A Memory of Murder: An Audrey Lake Investigation (Audrey Lake Investigations Book 1)

by Nichelle Seely

  I come awake, turtled in the center of the cot, shivering and sweating both. The window shades clack against the sash. Rain splats on the glass. Where am I? This isn’t the Baxter Building. The air smells fresh and moist. The night is quiet, no traffic or sirens or shots.

  Breathe.

  My name is…

  I can’t remember my name. Panic closes my throat. I gulp air, clutching the blanket around me.

  My name is Zoe Crenshaw.

  No. That isn’t right. Breathe. Eyes wide open. Get up. Find a light switch. Look around at the empty room, camp cot, suitcase.

  The darkness recedes. I know this place. This empty house belongs to me. Me, Audrey.

  My name is Audrey Lake. I live in Astoria, Oregon. I used to live in Denver, Colorado. I used to be a detective with the Denver Police Department. My father’s name is Barney. My mother’s name is Anita. My brother’s name is — was — Dean.

  My name is Audrey Lake. I am a police officer like my father. My mother is an architect. My brother is dead.

  My name is Audrey Lake.

  I repeat it to myself, over and over, until I fall asleep with the light still on.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  WHEN I WAKE up the next morning, I feel like a scarecrow left up through the winter. Last night’s episode has unnerved me. I thought the disassociation of identity would get better over time, not worse. The sun is leaking around the window shades and I raise them to reveal a glittering morning, clouds pile up over the bar but the river is blue and lovely, gleaming like a sapphire set in diamonds.

  I know it’s Sunday, but I need help. Before I can change my mind, I dress in sweats and a fleece and walk next door. When I knock, Phoebe answers. I can see her surprise, but also her appraisal, eyes flicking over my uncombed hair and rumpled clothes.

  “Audrey. Is everything all right?”

  I take a deep breath. “Phoebe. I need to consult you. Professionally. Now, if possible.”

  She nods. Points to the outside stairs which skirt the house and lead to another door, the door of her office. I go down, and meet her there. The furniture is the same: desk, chairs, lounger. Unexpectedly, Delilah has joined us, and she gives my hand a friendly lick before settling down in the corner.

  I sit in the armchair. Phoebe sits behind the desk. We fill out forms. Name, address, medical history.

  “Are you taking any prescriptions?” she asks.

  I hesitate, and tell her about the Zyprexa. “I threw it away.”

  Her eyebrows go up. “I presume you are aware it is an anti-psychotic medication.”

  “I don’t like drugs. I don’t like what they do to people.”

  She nods, pursing her lips. Finishes the form, and shuts down the computer. “All right, Audrey. What brings you here, now, to my office?”

  I tell her almost all of it. About my stint of undercover work, where I’d posed for months as Zoe Crenshaw, a drug addict living in a squat in East Denver, a condemned eight story structure called the Baxter Building. I’d been warned about the difficulty in integrating a deep undercover identity. In my case, I’d assumed it too well. When the operation was over, when the police had stormed the building and arrested the small fry but allowed the big dogs to slip through their fingers, I’d been taken to the hospital. Practically catatonic, suffering from stab wounds, I’d woken up screaming about the police being in league with the criminals, how no one could be trusted. I tried to pull out my tubes. They put me in restraints and eventually the psych ward, until I’d recovered enough of my identity to be discharged.

  Phoebe frowns. “None of that explains why you’re taking an anti-psychotic.”

  So I tell her about the hallucinations, beginning with the one at the Baxter Building. Seeing the cops and suppliers together, mixed up in some nightmare terrain, killing people. Backtrack to a few years before, when my brother died. I’d seen his car going off the bridge, again and again. Not just in my head, but in front of my eyes. I couldn’t go over the bridge without seeing it, like it was happening for real. I’d almost had an accident myself.

  “Have you had any hallucinations since going off your meds?”

  I hesitate.

  None of your fucking business, lady.

