The Voice Inside (Frost Easton Book 2)

by Brian Freeman

  “He murdered seven women, Magnolia.”

  “Yeah, I know what they say online, but I still can’t believe it. He didn’t seem like the type.”

  “There is no type,” Frost said. “You can’t tell by looking at someone.”

  “You really think he’ll come back here?”

  “I don’t know, but it pays to be safe. I wish you’d go somewhere else tonight.”

  “Sorry, I can’t. I’ll nap for a couple hours, but then I have to get to work. You sure you don’t want a drink?”

  “No.”

  “Okay.” Magnolia finished the glass and stood up, wobbling. “Anything else?”

  “Be sure to lock the door behind me when I go. And never leave the front door of the building unlatched.” Frost slid a card from his wallet and put it on the table. “If Rudy contacts you, call me immediately. Don’t meet him anywhere. If he shows up at your door, don’t open it. Call nine one one. I’m not kidding.”

  Frost left Magnolia in her apartment. He checked Sutter one more time and did another survey of the alley in back of the building. Nothing had changed, but he was still troubled. He found a dark doorway on the corner where he could see the front of the building and the entrance to the alley, and he waited there. It was late, but most of Cutter’s dirty work was done in the middle of the night. He might still show up.

  He texted Jess: Found the girl Cutter was with. She’s safe.

  And then a minute later, he sent another text: No sign of him, but I’m staking out the neighborhood.

  He shoved his phone back into his pocket.

  He tried to understand Cutter’s plan. Jess said Cutter always had a plan; he knew what he was doing. First, he hooks up with a stranger at a bar, and then he brags about it to Jess and leaves a trail a mile wide. He was practically begging her to chase him. Then Frost hunts him down inside the Fillmore, and Cutter disappears.

  He was beginning to suspect that this was all a diversion. A head fake. While Frost cooled his heels outside the girl’s apartment, Cutter was somewhere completely different.

  Where?

  Frost grabbed his phone and texted again: I think he’s playing us.

  That was when he noticed that his earlier texts to Jess had been delivered, but not read. She hadn’t checked messages on her phone, which was normally like an extension of her arm, day or night. He felt a tiny chill of anxiety, like a pinprick on the back of his neck.

  He texted: Jess?

  And again: Jess? Where are you?

  He punched the speed-dial number for her phone. On the other end, the phone rang without being picked up, and it shifted to her voice mail. He heard her message, which was the same as it had been for years. He listened to the impatient voice he knew so well. This was the woman he’d been with less than an hour earlier, the woman whose face he could see in his sleep.

  “Jess? Are you there? Call me as soon as you get this.”

  In the brief silence before he hung up, he added, “Are you back at your apartment? If you’re not, don’t go home. Go to my place. Meet me there.”

  Frost stepped out of the darkness of the doorway. He realized that he’d been right all along. Cutter had set up the events at the theater as a ruse. Magnolia was the distraction, and the man’s real target was someone else entirely. Something washed over Frost like a wave, but the rain had stopped. This was something else. This was terror. This was every instinct, every intuition, screaming at him to run.

  He did.

  He sprinted for his truck, his chest hammering.

  But he knew that his closet of horrors, the closet where he kept the memory of Katie, had a new monster inside. He already knew that he was too late.

  Two uniformed officers, a man and a woman, met him at Jess’s apartment building. He’d called for backup from the Suburban.

  “There’s no answer at her apartment, Inspector,” the policewoman told him.

  “Have you searched the area?” Frost asked.

  “No, we just got here.”

  “Circle the building,” he told her. “Be careful. This is Rudy Cutter, so expect him to be armed and dangerous.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He gestured to the other officer. “Let’s check the back.”

  The two of them headed for the rear of the building, where the apartments faced a dead-end alley and the densely wooded hillside. A river ran along the curb, where rainwater trickled from the muddy slope. Jess’s apartment was on the second floor. He stood below her balcony, and then he walked out to the other side of the alley to get a better view. Even in the darkness, he could see it.

