The Voice Inside

26

“This is my place,” Magnolia told Frost. “I’m on the second floor.”

He stood in the street, studying the three-story Victorian apartment home on Sutter. The lower level was occupied by storefronts that had been built out to the sidewalk. The shops were locked and dark. A staircase led up from the street to the building entrance.

“Is there anywhere else you can stay tonight?” Frost asked.

“No. I don’t just live here, this is my office. I work here, too. Look, I’m cold and tired, and I just want to go to bed.”

“I need to make sure you’re safe,” Frost said.

“I sleep with my Mace on the nightstand.”

“Cutter’s a lot more dangerous than that. Trust me.”

“I know, you keep saying that. He’s a killer. Are you sure? I thought a dirty cop framed him or something.”

“A police detective did something wrong, but that doesn’t change who Cutter is.”

Magnolia shrugged, as if she didn’t want to face the close call she’d had. “Well, he didn’t seem like a bad guy.”

“He is. A very bad guy.”

“Whatever. If you say so. Look, if you want to come inside and make sure the bogeyman’s not in there, knock yourself out.”

“I want to check the street first,” Frost said. “Wait right here, and don’t go into the apartment until I get back.”

He walked down Sutter past the lineup of parked cars and examined the porches and doorways of the other buildings. The hiding places were empty. Most of the apartments on the street were dark, with their blinds shut. He continued to the end of the block, seeing no one else around, and then retraced his steps. Magnolia leaned against the shop window at her building with her legs squeezed together, her arms crossed, and the fedora pushed high up on her forehead. Her eyes kept blinking closed, and she shivered.

“You done?” she asked.

“Let me take a quick look in back.”

“I’m telling you, Rudy’s not here. He probably hooked up with somebody else.”

“This won’t take long,” Frost said.

He walked to the corner and turned right, leaving Magnolia behind him. The cross street was deserted. He followed the sidewalk beyond the streetlight, where the building butted up to a narrow alley, barely wide enough for cars. It was a dead end that didn’t go all the way through to the next street. He walked into the alley past the rear walls of the apartments. His shoes splashed in standing water. It was pitch-black here, and he grabbed a penlight from his pocket. It cast a weak glow, enough to surprise a rat foraging at a dumpster. The smell of trash wafted in the damp air. A handful of cars were parked below the balconies and fire escapes, and he peered inside each one.

Nothing.

Maybe he and Jess were wrong.

Frost retreated to the street. He walked quickly back to Sutter and turned the corner. Twenty feet away, the sidewalk outside the Victorian apartment home was empty now.

Magnolia was gone. She’d headed inside alone.

He took the steps of the apartment building two at a time. The heavy front door was ahead of him under an arched portico. He grabbed the doorknob, and the door spilled inward. It wasn’t latched. He bolted into a hallway lined with musty carpet and fading yellow paint on the walls. Stairs wound upward to the next level of the building.

There was only one apartment on this floor. One door.

It was open.

Frost reached for the holster inside his jacket and slid his pistol into his hand. Through the crack in the door, he saw lights. He took a step closer, his movements muffled by the carpet. When he reached the door, he nudged it wide with the toe of his shoe. The only thing he saw was the fedora lying in the middle of the floor.

“Magnolia?” he called.

There was silence for a long moment.

Then the woman’s face popped around the kitchen doorway. “Hey.”

Frost started breathing again, and he holstered his weapon. “I told you to wait outside until I got back.”

“I was cold.”

He didn’t argue with her. “I want to check the place out, okay?”

“Sure, go ahead.”

The apartment wasn’t large. It didn’t take him long to confirm it was empty. He checked the balcony and the alley below, and then he locked the sliding door. When he was done, he returned to the kitchen. Magnolia, still wearing her black dress, sat at a small table. She’d kicked off her heels; her feet were bare. She’d poured a glass of white wine from a half-empty bottle.

“You want a drink?” she asked.

“No, thanks.”

She took a large sip of wine. “Rudy was cute, you know.”

“He murdered seven women, Magnolia.”

“Yeah, I know what they say online, but I still can’t believe it. He didn’t seem like the type.”

“There is no type,” Frost said. “You can’t tell by looking at someone.”

“You really think he’ll come back here?”

“I don’t know, but it pays to be safe. I wish you’d go somewhere else tonight.”

“Sorry, I can’t. I’ll nap for a couple hours, but then I have to get to work. You sure you don’t want a drink?”

“No.”

“Okay.” Magnolia finished the glass and stood up, wobbling. “Anything else?”

“Be sure to lock the door behind me when I go. And never leave the front door of the building unlatched.” Frost slid a card from his wallet and put it on the table. “If Rudy contacts you, call me immediately. Don’t meet him anywhere. If he shows up at your door, don’t open it. Call nine one one. I’m not kidding.”

Frost left Magnolia in her apartment. He checked Sutter one more time and did another survey of the alley in back of the building. Nothing had changed, but he was still troubled. He found a dark doorway on the corner where he could see the front of the building and the entrance to the alley, and he waited there. It was late, but most of Cutter’s dirty work was done in the middle of the night. He might still show up.

