The Night Bird

2

Frost Easton of the San Francisco Police leaned between the cables of the Bay Bridge and stared down. In the water, Coast Guard searchlights crisscrossed the waves. They’d been there for an hour, but the body of Brynn Lansing remained hidden among the frothy whitecaps. Eventually, he knew, she would make landfall. Jumpers from the Golden Gate sometimes washed into the Pacific and were never found, but the more inland Bay Bridge usually returned its victims.

He knew hydrologists at the state college who analyzed the bay currents and made wagers on when and where the bodies would turn up. It was never smart to bet against them.

Frost got up on the tips of his shoes. The wind buffeted his body, making him unsteady. His short, slicked-back hair, which was a messy mix of gold and dark brown, loosened into tufts on his high forehead. He frowned as he thought about the young woman, falling, and the black water sucking her in. Five seconds was all it took to end a life.

“Could you not do that?”

He looked down at the voice below him. His lean, tall body was still halfway over the bay. The witness to the incident sat in Brynn Lansing’s Camaro convertible. She stared straight ahead, her body rigid with fear.

“What?” Frost asked.

“Could you please not do that? Lean over the edge like that? It makes me want to throw up.”

Frost climbed down to the bridge deck. He strolled to the passenger door of the Camaro ten feet away. His dark blazer flapped like a cape in the wind, and his tie blew over his shoulder. He knelt beside the door and balanced his bearded chin on his hands. The girl had a sweet face behind her tears and terror.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know this must be terrible for you.”

“I thought she was teasing me.”

“What do you mean?” Frost asked.

“Brynn. I thought she was just making fun of me because I was so afraid to be stuck up here. I was freaking out.”

Frost nodded. “What is it that scares you? The height?”

“It’s the bridge, actually.”

“I’ve heard of that. Gephyrophobia, isn’t that what they call it? Fear of bridges?”

“Yes. You’re right.” She looked surprised that he knew what it was called.

“I guess everybody has something like that,” Frost told her. “With me, it’s frogs. Those slimy little things just scare the crap out of me.”

He smiled at her. He had a warm, slightly off-balance smile, and his blue eyes were lasers that never left her face. His thick blond-flecked eyebrows matched his trimmed beard. He stared at the girl until her head inched to the right, and she stared back with an empty expression. She was traumatized, like a robot with the power switched off.

“It’s Lucy, right?” he asked her.

“Yes.”

“Lucy what?”

“Lucy Hagen.”

“Okay, Lucy, I’m Frost. I’m with the police. And I’m going to get you off this bridge just as soon as I possibly can, but I have to ask you some questions about what happened.”

“Okay.”

Frost pointed at a black SFPD Chevy Suburban parked on an angle between a police squad car and an ambulance. “Would you mind if we talked in my car? I’ve got forensics people who need to get evidence in the Camaro, and we can’t really do that with you in it, see what I mean?”

Lucy stared at her lap. “Well, I’d love to get out of this car, except for one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“I can’t move,” she said.

Frost stood up and rubbed a hand over his beard. “You can’t move at all?”

“No. I can turn my head, but my arms and legs don’t work.”

Frost gestured to one of the uniformed ambulance workers. Lucy shook her head as she saw a paramedic coming closer.

“There’s nothing physically wrong with me,” she told him. “This has happened before. I’ll be fine as soon as I’m off the bridge. Sometimes the fear just overwhelms me, and my body shuts down.”

“We’ll take you to the hospital and get you checked out,” Frost said.

“I don’t need to go to the hospital. I just need to get off the bridge.”

“Well, unless you start moving soon, you’re going to the hospital, Lucy. It’s kind of a rule we have. Last time I left a woman paralyzed in the middle of the Bay Bridge, my lieutenant got really pissed at me.”

He smiled again. His cheeks and eyes had deep laugh lines. This time, Lucy’s mouth twitched upward into a shy smile of her own, and a blush deepened on her face.

“Please just get me out of this car,” she said. “I dragged myself back here after Brynn went over the side, and then I couldn’t move. It’s been an hour. I’m really cold.”

“I can carry you if you’d like. Or I could ask one of the EMTs to do it.”

“Do whatever you have to do,” Lucy said. “As long as I don’t have to watch. I can’t look over the edge.”