  The broken window. The open door.

  Frost bolted for the locked gate below her apartment and hauled himself up until he could grab the railing of the second-floor balcony. He shouted at the cop waiting for him. “Get around to the front, I’ll let you in. Call more backup out here right now! And an ambulance!”

  He swung his leg up, jumped, and landed hard on the other side of the railing. The vertical blinds beyond the open patio door slapped back and forth with the breeze. Glass glittered on the carpet. He had his gun out, and he stormed into the apartment.

  “Jess!”

  His voice was loud, but no one answered. The apartment smelled like Jess, which meant it smelled like cigarettes. He couldn’t see anything in the darkness. He knew where the light switches were, and he turned on the nearest lamp, squinting at the sudden brightness. Then his gaze swept the living room.

  His heart stopped.

  She was there. Just inside the front door. On her back, limbs sprawled. Blood was everywhere.

  “Jess.”

  He didn’t know if he’d said her name out loud or whether it was simply in his heart. He went to her and knelt over her. He checked her pulse, but there was nothing for him to do. Grayness had painted over her face. Her eyes were closed. Her skin was still warm, but she was gone. Fragments from the Taser blast that had stunned her sprayed the carpet. The knife that had opened up her throat, drowned her, bled her out, lay on the floor next to her.

  Frost saw a chair tipped over on the carpet. It wasn’t in the right place. Cutter had sat in that chair and waited for Jess to come home. He’d lured her out of her apartment and sent them on a false chase at the Fillmore after a girl who meant nothing, while Cutter crossed the city to stalk his real target.

  Jess was the eighth victim.

  Every “what if” that might have changed this moment played out in Frost’s mind in a split second. There were a thousand different things he could have done, and Jess would still be alive.

  What if he’d stopped Cutter at the Fillmore.

  What if he’d gone home with Jess tonight, instead of leaving her alone.

  What if he’d thrown Melanie Valou’s watch off the Golden Gate Bridge and let Cutter rot in prison.

  But none of it changed the reality that he’d failed her. Cutter had won. Jess was dead.

  Frost took her hand. He squeezed, but she didn’t squeeze back. That was when he noticed that Jess had a slim gold watch on her wrist. Jess never wore a watch. The crystal on the face was smashed, but he could still make out the time, which was frozen in place and would stay that way forever.

  3:42 a.m.

  27

  The night passed for Frost in a haze of sleeplessness and grief.

  He never went home. Instead, he spent hours in a small interview room in the police headquarters building in the Mission Bay District. This was where he typically talked to witnesses and suspects, but this time, he was the witness. The detectives on the case went over the details of the night with him. They asked the same questions again and again, trying to tease out new facts from his memory. In the end, he didn’t have much to tell them.

  He hadn’t been there when the murder happened. He hadn’t seen anything.

  Everyone knew Rudy Cutter was guilty, but knowing something was true didn’t mean they could prove it.

  The building was dead quiet. The death of a cop alwa
ys hung over the force like a cloud, but this was Jess. She was a cop’s cop, third-generation SFPD, an angry fighter for all things blue. Except, Frost knew, that was all in the past. She’d lost her badge. She’d gone down in disgrace and had been staring at prison time for her sins. Her murder was a tragedy, but there would be no city funeral, no parade, no speech from the chief and the mayor.

  It was still dark when they were done with the interview.

  He stopped at his desk and could feel the eyes of everyone watching him, but no one said a thing. He had a reputation for being a lone wolf, and it was mostly deserved. He didn’t hang out in the police bars; he didn’t party and drink with the other cops. That made him different, still a stranger after five years. His one real ally was Jess, and now she was gone.

  Frost felt exhaustion weighing him down, although he knew he wouldn’t sleep. He headed for the elevator, but he stopped when a voice cut across the stillness of the room.

  “Easton.”

  He turned around. It was Captain Hayden.

  “Let’s talk,” he said in a voice that always sounded as if he’d just come back from a root canal.

