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

by Nichelle Seely

  I wonder if making a video of the ceremony had been all Chandler’s idea, or if Olafson had suggested it. It’s a good idea. Despite my antipathy, I’m impressed. It’s surprising how often a murderer attends the victim’s funeral. The recording might pick up something useful.

  But. It’s not necessarily a murder.

  Sure about that?

  Oh hell. I’m not sure of anything. Just that I feel a connection to the dead woman and that I had a strange vision of her death on the little riverside beach. And a weird flashback when I was hiding in Harkness’s apartment. I’m fusing everything together. Creating links where there are none. In a word, craziness.

  But maybe I am still crazy. Insane people always think they are rational, don’t they?

  I cross Marine above the roundabout and proceed to Florence, paved with old concrete and heading straight up the hillside. I feel the pull of the ascent in my knees and calves.

  Daniel Chandler is a dark horse. Claire keeps telling me he didn’t want to go to the police. I smell a fish, and it isn’t the mudflats. There’s something going on there.

  At the dogleg, I turn left up the even steeper Agate Street, puffing a little. When I reach the intersection with Alameda, I stop to catch my breath and look out over the big river. The New Youngs Bay bridge glitters with headlights, the prongs of the drawbridge blinking with red warning beacons. A smudge of faded sunset still remains in the west over the scattered lights of Warrenton. It’s pitch black, and here among the houses, street lamps are few and far between.

  “It’s nice out here, isn’t it?”

  I turn at the unexpected voice, half-reaching for my gun — that’s twice in one evening someone has sneaked up on me — and behold Phoebe with Delilah tugging at the end of a green leash.

  “I come out here every night, rain or shine, unless it’s really storming. Wouldn’t want Delilah to blow away! It’s the best view in town.”

  I agree with a nod.

  “You looked like you were thinking hard.”

  Delilah twines her leash around our ankles as she looks for a perfect spot to do her business.

  “I’m trying to decide what to do about something.” The words pop out involuntarily.

  “Your investigation?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s not always clear, is it?” Without looking, Phoebe unwinds Delilah as though she has done it a thousand times before, and expects to do it a thousand more.

  “No. It’s not.”

  She continues in a musing tone, “I always ask myself, ‘what’s the worst that can happen, if I do X?’ and then, ‘what’s the worst that can happen, if I don’t do X?’ That usually helps to crystallize the problem. Sometimes the barrier isn’t what to do, but just giving ourselves that initial push.”

  The worst that can happen? I could wind up in the psych ward again. Or, a murder might remain unsolved, a killer allowed to go free to enact violence on someone else.

  Phoebe’s voice is warm but impersonal, calming. “Sometimes there’s another alternative, one that only becomes apparent when we make a choice and move to a new perspective. Like this place here. We have a wonderful view from our house, but neither bridge is visible. If I didn’t know better, I might believe that the river was uncrossed and uncrossable. But here, I can see the bridge to Warrenton. And when I walk the other direction, I can see the Megler Bridge over to Washington. I’m not marooned after all.”

  What I wouldn’t give to not be marooned, looking out from my island at the endless unfriendly sea. I’m confused again, conflating my own situation with the case at hand. I can’t seem to separate the threads into their discrete patterns. Victoria’s disappearance; my own voluntary retreat from everything familiar; secrets hidden under the veneer of normality.

  Put a sock in it, Lake. Crying in the dark don’t make things any better.

  Yeah, I get it. The only way I’m going to discover my way out of this darksome place is to blunder around until I find the light switch, or the door.

  Phoebe and I walk back together along Alameda and up our own Rhododendron. As I stop at the top of the stairs that lead down to my front porch, I say: “You must be a heck of a shrink, Phoebe.”

  She smiles, reaching down to pat Delilah. “Thank you. I like to think so.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THE NEXT MORNING, Detective Olafson calls. He offers to meet me for breakfast at the Pig 'N Pancake.

