The Crooked Street

5

Frost needed to get out of his wet clothes. He didn’t think that Coyle was going to run, but he wasn’t going to take any chances. He handcuffed the private investigator to the iron railing on the patio while he went upstairs to take a shower. When he’d changed, he returned to the patio and released him.

“So is it safe to talk outside?” Frost asked with a sarcastic smile. “No bugs?”

Coyle rubbed the kinks out of his wrist where the cuff had pinched his skin. “I guess it’s okay.”

“Then tell me what you were looking for inside my house.”

It wasn’t entirely accurate to call it his house. The house actually belonged to Shack, which made it one of the odder living arrangements in the city. Frost had adopted the cat from an older woman who’d been killed in the upstairs bedroom, and her will had made the house available nearly rent-free to whoever agreed to keep Shack there. So Frost now had a home in an exclusive neighborhood that wasn’t really his home at all.

“You won’t believe me when I tell you,” Coyle replied.

“Try me.”

“A snake,” Coyle said.

“A snake? Why would you expect to find a snake in the house? And what does this have to do with a serial killer?”

“It’s not a real snake. It’s a painting of a snake. It’s not large, maybe a foot by a foot, and it’s always done in red spray paint. Wherever this killer strikes, he leaves the same kind of snake painting near the crime scene. It’s like his calling card. So far, I’m the only one who’s figured it out.”

Frost had no time for conspiracy theories. “That sounds pretty crazy, Coyle.”

“I know it does. I didn’t believe it at first, either.”

“How many of these snakes have you found?”

“Eleven,” Coyle replied.

“Eleven?” Frost exclaimed, unable to hide his surprise.

“That’s right. Eleven victims, eleven snakes.”

Frost rubbed his beard and studied the earnest naivete on Coyle’s face. The detective still sounded crazy, but the number eleven had Frost’s attention. “Well, do you have any idea who this so-called serial killer is?”

“No. Some killers like the chase, but not this one. He’s smart. He doesn’t brag to the cops or the media about what he’s doing. I haven’t identified any pattern in how he picks his victims. The only thing each murder has in common is the snake he leaves behind.”

Frost wandered to the edge of the patio, which looked north toward the city and the bay. A few early morning sailboats dotted the blue water. “Did you find a snake painting inside my house?”

“No, but your cat interrupted me before I was done searching,” Coyle said, grimacing as he pressed the towel to the cuts on the side of his forehead. “Look, give me fifteen minutes. We can go over the whole place together. If we don’t find anything, fine, I was wrong. But I don’t think I am. Denny Clark is the latest victim of this killer. If he was murdered here, there’s a snake close by.”

“Denny wasn’t murdered inside the house,” Frost told him.

Coyle’s brown eyes widened. “The call on the police band made it sound like he was.”

“He died here, but the assault took place somewhere else.”

“That means I was searching in the wrong place!” Coyle said.

“And by ‘searching,’ you mean breaking and entering, right?”

The private detective blanched. “Look, Inspector, I’m sorry. I got carried away. Can we let bygones be bygones? Please?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“Find me a snake,” Frost said. “Get me some proof that any of this is real.”

Coyle’s head bobbed with enthusiasm. He headed back into the house practically at a run. Below his khakis, he wore neon-yellow sneakers. As heavy as he was, Coyle was surprisingly light on his feet. Frost followed the detective out the front door with an apology to Shack for leaving him behind. At Green Street, Coyle spun in a circle and pointed in different directions.

“Do you know where Clark came from?”

“Up the stairs from Taylor,” Frost replied.

Coyle charged downhill with one hand clutching the iron railing. Dense trees filled the slope with shadows, and the hillside was a sea of mud and dead leaves. Apartment buildings with stucco walls were terraced on the north side of the steps. Coyle stopped to peer through the foliage at every exposed section of stucco wall beyond the greenery.

There was no sign of a red snake.

At the base of the hill, Coyle broke from the trees onto Taylor Street and put his hands on his hips as he examined the buildings around them. When he found nothing, he huffed and puffed to the summit of the next hill, where a sweeping view opened up on the eastern section of the city. The day was perfect, and wind streaked across the hilltop. Coyle again made a point of checking every wall and sidewalk for snakes.

Frost glanced at his watch. Half an hour had already passed, and he was growing impatient with the detective’s quest.

“Come on, Coyle, we’re done here,” Frost said.

