I thank him for his help, and he thanks me for livening up his day.
“If I do hear someone up there, should I call you? Now you’ve got me involved, I’ll be paying more attention.”
“Yes, if you would.” I give him my number and we exchange a few more pleasantries — he obviously doesn’t get many visitors and is prolonging our interaction — but at last I find my way back to ground level. I knock on the basement apartment, but get no answer.
Back in the parking lot, I check Victoria’s car. The green Subaru Forester is at least twenty years old, and a crack scrawls across the windshield. The inside is uncluttered, no coffee cups or clothing or candy wrappers. All the doors are locked. I check the tires for mud or gravel, and the grill for dents or bloodstains, in case Victoria ran over someone and vanished to avoid the rap. The left rear tire is low. Without attention, it’ll be flat in another day or two.
Despite the lack of evidence so far, it seems likely there has been something suspicious, if not outright foul play. Most people don’t just walk away from their lives and leave everything behind, not without a reason.
Except for you, of course.
The tone of the inner voice is really starting to annoy me.
Did Pastor Harkness have something she wanted, or needed, to get away from? If uprooting her church is any indication, she seems to have a penchant for physically distancing herself from her problems. Maybe she’s now chosen a more permanent form of running away.
Like, being dead? Drowned in the river?
I refuse to take a hallucination seriously. Because that would be crazy. And I’m not.
From the front seat of my car, I call the property manager and leave a message, explaining that there is a concern for one of their tenants’ welfare and could someone please come and check. Then I sit there, stewing, squeezing the steering wheel like I’m trying to make a diamond out of a lump of coal. What if Victoria is lying up there in her apartment, unconscious or hurt? What if there’s some piece of evidence that might point me in the right direction, something that would save valuable time? Because the clock is ticking with a loud, insistent tone. And for Victoria, it might already be too late.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SON OF A bitch.
I don’t want to go back up to the apartment. I want to go home, get away from the river, have a chance to settle down and do some more research, but I can’t stand the thought of Victoria lying there, hurt or worse.
You could call the cops.
Ugh. I really don’t want to engage with them. Plus, I don’t really trust the police. Not anymore. I’d rather do this myself.
I pull a pair of latex gloves over my sweaty fingers and grab my snap gun from the box under the seat, scrambling up the switchback stairs. Up and up, and I’m panting when I reach the top.
The entry to the apartment is partially shielded by the railing around the top landing. I kneel on the welcome mat and thrust the snap gun into the lock to engage the tumblers. It takes only seconds; the lock is old and easily overcome; the deadbolt isn’t fastened, and with a last glance around I open the door and dart inside. I don’t give myself a chance to think about the beach, the hallucination, or whether I’m making a really big mistake. Because, if this turns out to be a crime scene, I’ll be leaving traces all over it.
Plus, breaking and entering.
Calling out is a non-starter because of neighbor George, so I draw my weapon and walk softly. No lights are on. Venetian blinds shade the windows, casting the apartment into twilight. The front hall leads to a small living area. Sofa, chairs, TV, houseplants. Some decorative fabric squares hanging on the wall. Kitchen is clean, no dishes in the sink, but a sour odor wafts from the trash can. The whole place is stale. I don’t linger anywhere, but open doors to find a bedroom with a rumpled bed; a closet full of colorful clothes; a second bedroom set up as an office with a desk and a laptop; a bathroom where the hand soap on the sink is beginning to crack.
Behind me, the refrigerator coughs and hums to life, and I whirl into a half-crouch, weapon at the ready. Almost immediately I realize my mistake and straighten up, taking a moment to steady my nerves with deep, controlled breaths.
Careful now. Someone’s gonna cite you for hunting appliances out of season.
There’s no sign of a struggle, no bloodstains, no mess. I would guess no one’s been here for days. I stand silently and listen. Muted traffic noise drifts up from the street, and the laugh track from a muffled television that probably belongs to George rises through the floor. On the move again, I look for a cell phone, or even a land line, but the only electronic item is the laptop in the office. The screen comes to life when I flip it open, requesting a password. I type in ‘password’ and variations of same. Then I try ‘churchofthespirit’ and ‘spirit’ and ‘Jesus.’ Even ‘Godhelpme.’ Nothing. I close the computer. There’s a pile of paper on the desk and an open notebook. It looks like she was working on a sermon.
