The Voice Inside

47

It was late evening before Frost made it across the city to Tabby’s hospital room near Golden Gate Park. His entire family was there. Duane sat by her bedside, holding her hand. His parents hovered near the door. Tabby lay propped in bed, her shoulder bandaged and her arm in a sling, and she was hooked to a morphine drip. Even so, she looked alert, not groggy.

Seeing him, Duane leaped to his feet.

“There he is! There’s the hero!”

His brother, who was several inches shorter than Frost, grabbed him and practically lifted him off the ground. Frost reacted a little stiffly. He’d been getting a lot of attention all day from his colleagues in the police and from the San Francisco media, and he didn’t like it.

Duane whispered in his ear. His brother was the emotional one of the pair, and Frost could hear a catch in Duane’s voice. “You don’t know what this means to me, bro. You saved her. I can’t even tell you what I would have done if something had happened to that girl.”

Frost responded with a half smile. “I know.”

Duane steered him to Tabby’s bedside and shook his shoulders so hard that Frost felt dizzy. “Is this guy amazing?” Duane bellowed in what was definitely not a hospital voice. “Amazing!”

Tabby stared at him from behind those green eyes of hers. “Yes, he is.”

Her face had a postsurgery paleness. Her red hair was limp. When she shifted in bed, he could see a grimace of pain. It distressed him to see her that way and to know he’d put her there. Even if he’d had no choice.

“Cutter?” Tabby asked him softly.

“He died in the ambulance,” Frost said.

She blinked. She didn’t seem to know how to take the news. There was no happiness in her expression and not even any satisfaction that the horror was finally over. He knew how she felt, because he’d felt the same way all day. He took no joy in watching anyone else die. Too many others had already been lost, and they weren’t coming back. Cutter’s death didn’t repair what he’d done.

Frost’s mother didn’t share their reluctance to pass judgment. “Good riddance. I hope he’s in hell.”

“Janice, you’re still talking about another human being,” Ned Easton murmured. It was his father’s humanist streak, his willingness to allow mercy for evil, that had been a partial cause of his parents’ breakup. They had never seen eye to eye about that.

“Barely,” his mother snapped. “I’m not going to apologize. That piece of filth killed my daughter. If it hadn’t been for Frost, he would have killed Tabby, too. I’m glad he’s gone.”

Frost let his parents argue through their emotions. He stared down at Tabby, and Tabby stared uncomfortably back at him. Her attitude puzzled him, although he knew he’d put a bullet in her body. If he’d missed by even a little, she’d be dead. There was a lot he needed to say to her about the last few days, but this wasn’t the time or place.

Duane pulled a chair from the wall. His long black hair was loose. “Come on, bro, sit, stay with us a while.”

“Oh, no, thanks, I can’t. I should get home. I don’t want Shack freaking out because I’ve been gone so much. I just wanted to make sure Tabby was okay.”

“I’m going to be fine, Frost,” Tabby murmured. “Don’t worry about me.”

“Good.”

Duane winked at her. “Should I tell him the news? Or do you want to?”

Frost looked back and forth between them. “News?”

“Let’s not do this now, Duane,” Tabby suggested. “Please. Frost said he needs to go. It’s been a stressful day for everyone.”

“No, no, it’s the perfect time!” Duane replied. “Mom and Dad are here. It’s the whole family! We should be talking about good news for a change after everything that’s happened.”

“Don’t keep me in suspense,” Frost said.

Duane grabbed Tabby’s hand again. He looked as giddy as Frost had ever seen him. “We’re getting married!”

Frost felt speechless. It was a terrible time to be speechless. A flush rose in Tabby’s cheeks, and Duane bent over and kissed her forehead. Frost tried to come up with something to say and finally said, “Oh, wow.”

An exceptional comeback.

“When I thought about how close I came to losing her,” Duane went on, “it made everything so damn clear. I love this girl. So when Mom and Dad got here, I got down on one knee. I wanted them to see it, too. I know they never thought they’d see the day, but they brought us together. The whole thing is fate. I never much believed in fate, but I do now.”

Fate.

Yes, Frost knew exactly what he thought about fate.

