CHAPTER TEN
MONDAY MORNING I'M up early, after spending all night flipping from side to side like a fish on a riverbank, and getting all snarled in my blankets as a result. The past and the present have tangled themselves in the wrinkles of my brain. Dreams and thoughts and memories are all interwoven into a net, and I’m the unlucky salmon caught in the strands.
I make my way down the suicide stairs to the kitchen. I call them that because the risers are steep and the treads shallow, the railing is low and the window on the landing is placed exactly so that if I slip and fall, I'll crash through the glass and bleed to death from all the lacerations.
I drag the card table and camp chair over near the windows that look over the Columbia. A tugboat chugs up the channel, pulling a barge heaped with gravel. I feel a kinship with the tiny boat and its heavy load. Whitecaps appear and disappear as the wind stirs the chop. For now, the rising sun illuminates the streets, but purple-bellied clouds stack themselves up near the mouth of the river, promising future overcast.
March. What are you gonna do? If I was still in Colorado, it might be sunny or snowing or blowing this time of year, or doing it all at once. I feel a pang of homesickness for the Centennial State’s vibrant climate, which despite the wild springtime still remains largely sundrenched and inviting. I miss the sunlit days, the lapis blue sky with its untamed cloudscape, the horizon edged by sawtooth mountains.
Resolutely, I grind nostalgia to powder under a metaphorical heel. No going back, remember?
Last night, I discovered the licensing process for private investigators is mostly a matter of filling out forms and sending some money to the state board. Once they approve the application, I have to take the P. I. Proficiency Exam. I definitely have the work experience, but the necessity for three letters of reference gives me a hollow feeling in my chest. The detectives in my unit at DPD had either witnessed my breakdown or heard about it, and might not be inclined to say nice things about me. Cops are leery of mental illness. They see too much of the down side, people having freak-outs in the street with kitchen knives. I’d have to think carefully about who I asked for a reference.
Knock, knock, Lake. What about your MisPers? Today is day four.
I know, I know. I need to talk to Claire again, and Daniel, and Seth Takahashi.
In fact, maybe I should call the police.
You can’t trust them. You know how they are. First thing, they’ll check up on you. Find out you’re an unreliable witness.
Plus, the police will want to know all kinds of things that I won’t be able to tell them. I don’t have a picture, I don’t know her habits. I’ve only seen her on video snippets posted on the website. And the thing is, I know she’s dead. She isn’t lost or trapped somewhere. Her life isn’t depending on being found.
The best person to make the call would be Claire. Or Daniel. I’ve made my plea. The Astoria Police Department isn’t the DPD, but they can still get a warrant for phone and financial records. I wish I was still a cop.
Stop right there. No, I don’t. The overbearing authority of the Man; the paperwork; the testosterone-fueled hierarchy. I don’t miss any of it.
I run my fingers through my hair in frustration, then go out to check the mail, and get a breath of fresh air. I keep hold of my coffee, comforted by the warmth and familiar bitterness.
An older white woman walks down the street toward me, tugged by a smooth-haired gray and white dog. My muscles tense. Pit bull mix. Owners swear by the breed, but I’ve had too many run-ins with pit bulls trained into aggressiveness by drug thugs and other criminal types to treat the animals lightly.
“Hello,” the woman says, smiling. “You must be our new neighbor. Link said he’d met you. I’m Phoebe. And this is Delilah.”
Link. The judge. The man who brought me cookies and flowers. Belatedly, I realize I haven’t combed my hair and am still in the rumpled sweats I threw on when I got out of bed. Oh, well. At least there’s nowhere to go but up. And her husband has seen me worse. One good thing: this time I'm unarmed.
“Hi. I’m Audrey.” I gingerly dangle a hand for the excited Delilah to smell, and she leaves a smudge with her cold wet nose and gives it a hearty lick, tail circling like an industrial fan. Despite my wariness, the friendly canine makes me smile.
Phoebe is in her sixties, her graying hair cut into a fashionable shoulder-length wedge. Though lines web the corners of her eyes and mouth, her cheeks look as soft and smooth as a piece of fine linen. Intelligence gleams in her gray eyes, and I remember she’s a psychologist of some kind. More dangerous in her way than Delilah. If the dog attacks, at least I’ll see it coming, and the wounds will only be physical.
She glances at the cup in my hand. “I see you’ve already got coffee, but why don’t you come in for a bite? Link was baking scones when I set off on Delilah’s constitutional. They should be ready by now.”
Constitutional. Ye gods. But despite my inner hermit, I feel the need to connect with someone, to send the shadows back into their corners. I have to be friendly some time.
Plus, baked goods.
“Okay,” I say.
Like mine, the Rutherford house is on the downhill side of the street and accessible by a dozen concrete steps, but that’s where the similarity ends. Oh, it has some of the same Craftsman details — covered porch and knee braces under the eaves — but it's twice as big, with leaded glass transoms and cedar shingles.