  Zoe’s words decide me. I tell Phoebe about my vision on the Riverwalk. About Victoria’s murder. About the almost-vision in Daniel Chandler’s office. About the voice of my alter ego that I can’t seem to silence. That, in fact, is getting stronger every day.

  “I need help, Phoebe. All this is interfering with my work, my life. I can’t function when I don’t know if I’m about to go over the edge, if I don’t know what’s real. But I don’t want drugs. They make me feel like I’m a ghost in my own life.”

  “Do you ever feel like harming yourself?”

  “What? No.”

  Phoebe leans forward, elbows on her desk and hands in a pyramid. She’s frowning. Not as though she is angry, but as though she is perplexed. She slowly resettles herself.

  “Do you hear voices?”

  “No. I never hear anything. Except in conjunction with a vision.”

  “Do you feel like someone is telling you to do something? Sending you a message?”

  “No.”

  “What about Zoe?”

  “Oh. Well, I guess I kind of hear her, but she’s not associated with the visions. She’s more like a running commentary in my head. But she doesn’t give me orders. Just snide remarks. And she’s not…outside, if you know what I mean. I don’t hear her - hear her. Not like for real.”

  “Do you ever talk back to her? Or initiate conversation?”

  I squirm in the chair. “Sometimes I talk back to her. Is that — is that crazy?” I laugh nervously.

  “It’s probably best that you don’t respond. The more energy you feed to this delusion, the stronger it will grow.”

  Well, shit. I swallow hard.

  Phoebe says, “Do you ever feel anything, or smell anything, in conjunction with the visions?”

  “Yes. I feel physical pain, and falling. I feel the water as it closes in. The cold. And Phoebe, this is what terrifies me. I think — no, I know — that I experienced Victoria’s death. For real. Before I knew anything about her, or it.”

  Phoebe doesn’t say anything for a few moments, which triples my anxiety. Is she going to say I’m at a level of crazy that only survives in a nuthouse? That she’s going to forcibly commit me right now?

  Finally, she says, “Audrey, there are some aspects to your symptoms that don’t make sense to me. You are definitely seeing things that aren’t there, but most psychotic hallucinations aren’t a replay of events like you are describing.”

  I sink back in my seat and close my eyes. I’m so done with all this. “I’m telling you the truth.”

  “I believe you, Audrey.” She constructs a short chain of paperclips while she thinks. Delilah gets up from her corner and sits beside me, pressing her body against my leg. It feels strangely good; warm and supportive.

  Phoebe pushes her paperclips away and says, “All right Audrey. I’m going to go out on a limb here. I think you may have been misdiagnosed. In that case, your prescribed medication may have done more harm than good. But with your permission, I’d like to consult with someone else. I’m not sure your problem is entirely psychiatric in nature.”

  I open my eyes. “Wait, what? Are you saying I have some other problem? Something else wrong?” This is a nightmare. One I can’t seem to wake up from.

  She holds up a hand. “I’ll need to get more information before I commit myself.”

  “Or me?” I say weakly.

  “Or you.” She smiles. “But Audrey, take heart. Whatever it is, we’ll get to the bottom of it.”

  Phoebe shows me some exercises, ways to curb my anxiety and generate a feeling of safety, and insists I do them twice. She knows I’m alone, so she gives me permission to get in touch if I need to. Her overprotectiveness raises my hackles, and I think the exercises are hooey, but I d
o appreciate her concern. Sometime soon, when I’m not too busy, I’ll give them a try.

  I feel better after talking to Phoebe, but also worse in some ways. I’ve exposed my craziness for someone else’s judgement. The fact that it’s to someone who is trained to diagnose and understand craziness adds another layer of fear and trembling. What if she insists that I go back on drugs, like ones that cut me off from reality and made me feel as though I were wrapped in a layer of lead? I won’t be able to do my job if I can barely think. And who was this other person she wanted to talk to, about my other problem? Now my own symptoms, my own mental health, are out of my control. I imagine all sorts of dire things from cancerous tumors to brain-eating worms.

  I hate having to rely on other people.

  We should just blow this joint. Never trust a shrink, if you ask me.

