The Voice Inside

27

The night passed for Frost in a haze of sleeplessness and grief.

He never went home. Instead, he spent hours in a small interview room in the police headquarters building in the Mission Bay District. This was where he typically talked to witnesses and suspects, but this time, he was the witness. The detectives on the case went over the details of the night with him. They asked the same questions again and again, trying to tease out new facts from his memory. In the end, he didn’t have much to tell them.

He hadn’t been there when the murder happened. He hadn’t seen anything.

Everyone knew Rudy Cutter was guilty, but knowing something was true didn’t mean they could prove it.

The building was dead quiet. The death of a cop always hung over the force like a cloud, but this was Jess. She was a cop’s cop, third-generation SFPD, an angry fighter for all things blue. Except, Frost knew, that was all in the past. She’d lost her badge. She’d gone down in disgrace and had been staring at prison time for her sins. Her murder was a tragedy, but there would be no city funeral, no parade, no speech from the chief and the mayor.

It was still dark when they were done with the interview.

He stopped at his desk and could feel the eyes of everyone watching him, but no one said a thing. He had a reputation for being a lone wolf, and it was mostly deserved. He didn’t hang out in the police bars; he didn’t party and drink with the other cops. That made him different, still a stranger after five years. His one real ally was Jess, and now she was gone.

Frost felt exhaustion weighing him down, although he knew he wouldn’t sleep. He headed for the elevator, but he stopped when a voice cut across the stillness of the room.

“Easton.”

He turned around. It was Captain Hayden.

“Let’s talk,” he said in a voice that always sounded as if he’d just come back from a root canal.

Frost followed Hayden into his office, which had windows looking north toward the Giants stadium. It was a nice office, but Hayden had his sights set on the office upstairs. He’d started out as a street cop thirty years earlier, and he’d climbed the promotions ladder, greasy rung by greasy rung, until the only step left was the one that would make him the chief. Hayden wasn’t going to let anything stand in his way. Not even the murder of his ex-wife.

“So you’re the one who found her,” the captain rumbled.

“Yes, sir.”

“Did she suffer?”

“I don’t know, sir. I imagine it was brutal but quick.”

“Hard to believe anybody getting the drop on Jess,” Hayden said.

“Cutter had it well planned. He was waiting for her where she couldn’t see him. First the Taser, then the knife. She didn’t stand a chance.”

Hayden coughed, and then he wiped his eyes. “Cutter,” he murmured.

“Yes, sir.”

The captain walked around to the back of his desk and squeezed into a high-back leather chair. Pruitt Hayden was one of the largest human beings Frost had ever met. He was six foot four, well over three hundred pounds, and he could bench-press his weight. His black skin was freckled and mottled, and his scalp had a dark shadow of stubble. He always wore his dress blues, with folds impeccably creased.

“Sit, Easton.”

Frost took the chair in front of the desk. He noticed that Hayden still kept a framed photo of Jess where he could see it. The photo had been taken ten years earlier, when they were just married and honeymooning on a Hawaiian beach. It was one of the rare photos in which Frost had seen Jess smiling. Divorce didn’t change the fact that there had been happier times between them, but they were two volcanic personalities who didn’t know how to do anything except work. Sooner or later, Hayden’s ambition, and Jess’s willingness to break rules, were going to collide.

“You know I’m angry,” Hayden said, although any emotions he felt barely moved the mask of his face. “I’d be angry if this happened to any of our people, but this is personal. I loved her. What happened in the past between us doesn’t matter.”

“I’m angry, too.”

“This department will get justice for her. I will get justice for her.” He emphasized the I, as if to make sure Frost realized that he wasn’t part of the mix. This case didn’t include him.

“I hope so,” Frost said.

“None of this changes the fact that Jess did a stupid, inexcusable thing by planting evidence.”

“I know.”

“You were right to bring the watch to me and the district attorney. Don’t ever doubt that, Easton.”

Frost said nothing. He’d been doubting himself all night. “Where do we stand on Cutter, sir?”

“Right now? Nowhere.”

“He did it,” Frost said.

Hayden’s face clouded over. “Of course he did it! You think I don’t know that? If it were up to me, I’d beat that prick to death with my own fists. Any cop in this building would do the same. He’s throwing it in our faces like there’s nothing we can do, and he’s going to pay.”

Frost waited for the outburst to pass, and then he dealt with the reality in front of them. “But we don’t have a case, right?”

Hayden rocked back in his chair, which squealed in submission. “Not yet we don’t, no.”

“Do we know where he is?”

