The Voice Inside (Frost Easton Book 2)

by Brian Freeman

  “As I say, we’re not taking any chances. We don’t know how he picks the women he stalks. According to the DMV records, you used to live in the city, is that right?”

  “Yes, I was born at Saint Mary’s near the park. I lived my whole life within six blocks of there until two years ago. I never thought I’d become a commuter.”

  “What happened?” Frost asked. “Why did you leave the city?”

  Maria wiggled one of her fingers for him. He spotted a large diamond ring. “Love happened. When Matt and I got married, we both wanted kids right away, and frankly, there aren’t a lot of kids left in San Francisco. So we came down here. We’re both fitness freaks, and we like running in the hills.”

  “You can’t get a better location than this,” Frost said.

  “That’s true. I thought I’d miss the city, but I never looked back. And I still get my fill of city life, thanks to the opera.”

  “Do you have kids now?”

  “Yes, a son. Jeremy. He’s two. He’s with Ranya, our nanny.” Maria rolled her eyes. “It feels strange to say that. You can probably tell that I was sort of a flower child growing up. Money was the root of all evil. Now here I am with a corporate husband and a house in the suburbs and a nanny and a nonprofit job raising money from the San Francisco elite. Life comes at you fast.”

  Frost smiled. He liked her. She didn’t take herself too seriously.

  “Is your husband home?” he asked.

  “No, he’s a road warrior for PlayStation. He’s overseas a couple times a month. He’s somewhere in Southeast Asia right now.”

  Frost took his phone from his pocket and found the best picture he had of Rudy Cutter. He handed the phone to Maria. “Does Cutter look at all familiar to you? Is it possible you’ve seen him around you recently?”

  “Now you’re scaring me.”

  “I’m sorry, but his pattern is to watch the women he’s after.”

  She studied the face on his phone and then shook her head. “No, I don’t think so,” she said.

  “Are you sure? You’re hesitating.”

  “Well, there is something vaguely familiar about him, but maybe it’s just that I’ve seen him on the news so many times. If I met him before, it wasn’t any time recently. I feel like it would have been a few years ago. And I could be wrong. He may just have one of those faces.”

  That was true. It was easy to think you’d seen a face before. However, she was the first of the women he’d talked to who thought Cutter looked at all familiar. To the others named Maria Lopes, he was a total stranger.

  “Would you mind looking at some more photos?” Frost asked. He took back his phone and found the folder where he kept the photos of Cutter’s victims. “If you swipe through this album, you’ll find several women here. I want to know if you remember any of them.”

  “Who are they?”

  “They’re the women Cutter killed,” Frost said.

  Maria’s mouth pinched into a frown, but she went slowly through the pictures. “I remember seeing some of these photos on television back then. I followed the Golden Gate Murders pretty closely. Everybody in the city did. But I didn’t know any of these women personally.”

  “What about their names?” He rattled off their names from his memory, where they were all indelibly filed. Including Katie. “Do you remember any of these names among people you knew or worked with or grew up with?”

  “I’m sorry, no.” Then she noted Katie’s last name. “Easton? Is there a connection?”

  “My sister.”

  “Oh my God, I’m so sorry.”

  “Thank you.” He pushed Katie’s shadow from his mind and went on. “I’m not trying to scare you unnecessarily, Ms. Lopes, but I want you to be vigilant. Do you have an alarm system in your home? Is it typically turned on?”

  “Always.”

  He handed her his card. “My contact information is on here if you need to reach me for any reason. If you see Rudy Cutter anywhere near you, don’t approach him. Don’t talk to him. Don’t indicate that you’ve seen him or recognized him. Just call nine one one.”

  “Wow.” Maria looked shaken.

  “I know. This is a lot to take in.”

  “You really think he picks these women for a reason? It’s not random?”

  “He was in the library yesterday, and he was looking up someone with your name. That’s not random.”

  Maria stood up from the rocking chair, and she still had his card in her hand. He noticed that her fingers were trembling. “What makes a person do something like this? What kind of diseased soul could take a stranger’s life so purposefully? I don’t understand it.”

