The Crooked Street

19

Coyle lived and worked on the upper floor of a two-story office building tucked among the industrial warehouses of Toland Street. His neighbors were electrical supply companies and food storage facilities. It was nearly midnight when Frost arrived, and the area was a ghost town of overhead electrical wires, corrugated metal walls, and empty loading docks. The only noise was the thunder of traffic on the elevated lanes of the 280 freeway a few blocks away.

The building entrance was locked. He squinted to see a stairwell inside. Tall glass windows stretched along the offices on the first floor, but there were no lights. He pounded on the door, and not long after, he saw Coyle’s doughy frame as the detective hustled downstairs and let him into the building.

“This is an interesting location,” Frost said.

“Yeah, a buddy of mine owns the place. He was having trouble leasing the upstairs space after the last tenant went belly up. He lets me have it cheap, at least until he finds somebody else.”

Coyle trotted up the stairs, and Frost followed. The first door in the drab corridor had a sign announcing COYLE INVESTIGATIONS. The detective showed him into a small anteroom. Coyle’s PI license was framed and hung above a tweed sofa. It looked like an office for someone who’d watched too many detective movies.

“It’s not much to look at, but clients don’t usually come here,” Coyle told him. “I usually go to them.”

He opened another door and led Frost into a larger room where Coyle obviously worked and slept. All the walls were covered in cheap wood paneling. Frost saw a messy twin bed shoved in one corner, a refrigerator, and a bathroom not much bigger than a phone booth. Two rectangular card tables were pushed together in the middle of the floor and covered with papers and books. There was a desk against the wall with an old Gateway computer and an electronic setup that included three monitors. On the screens, Frost could see video surveillance feeds of the street and parking lot surrounding the building. The windows in the office were covered over with plywood, making the space claustrophobic.

Coyle popped open the refrigerator door. “You want a beer? I’ve got Coors. I’m not into all the IPAs and microbrews.”

“No, thanks.” Frost nodded at the wooden barriers over the windows. “You’re taking some pretty serious precautions against spies.”

“I suppose you think I’m paranoid.”

Frost took a seat on a fold-up chair. “Well, I’m not sure you’re wrong to be cautious. I’ve already been followed myself.”

Coyle straddled one of the other chairs and smoothed down his thinning hair. “I knew I wasn’t crazy. Somebody’s been watching me, too.”

“Do you know who?”

“I don’t, but I think there’s more than one. Like a network.” Coyle leaned forward, and his heavy face was flushed. “I was wrong, wasn’t I? We’re not talking about a serial killer.”

“No.”

“Then what the hell is this, Inspector?”

“I don’t know yet, but I’m pretty sure you’ve latched on to something big.”

Coyle looked pleased with the compliment. “So what do you think it means that I saw this girl Fawn talking to Alan Detlowe?”

“It could explain why Detlowe was killed,” Frost replied. “According to her sister, Fawn was upset about the death of her friend Naomi and wanted to do something about it. Then you saw Fawn talking to Detlowe and he wound up with his throat cut. I checked the dates. All of this happened within a one-week span. The timing can’t be coincidental.”

Coyle rubbed the whiskers on his chin. “You think Fawn asked Detlowe to look into Naomi’s death?”

“Could be. Then he started asking questions that made somebody nervous. The thing is, you were watching Detlowe that whole time. You were following him after he met with Fawn. So maybe you saw him checking out whatever she told him. That might give us a clue about what he found out.”

Coyle hopped up from the chair. “Okay, let’s grab my Detlowe file. I keep all my cases on flash drives in the library. Notes, photos, videos, everything.”

“Your library? Where’s your library?”

Coyle’s eyebrows danced, and he gave Frost a little smirk. The detective went to the wood-paneled wall and tapped the base of one of the panels with the toe of his shoe. The panel clicked open and moved aside like an accordion, revealing a door built into the wall.

“Come on, Coyle,” Frost laughed. “A hidden door? Really?”

“Hey, I have to have some fun.”

Coyle opened the next door and flicked on the overhead fluorescent lights in the adjacent room. Frost followed him inside and saw that the next room was at least three times larger than Coyle’s office. The space stretched to the far wall of the building. As in the office, the windows were nailed shut with heavy plywood, so the only light was from overhead. The room was a combination of library and gaming space. Built-in bookshelves lined three of the walls, stocked with hundreds of mystery and science fiction novels dating back decades. There was a huge array of collectible Hot Wheels cars on some of the shelves, too. The fourth wall featured a large flat-screen television with virtual-reality goggles slung over the screen. Frost saw a set of golf clubs, a putting green, and a treadmill that was being used to store boxes of DVDs and VHS tapes.