You’re pushing your luck, Lake.
I know, I know. Just a few more minutes.
I check the closet in the office. Coats and cardboard boxes and an ironing board. Back in the bedroom, I look under the bed. Suitcases. In the living room, there’s nothing behind the couch but dust bunnies, and nothing under the cushions but a couple of pennies and a paperclip. Satisfied the place is empty, I return my gun to the holster. Then I see it — in plain sight, such a common thing that it didn’t trip my radar. On the dining table is a purse.
In seconds, I’ve got the zipper pulled back and am looking into the cavity. A green leather wallet takes up most of the space. A quick paw-through reveals pens, Kleenex packet, cough drops and other handbag detritus. No keys. Unsnapping the wallet reveals driver’s license, bank cards, a slim wad of cash: several ones and a fifty. I close the billfold and return it to the purse. Wherever she went, she took her keys, but not her wallet. She meant to come back. And since the car is still parked down below, she left on foot.
While my brain is still cataloguing data and drawing conclusions, I hear a noise that sends my heart into a gallop around my rib cage. It’s the sound of footsteps on the landing outside and someone rattling the doorknob.
For a nanosecond, I’m paralyzed, standing with the open purse in my hand. Then I drop it with a thump and skitter down the hall to the bedroom. For surveillance purposes, I leave the door open a crack.
“Hello? Maintenance! Anyone here?” The voice is deep, a man’s voice. Footsteps. “Hello? We got a call to check on this apartment. Hello?”
A tiny slice of hall and kitchen is visible. A figure crosses the room.
The deep voice calls out again. “Everything okay? Your door was unlocked. I’m gonna check the other rooms, okay? Hello?”
Shit. I dart to the far side of the bed and lie down on the floor. I hear the door to the office open, and then footsteps coming down the hall. From where I’m lying I can see the bottom edge of the door beyond the suitcases. It swings open, and a pair of work boots appears.
“Hello? Anyone here?”
I try to keep myself from breathing, willing him to stay out of the room. A fly buzzes against the window, thumping softly. Seconds stretch like hours. Sweat pours down my face and pools on my lower back. The dusty chemical smell of the carpet fills my nostrils, and moisture springs to my eyes as the sinus cavity prickles. My diaphragm lurches involuntarily. I feel a pain in my chest.
“Hello?”
Must. Not. Sneeze. I hold my breath and press my finger against the trigeminal nerve under my nose, grinding my upper lip against my teeth until the skin splits. The taste of blood is on my tongue. My vision pixilates.
And just like that, I’m back in the Baxter Building. Only now I’m crouched in the dark under a reeking pile of bedding, on top of a mattress crawling with microbes, trying not to sneeze as shots echo against the battered concrete walls. People are screaming, running away, fighting each other with fists and knives.
There’s a dead person on the bed besid
e me. I can’t remember who it is or how they got there. I’m too busy trying to hide. From down the corridor I here harsh voices.
“Police! Drop your weapons! Get on your knees! On your knees! Now!”
Gunshots. A thin voice calling, half whispering, half crying. “Zoe, where are you?”
Running footsteps, disappearing in the distance.
The fly buzzes against Victoria’s window pane. A horn blasts faintly down on the street. I’m still on the floor behind the bed. Sunlight streams through the window, and I blink the world back into focus. The boots have gone away and the bedroom door is wide open. How much time has passed? I’m shivering, terrified. The memory completely overwhelmed my senses — now I don’t know if I’m alone, if the maintenance man has seen me, if the police are on their way.
I am Audrey Lake. I am a police detective. I am in control.
I touch my gun for reassurance.
What the hell just happened to me? It felt like the hallucination on the beach, in all the immersive detail, as though I had been transported somewhere else. But unlike the beach experience, I know without doubt that the incident at the Baxter Building really occurred. Much of my experience during that last undercover assignment is hazy. I flinch away from that experience, more than happy to let it sink into oblivion.
