The Voice Inside (Frost Easton Book 2)

by Brian Freeman

  “Excuse me?”

  “Her handwriting was awful. Terrible. She’d write things down, and she couldn’t even read them herself.”

  “So what?”

  Frost walked over to the dining room table on the other side of the kitchen. He came back with the receipt from Haight Pizza, which he’d secured in an evidence bag. “Recognize this?”

  Eden did. Her eyes widened in shock but only for a split second before she regained her control.

  “What is that? Where did you get it?”

  “Phil Cutter paid us a little visit overnight. Apparently, Rudy decided a while ago that if he was going down, he was going to take you with him. So Phil dropped off this receipt for me. It’s the receipt Katie wrote to take a pizza to Todd Clary at 415 Parker. The trouble is, by the time the pizza was ready, she didn’t remember the address, and she misread her own handwriting. See what the address actually looks like? She didn’t go west from the restaurant to 415 Parker. She headed east on her way to 415 Baker.”

  Eden said nothing. Nothing at all.

  “And guess who was living at that address back then?” Frost went on. “You.”

  He reached over to the counter behind her and picked up the copy of Eden’s memoir he’d retrieved earlier. He held it up and showed her the author photo on the back cover, which she knew only too well.

  “This is your house on Baker, Eden. This is where you lived. If you look closely, you can even see the house number. 415. So why don’t you tell me how it happened? Was Rudy in the house with you when Katie came to deliver the pizza? Did she see both of you together? She would have recognized you. You were practically a household name at that point. You were on all the talk shows. Katie had read your book. She would have gone on and on about how excited she was to meet you. Did she ask what you were working on? Did she want to be introduced to Rudy Cutter? You must have been panicking. You couldn’t let her leave, could you? She would have told everybody about seeing you.”

  Eden summoned up a fake smile. “Is this the part where I’m supposed to weep and confess?”

  “You can do whatever you want. I already know the truth. I only want to know one thing. Who actually killed Katie? Who actually used the knife? Was it Rudy? Or was it you?”

  Eden took a deep breath. He could see her weighing her options. Trying to figure out how to get out of the maze.

  “Here’s what I want to know, Frost,” she said. “Do you think I’m stupid? I know a bluff when I hear it. A pizza receipt? A coincidence about a delivery address? Good luck with that. You don’t have any proof.”

  “Actually, you already proved it yourself, Eden.”

  “And just how did I do that?”

  “In your new book.”

  He saw her hesitate. “What do you mean?”

  “I know what kind of writer you are. And I know the kind of odd little detail you can’t resist.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like a girl in San Francisco wearing flowers in her hair,” Frost said.

  Eden couldn’t hide the concern on her face. She realized that she’d made a mistake. She just didn’t know why.

  “I read the chapter you wrote about Katie to see if you mentioned the flower tiara she was wearing when she was killed,” Frost went on. “And sure enough, you did.”

  “What difference does that make?” Eden asked. “I saw the crime scene photos.”

  “You should have looked more closely at them. The tiara isn’t in the photos. I took Katie’s tiara with me when I found the body. I’ve had it ever since. That’s my secret. Nobody knew Katie was wearing it. Nobody except me and the two people who killed her. Rudy Cutter and you.”

  Eden laughed.

  It was a cruel, bitter laugh. A laugh of self-disgust. A laugh of giving up. He should have been ready for what she did next, but his emotions had overrun him. He was too consumed with his own rage and grief to stop her. She was fast, and he wasn’t fast enough. Her hand grabbed a plastic jar of chili spice on the counter, which she’d been planning to use in the eggs, and she threw the contents at him. He didn’t even have time to blink. The powder struck his open eyes like a thousand knives. He was instantly blind and in agony, and his hands flew to his face. All he felt was a searing burn as he squinted and tried to see. He staggered backward, and Eden grabbed the frying pan from the stovetop and swung it toward his head. It connected violently, causing a hot explosion that ricocheted inside his skull. She stepped forward and shoved hard on his chest with both hands, and he tumbled backward onto the floor.

