“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,
