The Night Bird

22

Fog chased Frankie into the coastal hills.

She took the southbound 280 freeway out of the city, then merged west onto Highway 1, the road that hugged the California coast all the way from Santa Barbara to Crescent City. It was twilight. The deep-blue sky darkened to black minute by minute. The fog made the ocean invisible below her, and its first threads feathered across the highway as the cloud moved inland.

The address that Todd Ferris had given her was on the coast in the small town of Pacifica. She didn’t know if the address was fake — like the phone number — but she needed to find Todd again and find out what else he remembered from inside that white room.

The highway cut through green hills. She saw gnarled trees that grew sideways under the assault of gusts off the Pacific. Damp chill worked its way inside her car. A few drops of rain spit on her windshield. More fog washed across the road, playing games with her eyes, and she slowed and squinted to follow the curves that wound like a snake. The trees on the hills became ghosts. Milky parkland surrounded her, appearing and disappearing.

Frankie glanced in her rearview mirror. The headlights of another car came and went in the cloud. The car hung back, keeping a steady distance behind her. She had a strange feeling about it. She liked having company on the treacherous road, and yet a paranoid voice in her head made her wonder if she was being followed.

As she neared Pacifica, the GPS advised her to turn in a quarter mile, but the road to Todd Ferris’s apartment was barely an alley, and she missed it in the fog. She kept going to the next turn that led toward Rockaway Beach. Pacifica by the water was no more than a jumble of buildings and a few dead-end streets. Mist blurred the beach road, and a few gauzy lights shined in the windows of the local motel.

She glanced behind her again. No headlights. Whoever had shadowed her route was gone.

Frankie drove to within spitting distance of the ocean and then turned on a narrow road. She drove three hundred feet back to the alley she’d missed on Highway 1 and turned again toward the beach. The pavement was water stained. Trees leaned over the lane and made a tunnel. She followed the alley until it opened up at a parking lot by the water.

It was nearly dark now. As Frankie got out of her car, the wind cut through her light jacket and made her shiver. Waves thundered and broke in whitecaps, surging toward the seawall. Tide was high. Spray and foam landed on her face. She could barely see the coastal headlands silhouetted on the sky. Next to her was a drab three-story apartment building facing the water. That was where Todd said he lived.

The beach parking lot was empty. She was alone.

Or was she?

She heard something above the roar of the ocean that sounded like a car engine in the alley. She stared at the darkness, back where she’d come, and saw a momentary flash of headlights. Then they went off. So did the noise of the engine.

With her hands shoved in her jacket pockets, Frankie marched to the apartment building. There was no entrance on the beach side. She stood in front of a low wall surrounding the building that dropped into a recessed parking lot. The building itself was built on concrete stilts because of its proximity to the water. She swung her legs over the wall and jumped, landing three feet below her.

She headed for the underground entrance to the apartment building, but it was locked. There was a panel with buttons for the various apartments, and she found the button that matched the apartment number on Todd’s patient information form. Number 305. She pushed the buzzer.

There was no answer.

She waited and tried again, but no one replied through the speakerphone or opened the lock to let her inside. No one was home.

She dug in her purse for pen and paper and taped a note to the door.

Frankie felt vulnerable here. She navigated the dark parking lot quickly, eyeing the cars around her. By the time she found the steps to the street, she was practically running, and her breathing came fast and sharp. She pushed between two overgrown spruce trees near the building door and bolted back to the mouth of the alley. On her left was the parking lot. On her right, the tiny street disappeared into the fog toward Highway 1.

That was when she heard it. The voice. High-pitched and terrifying, but no louder than a whisper above the wind.

“Fran-kie... Fran-kie...”

It came from everywhere and nowhere. She froze. Fear rippled up and down her skin. Mist blew in front of her eyes, and spiny tree branches in the alley knocked together with each cold gust. She stared into the fog and listened for the voice again. It was night, and that was when the Night Bird came out to sing.

Frankie held her breath. She heard nothing, only the wind and the hypnotic thunder of the waves. The more time passed, the more she believed that her brain had conjured the voice. It wasn’t real. She clutched her purse tighter on her shoulder and headed for her car. She made a point to walk, not run, but every few steps, she glanced behind her, peering through the cloud. She was alone. When she reached her car, she got inside and immediately locked the door. Her hands were trembling.

She switched on the engine. Her headlights lit up the rocks on the seawall, and she screamed.

Todd Ferris was standing in front of her car.

Her hand jumped to the gearshift. She wanted to put the car in reverse and drive away, but she didn’t. Todd stared at her through the windshield, and she stared back at him. He didn’t move. There was something in his eyes that made her uncomfortable. Grief. Confusion. Anger. She realized that she didn’t know him at all. Even so, he was the man she’d come to see.

Frankie shut down the car and got out. Todd stayed where he was, so she walked toward the beach. His feet were in the sand. The black water rolled in behind him. His thin brown hair was wet.

“Dr. Stein,” he said, so softly that she could barely hear him. “I thought that was you.”

“I rang the bell at your apartment, but there was no answer,” she said.

“I was walking on the beach. What are you doing here?”

She listened to his voice before answering. She tried to decide if the strange whisper could have come from him, but it was impossible to be sure. She didn’t even know if she’d really heard it.

“We need to talk, Todd.”

He shrugged and wandered along the boardwalk beside the beach, and she walked beside him. He wore a sweatshirt and shorts and sneakers with no socks. He stared at the ground, with his mouth turned downward in a frown. When they reached a bench, he sat down and put his hands on his knobby knees.

Frankie sat down, too. “I tried calling,” she said. “You put the wrong number on your patient form.”

“What number was it?”

