The Night Bird

33

Darren Newman finally left the warehouse after dark.

Two blocks away, Frankie spotted the lights of the candy-red Lexus as it backed into the empty street. The car shot toward her, and she ducked down into the passenger seat as its headlights swept across her windshield. When he was gone, she turned on her engine, did a U-turn, and followed him away from the pier.

He made a right turn, heading north. She struggled to keep a fix on his taillights in traffic. He drove for several blocks and then pulled into a Shell station. She parked across the street near an auto parts store and watched him from her window. The MUNI tracks divided the street between them. When he was done filling his gas tank, Darren wandered over to a beat-up Malibu parked on the cross street. The passenger window slid down, and Darren leaned inside. Frankie couldn’t see who was in the car, but Darren grabbed his wallet from a back pocket and peeled off several bills. He passed them to someone in the car and received a package in his palm that he quickly secreted in his pocket. He eyed the street and returned to his Lexus.

Drugs.

Frankie wondered what he’d purchased. Marijuana. Pills. Cocaine. Heroin. Or something that could be injected into a woman in a white room.

She pulled behind him as Darren left the gas station. Several blocks later, without a signal, he turned toward the water again. As she followed, she noticed a bar across the street named the Dogpatch Saloon. This was the downscale industrial neighborhood that was quickly being reborn as a hip arts community with yuppie condos.

It was also the neighborhood where Todd Ferris had twice awakened on the streets after his lost time.

Darren headed for the bay past a deserted construction site. Weeds grew out of the cracked street. Just ahead, the road narrowed and veered sharply to the right beside a ten-foot concrete retaining wall. She switched off her headlights, and her wheels rolled forward slowly. Where the street ended, the land near the bay opened up around her. A ruined factory loomed to her left. She saw broken windows punched out like missing teeth and metal walls dripping with rust. Directly ahead, she saw a field of boxy self-storage units protected by a tall fence.

The gate leading through the fence was open. There were no other vehicles around. Darren had to be inside.

Frankie parked near the old factory. She got out, and cold bay air wormed inside her clothes. Wind rattled the factory’s metal walls and whistled through the broken windows. She shoved her hands in her pockets and marched quickly through the open gate. The storage units inside were green and no larger than trailers, dropped down in long rows. Wisps of fog swirled around her. The wind felt as if someone were breathing on her neck. Listening, she heard a bang of metal not far away as a garage door opened and closed. When she hurried to the corner, she spotted Darren’s Lexus backed up against a storage unit. A crack of light glowed from under the door.

She crept closer, feeling exposed. She waited for him in the cold, but time went by slowly, and she heard no noise from inside. Her fingers grew numb, and her cheeks felt raw. When she checked her watch, fifteen minutes had passed, and she wondered how much longer he planned to stay. Then, without warning, the garage door slid up from the ground. Not all the way. Just a few feet. From inside, Darren’s shadow moved like a monster. The lights went off, and she saw Darren squeeze under the open door and lock it behind him.

Frankie dove into the recessed doorway of another storage unit. Darren climbed into his car and headed toward her, throwing light across the wall inches from where Frankie hid. He passed her, driving fast. She ran to follow him, but his car was already gone by the time she reached the open gate. Behind her, she heard a guard shout from the doorway of a small security shack, but she didn’t stop running. When she got to her car, she backed up into an out-of-control three-point turn. The guard, outside the gate, sprinted toward her, but she swerved around him, her lights off. She swung into the narrow street but didn’t turn fast enough, and the stone wall ripped off her side mirror and gouged her door with a sickening scrape. She accelerated, taking the curve in the dark and switching her lights on. She braked hard, turned the wheel again, and found herself back on the street.

Two blocks ahead of her, she spotted taillights.

A light turned red, but she sped through it. Darren’s car turned left on Third Street, heading south, backtracking on his original route. He was in no hurry now, making it easy to stay in his wake. At the gas station, he turned right and then merged onto the northbound 280 freeway. At this time of night, traffic moved freely. She matched his speed and stayed behind him. He drove two miles and exited at Sixth, heading back into the city streets.

When he turned again at Bryant, she guessed where he was going. A block later, he took the elevated highway that led toward the Bay Bridge. He was heading across the water.

