The Voice Inside

37

Sometime in the middle of the night, Frost woke up alone. The fire had died to gray ash, and cold, whistling air blew onto his body through the chimney. He stood up. Their clothes were strewn on the floor, and he grabbed his boxers and stepped into them.

“Eden?” he called softly.

There was no answer in the house.

He surveyed the downstairs, which was lit only by the outside city lights through the patio doors. At some point, Shack had gravitated back to his usual spot on the sofa, where Frost typically slept. The cat didn’t bother opening an eye. Nothing around the house was out of place. The boxes of research materials for Eden’s book were still stacked against the foyer wall.

Frost went silently upstairs. The door to the master bedroom was open. From the doorway, he could see Eden stretched across the bed. He walked inside and stood over her. She was on top of the comforter, lying on her stomach, with her head sideways on the pillow. Black curls draped over her face. The memories of their lovemaking went through his mind. Expressions on her face. The catch of her breath and the pleasured rumbling in her throat. The warmth of her fingers. Her legs wrapped around him. He stared at her and remembered all of it, and he asked himself what he felt about it.

He didn’t like the answer.

Frost turned away to let her sleep, but before he left the room, he heard her voice calling to him. “I’m awake,” she murmured.

He came and sat down on the side of the bed. Eden rolled onto her back. Her eyes opened. Her body was an attractive shadow, and she let him watch her, like a sculpture on display. They stared at each other in the darkness, but it was a long time before either of them spoke.

Finally, Eden said, “I guess I got what I wanted.”

“Why was that so important?” he asked her.

She sat up in bed. She slid behind him and massaged the muscles of his back with deep, insistent fingers. Her bare legs were on either side of his hips.

“I’m selfish. I can’t write about you unless I know you inside and out.” She lightly bit his neck. “Which doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it.”

“And what did you discover about me?” Frost asked with morbid curiosity.

“That you want things you can’t have.”

He twisted around to face her. “What the hell do you mean by that?”

“I’ve been with enough men to know when someone isn’t fulfilled by being with me. That’s okay. Don’t apologize if you were using me simply because I was here. I was using you, too.”

“Then I guess we both got what we wanted,” Frost said.

He was angry with her, and with himself, because she was right. She was right about everything. He’d used her. He’d met two attractive, desirable women recently, and the one he wanted was the one he couldn’t have. And so he’d slept with the other simply because he could.

Looking into his eyes, she smiled at him, as if she could see through him. He found that he was beginning to dislike her smile.

“You want to do it again, don’t you?” she said, pulling him closer, kissing his neck.

She was right about that, too.

Frost drove south out of the city on Saturday afternoon. He’d already talked to six different women named Maria Lopes. He’d questioned each of them about their backgrounds, hoping to find a detail in their personal lives that would explain which of the women was on Rudy Cutter’s list. But none of their stories had brought him any closer to an answer.

Now he was on his way to meet number seven. She was farther away, high in the San Bruno hills. He didn’t mind the drive. He usually listened to audiobooks in the car, and he was nearly done with a Barbara Tuchman book about medieval Europe. There was something about times that were dead and gone that appealed to him.

It was a grim day, as unsettled as his mood. The forecast was for rain and wind moving in overnight, and black clouds had already slouched over the coast from the ocean. The inland temperature hovered at a damp, warm sixty-five degrees, but it was always colder closer to the water. As he drove higher, the low hills were a deep shade of emerald.

The next Maria Lopes lived in the shadow of the trails of Sweeney Ridge. He’d hiked there many times, where the peaks gave a 360-degree view of the Pacific and the bay. Her house wasn’t new or lavish, but it had one of the best locations in the Bay Area — except when the fog blanketed the hills, which it did most evenings. Up here, he imagined it was hard sometimes to see your hand in front of your face.

Frost got out of his Suburban. He climbed the front steps past a garden dotted with desert succulents. When he rang the doorbell, Maria Lopes answered almost immediately.

“Ms. Lopes? I’m Inspector Easton. I called you earlier.” He showed her his identification, and although she had an anxious look on her face, she swept the door wider for him.

“Please, come in,” she said.

She’d known he was coming, and she’d dressed for him in the kind of dark business suit she probably wore during the workweek. She was in her early thirties, attractive and freckled, with brown hair that fell to her shoulders. Her expression was serious, but he spotted evidence that she’d been a wild child in her past. Tattoos crept up her neck like snakes. She wore tiny gold loops in both nostrils. Her living room walls had posters from the San Francisco Opera, where she worked, but also from metal bands like Mastodon and Wintersun. He spotted a piano in one corner and an electric guitar propped near it against the wall.

She directed him to a wicker sofa on the back porch. Behind him, through the windows, were the dark clouds and coastal hills. She sat in a rocking chair that was probably a hundred years old.

“I have to tell you, Inspector, your call made me nervous,” Maria told him.

“I know. I’m sorry. Are you familiar with who Rudy Cutter is?”

“Of course. Are you saying this monster may be after me?”

“I don’t know for sure. We know he was researching your name, but there are quite a few women with the name Maria Lopes in San Francisco. We don’t know which one he was looking for. It may have nothing to do with you, but we’re being cautious.”