  So, I’m not going to be able to avoid talking to the police. I know how this works. If I don’t agree to this friendly meeting, on neutral ground, I will eventually receive a summons to the station. Or he might show up at my house. I’d given him my contact details when I’d gone in to apply for a consultancy; at this point, I’d prefer to keep him at a distance.

  His summons doesn’t give me time to do my usual perimeter check, so I’m nervous already as I walk down toward the restaurant, bundling my jacket around me. What do they know? What has Claire told them? Only that the church hired me as an investigator after the pastor disappeared. They can’t possibly know I broke in to the apartment. They might fault me for not making a missing persons report, but the church has a bigger onus there than I do.

  Yes. Good. I’ve succeeded in reassuring myself. I can enjoy the feeling of the intermittent sun on my face as clouds dart across the sky, ignore the bite of the clammy air gusting off the water.

  The Pig’N’Pancake is a family-style restaurant located near the five-way intersection of Columbia Avenue, Marine Drive, and Bond Street. When I enter the restaurant, I take a quick look around to see if he’s brought backup, and spot Olafson himself raising a hand from a corner booth. He’s already nursing a cup of coffee and a plate of bacon and eggs with a raft of hash browns. I order the short stack and a glass of orange juice. We make small talk until the waiter brings my dishes, and refills our coffee cups, and I make sure there’s no one close enough to hear our conversation.

  Olafson gets down to business. “So. Audrey. I understand from Daniel Chandler at the Church of the Spirit that you have been doing some work for them.” He folds a slice of bacon into a square and pushes it into his mouth. Crunch, crunch.

  Here we go. I swallow my mouthful of pancake. “That’s right.”

  Still chewing, he says, “Is that why you were down at the docks Sunday night?”

  “Yes.” There’s no point in lying. “I saw the Sheriff there. Is the county taking over?” I ask mostly to keep this from being a one-sided interview.

  “Nope. But search and rescue comes under their purview. Ruby was there as a professional courtesy.”

  He’s let me know he’s on a first-name basis with the Sheriff. That they are, in fact, in cahoots. In case I was thinking of peddling my consultancy to the higher-ups.

  “Since any investigation will now fall to the police, I’d like you to ease the transition by telling us what you’ve discovered.” He shovels in a forkful of hash browns yellowed with egg yolk.

  So, first you diss me, and now you want my help. Please. “The Church is paying my bills, so I only give information to them. What they choose to do with it afterward is up to them.”

  “Chandler cleared it with me, said you’d help in any way you could.”

  Does he think I’m a complete idiot, to fall for such transparent trickery? “Whatever he told you, he hasn’t said anything to me. Until I hear differently, the confidentiality policy still stands.” I’m trying to sound nonchalantly confident; in reality, anxiety is creating a big hollow in my abdomen.

  Olafson drops his chin in warning. “Don’t get off on the wrong foot here, Audrey. Cooperating with us is in everyone’s best interest. Including Victoria Harkness.”

  “Have you got the post-mortem back yet?”

  “You know I’m not gonna answer that.”

  I shrug. “So the information flow is pretty one-sided.”

  Olafson snorts in disgust. “You were a cop, Audrey. You know the drill. I can’t comment on a current investigation. It�
�s your duty to reveal what you know.”

  I lean forward. “Look, Steve, I’d like to help. Truly. But I won’t reveal information that belongs to my client. You need a court order. If you want my help, maybe you should hire me yourself. As a consulting detective. Then my experience would be at your disposal.” I fork in some more pancake.

  “Is that what this is about? Maybe your old precinct had different standards, but the APD doesn’t pay people for information.”

  The heat from my irritation rises from my chest to my cheeks, and I have to swallow twice before I can speak in a normal tone. Male cops get to show anger, but female cops don’t. Because any kind of emotional display will be seen as weakness. I had that experience drilled into me from day one on the force.

  “You’re insinuating that anyone outside your own little pocket is corrupt or incompetent. You just can’t stomach that I might have more experience than you.”

