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.