  Frost stood up, too. “After Katie was killed, my mother said that some mirrors were too dark to look at.”

  “I think that sounds right.”

  Maria led him back to the front door. He heard the squeal of a boy playing somewhere in the house, and a smile instinctively sprang to her face. She was a happy woman with an ordinary life. It was unimaginable that she could be put in the path of someone like Rudy Cutter. But that was how it worked.

  “Remember, if you see anything that concerns you, call me,” Frost told her. “If I find out any more details that you should know about, I’ll be in touch.”

  “Thank you, Inspector.”

  Frost went back outside, and Maria closed the door behind him. He heard the click of the deadbolt. She was taking no chances, and that was good. He went down the steps, but before he got into the Suburban, he took a short walk to the deserted end of the road, where dirt trails climbed toward Sweeney Ridge. The gray day had kept away most of the hikers. The seam of the valley made a V like the jaws of an open mouth. Dense green brush clung to the hillsides.

  He saw a hawk circling overhead. Circling and circling beneath the low clouds. Looking for prey.

  It reminded him that Rudy Cutter was out there somewhere, doing the same thing.

  38

  Rudy studied Frost Easton through binoculars. The detective’s head swiveled as he watched the hills and tracked the ridgeline. Rudy was too far away to be seen, no more than a dot on the hillside, and there was no sunlight to catch on the lenses of his binoculars. Even so, he wondered if the detective’s intuition told him he was being watched. He’d found that to be true with victims sometimes. Every now and then, one of them would turn for no reason, as if some instinct for self-preservation had alerted them.

  Five minutes passed. They stared at each across the distance, invisibly. Eventually, Easton turned around and went back to his truck and drove away.

  Rudy frowned. Seeing Easton here meant the police knew about Maria Lopes.

  He wondered how that had happened and how far it had gone. Did Easton know why? Did he know about Hope and the other victims? If he did, then the game was up, and they would be coming for him. Regardless, Rudy had no intention of going back to San Quentin. Not again. He wouldn’t be locked up in a cell with Hope’s ghost. He wouldn’t wake up every night at 3:42 a.m. That road had come to an end.

  The cold ocean air climbed over the peak, settling on top of him. Under his camouflage fleece blanket, he shivered. He’d built a nest for himself off the trail, on the eastern slope of the summit, where he was invisible to anyone hiking above him. He’d borrowed Phil’s Cadillac today, and the sedan was parked half a mile away in the parking lot of Skyline College. From there, he’d hiked into the hills that gave him a bird’s-eye view of Maria’s house.

  Her new location had been easy to find. He’d stopped at the San Bruno library that morning and run a couple of Google searches and found a local website with Maria’s name, address, and phone number. In this case, it was a community theater group that had posted contact information for all their board members. There Maria was, living on Sneath Lane.

  Now, hidden in the hills, Rudy could spy on her yard and her windows. He’d spotted her several times inside the house. She’d had coffee on the back porch and done yoga in her bedroom. Soon enough, she would do wha
t she always did, assuming her daily routine hadn’t changed completely in four years. She would run. She ran every day, rain or shine. Seeing her now, he could tell that she still had the lean, wiry build of a runner. And she’d moved here, to the fringe of a park, where the running trails were literally outside her front door.

  The cold didn’t matter. The fog didn’t matter. Not to a real runner. Maria would come, and he would be waiting for her.

  I’m going to take another one, Hope. Watch me. There’s nothing you can do about it.

  It was all a question of how much time he had. Sooner or later, the police would find him. He could measure it in hours, or he could measure it in days. It was a race between him and Frost Easton, and there was only one way to find out if Easton was getting close. Rudy dug in the backpack for his pay-as-you-go phone, and he dialed a number.

  It rang once, and then a voice answered.

  “Inspector Easton.”

  Rudy took a breath. “Hello, Inspector.”

  There was a long stretch of silence on the phone. He could hear the noise of traffic outside the truck. The detective was already back on the freeway. Finally, Easton said, “Cutter. Where are you?”

