A Memory of Murder: An Audrey Lake Investigation (Audrey Lake Investigations Book 1)
Page 21
Still shaking, I go into the bathroom. Force my gaze into the mirror. The face is my own, white and padded with extra flesh. Scar, thin line ridging the skin below my collarbone. Hair, disheveled. But the eyes are Zoe’s. Frightened, feral, and mean.
My fist cracks out, into the glass. Full impact. It shudders up my arm, into my shoulder. A spiderweb shivers across the reflective surface, turning my face into a fractured mosaic. This image is closer to the truth. So close it burns my eyes with tears. I shut them, quick. Run cold water over my hand. Leave the room, shuck my coat. Realize I haven’t eaten anything so I pour out some cereal. Put my gun on the table beside me. The flakes are cold and crunchy, and the spoon rattles against the bowl.
I will not have a breakdown. I owe it to my client — my friend — to finish out this investigation. And I owe it to the dead.
The phone rings. Claire. Don’t want to answer but I do anyway.
“Okay, Audrey. I’m home.” She’s breathing hard.
Tighten the screws. Cop mode, not crazy mode. “Okay. What did you discover?”
“I was looking at the books. It should be straightforward, but I don’t understand it. There’s all these entries for artwork being sold, eBay accounts and shipping addresses. But I don’t see any matching revenue for the church.”
“How did you know what to access?”
“I just started looking at the flash drives on the desk. I didn’t know what was important.”
Something is off here. “Claire, why did you want to look at the church books in the first place?”
“I was trying to find a copy of Pastor Harkness’s manuscript. But then I find all this stuff about art. It must be the spirit offerings. Some of them have been sold for hundreds of dollars. And when I tried to check the church books to confirm, I didn’t see any revenue. Audrey, I think — I think Daniel might have been stealing.” She hiccups past a sob.
“Just hang on a second.” I pace, thinking. “Okay, just to clarify, do the spirit offerings belong the church, officially? Like donations? Or are they on loan from the congregants?”
Claire sniffles. “Well, I don’t think anyone ever asks for them back. But I’m sure Pastor Harkness would have returned them if anyone did. The value isn’t monetary, it’s spiritual. A celebration of, of sacredness. Touching the Spirit.”
“Your husband told me he was having a hard time paying the bills for the church. Maybe he was selling them to help with that.”
“Maybe. But then wouldn’t they be in with the other church revenues? Along with cash donations?”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But if the artwork had never been listed as an asset in the first place, it’s off the books anyway. Maybe he’s just being cagey to maximize the return for the church.” That’s a pretty generous interpretation, but plausible. “He might have just deposited it to the checking account without running it through the books.”
Claire doesn’t speak, but her breathing comes through loud and clear. “Is that legit?”
“I’m not an accountant or an auditor, but if the art belongs to the church, I don’t see any problem. It’s sloppy bookkeeping, but not illegal. Unless…” I pause. Do I want to go further? The woman has been battered about a lot recently. But. She’s my client. And maybe, sort of, my friend.
“Unless?”
“Unless he was taking the proceeds for himself.” I wait for the angry denial, even hold the phone away from my ear, but nothing comes, just the sound of sniffles.
“Claire? Do you know where the money went?”
“No.” Her voice is firm.
“Are you sure you don’t know where it might be? Any big expenditures?” I think about his car compared to hers.
A minuscule pause. “No.”
“Then leave it to the police. They’ll go through the accounts, looking for motive for his killer. Believe me, you want to stay away from that. If there is some skulduggery, they’ll dig and dig until they find something. If they ask — when they ask, be honest. Come clean, if there’s anything to be clean about.”
Her tone is bedrock, hard and unyielding despite the tears. “I’ve never stolen anything. Ever.”
“Good. Then you’re safe.”
Claire sucks in a breath and lets it out slowly. “What are you going to do now? Honestly, a little action would be welcome.”
Ouch. Her tone makes me wince. But. Her husband is dead, her life a shambles. It’s amazing she’s as self-controlled as she is. “Shake the trees some more. Something will give. It always does.”
“If you say so, Audrey. But I can’t hang on forever.”
“You won’t have to. I promise.”
Talking to Claire gave me a rope to hold onto, snapping me back into professional mode. But after I hang up, I realize the knuckles on my right hand are dusted with tiny scuffs and cuts. My slip in the street comes back to haunt. Not like a creak or a crack you can put on the wind, but a full-on phantom with a scythe and a flaming skull.
I am losing my mind. Talking to myself. Smashing things. No other interpretation possible. Only the job, the facade of being a cop, gave me a strong enough mask to hold the pieces together. But it’s not working anymore. I won’t be able to keep my promise to Claire.
I walk out the door, up the steps, up the sidewalk, down the steps, to knock on Phoebe’s door. It’s only been a few hours since I was there. She’ll think I’m desperate, possibly unhinged. But there’s nowhere else to go.
It opens. Phoebe, not the judge. Thank all the goodness of the universe.
One look. “Let’s go downstairs, Audrey. You’ll be more comfortable in my office.”
When we arrive, I choose the hard chair. It has more structure.