I force myself to my feet. My knees tremble, and I lean on the bed for support. The bedspread puckers under my hand and I have to smooth it away. Must get out. Leave no trace. Peek around the jamb and listen before moving into the hallway. Pause to listen again, make sure I’m alone. The only sound is the roar of blood in my ears.
Inside the purse on the dining table, the green leather wallet is gaping open. The long compartment that should hold cash is empty. The maintenance man has robbed Victoria.
A flood of anger leaves me breathless, undermined by a sneaking surge of shame. If I hadn’t left the purse unzipped, with the wallet clearly visible, would he have dared?
And now, a conundrum. Do I return the purse back to its original condition, wallet closed and compartment zipped? Or do I leave it where it is? After an agony of indecision, I leave it as it is. At the end of the day I’m still a cop. I’m unable to erase the evidence of a crime.
Skip the moralizing, Lake. You don’t have a get-out-of-jail-free card.
Again, I freeze. The voice, the flashback. The tone and character are the same. It’s Zoe, from the Baxter Building, back from the dead. I have well and truly lost it.
Chill. Finish your biz and get out.
I start moving, if only to get away from the insistent voice. The laptop in the office beckons, but I resist taking it. I also want to go through all the papers, but my nerve has departed with the maintenance man. I really just want to get out, get away from the poisonous memories and crawling fear. At least Victoria’s not here, waiting for someone to help her. I leave the apartment and lock the door, shutting it hard behind me.
CHAPTER NINE
AFTER MY LITTLE bout of breaking and entering, it’s a relief to get back to the comfort of my empty house. A quick perimeter walk to make sure all the doors and windows are still locked helps settle my nerves, and I relax into the camp chair to check my email. Daniel has provided contact information for Victoria’s mother, whose name is Elizabeth Harkness. She apparently likes being a queen, and named her daughter to follow in her footsteps.
Since Victoria isn’t in her apartment, her car, or her place of work, the last arrow in my quiver is her mother. If the pastor isn’t with her family, I’ll have to think of a different tack.
I’m still jittery, so before the call I prepare my pistol cleaning apparatus, laying out the rod, brush, patches, and solvent. It’s a Zen-like activity that always calms me. I open the window to provide some ventilation before turning on the speakerphone and tapping in the number from Daniel’s email. The phone rings three times before a woman answers in a cultured voice.
“This is Ms. Elizabeth Harkness. To whom am I speaking?”
“Hello, my name is Audrey Lake. May I speak with Victoria?” I remove the magazine from my gun and place it on the table, then open the chamber and peer down the barrel to make sure the Glock is empty.
“What’s that noise?”
Oops. “Nothing. Is Victoria there, Ms. Harkness? Can I speak with her, please?” I begin to strip the gun, breaking it down to its component parts.
“Who did you say you were?” A small dog yaps in the background.
“Audrey Lake.”
“Your name means nothing to me.”
Big surprise. “Can I please speak with your daughter?” I begin pushing a solvent-soaked patch through the barrel with the rod. It emerges almost as clean as when it went in. I haven’t been firing my weapon lately, something I’ll have to rectify soon with some target practice. I’ve probably already lost my edge.
“She isn’t here. Why do you think she might be?” Ms. Harkness’s voice is brittle and clipped.
Her tone seems off. I do a quick auger with the bore brush before pushing through a dry patch. “I haven’t been able to reach her at home. Or at work. I thought she might be with you.”
“Listen to me. I don’t know who you are or what your game is, but it’s obvious to me you don’t know Victoria. I’m hanging up now.”
“Wait.” Her defensiveness is inexplicable. Why isn’t she more concerned? I pick up the phone and switch off the speaker. “Please, wait. I’m a private investigator hired to find your daughter. Are you saying she’s not with you?”
“Who hired you?”
I don’t know the proper etiquette regarding client confidentiality, so the journalist’s approach seems safest. “I’m not at liberty to say. But I can confirm that your daughter is missing, Ms. Harkness. Do you know where she is?”
