Silent Echo

Sometimes I call out to Numi, expecting to find my friend in the room with me, but he’s not there. I’m all alone with my scattered, incoherent thoughts. Dying is the ultimate hallucinogen. The final hallucinogen.

But now, as the phone continues to ring, one of these bright beings of light steps forward. The blazing white image is someone I recognize. Someone I’ve grown quite fond of. It is Olivia, Eddie’s missing wife. She has beautiful black hair that’s oddly translucent in the light. She does not smile and I see why: her mouth is bloody. So is her neck. Her neck, I see, has a deep gash that has opened down to her throat. If I look hard enough, I can see inside her throat.

Sweet Jesus.

I gasp and sit up, and the vision is gone instantly. I scan the room wildly, but I’m alone. Late afternoon sunlight splashes across my apartment living room. I blink hard. Olivia, complete with her open neck, had been standing right here in the light.

My phone is still ringing. Numi had set my phone to ring nearly a dozen times before it goes to voice mail. He wants me to have the extra time needed to get to it. What Numi wants, he gets.

Still looking around, shaken by the bloody image of Olivia, I reach for the phone and swipe it on. I don’t bother to see who’s calling. Hell, it’s all I can do not to drop the damn thing.

“Hello?” I say. Or I think I say. My mind isn’t entirely here.

“Jimmy,” says a vaguely familiar voice. “They found her.”

CHAPTER FIVE

“Who is this?” I ask, slurring my words. “Found who?”

“It’s Eddie. They found Olivia.”

“She’s all right?” I ask, although I already know the answer.

“No. She’s not all right,” he says.

I sit up on the couch, now fully in the moment. My scattered thoughts seem to retract back, like an explosion played in reverse. I’m here in the present, which means my earlier conversation with Eddie hasn’t been a dream after all. These days, reality and dreams are difficult to differentiate.

The vision…

“Where did they find her?” I hear myself ask. I can feel bile rising in my throat.

“Laurel Canyon.”

If he says something else, I don’t hear it. I hear nothing past the words “Laurel Canyon.” I discover I’m now sitting up and sucking in air.

Not related, I think. Impossible.

Laurel Canyon holds a special interest for me. What was found in Laurel Canyon would change my life forever. I take in more air. I want to stand and pace but I don’t have the energy for it. So, I breathe and keep breathing until I calm down.

Of course they’re not related, I think. How could two crimes that span twenty-two years be related?

Dust motes flit in and out of the streaming early evening sunlight where Olivia had recently stood, at least in my vision. Olivia with her bloody throat. For some reason, I look down and I am surprised at how shrunken my chest looks. I’ve easily lost seventy-five pounds over the past two years.

“Some hikers found her,” says Eddie. His voice sounds distant and hollow.

“When did they find her?” I ask after a few seconds.

“Not too long ago, I guess. Her purse was with her. Detectives were just here at my place.”

“I’m sorry, Eddie.”

“I just spent the past few hours answering their questions. They didn’t say it, but I could tell they think I did it.”

I say nothing. Truth be known, I’m still not convinced I’m not dreaming. This whole conversation seems too surreal, especially when combined with my recent dream.

“How did she die?” I ask tentatively, dreading the details.

“Jimmy,” says Eddie urgently, “someone slit her throat and dumped her body.”

Now something inside me goes ice-cold. My blood maybe. My spine, something. And as I sit there holding my cell, looking at the streaming sunlight, my friend weeps into the phone.

CHAPTER SIX

I’m sitting in a conference room in the North Hollywood Police Station of the LAPD.

I’d never been in the conference room. Normally, when I meet with Detective Dobbs, we do so in his office. This isn’t his office. So I wait. And while I wait, I watch Numi through the open door.

He is sitting on a wooden bench with his head tilted back against the cement wall behind him. His eyes are half-closed, although I know he’s watching me, too. He has positioned himself in such a way that he can keep his eyes on me. Always on me.

What did I do to deserve his friendship? His loyalty? I have no clue. To be honest, I’m an asshole to him. In general, I snap at him. When I’m not snapping at him, I’m grumpy as hell. Dying is a bitch, and I let him know it. Every day Numi experiences the brunt of my self-hatred.

I watch him some more as I wait. He sits there alone on the bench, his long legs stretched before him, his hands folded over his flat stomach. His hands are very dark, his palms, not so much. I can see his pink fingernails from here. His hands are clasped loosely and comfortably and, looking at him, one gets the feeling he could sit like that for hours.

Numi is an artist. And a successful one, too. He primarily sells his paintings in his own gallery on the Sunset Strip, nestled between all the famous nightclubs. How he secured that spot is anyone’s guess, but the location drives a lot of business inside his little gallery, and he moves a lot of paintings. These past few months—and, really, these past two years—he has mostly shut down his creativity to be with me. Sure, the gallery is still open, but he hasn’t painted anything in many months. His attention has been on me. Which makes me feel like shit. His talents are going to waste because I couldn’t control myself. I beg him to work, but he simply shakes his head and says the paintings will always be waiting for him.

And I get his implication: The paintings will always be there. Me, not so much.

I met Numi during one of my investigations years ago. Eight years ago, in fact. The stoic Nigerian had witnessed a fatal car accident. I had been hired by the widow’s attorney to investigate the case. Numi was on my list of investigatees. We met in his gallery after one of his exhibit openings. He made me buy a painting before he would talk to me. I did, and it still hangs on the wall in my living room to this day, the conniving bastard. Still, I like his style and his view of the world. Masterful, I would say. Back in the day, when I had been the picture of health, Numi had been less stoic and contemplative. Numi had even been outgoing and passionate about everything, two qualities that were reflected in his compelling art. In fact, once or twice he had even been known to laugh.