“Isn’t it wonderful, Frost?” his mother asked from across the room.

“Wonderful,” he told both of them. “It’s great. Really.”

“Get a tux, best man,” his brother told him. “And get one for Shack, too.”

“Shack’s tux comes prefitted,” Frost reminded him.

Duane thought about it and laughed. “You’re right! Now, that’s funny. See? Fate.”

Frost tried to read Tabby’s face, but she made it difficult by looking out the window instead of at him.

“I hate to celebrate and run,” Frost said, “but I really do need to get home.”

“Sure, sure, will we see you tomorrow?” Duane asked.

“Of course.”

Duane grabbed him for another hug. “Thanks again, bro. You’re the best.”

Frost squeezed his brother’s shoulder without saying anything more. He wanted to get out of there as fast as he could. He hugged his mother, who responded awkwardly in her usual way, and then he headed for the door. His father went with him. Ned put an arm around his shoulder as they walked to the elevator.

“Janice and I are heading back to Arizona tomorrow,” Ned said.

“It was good seeing you, Dad. Despite the circumstances.”

“I know it’s torture for you to leave San Francisco, but it would be nice to have you come visit us.”

“I will.”

“Come for Christmas,” Ned suggested. “We already talked to Duane and Tabby about coming down for the holidays. We’ve got the room. It would be nice to have the family together.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Frost replied, which was the Easton family way of making no promises.

The elevator door opened, but his father stopped him before he could get on. The door slid closed again with the two of them standing outside. It took Ned a minute to get out the words.

“I was wondering, did you find out anything more about Katie?” Ned asked. “I mean, before Cutter died?”

Frost had been expecting the question. He wished he had an answer for him. If there was one thing he’d wanted from Cutter, it was the truth about Katie, but Cutter had never regained consciousness. The secret died with him. Frost felt robbed of the opportunity to stare into the man’s eyes and ask him why.

“I’m sorry. No, I didn’t. He wasn’t able to tell me a thing.”

“She doesn’t really fit like the others, does she?” his father asked.

“No, she doesn’t.”

Ned shook his head in confusion. “I guess all we can do is live with it, but it still feels like a mystery. I hate that.”

“I know it does, Dad,” Frost replied, “and I hate it, too. But not every mystery gets solved.”

Frost went from the hospital back to Ocean Beach, and he stayed there for two more hours in silence, watching the waves. His phone was off. He didn’t want to talk to anyone. The rain had ended, but the winds remained strong, keeping the surf angry and high. It didn’t matter that Cutter was dead. It didn’t matter that the case was over. He had a sense of unfinished business, but the ocean had no answers for him.

Eventually, there was nothing else to do but go home.

It was past midnight when he let himself inside the house on Russian Hill. In the foyer, he saw that Eden’s boxes, with her research notes and manuscript, were still there. He knew she’d be waiting for him when he returned, because she wasn’t done with him yet. She needed a last interview. She needed an ending for her story.

Shack bounded to the foyer to greet him and immediately began his typical King Kong climb up Frost’s leg.

“Watch those claws, buddy,” Frost said, but the cat paid no attention. Shack staked out his spot on Frost’s shoulder and stayed there as Frost wandered into the living room with the lights off and then out onto the patio to watch the city and the stars. The storm had vanished; the night was clear and cool.

He turned on his phone, and he had several messages waiting for him. Some were from the media, which he skipped. The first personal message was from Herb.

“Frost, my friend. You’re all over the news. I’m grateful that things ended well, although I’m sure that doesn’t make what you went through any easier. I’ve got to teach a class at my gallery in the morning, but we obviously need to have a Sierra Nevada together very soon. If you need to talk in the interim, call me anytime.”

The next message was from Eden in her usual smoky voice.

“It’s late. I’m not sure when you’ll be back, but I hope you’re okay. I’m going to bed upstairs. Wake me up when you get home.”

And the last message was from Tabby. It had come in only five minutes earlier.

“Hey. It’s me. Everybody just left. I took a hit of the pain meds, so I’m probably going to be loopy. I wanted to say... actually, I have no idea what I want to say to you. Thanks? I’m sorry? This is hard. I feel like we should... I don’t know... I feel like there are some things...”