“You realize you’re the ultimate nerd, don’t you?” Frost asked.

“Guilty,” Coyle admitted.

He crossed the concrete floor of the large library to a shelf that contained shoeboxes labeled by year. He opened a box marked three years earlier and dug inside it until he came out with a thumb drive labeled with black marker.

“This is what I gathered on Detlowe,” he said. “Let’s check it out.”

They returned to the office. Coyle still had the thumb drive in his hand.

That was when the computer monitors and the office lights all went out simultaneously with an electrical pop. The machines sighed as they switched off. With the windows shuttered by plywood, they were in total darkness. There was absolutely no light at all.

“Power’s out,” Coyle announced, his voice oddly disconnected from his body.

“Does that happen a lot?” Frost asked.

“No, it’s weird. I can’t remember when it last happened.”

Frost dug in a pocket for his phone and switched it to flashlight mode, throwing a beam of light between the two of them. Coyle’s round face was a worried mess of shadows.

“Do you think it’s them?” Coyle asked.

“We better find out.”

Frost used the glowing screen to guide them to the anteroom, which was brighter because the outside window was uncovered. He switched off the phone to avoid highlighting their location and crept to the side of the window. The streetlights up and down the block were still on.

“It’s just us,” he said. “The power’s on everywhere else.”

Coyle came up beside him and stood directly in front of the glass, and Frost grabbed his arm and yanked him away.

“Don’t stand where anyone can see you,” Frost warned him.

“What do we do?” Coyle murmured, his voice cracking with anxiety. The game was over. This was real.

“Stay here. I’ll go downstairs and check it out.”

Frost went to the office door and shined a light up and down the hallway. It was empty. He crept to the stairwell. The glass door on the first floor let in enough light from the street to confirm that no one was waiting in the lobby below him. He went down the steps and slipped through the outer door and used an empty soda cup to keep the door from locking.

He followed the walkway to the curb. His Suburban was the only vehicle in sight. The overhead streetlights made a glowing white trail down the block. He checked the driveway next to the building, but it was fenced off by a gate topped with barbed wire. He was alone. The city felt like a ghost town here.

The midnight air had turned colder. The wind blew down the lonely street with a growl. Frost retraced his steps to the front of the building, and that was when he saw that one of the downstairs windows had been shattered, leaving broken fragments around the frame. Someone was already inside. He dashed back through the front door and took the stairs two at a time.

“Coyle?” Frost hissed from the hallway.

The detective didn’t reply.

Frost stopped where he was. He reached inside his jacket for his gun. He pressed against the wall and moved sideways toward the open doorway of the anteroom. Faint light from the window spilled into the corridor. He squatted and snapped around the corner. No one was there.

The door to Coyle’s inner office was open. He called Coyle’s name again, but the detective still didn’t answer.

Frost approached the doorway step by step with his gun leading the way. When he was almost there, he took shelter behind the wall and switched the light of his phone quickly on and off. The glow of white light attracted no attention. He spun past the door frame and used his phone to survey the room. The small office was empty. Coyle wasn’t there, but he noticed that the wooden panel concealing the hidden door into the library wasn’t fully latched.

He put his phone back in his pocket.

Frost slid back the accordion panel silently. The inner door was closed. He stood clear of the doorway and reached around to twist the knob with one hand and push the door open several inches.

“Coyle?” he called again.

No answer.

The interior of the library was blacker than night. So was the office where Frost was standing. He couldn’t see inside, and if anyone was waiting for him in the library, they couldn’t see out. He held his breath, not wanting to make a sound. He listened to his senses for any noise, any smell, that would tell him that the room wasn’t empty. He heard only one thing, faintly.

It was a slow, terrible, intermittent drip splattering on the floor. He remembered the layout of the room and could think of only one thing that would be dripping inside the library.

Blood.

Frost got down on his hands and knees. He crawled with agonizing slowness through the doorway, avoiding every noise. He was utterly blind. The room was a coffin, devoid of light. He reached out with his hands, feeling his way into the larger space of the library. With each movement, he stopped. If someone was here with him, they were frozen, too. Waiting.