  “Don’t assume that you got the chops to insert yourself into an investigation, just because you’re some big city cop on vacation.” He’s frowning now, shifting his coffee cup from hand to hand.

  I can’t help pushing him. “How many murders do you get? One a decade? If I were you, I’d be pulling in all the help I could get.” Fork. Pancakes. Orange juice.

  “There’s no evidence that Victoria’s death is murder. Accident is more likely. We don’t make assumptions until the evidence is in. Regardless of what you are accustomed to do.”

  That finally gets me. He’s made it personal. And just to show how far from normalcy and good judgment I’ve drifted, I say, “Well, I predict: drowning, after assault, by person or persons unknown. You’ve got a killer on your hands, Steve. Better get cracking.” I throw down my napkin and clank my cup on the table, sloshing the dregs to the lip.

  His face is red as the ketchup bottle. “And how do you know that, Ms. Lake? An eyewitness? Security footage? Or just delusional thinking on your part?”

  “Find your own evidence — you’ve already dissed any contribution from me.” But my screen of outrage is only to hide my sudden terror: I’ve referred to my hallucination as though it were real. Rationality is going out the window, and I need to end the interview before I discredit myself further.

  As I struggle out of the too-soft booth divan, Olafson drops his voice, lowering the volume but upping the menace. “Tell me, Ms. Lake, do your clients know about your — medical issues?”

  The blood seems to congeal in my veins.

  He presses his advantage, his tone like some old school headmaster. “You’re not a well person, Ms. Lake. You should stay home. Get plenty of rest. Don’t try to pick up where you left off. Because it’s not going to work.”

  He’s articulated my deepest fears as though he were ordering a second breakfast off the laminated menu.

  “We’ll see about that,” is all I can think of to say. And then I leave before I put a fork in his eye.

  The P&P is only a block from the Riverwalk, so to calm my nerves I stand on the boardwalk, staring over the water, taking deep breaths to steady my heart.

  I can’t blame the detective completely for my reaction. He’s only tapped into the substrata of resentment that bubbles beneath the surface. My father was a detective, too. He idolized law enforcement and the military, and when my brother Dean entered the Marines, Dad couldn’t have been prouder. Seeking that same level of approval, I got a degree in criminal justice and went through the Denver police academy, taking my place on the thin blue line.

  But following so closely in his footsteps meant he never stopped criticizing my performance, or comparing me to other cops. My colleagues took their cue from him. Instead of enjoying a cloak of protection from the status of my father, it was open season for hazing and derision. It wasn’t until his early retirement after being wounded on the job, and my own receipt of a gold detective shield that I was marginally accepted. And even then, I still had to endure the sexism of the other detectives. To be fair, not all of them were like that. But enough.

  Suck it up, Lake. Everyone has a sad story. Don’t choose victimhood.

  No. I’m not a victim. But Zoe’s intrusive voice still makes me doubt my sanity. With a shudder, I realize once again I’m not far from where I had the hallucination. Granted, Astoria is a small town but I always seem to end up here. I’ve been skirting around deciding if the vision is real — real in the sense of accurate, a true portrayal of an actual event: like a memory. But in my foolish tirade against Olafson, I’ve brought it into the open.

  When I interviewed witnesses, I sometimes found it helpful to introduce a smell, a sound, get them to think about a sensory experience associated with the thing they were trying to remember. I’d even take them back to the original place if that was possible. Maybe if I return to the beach, I can re-invoke the vision, and get some more detail. My knees feel weak at the thought. Deliberately try to induce a moment of psychosis, when I’d been fighting so hard to keep that under control?

  Yes. I have to grapple with this — better to do it alone, where no one can see me fail, or worse, call the authorities. So. I walk toward the little crescent of sand. Seagulls squawk, and I hear the whisper of traffic on Marine Drive.

