The Voice Inside

3

“Ms. Valou?” Frost asked.

The raven-haired woman at the restaurant Zazie looked up from her organic granola and her copy of the New York Times. The morning was cold enough to see your breath, but she sat outside with only a lightweight jacket and an espresso to warm her. Her legs were bare below her knee-length skirt.

“Yes?” she replied, her accent thick and French. “May I help you?”

“My name is Frost Easton. I’m a homicide inspector with the San Francisco Police. The doorman at your building said I could probably find you here. I was hoping we could talk for a couple minutes. It’s about Melanie.”

Camille Valou’s face showed a hint of anxiety. Five years had passed since her daughter’s murder, but five years was nothing. Her dark eyes had a permanent sadness. Her pale-pink lips made a thin, emotionless line. “Sit,” she told him.

Frost took a chair opposite her as Camille neatly folded her newspaper. She nodded at a waitress through the window, who appeared in a flash to take Frost’s order. He shook his head, but Camille was having none of that.

“You must have something,” she said. “Please, it’s my treat.”

“Coffee,” Frost said.

“Oh, that is not breakfast. You’re a busy, important man. You need to eat. Bring him the Avignon scrambled eggs, Suzy.”

“That’s really not necessary,” Frost said.

Camille shrugged. “Life is about more than what’s necessary. And more espresso for me, Suzy, please.”

The waitress smiled and disappeared.

Camille still had espresso left in her cup, and she took the last sip and dabbed at her mouth with a napkin. She was intelligent. He could see it in her stare as she watched him, making calculations about his intentions. He’d seen many photographs of Melanie Valou, and he could see the resemblance between mother and daughter. Camille was in her midfifties, matchstick thin, with sharp, bony lines outlining her white face. She was pretty and elegant. Well dressed. Manicured nails. Her black hair, a little too black for her age, was cut short in a deliberately messy style. Her appearance didn’t scream of money, but people with money didn’t need to advertise it.

“So,” she said. “You look familiar to me, Inspector. Do we know each other? Did you work on Melanie’s case?”

“I did, but that’s not where we met,” Frost replied. “Some of the families of the victims got together a few years ago. It was sort of a support group to help each other. I went with my parents. We met there.”

“Many of us still meet,” Camille told him. She pursed her lips. “Easton. Your parents are Ned and Janice?”

“Yes.”

“So that means—” she began, and he could see empathy in her stare as she put the pieces together. “Your sister? She was one of the victims, too, yes?”

“Katie,” Frost said.

“I am very sorry.”

“Thank you.”

“Your parents have not been to one of our meetings in a couple of years,” Camille said. “I hope that means they are okay.”

“They moved to Arizona,” Frost explained. “They split up for a while, but then they got back together. Katie’s death put a lot of stress on their relationship.”

Camille held up her left hand, which had no ring. “I understand. My own marriage did not survive the grief.”

The waitress returned with coffee and put a plate of scrambled eggs in front of him. He realized he was hungry, and he ate quickly, in large bites. Camille sipped her next cup of espresso and left behind most of her granola.

“Those were dark days,” she said. “I wish I could say it’s over, but it’s never really over, is it?”

“No.”

“After all, here you are, and you say this has something to do with Melanie.”

“Yes, it does. I’m sorry.”

“Well, what can I do for you, Inspector?”

Frost put down his fork. He felt reluctant to say the things he needed to say. He slid a hand into the inner pocket of his sport coat and extracted the watch, which he’d now secured in a plastic evidence bag. He put the bag on the table between them and watched Camille’s eyes as she studied it. She was cool, but she couldn’t hide a stiffening in how she held herself. She saw the watch, recognized it, and looked away without a word. Maybe it was just the pain of what this watch meant to her. Or maybe it was something more.

“What is this?” she asked.

“Someone led me to this watch overnight,” Frost told her. “They wanted me to find it.”

“Why would they do that?”

“To make me believe that this is Melanie’s watch,” he said. “Not the one that Jess Salceda found in Rudy Cutter’s house.”

“Obviously, that’s not true.”

“I’m sure you’re right, but that’s why I’m here. You’d know the truth better than anyone. You bought the original watch for your daughter. I was hoping you could look at it.”

Camille picked up the bag with obvious reluctance. He waited to see what she would do next. Her face had the strain of profound grief. Her slim, birdlike fingers trembled. Her eyes pored over the watch face, the band, and the jewels, as if caressing it.

And then she did the one thing he didn’t want her to do. The one gesture that told him everything.

She turned the watch around.

She studied the back. Where the inscription was. La rêveuse. Looking at it, her eyes went dead. The life went out of them. She put the bag down on the table as if it were hot to the touch. “It’s a copy. It’s not Melanie’s. Just as you would imagine.”

“Okay.”

“Throw it away,” she said lightly, dragging the words out of her throat. “It means nothing.”

“Thank you for confirming it,” he said, although she’d unintentionally confirmed the opposite of what she was telling him. She expected there to be an inscription on that watch as she picked it up. Just looking at it, she already knew its history. Now he needed to figure out how and why.

“Are we finished here, Inspector?” she asked.

“I have a couple more questions,” he said.

Frost took the bag and slipped it inside his pocket again, and Camille’s mouth twitched as it disappeared from her view. He thought she might reach across the table and grab it from him.

“This is a very distinctive watch,” he said. “Someone must have gone to a lot of trouble to find an exact duplicate.”

“It’s distinctive, but apparently not unique.”

“I recall from the trial that the watch was designed and sold by a small jeweler in Switzerland,” Frost said.

“Yes, my ex-husband’s family owns a chalet in Wengen. The jeweler was related to my in-laws, a cousin of a cousin or something like that.”