There was a pause so long that he thought she’d drifted off to sleep. But then she went on.

“I’m not making any sense, am I... I guess this is the morphine talking. I better hang up before I say something really stupid. Stop by tomorrow, okay? I’d like to see you. Night, Frost.”

He played the message again. And again. Then he went back inside the house. He thought about having a drink but concluded it wasn’t a good idea. Shack hopped off his shoulder onto the sofa, and Frost went upstairs to one of the spare bedrooms, where he took a shower. The hot water revived him. Afterward, instead of going downstairs to the sofa where he usually slept, he went into the master bedroom.

Eden was there. She slept on her stomach on the king-sized bed. He sat down in the overstuffed armchair on the other side of the room and watched her. In his memory, he could feel the touch of her skin and the smoothness and curves of her body. It would have been easy to climb into bed next to her. Wake her up. Have sex with her. That was what she wanted, and a part of him wanted it, too.

Instead, he sat in the chair until his eyes felt heavy, and he finally fell asleep right where he was.

When he woke up, he saw the clock on the nightstand, and he was instantly alert. It was 3:42 a.m. That shouldn’t have mattered to him now, because Rudy Cutter was dead, but he realized that a disturbance in the house had awakened him. Again. It was the same as it had been weeks earlier.

He’d heard something in the house below him. And unmistakably, he smelled the dark burn of Phil Cutter’s cigarette smoke.

Frost went into the master closet and found a lockbox on the upper shelf. His department weapon had been taken from him because of the shooting, but he kept a backup firearm for himself. He retrieved the gun and padded downstairs in his bare feet. The smell of smoke was stronger down here. Shack, his back fur arched, had taken refuge on top of the mahogany bookshelf, but the intruder was already gone.

He saw nothing amiss in the house this time. No Halloween surprises. No alarm clocks. All that had been left for him was a slim manila envelope in the middle of the floor.

Frost picked it up by the edges. He took the envelope into the dining room, where he put his gun on the table and switched on the lights. He turned over the envelope in his hands and saw a message scrawled on the outside:

The envelope was light, as if almost nothing were inside. Frost undid the clasp and opened the flap. He saw a small piece of paper tucked near the bottom of the envelope, and he overturned it and let the paper flutter onto the dining room table. It was no more than four inches by six inches, with what looked like grease stains on the surface. Using the cap of a pen, Frost turned the paper over and saw that it was a green, lined receipt, the kind used for taking orders at diners.

And at pizza restaurants.

Frost recognized the handwriting on the slip. Katie had written it. He saw the name above the delivery address, too. Todd Clary. Clary had ordered an olive-and-arugula pizza with garlic cream sauce to 415 Parker. It was the last order Katie had ever taken. This receipt was what had sent her on a delivery run that would end in her murder. It still made no sense to him.

He checked the envelope again. There was nothing else inside. Rudy Cutter had obviously believed that this piece of paper would offer up the answer to Katie’s death, but Frost didn’t understand its significance. He studied the receipt for a hidden clue, but all he saw was what Katie had scribbled down from Clary’s phone call:

The note made him heartsick because seeing it brought Katie to life again. He could see her writing it; he could hear her voice. Twenty minutes later, she’d carried the pizza out the door on Haight and climbed into her Chevy Malibu.

And headed the wrong way.

Why?

Frost stared at the receipt. He knew Katie better than anyone; he should have been able to figure out what she was telling him. But finally, he realized that his closeness to Katie was the problem. He had to stop looking at the receipt like a brother who’d grown up with her.

He stared at it again, like a stranger.

And he knew. Just like that, he saw what Katie had written, and he knew what she’d done. The answer was staring him in the face. He knew why Katie had gone east from the restaurant, not west toward Todd Clary’s house. He knew where she was going with that pizza.

It didn’t take him long to figure out the rest. He had everything he needed to solve the mystery. The pieces came together, one after another, like gears meshing in an elaborate machine. Half an hour later, he knew why Katie had been killed that night and whose secret she would have exposed if she’d stayed alive.

When the truth finally settled into his brain, he realized that Cutter had been right all along. Horror can always get worse.