  Except I didn’t ask you, did I? You’re just another part of me, some submerged shard of my undercover identity, my legend. You don’t even exist, not really.

  Belatedly, I recall I’m not supposed to give her any energy.

  The Legend of Zoe. Sweet. There oughta be a video game.

  Maybe it isn’t surprising that I decide to walk down to the Portway Tavern.

  “How are you doing, Claire? Are you coping with all this?”

  The light from the muted TV flickers over the polished surface of the bar. I had been surprised to find her here, actually. But many of us seek solace from stress and sorrow in work. It beats sitting at home alone in an empty house.

  The Portway was actually closed. It was mid-afternoon on a Sunday, but I’d seen Claire through the window and she’d let me in. As she moved around, stocking shelves and wiping tables, polishing fixtures and squaring up the menus, I stayed. She didn’t tell me to go home, and now we’re sitting side by side at the bar nursing bottled beers.

  She says, “The police have been talking to me. Asking me about Dan and my marriage, our finances, whether there was trouble between us.” She shakes her head. “I want to believe they are looking into every possibility, but it feels like I’m their number one suspect.”

  Uh, yeah.

  I snag a peanut from the bowl on the bar and crack the shell in halves. “Unfortunately, in a lot of cases, it’s the surviving spouse who’s guilty. So, until they’re convinced otherwise, you’re in the limelight.” I’ve been the investigating officer in several cases where the wife was found guilty, but I don’t mention that. “It probably feels awful, but it’s not personal. Just statistics.”

  “Yeah, well, I’d rather not become one.”

  For a few minutes, the only noise is the sound of splintering peanut shells. Then Claire says, “You know, I keep thinking that this one is going to be the last. That I won’t have to find another.”

  “‘This one’?”

  “This life. I really thought I could make it work this time.”

  “I’m sorry for your pain. All the death — it must be — I can’t even imagine. It must be awful.” There’s some solace in knowing that there is suffering greater than your own. Not much, but some. “How long were you and Daniel together?”

  “I met Dan about ten years ago. Just come up from L.A. Where I’d been for way too long, depending on the wrong guy again.” She lays the sweating bottle against her cheek. “You ever done that, Audrey?”

  The wrong guy. I touch the scar on my chest.

  Such a thing as the right guy?

  I swig a mouthful of my Hef. “I trusted a gangster once. He tried to kill me.”

  “You? Thought you were a cop.”

  “It’s been a long and strange career.”

  “Huh.” Claire takes a drink from her own bottle, puts it with the other dead soldiers and pops the top off another. “I always choose the wrong one. Before Dan it was Maurice, before him it was Harvey. Others. Bu’ that’s it. I’m on my own now.” Her voice is slightly slurred; not a surprise, given the empties on the bar.

  “Tell me about Harvey.”

  Like you care.

  But I do care. Or at least, I’m interested. Can’t be a good cop without being endlessly interested in the human story. Always got to roll that stone away, look at what’s underneath. Plus, friendship. Maybe. I’m out of practice.

  “He was the first person besides my mother to tell me that I was beautiful. That guy had a way with words and a taste for adventure, and he made me feel like I could do anything I wanted. That I could have an adventure, too. That’s why I got on the back of his motorcycle to leave Iowa and never looked back. Because he made me feel pretty and powerful. I should’ve known it couldn’t last. That he was just lying to get what he wanted.” Claire shakes her head. “God, that motorcycle, like being on my own personal rocket ship. I wish I could feel that freedom again. That power. Someday, I’m gonna buy one of my own.”

  She slides off her stool and beckons me over to the wall. Among the haphazard decor — life preservers, bits of fishing net, floats — there’s a small black and white photo in a metal frame. It shows a Black woman dressed in a white jumpsuit and knee-high boots, standing in front of an old-style Harley.

  “Who’s that?” I ask.

  “Bessie Stringfield. She was a bad-ass rider back in the day, ’30’s, ’40’s, won races, went cross-country on her Harley, the works. Didn’t let anything slow her down. Had six husbands. Guess they couldn’t keep up. She’s in the Motorcycle Hall of Fame.” She touches the frame. “I put this here to look at when the job feels too much like a death sentence.”