  He tried to get up, but his brain was a carnival ride, dizzying him, making him sick. Through his scorched eyes, Eden was a blur. She stood over him, but he couldn’t stop her body from whirling in and out of focus. She knelt on top of him, pressing her knees heavily into his chest. He swung a fist at her, but he missed. Eden bent forward. She had a kitchen knife in her hand now, and she lay the edge against his neck. She pressed it in so far that he could feel his skin tearing and the liquid warmth of blood.

  “Since you’re so curious, Frost,” she told him, “it was me.”

  He struggled to right his mind and clear his eyes. All he needed was a few seconds.

  “Rudy said I’d never understand what it was like to kill someone until I used the knife myself, and he was right. If I was going to write about it, I couldn’t just watch. I had to do it. And you know what? It was exhilarating. Life and death was right there in the palm of my hand. The feeling was so strong it scared me. That’s why I ran back to Australia. I had to get away from what I’d done.”

  Frost kept blinking, and the fire in his eyes eased as tears worked their way down his face. The spinning world began to drift to a stop. He could feel pain popping like fireworks inside his head, but he could see Eden clearly now, leaning over him. Her curls draped forward. The scar on her neck wriggled as she talked. She had one hand propped on the floor and one holding the blade to his throat.

  “It’s a shame I can’t write about this part,” Eden went on. “Because this is a hell of an ending.”

  He saw the muscles in her hand squeezing tightly around the handle of the knife. Their eyes met, lover to lover, killer to victim. This woman was about to cut his throat and watch him die.

  And then something happened.

  Frost heard a noise unlike anything he’d heard in his life. An animal noise, primal and savage, enough to run gooseflesh up a human’s skin, the noise you would hear from a leopard preying in the nighttime jungle. Eden heard it, too, and she froze in confusion. Frost heard thunder on the floor. He saw a lightning flash of motion in black and white.

  It was Shack.

  The cat flew across the room. He leaped, landing squarely on Eden’s head, his front paws on her cheekbones. With claws fully extended almost an inch deep, he ripped eight deep gashes up her face and sliced through her eyeballs. Eden reared back with a guttural wail of anguish. Blood sprayed. The knife vanished from Frost’s neck as her arms flailed. With a wild lunge of her torso, Eden dislodged Shack like a rodeo rider, but simultaneously, Frost slammed a fist into her head and knocked her sideways. He was free.

  He tried to stand, but the room spun, and his knees buckled beneath him. He crashed down again. Eden slashed at him with the knife, and the blade cut a deep, red laceration across the bare skin of his calf. His foot shot out; his heel booted her chin and kicked her backward. She toppled against a pedestal lamp, which fell, and the knife spilled from her hand.

  Frost half crawled, half dragged himself across the room. The dining room table was a few feet away. His gun was on the table.

  Behind him, Eden was on her feet again.

  She had the knife.

  He groped around the smooth wooden surface of the table. Papers flew. His laptop skidded off and dropped. Then he felt it. The metal barrel. His fingers spun the gun around until the grip nestled in his palm. He scooped it up and cocked it; then he collapsed onto his back and pointed the gun across the room.

  “Stop
!”

  Eden charged with the knife high over her head. Her face was streaked with ribbons of skin; her eyes dripped blood like the ruby eyes of a devil. Frost aimed straight up at the ceiling and fired once, cascading plaster dust over the room.

  “Eden, stop!” he shouted again.

  But she came and came.

  He heard the voice of Rudy Cutter.

  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?

  Eden jumped. Her arm swung down; the knife hurtled toward his chest. He rolled away from the blade, but as he did, he fired twice more at point-blank range at the body cascading toward him.

  One shot passed through her neck. The other shot drilled into her forehead.

  She was dead as she hit the ground.