She checked her phone and read it off to him. He shook his head.

“No, sorry. I swapped two of the digits. I do that sometimes. It’s a kind of dyslexia.”

She noticed that he didn’t correct the number for her, and she doubted that he’d made an innocent mistake.

“Where are you working? At the same gaming company?”

“No, I couldn’t take the boss anymore. I do freelance tech work now. There’s a start-up company launched by a couple SF State alums. It’s kind of an Uber for nerds. I go all over the city doing tech support for various businesses. I like it. I get to set my own schedule.”

“Good for you,” she said.

A wave crashed against the rocks and sent up a fountain of spray that slapped both of their faces.

“So what do you want, Dr. Stein?” Todd asked.

“I want to talk about those memories you’ve been having.”

“I thought you didn’t believe me,” he said.

“Things have happened.”

His head swiveled. In the darkness, she couldn’t make out his eyes. “I know. I saw the news. I saw what they said about you. Another woman died last night, and she was one of your patients. Like all the others.” He added, after a long pause, “Like me.”

She nodded. “That’s right.”

“Of course, this couldn’t be about what you did to me. You were sure about that.” His soft voice was thick with sarcasm.

“I didn’t do anything to you, Todd.”

“Then why is this happening to me?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know.”

“Ask me the question,” he said. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? You want to know if I saw this latest woman. The one on the news. You want to know if I remember her, too.”

“Do you?”

Todd lay his head back and stared at the sky. She could see the profile of his long nose and jutting chin. “Yes.”

“What do you remember?”

“Needles,” he said.

Frankie felt a little shock of electricity in her body. “What?”

“The woman was terrified of needles.”

“How do you know that?”

He looked at her again. “I remember it.”

“Tell me more. What else do you remember?”

Todd was silent. He stood up from the bench. Nervously, he looked up and down the dark boardwalk. “No, I have to go. I need to get out of here. This shit is going to get me in trouble.”

She reached up and held his arm. “Please, Todd. I can’t say anything to anyone about what you saw. Whatever you tell me is bound by privilege.”

“Not if you think I’m dangerous.”

“Are you?”

Todd didn’t answer immediately. He sat down again. “I’m losing time, Dr. Stein. I’m missing days. I wake up, and I don’t know where I’ve been or how I got there. Hours will be gone. Sometimes the whole day. It’s happened twice this week. All I know is that when I wake up, I have these memories stuck in my head.”

“The white room,” Frankie said.

“Yes. And the women being tortured.”

“When did this last happen?”

“I woke up Saturday morning. Early. It was five in the morning. I was under a blanket like some homeless guy on the steps of an industrial building in Dogpatch. I have absolutely no idea how I got there. That was when I decided to track you down. I drove to the place by the bridge where you said you liked to run, and I waited to see if you showed up.”

“How much time did you miss? What’s the last thing you remember?”

He closed his eyes. His face twisted into a grimace. “I was at a bar near City College on Thursday night. Really late. I was pretty drunk. I don’t remember if I blacked out or what. Next thing I knew, it was Saturday. When I went back, I found my car still parked near the bar.”

“And you don’t remember anything in between?” Frankie asked.

“Just that woman’s face. The one who died. I don’t know where I was, but I’m sure I was with her.”

“Had you ever seen her before?”

Todd shook his head. “No.”

“Are you sure?”

He dug in his pocket and removed something small and plastic, which he rubbed between his fingers. “Yeah, I’m sure. I’ve been watching for these women. To see if they showed up anywhere.”

“What do you mean?”

“The first time this happened was a couple months ago. The woman I saw — I knew she died. I saw it online a few days later. She went crazy at a wedding and shot herself. I didn’t know her, but I remembered her, and that scared the hell out of me. I began to get paranoid. I didn’t know what was happening to me. So ever since then, I’ve been keeping records.”

“What kind of records?” she asked.

“Wherever I go, I shoot a video of the people in the room.” He held up the plastic object, which was a small USB flash drive. “I figured, if this happened again, I could go back and see if I’d met this woman somewhere. You know, like at a bar or diner or wherever. I went through the videos today. As far as I can tell, I never crossed paths with any of these women. But somehow I know them, and they’re all dead.”

Frankie was silent. Then she said, “May I take the flash drive and look at it myself?”

His fist closed over it. “I don’t know.”

“I won’t show anyone else. I won’t tell the police.”

He shrugged, and his fingers uncurled. She took the flash drive from his palm.

“Thank you, Todd.”

“You won’t find them,” he said. “The women aren’t in there.”

“It’s okay, I believe you.” She added, “There’s a phrase I’d like to say out loud. I want to know if it means anything to you. Or if you’ve heard it before.”

“What is it?”

Frankie didn’t know if she should go on. She wondered how he would react. “The Night Bird,” she said.

He turned and stared at her. He didn’t say anything. She couldn’t read his eyes.

“Todd?” she continued. “Does anything pop into your head when I mention the Night Bird? Any kind of memory?”

“No,” he said softly, but his voice quavered.

“Nothing at all?”

“No. Why?”

She hesitated, because she didn’t think he was being honest. The Night Bird did mean something to Todd. He looked unsettled, as if he wanted to run. “I think a psychopath is deliberately killing these women. Somehow he’s programming their minds for extreme, self-destructive behavior. He calls himself the Night Bird. Do you have any idea who that could be?”

He leaned closer to her. She was conscious of the fact that they were on a lonely beach with no one else around. If he wanted to do something to her, he could.

“You think it’s me, don’t you?” he asked. “You think I’m the Night Bird.”

“I have no idea.”

“Well, here’s the thing, Dr. Stein. I’m scared that it’s me, too.”