The Night Season Read Online Free PDF

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 Archie 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