  49

  It was two weeks before Frost had any semblance of his life back. He was in the hospital. He was on television. He was in the interview room at headquarters, grilled by the review board that dealt with officer-involved shootings. By the end, he didn’t even know if he wanted his old life back, but finally, Captain Hayden gave him the all clear and told him he was a free man.

  That was on a Friday night.

  He arrived back on Russian Hill to find Herb waiting for him on the bottom step of the stairs that led up to his front door. His friend wore a white painter’s smock, which was smudged with a variety of colors of fresh paint, and overalls beneath it. His long gray hair had a shiny new set of beads tied into the braids. Frost hadn’t seen him since the shootings.

  Herb got up, putting a hand on his aging hip to steady himself, as Frost pulled up to the garage. He slipped off the painter’s smock and embraced Frost with a smile and a look of relief.

  “You’re a sight for sore eyes,” Herb said.

  “So are you.”

  “How are you doing?” he asked.

  “Fine,” Frost said. “I’m fine.”

  “Everyone’s inside. Act surprised.”

  Frost smiled. “I will.”

  “I made you a little gift,” Herb told him. The smell of paint was the only thing that outweighed the smell of pot on Herb’s clothes. “It’s not completely original, but I think you’ll like it.”

  Frost followed his friend up the stairs. Herb had fashioned a makeshift curtain at the topmost step, and he swept it aside to reveal his latest creation. On the landing, Herb had painted one of his three-dimensional illusions that seemed to rise out of the stonework to guard the door. It was a scene stolen from The Lion King, with Simba as the new king standing atop Pride Rock, ruling over the animals gathered in the savannah below.

  But Simba wasn’t the king of Frost’s front step.

  It was Shack.

  Frost laughed out loud. “Now, that just may be the best work you’ve ever done, Herb.”

  Inside the house, the king greeted him. Shack didn’t understand all the attention he was getting—and he hadn’t appreciated the bath he’d had to have to wash off the blood in his fur—but he was happy to climb up to Frost’s shoulder and stay there as Frost acted surprised by the people waiting to greet him.

  His parents had come back from Arizona again.

  Several of his police colleagues were there.

  So were a dozen family members of the victims.

  Duane was there.

  Tabby was there.

  Frost didn’t like parties, but he put up with it throughout the evening. Everyone else needed this more than he did. They needed a chance to commune and grieve. They needed closure. Duane had made the food, which was amazing; Herb acted as bartender and poured the drinks. Robbie Lubin was an amateur guitarist and singer, and he played a version of “Hallelujah” that had everyone in tears. Frost had a few too many ales and felt the buzz.

  It was dark and nearly midnight before people finally started to leave. They poured out to the street, mostly emptying the house. He said good-bye to Herb. He walked his parents to their rental car, and Ned clapped him in a hug and whispered, “Thank you.” Janice put both hands on Frost’s cheeks and said simply, “I love you.”

  He didn’t think she’d ever said that out loud to him before. He’d always known his mother loved him, but they weren’t the kind of family who actually said it to each other. It was simply understood.

  He liked hearing it.

  When they left, he stood on Green Street by himself for a while. It was December. The trees shook their branches at him in the wind. Holiday lights adorned the windows. It made him think about Christmas as a kid and about coming downstairs before sunrise to find Katie sitting cross-legged in the living room in front of the tree, with her chin propped on her hands, staring at the blinking lights.

  God, he missed her.

  Frost went back inside. Duane and Tabby were still in the kitchen, doing the dishes, although Tabby couldn’t do much; her one arm was in a sling. He took another beer from the cooler and went out to the patio, where the city sparkled below him. Shack hopped up on the table and enjoyed the breeze. He leaned on the railing with his beer, and then he heard the glass door open and close behind him.

  It was Tabby.

  She came up beside him. Their skin brushed together. They were silent for a long time, in the cool darkness, letting San Francisco charm them. Eventually, he extended his beer bottle to her. He felt pleasantly high on the night.

  “Want some?”

  “Can’t,” Tabby said. “You know, shot. I’m still on drugs.”