“Audrey, talk to me. Are you all right? What’s wrong?”
Our discussion of the morning seems like year ago. Or a lifetime. Now, I’m afraid if I open my mouth the pieces that are my face will fall off. I can’t let that happen. I can only breathe, in and out. Then, “I can’t see the face of the man in the vision. Why can’t I see his face?”
Phoebe blinks, visibly recalibrating. “Are you sure you want to?”
“He’s a killer, Phoebe.”
“Is he?”
“I know it.”
“How do you know it?”
“I felt him do it. I felt him grab her. Push her under the water. He called her by name. He’s evil.”
“How do you know he’s evil?”
“He’s a murderer.”
“So?”
My voice rises in anger. “So, murderers are evil.” Why doesn’t she see that?
“Are they?”
It’s been a mistake to come here. If this stupid woman can’t understand that murder is evil, there’s nothing more I can say. I stand up.
“Sit down.” A doctor voice. Authority. She hasn’t moved from her chair.
I sit down.
She looks at me for what seems an eternity. Then she makes an unfamiliar gesture, and Delilah, who I hadn’t noticed was in the room, comes over and leans against my legs like she did before. Puts her big square head on my knee. Steady and warm and calm.
“Audrey, I’m worried we’re moving too fast.”
“Phoebe, please. Help me.” I stroke Delilah’s smooth head.
Phoebe purses her lips, nods once. “Are you facing the man in your vision?”
“I’m running from him. She is.” I’m confused. “We are.”
“Do you ever look directly at him?”
I squirm against the hard wood. “Yes. I — she — we look back. At him.”
“What do you see?”
“A shape. A shadow.”
“Does she know who it is?”
“Yes.” I’m positive of this. She knows and fears him.
“Then why don’t you?”
Blankness. “I don’t know.”
A wire of silence stretches between us. Humming, jangling.
Phoebe speaks again. “Do you know what an occluded memory is?
”
“What?” Shrink jargon. Out of my depth. Hate that. I want to stand, but can’t seem to get my feet under me.
“It’s when you associate a particular memory with something that you don’t want to deal with, so you block it out.”
Absorption moment. “So?” Belligerent. She’s so irritating.
“There’s something you don’t want to see.”
“What’s that?”
“The face of the man in your vision.”
Silence. I’m struggling. She’s wrong. “You’re wrong. I do want to see.”
“Why?”
Patiently. “So I can catch him. Put him in jail.” Ye gods. This woman has advanced degrees. Why isn’t she smarter? My hands clench the arms of the hard chair.
“Why?”
Slowly, so she gets it. “Because he’s evil.”
“And evil people need to be punished?”
Finally. “Yes.”
“And he’s evil because…?”
I lose it. “Because she killed an innocent person!” My voice is loud and shrill, and seems to echo in the small room. It gets louder, reverberating. I expect the window to shatter. The vase on the desk. I expect the sheetrock to crack, the carpet to curl and scorch, because my face has fallen off and my cheeks are scalding with tears.
“Who did she kill, Audrey?” Phoebe’s voice is gentle and implacable, like the small rain that permeates the seams of my jacket whenever I go outside. I can feel the wetness spreading, my chin, my neck, the top of my chest. There’s a strange sound coming from somewhere; an odd, hitching gasp.
Who was the corpse in the closet? Who did you kill, Zoe?
Who did you kill, Audrey?
My heart thumps weakly in its lonely cave.
I don’t know.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
I’M HOME, SITTING cross-legged on the floor in an empty room as the rain beats on the roof and windows. Phoebe wants to do some EMDR sessions with me. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. Whatever that means. I can tell she’s very worried about my past trauma. She’s left two unanswered voicemails on my phone. I know she wants to follow up but I’ve got to think.
Phoebe made me realize that I’m the one obstructing my own investigation. I’ll never see the whole vision because I’m afraid to. Afraid to see the face of the murderer.
But now I know that somehow, I’m a murderer, too. I’m one of the evil ones that need to be captured and punished. I’m trying to pull that all together, make a coherent picture, but it keeps slipping out of my grasp.
Yeah, you take the blame. I’m cool with that. I’m just a figment, remember?
Zoe. My undercover identity, nemesis, and evil twin all in one. User, transient, petty criminal. As Zoe, I met lots of street kids, pimps, prostitutes and drug dealers. The pressure to uncover more and more information was tremendous. The raid kept getting put off and put off, my stint getting longer and longer. I got confused about where my loyalties lay. When the raid finally came, with bullets flying and hand to hand fighting taking place in the hallways, I hid in a storeroom with a mattress and a corpse, overcome by visions of police officers making back room deals with the same criminals I was trying to get evidence to convict.
That whole night was a jumble of circumstance and emotion. Terror. Horror. Nowhere to run. Afraid the police wouldn’t recognize Zoe as one of their own and she’d be gunned down by an overeager rookie. Afraid the squatters would realize she’s a cop and slit her throat before she had a chance to be rescued by the thin blue line advancing through the premises, floor by floor and room by room. Afraid the drugs in her system, the ones she couldn’t avoid taking, were twisting her consciousness into a morass of real and imagined images. Zoe had no better option than to hide like a rat in the darkness and hope the terror passed her by.