He texted Jess: Found the girl Cutter was with. She’s safe.

And then a minute later, he sent another text: No sign of him, but I’m staking out the neighborhood.

He shoved his phone back into his pocket.

He tried to understand Cutter’s plan. Jess said Cutter always had a plan; he knew what he was doing. First, he hooks up with a stranger at a bar, and then he brags about it to Jess and leaves a trail a mile wide. He was practically begging her to chase him. Then Frost hunts him down inside the Fillmore, and Cutter disappears.

He was beginning to suspect that this was all a diversion. A head fake. While Frost cooled his heels outside the girl’s apartment, Cutter was somewhere completely different.

Where?

Frost grabbed his phone and texted again: I think he’s playing us.

That was when he noticed that his earlier texts to Jess had been delivered, but not read. She hadn’t checked messages on her phone, which was normally like an extension of her arm, day or night. He felt a tiny chill of anxiety, like a pinprick on the back of his neck.

He texted: Jess?

And again: Jess? Where are you?

He punched the speed-dial number for her phone. On the other end, the phone rang without being picked up, and it shifted to her voice mail. He heard her message, which was the same as it had been for years. He listened to the impatient voice he knew so well. This was the woman he’d been with less than an hour earlier, the woman whose face he could see in his sleep.

“Jess? Are you there? Call me as soon as you get this.”

In the brief silence before he hung up, he added, “Are you back at your apartment? If you’re not, don’t go home. Go to my place. Meet me there.”

Frost stepped out of the darkness of the doorway. He realized that he’d been right all along. Cutter had set up the events at the theater as a ruse. Magnolia was the distraction, and the man’s real target was someone else entirely. Something washed over Frost like a wave, but the rain had stopped. This was something else. This was terror. This was every instinct, every intuition, screaming at him to run.

He did.

He sprinted for his truck, his chest hammering.

But he knew that his closet of horrors, the closet where he kept the memory of Katie, had a new monster inside. He already knew that he was too late.

Two uniformed officers, a man and a woman, met him at Jess’s apartment building. He’d called for backup from the Suburban.

“There’s no answer at her apartment, Inspector,” the policewoman told him.

“Have you searched the area?” Frost asked.

“No, we just got here.”

“Circle the building,” he told her. “Be careful. This is Rudy Cutter, so expect him to be armed and dangerous.”

“Yes, sir.”

He gestured to the other officer. “Let’s check the back.”

The two of them headed for the rear of the building, where the apartments faced a dead-end alley and the densely wooded hillside. A river ran along the curb, where rainwater trickled from the muddy slope. Jess’s apartment was on the second floor. He stood below her balcony, and then he walked out to the other side of the alley to get a better view. Even in the darkness, he could see it.

The broken window. The open door.

Frost bolted for the locked gate below her apartment and hauled himself up until he could grab the railing of the second-floor balcony. He shouted at the cop waiting for him. “Get around to the front, I’ll let you in. Call more backup out here right now! And an ambulance!”

He swung his leg up, jumped, and landed hard on the other side of the railing. The vertical blinds beyond the open patio door slapped back and forth with the breeze. Glass glittered on the carpet. He had his gun out, and he stormed into the apartment.

“Jess!”

His voice was loud, but no one answered. The apartment smelled like Jess, which meant it smelled like cigarettes. He couldn’t see anything in the darkness. He knew where the light switches were, and he turned on the nearest lamp, squinting at the sudden brightness. Then his gaze swept the living room.

His heart stopped.

She was there. Just inside the front door. On her back, limbs sprawled. Blood was everywhere.

“Jess.”

He didn’t know if he’d said her name out loud or whether it was simply in his heart. He went to her and knelt over her. He checked her pulse, but there was nothing for him to do. Grayness had painted over her face. Her eyes were closed. Her skin was still warm, but she was gone. Fragments from the Taser blast that had stunned her sprayed the carpet. The knife that had opened up her throat, drowned her, bled her out, lay on the floor next to her.

Frost saw a chair tipped over on the carpet. It wasn’t in the right place. Cutter had sat in that chair and waited for Jess to come home. He’d lured her out of her apartment and sent them on a false chase at the Fillmore after a girl who meant nothing, while Cutter crossed the city to stalk his real target.

Jess was the eighth victim.

Every “what if” that might have changed this moment played out in Frost’s mind in a split second. There were a thousand different things he could have done, and Jess would still be alive.

What if he’d stopped Cutter at the Fillmore.

What if he’d gone home with Jess tonight, instead of leaving her alone.

What if he’d thrown Melanie Valou’s watch off the Golden Gate Bridge and let Cutter rot in prison.

But none of it changed the reality that he’d failed her. Cutter had won. Jess was dead.

Frost took her hand. He squeezed, but she didn’t squeeze back. That was when he noticed that Jess had a slim gold watch on her wrist. Jess never wore a watch. The crystal on the face was smashed, but he could still make out the time, which was frozen in place and would stay that way forever.

3:42 a.m.