  Frost followed Hayden into his office, which had windows looking north toward the Giants stadium. It was a nice office, but Hayden had his sights set on the office upstairs. He’d started out as a street cop thirty years earlier, and he’d climbed the promotions ladder, greasy rung by greasy rung, until the only step left was the one that would make him the chief. Hayden wasn’t going to let anything stand in his way. Not even the murder of his ex-wife.

  “So you’re the one who found her,” the captain rumbled.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did she suffer?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I imagine it was brutal but quick.”

  “Hard to believe anybody getting the drop on Jess,” Hayden said.

  “Cutter had it well planned. He was waiting for her where she couldn’t see him. First the Taser, then the knife. She didn’t stand a chance.”

  Hayden coughed, and then he wiped his eyes. “Cutter,” he murmured.

  “Yes, sir.”

  The captain walked around to the back of his desk and squeezed into a high-back leather chair. Pruitt Hayden was one of the largest human beings Frost had ever met. He was six foot four, well over three hundred pounds, and he could bench-press his weight. His black skin was freckled and mottled, and his scalp had a dark shadow of stubble. He always wore his dress blues, with folds impeccably creased.

  “Sit, Easton.”

  Frost took the chair in front of the desk. He noticed that Hayden still kept a framed photo of Jess where he could see it. The photo had been taken ten years earlier, when they were just married and honeymooning on a Hawaiian beach. It was one of the rare photos in which Frost had seen Jess smiling. Divorce didn’t change the fact that there had been happier times between them, but they were two volcanic personalities who didn’t know how to do anything except work. Sooner or later, Hayden’s ambition, and Jess’s willingness to break rules, were going to collide.

  “You know I’m angry,” Hayden said, although any emotions he felt barely moved the mask of his face. “I’d be angry if this happened to any of our people, but this is personal. I loved her. What happened in the past between us doesn’t matter.”

  “I’m angry, too.”

  “This department will get justice for her. I will get justice for her.” He emphasized the I, as if to make sure Frost realized that he wasn’t part of the mix. This case didn’t include him.

  “I hope so,” Frost said.

  “None of this changes the fact that Jess did a stupid, inexcusable thing by planting evidence.”

  “I know.”

  “You were right to bring the watch to me and the district attorney. Don’t ever doubt that, Easton.”

  Frost said nothing. He’d been doubting himself all night. “Where do we stand on Cutter, sir?”

  “Right now? Nowhere.”

  “He did it,” Frost said.

  Hayden’s face clouded over. “Of course he did it! You think I don’t know that? If it were up to me, I’d beat that prick to death with my own fists. Any cop in this building would do the same. He’s throwing it in our faces like there’s nothing we can do, and he’s going to pay.”

  Frost waited for the outburst to pass, and then he dealt with the reality in front of them. “But we don’t have a case, right?”

  Hayden rocked back in his chair, which squealed in submission. “Not yet we don’t, no.”

  “Do we know where he is?”

  “No, he’s still off the radar. His brother called me. Phil Cutter. Very helpful piece of crap. He said he’d heard about the murder. He thought we might leap to the wrong conclusion, so he wanted me to know that Rudy had been with him all night after midnight.”

  “He’s a liar,” Frost said.

  “Yes, but the trouble is, we can’t prove he’s lying without some physical evidence to put Rudy Cutter in Jess’s apartment or anywhere near the crime scene. Which, right now, we don’t have. The forensic people are still over there, but they don’t sound happy. Cutter is pretty careful about not leaving any DNA or fingerprints that we can hang on him.”

  “He knows what he’s doing,” Frost said. “It was the same with all of the other murders. What about the old man on Stockton? Jimmy Keyes?”

  “The Taser used on Jess belonged to Keyes. The ID tags match. But we’re no closer to getting Cutter for the Keyes murder, either.”

  “So what do we do?” Frost asked.

  Hayden didn’t answer immediately. He took the photo of Jess from his desk and held it in his big hands. His eyes didn’t mist, but they became empty, as if the weight of her death were too much to bear. Behind his anger, behind his ego, was a crushing loss. And he wasn’t about to share that loss with Frost.

