Perchance to Dream

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FOUR

I was sitting in my office drinking my second cup of coffee with my feet up, looking at the list of names of people I still wanted to interview. I was just deciding who I’d go talk with next when the phone rang. I picked it up and answered.

At the other end, Jaime Reyes said, “Know a woman named Audrey Ryan?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me about her.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m a cop, and I’m asking you,” Reyes said.

“Oh,” I said. “That’s why.”

Reyes waited. He was homicide, and something had been off about Audrey Ryan when I’d spoken to her to the previous evening. There was a small sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

“She was one of the people I interviewed yesterday about the case I’m working,” I said. “I left her house around six-thirty before I came out to your place.”

“What kind of case?”

“Missing persons,” I said. “Remember the plate I asked you to enter for me? Two young women from a wealthy family disappeared last Saturday, probably runaways. They are friends of Audrey Ryan.”

“Not anymore,” Reyes said. “She’s dead.”

The sinking feeling hit bottom.

“We found your card on the dresser in her bedroom,” Reyes said.

“I gave it to her last evening. How did she die?”

“Hanged herself, looks like.”

“Suicide?”

“Maybe, unless it was one of those autoerotic things,” Reyes said. “Her feet were on the ground. She could have stood up and saved herself. Maybe she went too far, lost consciousness, and couldn’t.”

“Doesn’t seem likely,” I said. “Autoerotic deaths are nearly always males and usually single. Sounds more like a suicide by someone with no second thoughts.”

“Either way, it’s suicide or accidental,” Reyes said. “There are no signs of trauma on the body other than the ligature marks around her neck. The house was all locked up, and the alarm system was armed like normal. The postmortem lividity is consistent with the position we found her in. Nothing to suggest it was a homicide unless the autopsy turns up something suspicious.”

“What was the estimated time of death?”

“Based on the liver temperature, po-mo lividity, and rig, the rough estimate from the coroner’s technician is she has been dead maybe ten to twelve hours.”

“Who found her?” I said. “The husband?”

“No, the housekeeper discovered the body when she came in to work this morning. She says the husband left two days ago on a business trip to Seattle. I got hold of him on his cell phone, and he is on a plane back to L. A. now.”

My office felt stuffy to me. I got up and opened my window to let some air into the room. I looked out at Cahuenga for a moment, looking at the traffic waiting for the light to change on Hollywood Boulevard.

“She help you with your case?” Reyes said.

“Not really. Just confirmed some names I already had. Something felt off about her. I felt sure she wasn’t completely honest with me. That’s why I gave her my card, so she could call if she had a change of heart.”

“Like she might have known more about the situation than she was telling you?”

“Yeah, like that. It felt like she was holding something back along with not telling me the whole truth when she answered my questions.”

“Then this could be related to your case,” Reyes said.

“She leave a note?” I said.

“Not that we’ve found,” Reyes said. “There was a laptop in the bedroom, but it’s password protected. We’re taking it and her mobile phone in to let the tech wizards have a look at them.”

Below me, the light changed, and the traffic moved across Hollywood Boulevard toward Sunset.

“She seem depressed when you were here yesterday?” Reyes said.

I turned away from the window and sat down with my back to the breeze drifting in through the open window.

“No, just nervous, like she was keeping a secret from me. She didn’t look like an impending suicide.”

“Suicide is sometimes hard for figure,” Reyes said.

“The means used seems consistent with that most often chosen by women her age,” I said.

“If you learn anything relevant to this while working your case, circle back to me,” Reyes said.

“Will do,” I said. “This bothers me a little.”

“That you interviewed her, maybe scared her a little, and she ends up dead the next morning.”

I said, “Something like that.”

“Don’t blame you, bro. It would bother me too.”