“Are you working for that heathenish organization she calls a church?”
Whoa. No love lost there, apparently. “A friend of hers approached me.” Claire said she was a friend. I’m not lying. “Are you saying that Victoria isn’t with you?”
Her voice lowers; it sounds husky now. “I haven’t seen or spoken to my daughter for over three years.”
My turn to pause. “I see.” I take a turn around the room, rolling the gun barrel in my palm. Sometimes I think better on my feet. “Do you know where she might be? Is there any other family? A sibling? Her father?”
Ms. Harkness’s reply drips with venom. “Her father is the last person she would go to.”
“Look, Ms. Harkness. I’m trying to find your daughter. A little help would be nice.”
Setting the phone back down, I re-activate the speaker, giving her time to assimilate the information and adjust her attitude. After a pause long enough to enable me to run the lubricating mop through the gun barrel, Elizabeth Harkness says, “I don’t know who you are, but I’m coming out to that riverside rat hole, and so help me God, no one had better stand in my way.” The call ends, and my ear fills with the sound of dead air.
What a bitch.
I push aside Zoe’s opinion. Maybe if I ignore her long enough she’ll go away.
The key to a successful interview is not becoming emotionally involved, but I’m shaking with the effort of not reacting. Channeling away the anger, I use a gun brush to apply a light coat of lubricant to all the moving parts of the Glock. The familiar acrid smell and the resulting smoothness of the action satisfy my internal power receptors — I have a working, dependable weapon ready to hand. As I burnish the reassembled pieces with the luster cloth, I’m once again in command of myself and my unruly emotions.
There’s something going on with this case that I don’t understand. But whatever the cracks and crevices in the family dynamic, there’s now no obvious place to look for Victoria. I mentally review the timeline. According to Claire, the church moved to Astoria two years ago. Victoria hasn’t spoken to her mother for three. So, although Ms. Harkness obviously doesn’t think highly of the town, their estrangement wasn’t caused by the move. It also didn’t so
und as though Victoria’s mother knew about her disappearance, or where she might be now. Nor did she seem overly concerned. Unless it was fear coming out as anger.
I know something about that.
When I was a detective at the Denver Police Department, the Major Crimes Unit handled missing persons, so I’ve had my share of looking for the lost. Hundreds of thousands of people are reported missing every year, but the vast majority turn up safe within a few hours or days. Unfortunately, those that don’t are often victims of crimes like kidnapping and murder. Hence the involvement of the MCU.
What the general public doesn’t seem to get is that it’s not a crime to disappear, to leave your world behind and start a new life. After all, I’m doing that myself. You can even argue that historically, these are the kinds of individuals who built our country. So unless there’s compelling evidence to the contrary, the police have to assume a missing adult is acting by choice. And most of the time, they’re right.
The gun-cleaning apparatus goes back into its box. I pull the trigger a few times, dry-firing to make sure everything is working. Then I begin thumbing bullets into the magazine. Up to now, I have found no evidence of a crime committed against Victoria Harkness. Just the fact that she left her home on foot without her purse, but with her keys and phone.
And a frightening hallucination.
If Victoria’s disappearance is voluntary, she may have been fleeing a stalker or obsessional congregant. Although the purse left in her apartment makes me infer she left with the intention of returning, it’s possible she may have felt so threatened she didn’t dare go home. This scenario feels more plausible than the pastor avoiding unpaid debts or overdrawn credit cards, although I can’t rule it out. I don’t know her money situation and have no right of access. This is where the resources of the police beat those of a lone investigator. My only resources are wits and experience.
The alternatives to voluntary leaving are foul play or an unforeseen accident. Movies and novels notwithstanding, very few people wander off with amnesia. Something prevented Victoria from coming home. And when I think of the darkened Riverwalk, the lonely beach, and the rolling chop of night-black water, the conviction grows: she was alone, vulnerable, unable to defend herself. Something terrible has happened. I don’t need a vision to tell me that.
A Memory of Murder: An Audrey Lake Investigation (Audrey Lake Investigations Book 1) Page 6