  “Oh yeah. I shot you.”

  “Just a little,” she replied with a grin.

  “Sorry.”

  “Well, there’s the whole saving-my-life thing, too. You get points for that.”

  “Thanks.”

  Silence lingered easily between them again. Then he said, “Will you be back at work soon?”

  “Not for a while. One-armed chefs aren’t too useful in the kitchen.”

  “Right.”

  Tabby turned around and leaned the other way. So did he. She closed her green eyes; her lips made a peaceful smile. Her chin tilted into the starlight. There was something magical about her in the daylight, but at night, she was perfection.

  He was thinking things he couldn’t afford to think.

  “So you and Duane,” Frost said.

  “Yes, me and Duane.”

  “You wanted to know if he was serious. I guess he answered that question for you.”

  “I guess he did. He surprised me.”

  “Was it a good surprise?” Frost asked.

  “Sure. Of course. I guess.” Tabby blinked and looked away. “I don’t want to talk about that right now. This night is about you, so let’s talk about you. I hide behind jokes, but I never thanked you like I should, Frost. For everything you did.”

  “You don’t need to do that.”

  “Well, good, because there are things that can never be repaid. They’re just there. They just are.”

  “I like that,” Frost said.

  “So how are you?” Tabby asked.

  Everyone had been asking him that. The same question, over and over. He’d given them all the same answer. Fine.

  “I’m not good at all,” he told Tabby.

  She took his hand in the warmth of hers. “I didn’t think you were.”

  “I still wake up thinking about killing her,” he said.

  “She didn’t give you a choice.”

  Frost turned and stared at her and confessed the truth. “I haven’t said this to anyone, but I didn’t want a choice. I wanted to kill her. I’m glad I did.”

  “Maybe that’s true, Frost. I don’t think it is, but it doesn’t matter. She still didn’t give you a choice.”

  He didn’t say anything. All he had to do was close his eyes, and he could see the gun firing and Eden’s body falling. It was the first time he’d killed another human being. It wasn’t something you ever forgot or ever got over.

  “Did you have feelings for her?” Tabby asked.

  “N
o.”

  “But you slept with her, didn’t you?”

  Frost would have given anything to say no, but he nodded. “I did.”

  “I’m sure that makes it worse. I mean, sharing something so intimate with someone who turns out to be evil.”

  “I don’t even know why I did it. I didn’t really like her.”

  “Maybe it was a full moon. I hear that brings out the beast in you.”

  That got him to smile. “Maybe.”

  “You’re not exactly the first guy to listen to his body, not his heart.”

  “That doesn’t mean I’m proud of it.”

  “I know.” She added after a long pause, “The fact is, we can’t control where our hearts take us, either, can we?”

  “No, we can’t.”

  She was still holding his hand. Their eyes didn’t let go of each other, until her lips broke into a faraway smile and she stared at the ground.

  “What about you?” he asked. “How are you?”

  “I’m not so good, either,” she confessed.

  “Because of Cutter?”

  “Yes. And other things.”

  “Like what?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Just things.”

  “Have you talked to anyone about what you went through on the pier?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because the only one who can understand is you.”

  He didn’t know what to say to that. He only knew all the things he wanted to say to her. Those were the things he couldn’t say.

  In front of them, the patio door opened.

  “Well, your kitchen is as good as new,” Duane called out. “You have enough leftovers to last you through Christmas, bro. I also took the liberty of throwing out some things that should not be consumed by people or cats.”

  Frost smiled at him. “Thanks.”

  “Come on, Tabs, we need to rock and roll,” Duane said. “You may be on sick leave, but the food truck and me, we have work to do.”

  Tabby squeezed Frost’s hand and then let go. She walked away without looking at him. Frost and Duane went back inside the house, and Tabby was already gone, leaving the front door open, by the time they reached the foyer. Duane, who was just like their father, grabbed Frost by both shoulders. His effervescence radiated from him every hour of the day. That was just one of the things he loved about his brother.