“No, he’s still off the radar. His brother called me. Phil Cutter. Very helpful piece of crap. He said he’d heard about the murder. He thought we might leap to the wrong conclusion, so he wanted me to know that Rudy had been with him all night after midnight.”

“He’s a liar,” Frost said.

“Yes, but the trouble is, we can’t prove he’s lying without some physical evidence to put Rudy Cutter in Jess’s apartment or anywhere near the crime scene. Which, right now, we don’t have. The forensic people are still over there, but they don’t sound happy. Cutter is pretty careful about not leaving any DNA or fingerprints that we can hang on him.”

“He knows what he’s doing,” Frost said. “It was the same with all of the other murders. What about the old man on Stockton? Jimmy Keyes?”

“The Taser used on Jess belonged to Keyes. The ID tags match. But we’re no closer to getting Cutter for the Keyes murder, either.”

“So what do we do?” Frost asked.

Hayden didn’t answer immediately. He took the photo of Jess from his desk and held it in his big hands. His eyes didn’t mist, but they became empty, as if the weight of her death were too much to bear. Behind his anger, behind his ego, was a crushing loss. And he wasn’t about to share that loss with Frost.

“You don’t do anything, Inspector Easton,” Hayden told him.

“With respect, sir, I can’t live with that answer.”

He expected the captain to lose his temper and fire back, but Hayden actually smiled at him. “No bullshit. I appreciate that. I know Jess always liked you, Easton. She liked you enough that it pissed some people off around here. A pretty long list of people, in fact.”

Frost suspected that the list included Hayden himself.

“I liked Jess, too,” Frost said. “And whatever you or anyone else may think, she never cut me any slack.”

“Oh, I know that. If she did, I would have been on her like a ton of bricks. You’re good. No one says you’re not.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I also know about the rumors,” Hayden said.

Frost said nothing. He wasn’t going to try to explain his relationship with Jess, because he didn’t know if he could explain it to himself. He simply waited to see what would happen next. Hayden’s eyes were like coal on the other side of the desk, and his breathing was loud through his wide nose. Then the captain waved his hand, as if whatever had happened between Frost and Jess meant nothing at all.

“Mind you, I’m not asking whether the rumors are true. I don’t care. It’s not like I can complain about anything Jess chose to do, before or after our divorce. I was no saint. We both brought plenty of baggage to the breakup.”

“I’m not sure why we’re talking about this, sir,” Frost said.

“We’re talking about this because we both have the same goal. We want Rudy Cutter back in prison. And I’m aware that you have just as much motivation as me to make that happen.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Then let the rest of us do our jobs. Jess already went rogue on this case. The result was that Cutter went free, and Jess paid for it with her life. I’m not going to let you screw up our next shot at putting him away.”

“I have no intention of doing that,” Frost said.

“No? You don’t think I have spies, Easton? I know exactly what you’ve been doing on your vacation. You’ve been dredging up old witnesses. Talking to family members of the victims. Asking questions. I hear you’ve been working with a writer who’s doing a book about the case, too. Am I right?”

Frost made no attempt to deny it. “Yes, you’re right.”

Hayden exhaled, making a whistling noise through a little gap in his front teeth. “We are already on thin ice with Judge Elgin. He threw out the entire investigation, Easton. Five years of work. If he smells so much as a hint of impropriety again, he’ll toss the case entirely, and we’ll never get our hands on Cutter. None of us want that to happen.”

“No,” Frost said. “We don’t.”

“Good. Now here’s what I want you to do. Go home. Grieve for Jess. Grieve for your sister. Take another week of vacation, and make it a real vacation this time, got it? Fly to a beach somewhere, or go hiking in the mountains, or just sit at home and clear your head. But whatever you do, stay the hell out of this case. Have I made myself absolutely clear?”

“You have,” Frost said.

“That’ll be all, Easton.”

“Yes, sir.”

He got out of the chair and headed for the door, but Hayden called after him in a voice not much louder than a sigh. “Frost.”

He turned around in surprise. The captain stood up and came around to the other side of the desk again. “I assume that once upon a time, Jess gave you her little speech about the line,” Hayden said.

“Several times.”

There was a silence between them. Frost expected something more, but Hayden simply whispered, “Good, good.”

That was it. The meeting was over.

Frost didn’t know what had just happened. He was in the elevator, leaving the building before he understood. The line. It was the line you had to cross as a cop sometimes, even if you got fired for doing the right thing, even if no one could protect you.

Hayden had given Frost a direct order to drop the investigation against Rudy Cutter. Then he’d added a postscript off the record.

Keep going.