Frost opened the passenger door of the Camaro. Lucy Hagen was small, maybe five foot three. Her shoulder-length brunette hair had been mussed into tangles by the wind. She wore a long-sleeve gray shirt untucked over black tights, with calf-high boots. He guessed that she was no more than twenty-five years old. Life was about perspective; to Frost, at thirty-four, twenty-five sounded young. Her skin was creamy, her large brown eyes sunken by darker moons underneath. She had lips that pushed out from her mouth in a permanent pucker, and her lipstick was deep red. Her rounded nose was slightly too large for her face, but she was pretty.

Lucy closed her eyes. Frost leaned down to her waist and lifted her effortlessly. She was as limp as a sack of Chinatown rice. He hoisted her so that her torso nudged over his shoulder and carried her the short distance to his Suburban. With one hand, he opened the passenger door, and then he gently draped her inside. When he went around to the other side of the truck and got behind the wheel, her big eyes were open, and she was staring at him.

“Thank you.”

“No problem,” Frost said. He turned on the engine. Heat surged from the vents. “How are you feeling?”

“It’s better inside. The convertible makes the bridge thing worse.”

“That makes sense.” He tugged the knot to tighten his tie and smoothed his hair down as much as he could. It was still messy as it swept back high on his forehead, but messy worked for him. His hair was buzzed short on the sides of his head, emphasizing his small ears. “Can you move yet?”

“No, but I’m sure the feeling will come back soon.”

“Okay. Can you tell me what happened out there?”

“Brynn went nuts,” Lucy said. “That’s what happened.”

“Nuts how?”

“We were stuck in traffic. I was scared because of the bridge, but Brynn was fine. Joking, singing. Totally normal. And then she turned psycho. It came out of nowhere. She was screaming, going crazy, clawing at herself. She tried to climb the bridge, like she was being chased, and she fell. It was horrible.”

“Did she fall or did she jump?”

“I think she fell. I mean, she wasn’t trying to kill herself. This was something else, but I don’t know what it was.”

“Did she say anything while this was going on?”

“No, she never said a word. She just screamed.”

“Where were the two of you coming from?” Frost asked.

“A party in Alameda.”

“Was Brynn drinking at the party? Did she take any drugs?”

Lucy shook her head firmly. “No drugs. That wasn’t her thing. Brynn had a martini at the party, but that was it.”

“Could someone have slipped something into her drink?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. There are freak jobs who will do anything. But she seemed fine as we were driving home.”

Frost didn’t say anything for a while. He was making connections. “Do you know a woman named Monica Farr? Or do you know if Brynn did?”

“Monica Farr? I don’t think so.”

He slid his iPhone from his belt clip and swished through a few photos. He showed Lucy a picture of a young redhead. “Do you recognize this woman?”

“No. Who is she?”

Frost didn’t answer. “How well did you know Brynn?”

“Pretty well. We’ve been roommates for a year. We both worked at Macy’s.”

“Did she seem depressed or unstable? Did you notice any other instances of erratic behavior?”

“Brynn? No way. She’s Mary McCheery. Nothing gets her down. If anything, she’s been even happier the past few months. She’s dating a guy, and I think she felt like he might be the one, you know? Wedding bells. She’s been sleeping over at his place a lot. I didn’t see her the past couple of nights.”

“What’s the boyfriend’s name?” Frost asked.

“Gabriel Tejada. He’s an attorney in Sausalito.”

“How’d they meet?”

“He was in Macy’s, buying perfume for his girlfriend before Christmas. She became an ex-girlfriend pretty fast after Gabe met Brynn.”

“Okay.”

Frost paused as he heard a gravelly noise from the far back of the truck. He looked over his shoulder as a noxious cloud wafted into the front seat, making him cover his nose. “Aw, c’mon, Shack, really? Now?”

Lucy’s face scrunched in confusion. Then she screamed as a tiny tuxedo cat flew over the seat and landed on the dashboard of the SUV. It had huge, curious dark eyes, a pink nose, and a black chin set against white cheeks and chest. Its stubby ears ended in white wingtips. The cat cocked its head, snaked a short tail around its paws, and analyzed her face like a psychiatrist.

“Sorry,” Frost told her. “He always waits to hit the litter box until I have someone in the car.”

“Your cat?”

“Yeah, sort of. Long story. This is Shack.”

“Shaq? Like the basketball player?”

“No, Shack as in Ernest Shackleton. The Antarctic explorer.”