He crawled and reached out, crawled and reached out.

Something dripped again. Very close by. The sheer silence around him made it sound loud.

His hand bumped against the warmth of skin. There was a body on the floor. He traced the fingers of a hand and followed the arm until he reached the face. His knuckles scratched against the stubble of a weak beard. It was Coyle, lying on his back, head turned sideways. Frost went to check the detective’s pulse, but when he did, his fingers sank into a sea of blood. He recoiled, clamping his mouth shut. Coyle’s neck had been cut, viciously and deeply, nearly decapitating him. His arteries had already bled out. Frost bent to the man’s chest to listen for a heartbeat and heard none.

Coyle was dead.

Frost didn’t have time to feel regret. He knew he wasn’t alone in the room. Coyle’s murderer was here with him, too. Silent and deadly, hidden somewhere, invisible in the darkness.

Frost eased himself to his feet and backed away from the body. It didn’t matter whether his eyes were open or closed; he couldn’t see anything. He backed up until he felt bookshelves pressing into his back. At least he knew no one was behind him now. He extended his gun in one hand and slid out his phone, but before he could turn on the screen, the folds of his jacket snagged on something on the shelf behind him. A small object rolled and fell. Even as it slipped off the bookshelf, Frost knew what it was. One of Coyle’s Hot Wheels cars.

The toy clanged to the ground, giving him away. Instantly, he felt a whip of air from his left side. He turned, pointing his gun, but he wasn’t fast enough. Someone crashed into him, taking him to the floor and knocking away his gun and phone. A wildly aimed knife sliced through the air and cut into his jeans and skin. Frost gasped with pain and rolled. The knife came down again, but it missed this time and struck against the concrete floor with a metallic clatter.

Frost kicked hard. He got lucky. The blow landed, yielding a grunt of breath, but by the time he threw himself toward the sound, the killer had already moved. Frost pushed himself up. The cut on his leg stung. Blood pulsed down his skin. He tried not to breathe, but the exertion made his chest demand oxygen. He had to inhale. As soon as he did, the noise brought his assailant charging through the darkness and landing against his torso like a battering ram. Frost staggered backward. He heard the swish of the knife again and ran blindly, coughing as he tried to suck air back into his lungs. He zigzagged, hearing footsteps chasing him, and collided with the wall. Boxes flew, and books tumbled around him.

Another assault barely missed him as he dove free. The entire bookshelf toppled with a crash.

Frost skidded across the floor and stopped. So did the other person. He could hear breathing in the room, but the noise came from everywhere and nowhere in the darkness. His senses began to play tricks on him. He was seeing things when he couldn’t see anything at all. Shapes moved. False lights fooled his eyes. Frost stretched out his arms and felt nothing at the end of his reach. He took a few silent steps and reached out again.

Nothing.

And again.

Then he felt something cool and leathery under his hands and realized it was Coyle’s golf bag. It toppled away from his grasp and fell with an obscene noise. He ducked away from the sound, but as he did, he slipped on something under his feet and hit the ground. Golf balls rolled wildly around the floor. When he crawled, he came upon the clubs that had spilled from the leather bag.

Frost grabbed a golf club and stood up. He swung it through the darkness like a baseball bat, causing a ripple of air. He moved and swung it again. He kept swinging over and over, making fast, vicious circles.

There he was.

The club slammed hard against the other person in the room and produced a howl of pain. Frost dropped the club and landed a blow with his fist. And another. Then a foot shot into Frost’s stomach with the impact of a brick and threw him off his feet. His skull hit the concrete. Even in blackness, the room spun; he could feel his brain doing somersaults. Nausea rose in his throat.

He didn’t have much time. The man was coming for him. He skittered backward along the floor, and as his hands scraped across the concrete, a miracle happened.

His fingers closed over his gun.

Frost scrambled to his feet. With no hesitation, he rammed back the slide and fired. He couldn’t see anything but a kaleidoscope in the orange flash. He fired again. And again. The noise of running footsteps banged on the floor. And again. And again. The man was getting away. He fired wildly as the door opened somewhere in the spinning darkness. He fired twice more, causing blows of thunder in his ears, but he was alone with the echoes now. He’d missed; the killer was gone. He stood there, breathing hard, as sweat poured down his face.