“I know,” the kid said.
The two sat in silence for a moment, watching the stream gurgle by down below.
“Do you have kids?” the kid asked finally.
“Two,” Archie answered. “Six and eight.”
The kid nodded, satisfied. “I want to show you something.”
Archie looked at the boy. He was lonely. Looking for attention. Archie didn’t have time to indulge him. But there was something in his eyes, a seriousness that was enough to make Archie agree. What the hell. He’d look at the fort or whatever the hell the kid had, and then he’d go home to his family.
Archie stood.
“Don’t forget your book,” the kid said, pointing at The Last Victim.
Archie looked down at Gretchen’s face, the pink background, the gold embossed lettering. “Right,” he said, stooping over and picking it up.
The boy scrambled a few feet up the hill. Archie took a few careful steps up the muddy embankment after him, remembering the patrol cop who’d lost his footing. But the kid grew anxious and extended an impatient arm. Archie tucked the book into his waistband and took the kid’s hand, and the kid led him up the hill, back to the main path, and started walking west, farther into the woods. The rain had picked up and was an insistent patter on the canopy of leaves overhead. The cuffs of Archie’s pants were black with mud and his palms were covered with dirt from trying to leverage himself up the hillside. The light was fading quickly. The kid walked at a forty-degree angle, driven with purpose, his feet moving double time. Archie had to work to keep up with him. Then the kid came to a stop and looked at Archie and then up another hillside.
“Seriously?” said Archie.
The kid took a few steps up the hill and reached back for Archie. Archie took his hand again and the kid led him up the hillside. They were about halfway up when Archie felt a dull ache pound below his right rib cage. He winced, and his foot slipped in the mud, and he slid to his knees, grinding dirt into the calves of his pants. It took him a minute to catch a breath before he let the kid help pull him upright and they started climbing again. Archie tried to breathe into the pain. It wasn’t a cramp. It wasn’t that sharp. It was a flatter pain, more diffuse. At first Archie thought it was the book, tucked into his waistband, digging into his gut, but when he slid the book to the left, the pain stayed on the right. Still, he took the book out of his waistband and pinched it under his armpit, and focused on the kid, his mud-soaked green sneakers always a few feet up ahead, and in a few minutes the strange ache subsided. At the top the hillside leveled off. It was crowded with trees. The kid looked up at Archie. “I collect nests,” he said.
Archie stopped to try to brush some slimy vegetation off his increasingly damp pants. “Great,” he said.
“I found one here a few weeks ago.” The kid tapped the ground with the tip of his sneaker. “Right here.”
“Neat,” said Archie.
“There’s something wrong with it,” the kid said.
“With the nest?” Archie said.
The kid gave Archie a grave look and then sat down cross-legged again, set the lunch box on his lap and opened it. Inside was a bird’s nest. The kid lifted it carefully out of the lunch box and handed it up to Archie.
Archie took it. The sun set a little further and it felt suddenly very cold in the park. “You found this right here,” he said quietly. “This spot.”
The kid nodded gravely. “There’s something wrong with it, right?”
“Yeah,” said Archie. He got his cell phone out and called Henry, his arm still tight around the book.
“It’s me,” he said. “I’m at Forest Park. Get Search and Rescue out here. And a cadaver dog. I think we’ve got another corpse.”
Woven into the nest, among the twigs and vines that had been gathered off the forest floor, were several hundred strands of long blond hair.
When Archie looked up again, the kid was gone.
CHAPTER
9
Susan thought about going home and changing into park clothes: hiking boots, a slicker, maybe a pair of lederhosen. But she didn’t want to look like she was trying too hard. So she just wore her hooded sweatshirt over her black dress. She was wearing flip-flops, but she had a pair of sneakers in the trunk she kept for just such occasions. She only had to ruin one pair of expensive boots at a crime scene to learn that lesson. Now her trunk was full of reporter supplies: a change of shoes, a waterproof jacket, notebooks, water, a sun hat, batteries for her recorder, emergency tampons. You never knew where you might end up and for how long.
Traffic was bad. It had started to rain and the storm drains were overflowing and water pooled at every corner. Traffic was always bad when it rained during the summer. Even though it rained nine months out of the year, Portlanders were always unsettled when it rained out of season.