bridge and looked over to see a man shouting at a uniformed patrolman. A woman was with him. A pair of headlights suddenly lit the scene and Archie was able to recognize the couple.

They were Patrick Lifton’s parents.

“I have to go,” Archie mumbled into the phone, and he hung up and handed the phone back to the Eaton.

Eaton saw them, too, and put an arm across Archie’s chest. “I can talk to them,” he said.

“It’s okay,” Archie said. “Let them through,” he shouted at the officer trying to hold them back.

The officer turned back and saw Archie and then nodded and lifted the tape for Patrick’s parents to duck under.

Daniel Lifton’s eyes fell on Archie and Lifton ran for him.

His face was twisted with grief, his eyes swollen. He wasn’t wearing a coat.

Eaton stepped between then.

“You had him?” Lifton asked Archie, his voice almost a wail.

“I couldn’t hold on,” Archie said.

Archie thought that Lifton might slug him. He wanted him to. He wanted to feel the pain of his skin splitting, his jaw dislocating. He wanted to taste his own blood.

Lifton turned, trying to hold back sobs. “We almost had him back.”

Eaton put an arm around Lifton and led him away a few steps. “We’ll find him.”

Find him. They all knew what he really meant—find the body. But even that might not be possible. Corpses could stay hidden a long time in the river.

Patrick’s mother shifted close to Archie.

“I was supposed to walk with him, to Simon’s house,” she said. She stood next to him, so that they were side by side, but she faced the opposite direction, looking out over the railing toward the river. She was wearing a baseball cap, and Archie thought he could hear rain tapping against the bill. “But I was late on a job, a Web site I was building for this little store up in Everett. So I told him he could go on his own. I sat there, writing code, while my son was taken away by some maniac.”

“What was the store?” Archie asked.

“The Pet Nook,” she said.

Archie tried to keep his expression neutral. “Do they sell fish?”

She turned and looked at him. The bill of her cap shadowed her face. “Yes.”

“Did you ever take Patrick there?” Archie asked.

She nodded. He could see her mouth in the light, a small line. “He went with me a few times,” she said. “He sat in the back, next to the aquariums, and did homework while I talked to the owner. He loved it back there. Something about the light. He always wanted to come.” Her voice trailed off, then she looked at him, her eyes stricken with grief. “That’s where the kidnapper found him? He picked him out? Like he was picking out a pet? He just chose him and took him?”

“He must have followed you home.”

The walkie-talkie in Archie’s hand popped and crackled. “Detective Sheridan?” a voice said.

“I’m here,” Archie said, lifting it to his mouth.

“We found your detective. Flannigan. He managed to make it up a fire escape. He’s fine.”

Archie closed his eyes and exhaled. It made him cough, and he turned his head to his shoulder. His lungs cramped and he fought to catch his breath.

When he’d recovered he looked up to see the Liftons and Eaton staring at him.

“Flannigan’s okay,” Archie said.

Diana Lifton pointed at the blanket over Archie’s shoulder where he’d turned his head when he’d coughed, and where a dark splatter was visible on the gray wool.

“It’s blood,” she said.