Takahashi says, “Audrey, I’d like you to meet Mr. Travis McGuthrie. Travis, this is the woman I told you about, Ms. Audrey Lake.”
“Hi,” I say. “I saw you at the shelter last week.” I extend my hand to McGuthrie, and he barely touches it with his fingers before dropping his hand back to his notebook. He doesn’t look at me.
“Travis, I’d like you to share your poem with Audrey. Is that okay? You can read it aloud, or give it to her to read herself.”
Oh lordy, a poetry reading. There was a detective from Denver…
Shut up, Zoe. Seth wouldn’t have asked us — me — here without a good reason.
Who stuck her hand in a blender…
I remembered Phoebe’s advice not to talk back to the voice, not to give it any more attention and energy. The recollection of her firm, no-nonsense tone is a lifeline.
It’s getting crowded in here, gonna have to build an addition.
I should never have given her free rein.
Ignore Zoe, concentrate instead on the tableau before me. Seth sitting quietly, hands in his lap, looking at Travis encouragingly. Travis opens up his notebook and pages through it. It bears many brief notes, some sketches, and some dense handwritten passages which I think might be a sort of journal. He stops at a page with a rough series of single written lines marred by smudged fingermarks and begins to read.
“The night is cold. The ground is hard. But river seen through screen of grass is beautiful.
I hear footsteps. I see a woman. She comes along the path.
Her hair is long. Her shoulders hunched. She looks back more than once.
She leaves the path. Goes to the beach, her footprints on the sand.”
I catch my breath. Seth flashes me a warning glance. Travis doesn’t look up, continuing his recital.
“I hear the tread of someone else. Faster. Harder. Louder.
A man comes through. He follows her. His feet sink in the sand.
I see him reach. She dances back. I hear him yell. I see him strike.
I hear her cry. I see her fall. Her hand is on her cheek.
I see him kneel and shake her hard. Her words to him are sharp.
He strikes again. She speaks again. He reaches for her.
Knocks her down. Then puts her into the water.
For a moment they are one, then two.
The man walks away alone.”
Travis puts his notebook down. Takahashi looks at me and raises his eyebrows.
Holy shit. He was there.
Yeah. He was.
I’ve got to proceed carefully here. This is a vulnerable witness. I don’t want to lead him, or scare him, or make him retract his story.
“Wow,” I say. “That’s a pretty striking poem. Was that something you actually saw?” I deliberately don’t use the word ‘witnessed.’ I don’t want to be all policey and intimidating. Who knows what his interaction with law enforcement has been before now? Not good, I’ll reckon.
Travis nods.
“Where did this happen?”
He shuffles his feet. Looks around the room. At Seth. But not at me.
Seth says, “Is it close by? Can you take us there, Travis? Can you show us where you were camping?”
Shuffle. Shift. Sniffle. Finally, a nod.
“Okay then,” I say. “Let’s go. You lead the way.”
Travis walks out of the shelter onto the narrow sidewalk. Takahashi follows him, and I come last, trying not to crowd. Travis leads us toward Marine Drive, where we wait at a crosswalk in silence. When the light changes, we cross five lanes of steaming bug-splattered grills and a parking lot to get to the Riverwalk. The Holiday Inn looms. I feel a shiver across my shoulders, my skin pimpling as though caressed by an arctic breeze.
Our guide stops at the end of the boardwalk where it joins the paved trail that runs between the hotel and the river. “I got a place down underneath here,” Travis mumbles. He points at the boardwalk. “Above the tide line, some shelter when it rains. I like to be by the river. It wasn’t raining that night. So I laid up over there.” He points to a clump of yellow-flowered Scotch broom. “Thick. No one can see me in there.”
I don’t doubt it. The broom is woody, gnarly, the tight-packed stems discouraging casual visitors. But someone who wasn’t worried about scratches or stains could wriggle into the copse, snug as a bug in a rug. And invisible to a casual glance. Especially at dusk. I circle the thicket, tramping through tall, dew-covered grass. Assuming Travis had been seated, peering through the stems, the beach where I’d first had my vision is clearly visible.
I ask, “Do you remember when you saw this happen, Travis? What day it was?”
He looks at Seth, and shakes his head. “Naw.”
Seth says, “The calendar is pretty meaningless when you don’t have places to go or people to see. No reason to keep track.”
I nod, disappointed. Maybe there’s something else in the journal that would help to narrow down the date. Although the fact that it wasn’t raining should help. Because it always seems to be raining in Astoria.
We return to the shelter. Travis goes back to his room and Takahashi and I stand on the front porch. A few sparrows are twittering on the sidewalk, pecking at some crumbs. They scatter at the approach of a brindle cat who pretends he isn’t on the stalk.
Takahashi breaks the silence. “It’s important, isn’t it? Travis’s story.”
“Yeah, it’s important. He witnessed a murder. Victoria’s murder.”
There’s a sharp, intake of breath before his next words. “We need to be careful with him. He’s fragile.”
“I know. I can tell. Will he stay here?”
“A few days, maybe. These guys are called transients for a reason. He’ll start to feel confined and get on the move again, maybe