“I don’t even live in San Francisco anymore,” Maria pointed out.

“But you work there, don’t you?”

“Yes, I take BART back and forth every day. Why, do serial killers commute?” She gave a weak laugh, which covered her tension.

“As I say, we’re not taking any chances. We don’t know how he picks the women he stalks. According to the DMV records, you used to live in the city, is that right?”

“Yes, I was born at Saint Mary’s near the park. I lived my whole life within six blocks of there until two years ago. I never thought I’d become a commuter.”

“What happened?” Frost asked. “Why did you leave the city?”

Maria wiggled one of her fingers for him. He spotted a large diamond ring. “Love happened. When Matt and I got married, we both wanted kids right away, and frankly, there aren’t a lot of kids left in San Francisco. So we came down here. We’re both fitness freaks, and we like running in the hills.”

“You can’t get a better location than this,” Frost said.

“That’s true. I thought I’d miss the city, but I never looked back. And I still get my fill of city life, thanks to the opera.”

“Do you have kids now?”

“Yes, a son. Jeremy. He’s two. He’s with Ranya, our nanny.” Maria rolled her eyes. “It feels strange to say that. You can probably tell that I was sort of a flower child growing up. Money was the root of all evil. Now here I am with a corporate husband and a house in the suburbs and a nanny and a nonprofit job raising money from the San Francisco elite. Life comes at you fast.”

Frost smiled. He liked her. She didn’t take herself too seriously.

“Is your husband home?” he asked.

“No, he’s a road warrior for PlayStation. He’s overseas a couple times a month. He’s somewhere in Southeast Asia right now.”

Frost took his phone from his pocket and found the best picture he had of Rudy Cutter. He handed the phone to Maria. “Does Cutter look at all familiar to you? Is it possible you’ve seen him around you recently?”

“Now you’re scaring me.”

“I’m sorry, but his pattern is to watch the women he’s after.”

She studied the face on his phone and then shook her head. “No, I don’t think so,” she said.

“Are you sure? You’re hesitating.”

“Well, there is something vaguely familiar about him, but maybe it’s just that I’ve seen him on the news so many times. If I met him before, it wasn’t any time recently. I feel like it would have been a few years ago. And I could be wrong. He may just have one of those faces.”

That was true. It was easy to think you’d seen a face before. However, she was the first of the women he’d talked to who thought Cutter looked at all familiar. To the others named Maria Lopes, he was a total stranger.

“Would you mind looking at some more photos?” Frost asked. He took back his phone and found the folder where he kept the photos of Cutter’s victims. “If you swipe through this album, you’ll find several women here. I want to know if you remember any of them.”

“Who are they?”

“They’re the women Cutter killed,” Frost said.

Maria’s mouth pinched into a frown, but she went slowly through the pictures. “I remember seeing some of these photos on television back then. I followed the Golden Gate Murders pretty closely. Everybody in the city did. But I didn’t know any of these women personally.”

“What about their names?” He rattled off their names from his memory, where they were all indelibly filed. Including Katie. “Do you remember any of these names among people you knew or worked with or grew up with?”

“I’m sorry, no.” Then she noted Katie’s last name. “Easton? Is there a connection?”

“My sister.”

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you.” He pushed Katie’s shadow from his mind and went on. “I’m not trying to scare you unnecessarily, Ms. Lopes, but I want you to be vigilant. Do you have an alarm system in your home? Is it typically turned on?”

“Always.”

He handed her his card. “My contact information is on here if you need to reach me for any reason. If you see Rudy Cutter anywhere near you, don’t approach him. Don’t talk to him. Don’t indicate that you’ve seen him or recognized him. Just call nine one one.”

“Wow.” Maria looked shaken.

“I know. This is a lot to take in.”

“You really think he picks these women for a reason? It’s not random?”

“He was in the library yesterday, and he was looking up someone with your name. That’s not random.”

Maria stood up from the rocking chair, and she still had his card in her hand. He noticed that her fingers were trembling. “What makes a person do something like this? What kind of diseased soul could take a stranger’s life so purposefully? I don’t understand it.”

Frost stood up, too. “After Katie was killed, my mother said that some mirrors were too dark to look at.”

“I think that sounds right.”

Maria led him back to the front door. He heard the squeal of a boy playing somewhere in the house, and a smile instinctively sprang to her face. She was a happy woman with an ordinary life. It was unimaginable that she could be put in the path of someone like Rudy Cutter. But that was how it worked.

“Remember, if you see anything that concerns you, call me,” Frost told her. “If I find out any more details that you should know about, I’ll be in touch.”

“Thank you, Inspector.”

Frost went back outside, and Maria closed the door behind him. He heard the click of the deadbolt. She was taking no chances, and that was good. He went down the steps, but before he got into the Suburban, he took a short walk to the deserted end of the road, where dirt trails climbed toward Sweeney Ridge. The gray day had kept away most of the hikers. The seam of the valley made a V like the jaws of an open mouth. Dense green brush clung to the hillsides.

He saw a hawk circling overhead. Circling and circling beneath the low clouds. Looking for prey.

It reminded him that Rudy Cutter was out there somewhere, doing the same thing.