“So an exact match of Melanie’s watch would probably have come from the same jeweler?”

Camille shrugged. “I assume so.”

“Was it expensive? It looks expensive.”

“Expensive depends on your means.”

“Did you notice the inscription on the back of the watch?” Frost asked. “That puzzles me.”

“Why?”

“Well, why go through the trouble of obtaining an exact duplicate of Melanie’s watch when it has an inscription that clearly indicates that it’s not hers? I mean, Melanie’s watch didn’t have any inscription on the back, right?”

Her eyes drilled through him as if she could see to the back of his head. “That’s right.”

“Because obviously you would have noticed if the inscription was missing,” he went on. “I was in court when you testified. I saw you identify the watch that was found in Rudy Cutter’s ceiling. You were very convincing. You were very certain.”

“Yes, I was.”

“That’s not something you’re likely to make a mistake about.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Was Melanie’s watch returned to you after the trial?” Frost asked.

“Yes.”

“Do you still have it?”

Camille bristled. She’d begun to see him as an enemy. “No, I don’t.”

“Really? What happened to it?”

“I destroyed it, Inspector. I took a hammer, and I reduced it to pieces. It no longer exists. To me, it was a source of pain and misery, a reminder of what I’d lost, and I wanted to be rid of it.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?” she demanded, her voice trembling. “Then for the life of me, I cannot understand why you are here asking me these questions all these years later. Particularly when your own sister was another of Rudy Cutter’s victims. What on earth do you think you’re doing? Why are you bringing this up now?”

Frost had been asking himself the same thing for hours. He wasn’t surprised by Camille’s reaction. Any mother who had gone through what she had would be outraged. However, Camille’s outrage also felt calculated. It masked something else. She knew more than she was telling him.

“I’ll be honest with you, Ms. Valou,” Frost told her. “My first instinct when I found this watch in my hand was to do what you did. Destroy it.”

“That’s what you should have done. That’s what you should do right now. I already told you. Throw it away.”

“I wish I could, but we’re beyond that now.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re lying to me,” Frost said sadly.

Camille didn’t say anything to deny the accusation. Her body relaxed, and she went back to her espresso. “Let me ask you something, Inspector.”

“All right.”

“Do you have the slightest doubt that Rudy Cutter was the man who murdered all those women? Including my daughter. Including your sister.”

“None at all,” Frost said.

“Then justice has been served.”

“That’s true, but justice demands a fair trial that plays by the rules.”

“Cutter got that.”

“I hope so. I’d like nothing more than to believe that this watch is nothing but a copy and that the original was found in Cutter’s ceiling.”

“It was,” Camille snapped. “There’s no mystery here. Melanie was wearing the watch I bought for her when that beast abducted and murdered her. Rudy Cutter kept it. He hid it. His plan was to put it on the wrist of the next woman he killed. Just as he’d done six times before. He would have succeeded, if your fellow detective Ms. Salceda hadn’t discovered it at his house. She found Melanie’s watch, Inspector. I confirmed it when she showed it to me. I testified to it under oath at that man’s trial. That’s the only truth that matters.”

He suspected that she’d said those words to herself many times over the years, as she tried to convince herself that she’d done the right thing.

“If you’re right, then someone is playing a sick game with me,” Frost said.

“No doubt someone working with Rudy Cutter,” Camille replied.

“Most likely. I’d like to know how they managed to locate this watch. What would a person have to do to put their hands on an exact duplicate like this?”

“Fly to Switzerland,” Camille said impatiently.

“The jeweler doesn’t have a website?”

“It’s a one-man business in a small village. Not every corner of the world is online, Inspector.”

“And do you think the owner would keep records of his customers and what they purchased?” Frost asked. Because he knew what those records would show, and so did she.

A shadow crossed Camille’s face. “I have no idea.”

“What was the name of the jeweler?”

“I really don’t remember. For all I know, he’s dead by now. He was very old even then, and this was a decade ago.”

“What about your ex-husband? Would he remember? You said the jeweler had some kind of family connection.”

“You’d have to ask him,” Camille said, her voice growing exasperated. “Honestly, Inspector, I really don’t understand the relevance of any of this. I already told you, it’s not Melanie’s watch.”

“I’m just trying to understand how hard it would have been to obtain an exact copy,” Frost replied. “It sounds like it would have been pretty hard. Almost impossible, in fact. A very expensive watch from a jeweler in a remote town overseas? I can’t imagine how Cutter would have pulled it off.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t have any answers for you, Inspector.”

Frost stood up. He picked up the mug and finished his coffee. “Well, I appreciate your time, Ms. Valou. Thank you for breakfast.”

“You’re welcome.”

He made sure they were alone. There were no morning pedestrians on Cole Street. The door to the restaurant was closed. He leaned across the table toward Camille and whispered just loud enough for her to hear. “There were two watches, weren’t there?”

Her nostrils flared with annoyance. Her eyes were hard black sapphires. “What?”

“You bought two watches back then, didn’t you? One for you, one for your daughter.”

“I have nothing more to say.”

“Was it your watch that Jess found in Cutter’s ceiling? And if so, how did it get there?”

“I think you should leave, Inspector,” Camille said.

Frost straightened up. “If you’d like.”

He turned away from the restaurant, but Camille called after him in a loud voice. “Inspector, before you go. There’s an old French proverb you may know. Il ne faut pas réveiller le chat qui dort. It means, when the cat is asleep, you don’t wake it up.”

“Let sleeping dogs lie?” Frost replied.

“That is exactly right. Let sleeping dogs lie. You should remember that.”