  “I’m watching someone. Do you know who I’m watching?”

  Easton didn’t answer. Rudy listened for a change in the vehicle’s engine. If the detective had figured out the truth, he’d be turning around. He’d go back to find Maria Lopes and scour the ridge. But he didn’t. The traffic noise didn’t change. Easton kept driving. He knew the name Maria Lopes, but he didn’t know more than that. Not yet.

  Rudy thought, The library.

  The guy with the motorcycle magazine had spotted him at the downtown library, and they’d found his search history.

  “What do you want?” Easton asked.

  “I thought we should talk,” Rudy said. “The way these things go, we might not have a chance to talk again. The next time we meet will probably be under more difficult circumstances. It’s easier now, when we both have time.”

  “You have less time than you think,” the detective said.

  “Really? I think you’re bluffing. I don’t think you know anything about me at all.”

  “I know the victims are all connected to Hope,” Easton told him. “I know that punishing Hope for what she did to your daughter is pretty much the only thing that keeps you alive.”

  Rudy waited a long time to reply. If Easton was taking a shot in the dark, the shot had landed perilously close to its mark.

  “You can’t possibly understand my relationship with Hope, Inspector,” Rudy said. “I loved her. I still do, despite everything. You can hate and love at the same time. Hope was very complicated and troubled. I never saw the depth of pain she was in.”

  “Then I guess you weren’t looking,” Easton said. “It’s right there in the self-portrait she did as a teenager.”

  “It’s always easier to recognize things in hindsight, but you’re right. I should have seen it. I used to look at that painting on the wall and not realize that it was a cry for help. I suppose if you’ve seen the painting, that means you’ve seen Hope’s mother? Josephine?”

  “I have. I showed her the photo of Nina Flores. She spotted the connection to Hope right away.”

  Rudy felt another body blow. Was it possible? Did he know? There was only one other person in the world who would understand with a single glance why he’d chosen these women, and that was Hope’s mother.

  “What did Josephine tell you?” he murmured.

  As Rudy spoke, the wind gusted behind him suddenly, like the shriek of a witch. He wondered if the detective could hear it through the phone and whether he would put it together. The wind. The ridge. Maria Lopes and her house in the hills. Instead, Easton said nothing, not answering the question. The detective was baiting him to talk. To say more. Rudy couldn’t stop himself.

  “Hope was always afraid that she was going to harm Wren,” he went on. “I think she was terrified of that even before she got pregnant. She saw something in the faces of other mothers. Contentment. Joy. Love. They were so happy holding their children, and she knew she would never feel the same way herself. It took me a long time to realize that. Far too long.”

  Rudy closed his eyes. In his mind, he saw all their faces. All that terrible, infuriating joy.

  “Of course, understanding what Hope did doesn’t make it less evil,” Rudy went on. The edge was back in his voice now, as sharp as a knife. “She gets no mercy for what she did. None.”

  “Neither do you,” Easton replied immediately.

  Rudy heard the rage thrown back at him. “I’m not asking for mercy. I know I won’t get any from you. Are you saying you want to kill me, Inspector? Is that your plan? Be honest. If I gave you the chance right now, would you put a bullet in the head of the person who cut your sister’s throat?”

  He listened to the detective breathe. Slowly. In and out. Trying to wrest control of his emotions.

  “I want to stop you, Cutter,” Easton said. “I don’t want you dead. I’d rather see you back in a box to torment yourself for the next thirty years.”

  “Oh, you don’t need a box for torment, Inspector. Free men suffer, too. Sometimes the only thing you need for madness is a memory burned into your eyes. I have that.”

  “I have that, too,” Easton reminded him. His voice was a low, bitter growl.

  “You think you’ve seen it all, but you haven’t. There are plenty of other demons out there for you. Horror can always get worse. Don’t make this personal between us, Inspector.”

  “Too late.”