  The wind off the water skirls around my thighs and slips down the collar of my coat. I shiver. The dampness reaches into my bones, chilling me from the inside out. To my left, the steel skeleton of the Megler Bridge arcs high across the water. I pull up the hood on my jacket and hear the patter of rain on the fabric, see the black stippling appear on the sidewalk and pepper the river. I close my eyes and try to empty my mind of other thoughts, and step down onto the sand. The packed grains give way beneath my feet, and I wander down to the water’s edge. When I look back over my shoulder, I see my own clear prints embedded on the surface.

  Don’t be an idiot, Lake. You can’t make it happen. Not like streaming on demand.

  All right then, maybe I can let it happen. Deep slow breaths. Thinking about nothing in particular, just letting my senses inform me about the place. The wind. The sloshing wavelets. Damp fingers of fog. Traffic rumbling high above.

  Then: fear. Darkness. Slap of running feet. Hands on my arms, my shoulders.

  I struggle to stay above the surface of the sensations and waves of emotion, closing my eyes in tightened concentration even as my heart hammers and sweat slicks my palms.

  A ringing blow to my cheek. I fall, knees and elbows into the wet sand. A feeling of dislocation — I’m on the ground, but also standing. The me on the ground looks over her shoulder, puts up a hand. No!

  A harsh voice cuts through the night, full of pain and anger. “It was just a game! You see that, don’t you?”

  A smeared face, a hulking shadow, fear, betrayal — I’d trusted him…

  Him.

  He grabs my shoulders, slaps me again. My vision tunnels. I fall, hit my head. Kick out, feebly. He pushes me, pulls me, into the river. “I can’t let you spread your lies, Victoria. I won’t let you wreck my life.” He holds me down. I bat at his arms, try to scratch. Fail. Cold water. Filling my chest. Down down down…

  A foghorn blasts from a freighter nosing under the high span of the bridge. I come back to myself, blinking, gasping for air. Heart is racing like a hummingbird’s, and cold sweat bathes my chest and back. The vision is so real. The same as before, or almost. This time I hadn’t been so caught up, so taken unawares. I learned something important. The attacker was a man. Someone known, someone trusted. And now I know for certain whose death — whose murder I’ve just experienced. He said her name out loud.

  Victoria.

  The certainty settles around my heart like hoarfrost. And yet, I’ve known it all along.

  As I’m walking home it starts to rain. Typical. I don’t want to think about what I just experienced. So I think about the meeting at the restaurant, the argument, and losing my temper.

  Yeah, way to annoy the locals, Lake. Don’t think you’ll be getting a job anytime soon.

  But
he’d been the one, threatening me with what he knows. That’s blackmail. Typical small-town good-ol’-boy.

  Now who’s biased?

  Oh, shut up.

  He knows. The bastard knows I’d been in the psyche ward. Someone at the station must have talked. Who was it? Who outed me? Olafson must have called in, checking my references, or just curious — the sin and virtue of every good detective. It would be too much to hope that he keep any revelations to himself. And this is a small town. Word will get around. I’ll be unemployable. A pariah. My fury ignites anew.

  Wow. Paranoid much?

  Okay. So thinking about the meeting isn’t an exercise in calm. But neither is the other thing. My hallucinations — or visions — are real. They reflect a real thing that happened. The whole idea makes my brain lock up. Because if I can witness to something that already happened, be present in the past, that means — I don’t even know what that means. Just that my whole idea of the universe has been flipped upside down.

  A convulsive shiver racks my whole body, like I’ve poked an electric eel.

  Maybe you projected Victoria into your craziness.

  Zoe, back for another low blow. But I can’t shake my certainty. Whatever its source, whatever has suddenly made me able to sense an event outside my personal experience, now I have something concrete to investigate.

  Refill your prescription, Lake. You’re talking to yourself a lot.

  No. I stopped taking my meds when I’d emptied the bottle into the toilet. No more lint padding between me and the world. I’ll just have to endure Zoe’s commentary as I sort through events. Because I am going to move forward with the investigation. Claire trusts me, and Victoria seems to be calling from beyond, demanding justice. Or something.