  More than anything else she’s said, I get that. “So what happened with Harvey?”

  Claire snorts. “We never got further than Des Moines. Harvey got drunk, beat another guy up, got thrown in jail. I ended up working at a bar, washing glasses, wiping tables. The start of my brilliant career.” She waves a hand to encompass the Portway. “Always a need for bartenders. Even on the last day before the world ends, people will be calling for shots.”

  “Especially then.” Nod. Head feels heavy for some reason. “How’d you get out of Des Moines?”

  “That was Maurice. Slick talking man, said he’d take me to L.A. and make me a star. Again with the promises. But I had high hopes. Turned out I’d gotten hooked up with the wrong guy, again. I was trying to be an actress, but I had no qualifications. That’s hard to realize when you’re young and ambitious. I’d never taken a class, never done anything except Dorothy in a school production of The Wiz way back. I could sing, but I was no Tina Turner. It was so demoralizing going to auditions and to be dismissed before I’d said ten words. And Maurice turned out to be a scumbag. But when I walked away, I walked by myself, and got on the bus to Portland.”

  How much longer we got to sit here and listen to her sob story?

  She’s getting worse. Zoe, I mean. I don’t want to be her. Ever again. Because I like Claire, and her story. And she needs to talk, a sympathetic ear. I ask her to pour me a shot of Jack Daniels, make it a double please, and I fire back those shots and follow with a beer chaser. I hear about her arrival in Portland, working in bars and restaurants, a series of short-term boyfriends. Then she heard a broadcast of Pastor Harkness on the radio, went to a service out of curiosity, returning over and over, until she’d become a member of the congregation. Saw Daniel around, liked his smile, his air of respectability, the fact that he actually had a professional job.

  “And here I thought I was moving up in the world, when he asked me to marry him.” Claire shakes her head. Her words have become blurred and rounded. She pauses, and the silence licks about us like the river.

  I say, “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry for what? That he cheated on me? That he got killed? Please.” She prints wet circles on the bar with her bottle. “He always was too slick. There were other women in Portland, too. I always wondered — did he and Pastor Harkness? — but he wasn’t her type, not really. She liked them a bit lost. A bit rugged.”

  “Did she — Victoria — have a permanent partner? Or…?”

  C
laire scoffs. “With all those willing boys to choose from, all of them wanting to worship at her feet?” She drops her gaze. “Shouldn’t be mean. Shouldn’t judge. Did them some good. Made them feel better. Women too.”

  I try to sort this out. “You mean she had relationships with women as well?” I feel my suspect pool expand exponentially, and my eyes glaze.

  “Nah. I mean she made everyone feel special. Like they had something to offer. Like they could touch the Spirit like her, if only they tried.”

  Claire’s plenty in touch with spirits herself.

  I’m not far behind. The JD coats my senses like an ermine robe. I feel warm and snuggly, my problems a distant shadow on the shore.

  “Did Victoria have relationships with many men?”

  “Wouldn’t say relationships. She liked to be of comfort, liked to show love.”

  “Physically, you mean? Sex?”

  “Sometimes. It wasn’t exclusive, with her. Never stuck with any one guy. Maybe she and Dan were birds of a feather.” A taste of wormwood in her tone. “I wish — I wish —” Claire’s voice breaks.

  Here it comes. Please, can we just leave?

  Shut up, bitch. I’m listening here.

  “What do you wish?” I strive to focus my eyes, but it’s so much easier to let them relax, let the bar dissolve into gentle blurs.

  “Just that things could be different, that’s all.”

  “Did you know she was writing a book?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you ever read it? Or did she tell you about the contents?”

  “She was abused as a child. She was pretty open about it. Said healing could only happen when the wound was exposed to the air. That the abuser was a victim too.” Claire snorts. “Some victim. My opinion, someone hurts you, you don’t go around hurting other people in revenge. Coward’s way out.”