Coyle wiped sweat from his forehead and upper lip. He pushed down his hair as the wind flew it like a flag. He took a few steps down the hillside that led through Coolbrith Park. “Ten more minutes. Please.”

“We don’t even know that Denny came up through the park.”

“That’s okay. Look, you can go home if you want. I’ll come back if I find anything.”

Coyle lumbered into the park alone with a determined gait. Frost heaved a sigh and headed after him. The brick stairs went almost straight down, with the bay water and rolling San Francisco hills spread out under the sky. There were no buildings here, just landscaped trees, scrub brush, and spring flowers. The steps ended at the base of the park, and two parallel staircases continued on either side of the thick woodland. Coyle, who had a head start, took the steps on the left. When Frost eventually caught up with him, the detective was resting on a low concrete wall at the dead end of Vallejo. His round face looked glum, and his arms hung limply at his sides. He was breathing heavily at the distance they’d traveled.

“Nothing?” Frost guessed.

“I guess I was wrong. I don’t understand it.”

“Why were you so sure that Denny was a victim of this killer?”

Coyle unhooked his phone from a holster on his belt. He thumbed his way through several pictures and then showed one to Frost. The photograph had been taken aboard the Roughing It, and it showed Denny Clark standing between an attractive thirty-something blond woman and a tall, older man in a tan suit. The man’s face looked familiar, but Frost couldn’t place him.

“This guy next to Denny,” Frost said. “Who is he?”

“His name’s Greg Howell. He was a big real estate developer.”

Frost remembered now. “Okay, sure. Howell died a few months ago.”

“That’s right. Howell was the last snake victim. Until Denny Clark.”

“Howell had a heart attack while he was jogging in Golden Gate Park,” Frost pointed out. “He wasn’t murdered.”

“Well, that’s the story, but I don’t believe it. I found a red snake on the trail just fifty yards from where his body was found. His death was made to look like a heart attack, but I’m telling you, he was killed.”

Frost was having a hard time deciding whether Coyle was serious or whether he belonged on the other side of Area 51 with his nose pressed against the fence. “And you’ve really found eleven of these snakes?”

“Right. Each one was within a stone’s throw of some unusual death. I did my research. I talked to neighbors. I found online photos. As far as I can tell, the snake paintings all showed up right after the person died.”

“Have you found anything that ties the victims together?”

“Not until now. When I was looking into Greg Howell’s death, I found this photo on Facebook, and I identified Denny Clark through the boat. When I heard the police report about his murder, I didn’t think it could be a coincidence. I figured, maybe this case would finally give me a clue about who the killer is and how he picks his victims.”

Frost took a look at the photograph again. “Who’s the blond woman with Denny and Howell?”

“I don’t know. I was never able to identify her.”

Frost handed the phone back to Coyle. “The snake thing is weird, I’ll give you that, but this is San Francisco, Coyle. Nobody ever had to start a campaign to Keep San Francisco Weird.”

“At least look into it,” Coyle urged him. “Please.”

“Right now, my priority is Denny Clark. If I have time, I’ll see what I can find about the other victims on your list. I’ll keep an eye out for connections to my case. That’s all I can promise.”

“Thank you, Inspector.”

“I have to head home,” Frost said. “You coming with me?”

Coyle looked over his shoulder at the steep hill. “I need to rest before tackling that monster again.”

“Okay. See you, Coyle. And stay out of other people’s houses from now on.”

Frost got up and made his way to the stairs that led into the park. Without thinking about it, he headed for the opposite set of steps from the one they’d taken down. The street around him was a mess of cigarette butts, and the mortar in the low retaining wall was pockmarked, as if it had been used for target practice. As he turned the corner, he glanced toward his feet. Then he froze.

He called to Coyle. “Hey, you better get over here.”

Frost squatted in front of the wall, studying the bright-red painting he’d found there. He drew a finger across the graffiti. The paint was dry but looked fresh.

It was a snake.

The head was enlarged, with empty spaces to mark its slitted eyes and a forked tongue spitting sideways from wide-open jaws. The braided body twisted and turned all the way to its tail, which ended in the coils of a rattle. The blood-red snake glared at him like a warning. It looked like a harbinger of death.

But Frost realized it looked like something else, too.

The ripples of the snake’s body wound back and forth through a series of sharp turns. He counted exactly eight turns from head to tail.

Just like the hill at Lombard Street.