For a long time after my assignment ended, I didn’t look at those memory. I didn’t repress them, exactly — I knew I’d been hiding in a room with a dead body — but I didn’t look directly at them. Couldn’t. Because Zoe killed someone.
No. Not Zoe. Me.
Denver Police Department detective Audrey Lake.
Who swore to serve and protect. And who has an obligation to Claire Chandler, and Victoria Harkness, not just because of a piece of paper I signed, but because this is my life’s work. But somehow this other thing, this trauma, is getting tangled up in my perceptions. And because I won’t allow my own weakness to make me a victim, I intend to face my fear, look at the monster full on.
Eventually.
But before I think about that, I have to think about Victoria Harkness. There’s a case to be solved, and right now, I’m the only one who can do it. I don’t have time to engage in therapy.
I steel myself to go down to the beach again.
Third time’s the charm, baby.
I’ll deal with Zoe later, maybe with Phoebe’s help. Right now, I have a crime to witness.
Clarity, I need clarity.
I hope it’s like seeing a movie for the second time. The first time you’re too caught up in the plot to be conscious of all the background information and cinematography that work together to create an overall emotional effect. But later, if you watch it again, you can appreciate all the little details that go into telling the story.
In the case of Victoria’s murder, I know what’s going to happen. I hope I can be more detached this time, not get steamrolled by the emotional turmoil, and take note of the telling details.
I wait until night, thinking that it might help to have all the elements in reality as similar as possible to the vision. I drive down to the parking lot of the Holiday Inn, and walk down to where I can see the beach. The bridge looms overhead, reaching into the darkness. A truck vibrates the concrete deck. A pair of mallards bob amongst the broken piers snaggling up above the surface of the river. I’m alone. Good. And the rain has stopped, for now.
With a deep breath and a half-formed prayer, I step onto the featureless sand, wiped clean by wind and rain and tide. Walk slowly down to the water’s edge. Try not to think, just feel the moist cool darkness of the night. I wait, breathing easily, feeling the pulse in my veins and the gentle roar of blood in my ears. I close my eyes.
Footsteps. The slow cadence of walking, then nothing. The soft scuff of shoes on sand, picking up speed, not running but coming with purpose. A voice whispering my name: Victoria.
I don’t want to look. I don’t want to see the face.
No, that’s not right. Because Victoria looks. I can’t prevent her.
I turn, see the dark shape of the killer, his tousled hair, his dark eyes illuminated by the dull glow of a street lamp. Even as the familiar fear washes over me, I do not close my eyes. I can deal with this. I can. Because now I know the face is not my own.
He says, “It was just a game. Nothing more.”
The words are soft, civilized even, but rage blazes from his eyes.
I recognize the man whose hands are around my neck, who shuts off my breath, who pushes me down and forces me into the water until I am permeated by darkness.
It is Eric North. And he growls, “I won’t let you wreck my life. You made me do this. With your lies.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
I SPEND THE night tossing and turning, trying to get my head around Eric North as Victoria’s murderer. Why, why, why? His final words are inexplicable. What game? What lies? And how can I possibly find out if my vision is a depiction of true events? There’s just no evidence. No forensics that I know of, nothing that points to him.
I wonder if Olafson & Co. ever acted on my tip about possible witnesses at the Best Western Hotel. That might be my best bet. In between my worried conjectures, I dream about knocking on endless doors looking for long-absent guests. As quality sleep goes, I’ve had more restful stakeouts.
The morning finds me groggy and grumpy. I remain on my cot, snug beneath my sleeping bag while a noisy bird twitters outside and some critter scampers over the roof.
I don’t like this idea, and it takes me some time to figure out why. My vision about Victoria came unannounced and unprepared for. Even when I evoked it again for clarity, I felt like I was following up on a clue given to me by the universe. But looking at Daniel’s last moments feels vaguely pornographic. A breach of ethics that I can’t even really define. Plus, it’s not easy to choose to watch terrible violence while being unable to do anything about it. There’s a certain level of — distaste. I can’t intellectually justify my repugnance, but, in the end, I don’t have to. As a former homicide detective, I’ve seen and done a lot of distasteful things. Sacrificing personal disquietude in the name of justice.
Yay, you. A big gold medal for Audrey.
Shut up, Zoe.
My phone rings, and I see Phoebe’s name on the caller I.D. I let it go to voicemail. Because I’m sure she wouldn’t approve of what I’m about to do.
Olafson and Candide have learned their lesson. There’s a combination lock like the kind Realtors use bolted over the hardware of the Church of the Spirit. I feel like a kid standing outside a candy store with my nose pressed to the glass, dreaming of the sweets therein. Since I can’t get inside, I do the next best thing. I call the cops. Specifically, Detective Jane Candide. For some reason I think I’ll have a better chance with her than with her boss. I can always work my way up the hierarchy if that assumption turns out to be wrong.
She picks up on the third ring. “Candide.”
“Hello, Detective. Audrey Lake here.”