“Oh,” Lucy said.

“I’m sort of a history buff. Sorry, are you allergic?”

“No.”

Shack took that as an invitation. He padded from the dashboard onto Lucy’s lap, kneaded her thigh briefly, and stretched across her legs, exposing a black stomach with a single white stripe that looked like an Oreo cookie. The cat was barely a foot from nose to tail. Lucy lifted a hand and stroked under Shack’s chin, and Frost noted the movement in her arm.

“Looks like you’re not paralyzed anymore,” he pointed out.

“Oh!” Lucy exclaimed. She wiggled her fingers. “You’re right. I told you, it’s always temporary.”

“Do you want me to put Shack in the back? I have a carrier for him.”

“No, he’s fine,” Lucy said. “Is he like a police cat? I didn’t know they had such things.”

“No, he’s just a cat cat. He likes to ride along with me sometimes.”

“I thought cats hated cars.”

“Not Shack. He goes everywhere. He’s got the heart of an explorer. Hence the name.”

“I think that’s sweet,” Lucy told him. “I mean, that you take him with you.”

“Yeah, homicide inspectors. We’re as sweet as they come.”

Lucy’s eyebrows arched. “Homicide?”

“That’s my department. We look at any death that’s considered suspicious. Based on what you’re telling me, Brynn’s behavior is way out of character for her, and I’d like to know what caused it.”

“Have you seen anything like this before?” Lucy asked.

Frost hesitated. “Extreme behavior usually makes me think about PCP or certain synthetics. What you’re describing sounds like a severe hallucinogenic reaction.”

“I’m telling you, Brynn never did drugs,” Lucy insisted. “Not even a joint. She was a vegan. ‘My body is a temple.’ That kind of crap.”

“Did she smoke?”

“No.”

“And did you notice anything unusual prior to her breakdown?” Frost asked. “Did anything strange happen while you were stuck on the bridge?”

“No, nothing at all.” Lucy chewed her lower lip, and her eyebrows squeezed together, making crinkled lines on her forehead. She rubbed Shack’s stomach, and the cat stretched luxuriously with its front and back paws. Shack had very clear likes and dislikes among people, and he’d obviously decided that he liked Lucy Hagen.

“Nothing?” Frost asked, watching her face. “Are you sure?”

Lucy glanced at the other cars around them. A trickle of vehicles pushed westward through the one open lane the police had carved out for traffic. “There was the mask thing. That was odd.”

“The mask thing?”

“There was a car stuck on the bridge with us, and the driver was wearing a creepy mask. At least I thought he was. His window opened and closed so fast that maybe I just imagined it. Brynn didn’t see anything.”

“What kind of mask was it?” Frost asked.

“Scary. Bone white. Big, weird, exaggerated smile, red lips. Fly eyes. The hair was fake, too.”

“It doesn’t sound like you imagined it. Do you remember the car?”

“I want to say it was a Cutlass, but I’m not sure. It had smoked windows. Black, I think.”

“Could the car have been following you after you left the party?”

“I guess. I never looked back, so I don’t know. It’s not like the guy did or said anything while we were stuck on the bridge. He just opened the window and stared at me.”

“You’re sure it was a man?” Frost asked.

“I assume so, but I guess I don’t really know for sure.”

“Did this person get out on the bridge deck when Brynn began behaving strangely?”

Lucy shrugged. “If he did, he didn’t have the mask on. I was too freaked out to notice who came out of which cars. By the time I even thought about it again, the car was gone.”

“Okay.”

“Do you think it means anything?” Lucy asked.

“I don’t know. It’s strange, but the whole thing is strange.” Frost added, “You said you’ve never heard of a woman named Monica Farr. Are you sure about that?”

“Pretty sure. The name doesn’t sound familiar.”

“Have you or Brynn ever been to the San Francisco Film Centre at the Presidio?”

“No, I’ve never been there. I don’t think Brynn has, either, at least not since I’ve known her. Why are you asking me these questions? What does this have to do with Brynn?” When Frost didn’t answer, Lucy went on: “You know I’m just going to Google this woman when I get home.”

Frost knew that was true. There were no secrets anymore.

“Okay, the fact is, Brynn’s not the first person to go crazy like this,” he told her. “Two months ago, a woman named Monica Farr had a similar breakdown during a wedding reception at the Film Centre. She died, too.”