  The noise of the phone became dead air. Easton had hung up abruptly; the call was over. Rudy powered down his phone and took out the battery. He picked up the binoculars again and settled in to wait.

  Evening would be coming soon. Maria would be running.

  He’d wavered about his plans for Frost Easton, but now he knew what to do. No mercy. If Easton wanted to make it personal, then Rudy would oblige. The detective had no idea just how personal it was going to get.

  39

  Frost threw down the phone on the seat beside him. He swore loudly in the silence of the truck, and his hands squeezed into fists. He’d lied to himself and to Rudy Cutter about the violence gripping his heart. If he had the chance right now, he would do just what Cutter had suggested. He’d put a bullet in the man’s head.

  He tried to calm himself as he drove the last few blocks. He was late, and he was somewhere he didn’t particularly want to be. Parked cars crowded the street beside the eucalyptus trees of Stern Grove as he turned off Nineteenth Avenue. Natasha Lubin’s parents had a full house for the gathering of families of Cutter’s victims. Their bay window fronted the park, and he could see people inside.

  Frost got out of the truck. Stern Grove was like a dense forest inside the city, and the trees loomed over his head like giants, with their bony branches knotted together. He shoved his hands in his pockets as he crossed the oil-smudged street. He climbed the steps, and he could hear voices through the front door. He steeled himself to face down the cold stares of the families.

  What could he tell them?

  Rudy Cutter was still free. He was still killing. And he was going to kill again.

  A slim woman in a dark-green dress answered the door. He’d met her once before. Dominika Lubin was Natasha’s mother. It was obvious from her tight-lipped expression that she recognized him, too.

  “Mr. Easton,” she said. “Janice and Ned told me you would be here. Come in.”

  He crossed the threshold into the lion’s den. The space in the living and dining rooms was small and crowded. Family members clustered together, talking in hushed tones with no smiles. The conversations came to a sudden end as people noticed him, and he felt a wave of silent hostility. No one said anything, but they didn’t need to say a word to convey their message.

  His parents spotted him. Ned broke away from the people he was with to welcome Frost with his usual smothering hu
g.

  “Thanks for coming,” his father murmured in his ear. “It means a lot to your mother.”

  “That’s why I did it,” Frost replied.

  “What a great dinner last night, huh? Your mother and I are so thrilled about Duane and Tabby. Isn’t she great?”

  “She is.”

  “Next time, bring this Eden woman with you,” Ned said.

  “We’re not a couple, Dad. Really.”

  “Well, bring her anyway. It will make Janice happy to see you with someone.”

  Ned steered Frost into the gathering with an arm around his shoulder. Polite, lukewarm smiles greeted him. His mother was in a circle with three others, including Gilda Flores and a thirty-something Chinese couple, whom Frost assumed were related to the sixth victim, Shu Chan. Janice took hold of Frost’s shoulders and kissed him on the cheek.

  “This may be uncomfortable for you, but I’m glad you’re here,” his mother whispered.

  He saw that furniture had been pulled into a rough circle of sofas and chairs, with an open area of gold carpet in the middle. There wasn’t enough seating for everyone in the room. Frost estimated the crowd at nearly thirty people. He saw members of different families holding hands and clinging to each other. Hugging. Crying. There was some laughter, too. Around the room, he saw a handful of framed photographs of an attractive young woman he knew to be Natasha Lubin. Some of the other family members shared photographs on their phones.

  It was probably cathartic for many of them, but for Frost, it was suffocating. As a rule, he didn’t do well in crowds.

  “Shall we do the reflections?” Dominika Lubin announced after twenty minutes that felt like an hour.

  Frost eyed his mother with a question.

  “It’s a chance for people to share memories,” Janice murmured.

  The parents and the older people in the gathering gravitated to the chairs, and Frost stayed in the back with the rest, which included siblings and children. He spotted Camille Valou, looking wealthy and pained in one of the armchairs. Their eyes met, and her mouth opened slightly in unhappy surprise. He remembered their confrontation and her grieved reaction as she studied the inscription on the back of Melanie’s real watch. La rêveuse.