They soon left the city behind as the bridge climbed over the bay. Darren stayed in the left lane. The eastbound lanes were claustrophobic on the lower level of the double-decker span, but when they passed Yerba Buena Island, they emerged into the open air under the white lights of the new bridge tower. She slowed, her eyes drawn to the westbound lanes, where Brynn Lansing had taken a fatal dive to the water. Then she hit her brakes hard, because Darren had slowed, too, in the same spot.

As if he were remembering.

She followed him to the end of the bridge. A mile later, he headed north on Highway 24. The Lexus climbed into the Berkeley hills and then disappeared into the mouth of the Caldecott Tunnel leading toward the towns of the East Bay. Beyond the tunnel, he exited immediately, and she almost missed the turn. Then he curled up the twisting mountain road with Frankie behind him.

Fog sank down the steep hillside through the trees. His taillights came and went. She was conscious of breathtaking drops falling away into darkness on the right shoulder, where she could see the faraway city lights in the valley. Houses clung precariously to the sharp slope. There had been a fire in this neighborhood years before, burning through the dry grass and reducing dozens of houses to ash, because the roads were too narrow and steep for fire trucks to traverse.

Darren pulled ahead of her, driving confidently, as if he’d navigated this route many times. She didn’t dare go any faster herself. When she inched around a hairpin turn, she saw that his lights had vanished, and they didn’t reappear. She was on the downslope of the mountain now, on a road barely wider than her car. Houses loomed among soaring pine trees on both sides. If he’d come this far, she assumed that he’d turned into one of the steep driveways, but she didn’t know which one.

Frankie drifted to a stop. She spotted a house with no lights and a foreclosure sign posted outside. She pulled off the road in front of the house and turned off her car. Getting out, she waited in the darkness as a large SUV crept down the narrow road past her. When it was gone, she marched uphill in the middle of the street. The air was cold and damp. Most of the expensive houses were hidden behind walls of trees and vines. She stopped to examine each house, looking for Darren’s Lexus. Her presence alerted a dog that barked madly from behind a gate.

She passed a car parked on a bed of pine needles, across from a Mediterranean-style home on the other side of the street. It was a blue Nissan, and the hood was warm to the touch. She couldn’t see the interior, but she spotted a security decal on the Nissan’s windshield from the San Francisco pier near Darren’s office. That couldn’t be a coincidence. She crossed to the house, which had a sharp driveway curving upward to her left. The garage wasn’t visible from the street. She climbed the driveway, her heels slipping on wet leaves. Beyond a hedge wall, she spotted a brightly lit ranch home, built on the precipice of the canyon. Its garage was in front of her, and the door was open.

Darren’s Lexus was parked inside.

The courtyard of the house was protected by a low wrought-iron fence. Stone steps led up to a patio, lit by mushroom lights hugging the ground. Wind chimes rang like church bells. A fig tree hung over the path, and terraced hyacinths climbed the slope. She didn’t see a lock on the gate.

Frankie undid the latch and let herself inside, wincing at the groan of the metal hinges. She left it open behind her. She climbed the wet steps carefully, and when she reached the top, she found herself in a brick courtyard, bordered by flowered vines draped over a wooden trellis. A stone table was placed in the middle of the arbor for entertaining, and she saw a half-full wine glass that had been left behind. On the far side of the courtyard, the warm lights of a bay window glowed against the darkness of the cliff. The house’s walls were peach stucco, and a massive double front door guarded the entrance, with narrow stained glass windows on both sides.

She crossed the courtyard and took note of the wine glass, which had lipstick on the rim. The interior of the living room was visible. She saw Native American pottery. Frontier oil paintings. Hand-blown glass art. The walls were painted in vibrant color, and the carpet was a garish pink. She didn’t see anyone moving inside.

And then she heard it. Loudly, surrounding her in the courtyard from hidden speakers. As if she’d triggered it herself.

Music.

Her heart froze in her chest. She recognized the singer and the song. Carole King’s mellow voice lilted from the trellises, crooning about the night bird making its way home. It was the song that had driven three women — three people who had trusted Frankie with their deepest fears — to madness.

“Nightingale.”

She had to get inside the house.

Frankie started to run forward, but as she did, a hand slapped over her mouth from behind, and she felt her entire body being dragged backward.