  “You don’t do anything, Inspector Easton,” Hayden told him.

  “With respect, sir, I can’t live with that answer.”

  He expected the captain to lose his temper and fire back, but Hayden actually smiled at him. “No bullshit. I appreciate that. I know Jess always liked you, Easton. She liked you enough that it pissed some people off around here. A pretty long list of people, in fact.”

  Frost suspected that the list included Hayden himself.

  “I liked Jess, too,” Frost said. “And whatever you or anyone else may think, she never cut me any slack.”

  “Oh, I know that. If she did, I would have been on her like a ton of bricks. You’re good. No one says you’re not.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “I also know about the rumors,” Hayden said.

  Frost said nothing. He wasn’t going to try to explain his relationship with Jess, because he didn’t know if he could explain it to himself. He simply waited to see what would happen next. Hayden’s eyes were like coal on the other side of the desk, and his breathing was loud through his wide nose. Then the captain waved his hand, as if whatever had happened between Frost and Jess meant nothing at all.

  “Mind you, I’m not asking whether the rumors are true. I don’t care. It’s not like I can complain about anything Jess chose to do, before or after our divorce. I was no saint. We both brought plenty of baggage to the breakup.”

  “I’m not sure why we’re talking about this, sir,” Frost said.

  “We’re talking about this because we both have the same goal. We want Rudy Cutter back in prison. And I’m aware that you have just as much motivation as me to make that happen.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Then let the rest of us do our jobs. Jess already went rogue on this case. The result was that Cutter went free, and Jess paid for it with her life. I’m not going to let you screw up our next shot at putting him away.”

  “I have no intention of doing that,” Frost said.

  “No? You don’t think I have spies, Easton? I know exactly what you’ve been doing on your vacation. You’ve been dredging up old witnesses. Talking to family members
of the victims. Asking questions. I hear you’ve been working with a writer who’s doing a book about the case, too. Am I right?”

  Frost made no attempt to deny it. “Yes, you’re right.”

  Hayden exhaled, making a whistling noise through a little gap in his front teeth. “We are already on thin ice with Judge Elgin. He threw out the entire investigation, Easton. Five years of work. If he smells so much as a hint of impropriety again, he’ll toss the case entirely, and we’ll never get our hands on Cutter. None of us want that to happen.”

  “No,” Frost said. “We don’t.”

  “Good. Now here’s what I want you to do. Go home. Grieve for Jess. Grieve for your sister. Take another week of vacation, and make it a real vacation this time, got it? Fly to a beach somewhere, or go hiking in the mountains, or just sit at home and clear your head. But whatever you do, stay the hell out of this case. Have I made myself absolutely clear?”

  “You have,” Frost said.

  “That’ll be all, Easton.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He got out of the chair and headed for the door, but Hayden called after him in a voice not much louder than a sigh. “Frost.”

  He turned around in surprise. The captain stood up and came around to the other side of the desk again. “I assume that once upon a time, Jess gave you her little speech about the line,” Hayden said.

  “Several times.”

  There was a silence between them. Frost expected something more, but Hayden simply whispered, “Good, good.”

  That was it. The meeting was over.

  Frost didn’t know what had just happened. He was in the elevator, leaving the building before he understood. The line. It was the line you had to cross as a cop sometimes, even if you got fired for doing the right thing, even if no one could protect you.

  Hayden had given Frost a direct order to drop the investigation against Rudy Cutter. Then he’d added a postscript off the record.

  Keep going.

  28

  The sun pushed above the East Bay hills, casting a golden glow on the water and making silhouettes of the Bay Bridge towers. Rudy stood with a takeaway cup of black coffee in his hand, steps from the Ferry Building, as he watched the dawn. He was freshly shaved and showered; the shower basin was bleached. His underwear, shirt, and jeans were clean and new. Half a mile away, at the bottom of a street corner trash bin, he’d deposited a tightly sealed plastic bag with last night’s bloody clothes.