Brian Freeman - The Crooked Street

If you got in the way, you were expendable.

Frost watched the construction activity for several minutes, and then he turned around and went back to his truck and headed uptown. While he drove, Tabby called again. This time, she left a message, and he played it over the speakerphone as he sat in traffic.

“I need to see you, Frost. Call me as soon as you get this.”

But he didn’t know what to say to her.

Ten minutes later, he crossed into the Financial Center, where the pyramid top of the Transamerica building peeked above the other skyscrapers. It was almost the thick of rush hour, and the streets and sidewalks were dense with people. The rain had stopped, but dark clouds still blotted out the sun and made the afternoon look like dusk.

He’d nearly reached the alley behind Belinda’s building when he realized that something was wrong.

On the sidewalks near the pyramid, he saw people running.

Through his open window, he heard the wail of sirens. Ahead of him, on the cross street, a police vehicle screamed through the intersection. Only seconds later, an ambulance followed.

Frost drove up onto the sidewalk. He bolted from the car and followed the crowd. He sprinted through the plaza at the base of the Transamerica building. The white high-rise climbed above him against the black sky.

Across the street, people swarmed around an Acura sedan, its car alarm blaring. Police and EMTs tried to hold a perimeter around the car. Frost shoved his way in and yanked out his badge when a uniformed officer tried to hold him back. He pushed to the front and saw the damage to the car up close, its roof flattened, its windows shattered. Glass littered the street.

Belinda Drake lay atop the sedan.

She was on her back where she’d fallen thirty stories from the balcony above the street. Her limbs were spread. Her head was turned, her eyes wide open and staring at him. Blood made a lake underneath her, but her face was untouched, without even a scratch. Her lips were bent into the tiniest smile.

He remembered what she’d told him about going off the building.

You get one last exhilarating ride, and then you’re dead before you feel the pain.

Frost crossed the Golden Gate Bridge to find Trent Gorham’s house in the hills of Tamalpais Valley, tucked among tall trees that towered over the roof. It was small and old, but the neighborhood alone meant it was worth more than a million dollars. Cyril and Hayden were both right about one thing. Gorham, who was single and on a cop’s salary, should never have been able to afford it.

He parked in the driveway. There were no streetlights nearby, and the neighborhood was dark. The first thing he noticed when he approached the house was that the window next to the front door had been smashed, and the door was ajar. He took out his gun and cautiously went inside, but the house itself was empty. Whoever had broken in had already come and gone.

This wasn’t a robbery. Gorham had a seventy-inch Ultra HD television in the living room — also unusual for a cop — and it hadn’t been touched. The intruders had ignored other expensive items, too. He saw a high-end Blu-ray player, vintage rock albums, a cherrywood humidor, and several bottles of single-malt scotch on a mirrored bar. Gorham had lived well. Too well.

As Frost searched the house, he kept seeing Belinda Drake’s face in his memory. She’d looked alive enough to open her mouth and talk to him. He could hear her voice in his head. An hour earlier, they’d been on the phone; now she was dead. He felt responsible. It was sharing secrets with Frost that had led to her death.

Another loose end tied up by Lombard.

He checked Gorham’s office. This was where the intruders had done their work. His computer and printer were gone. There were charging cables on the desk but no devices. The drawers of two steel file cabinets were open and empty. A section of the hardwood floor had been pried up, leaving an empty hole that Gorham had obviously used to hide things he didn’t want found. It didn’t work. The intruders had taken whatever was inside.

Gorham’s life had been sanitized, much like Denny’s boat. The thoroughness of the job — and the evidence of Gorham living beyond his means — led Frost to think that Gorham was dirty, just as the captain believed. If so, he wondered how far back the corruption extended into Gorham’s past.

What if Alan Detlowe really had gone to Gorham with his suspicions about Martin Filko?

What if that was what got Detlowe killed?

Frost shook his head. Trust no one.

He checked the kitchen. Gorham was surprisingly neat. There wasn’t a dirty dish anywhere, the stainless steel appliances gleamed, and the refrigerator was perfectly organized. Frost studied the contents and had a hard time imagining a high school jock like Gorham drinking soy milk and eating takeaway vegan meals from Trader Joe’s, but this was California. Anything was possible.

The last room to search was Gorham’s bedroom.

Most of the memorabilia inside was sports related. He saw photographs and trophies from Gorham’s days on the college track team. There were also pictures of him and Alan Detlowe drinking beer at a Giants game, which didn’t make sense. Frost couldn’t imagine Gorham killing Detlowe and still keeping pictures of the two of them on his dresser. He was missing something.

He studied the other items, which included a beer stein filled with loose change, a baseball signed by Madison Bumgarner, and two objects that felt out of place among Gorham’s possessions. One was a Middle Eastern music box, obviously expensive, inlaid with colored gems. The other was a wood carving of an African elephant.

Frost picked up both of the items as if they could speak to him, and then he put them down. He felt an odd, cresting wave of adrenaline that he couldn’t explain. The clues in this room were pointing him to something, but he didn’t know what.

He noted two nightstands on either side of the king-sized Tempur-Pedic bed. The one closest to him was obviously used by Gorham and included a man’s dress watch and diamond cuff links. On the other nightstand, he saw a bottle of hand cream and Jean Patou Joy perfume.

That was the missing link.

A woman.

Gorham didn’t live alone in this house. He was unmarried, but a woman obviously spent time here, too. Frost went to the closet and opened the doors, and among the clothes that Gorham would wear, he also saw a lineup of sexy, elegant dresses. He opened the built-in drawers and found lace lingerie.

Soy milk. Vegan dinners.

Not Gorham. Gorham’s girlfriend.

Frost took another long look at the bedroom, and the truth came to him in a rush. It wasn’t just hand cream on the nightstand next to the perfume. It was Bulgari hand cream. He stared at the Middle Eastern music box and the African elephant, and he could hear the voice of Prisha Anand in his head.

Men fly her around the world. Africa. The Middle East. South America.

He thought about the indications of money in the house. The expensive toys. Even the house itself. It wasn’t Trent’s money. It wasn’t a payoff for his work for Lombard. It came from somewhere else. Someone else. A woman with highbrow tastes and the means to pay for it.

Fawn.

Gorham’s bedroom door was wide open, but behind it, Frost could see the wooden edge of a picture frame. He went over and pushed the door aside, and there on the wall was a sketch of Trent Gorham, black-and-white except for his sky-blue eyes. The style, the picture, the pose were all a match for another picture he’d seen two days earlier. In Fawn’s bedroom.

Trent Gorham. Zara Anand.

They were in love. He could see that in the eyes of each sketch, as if they were looking at each other across the miles. It was a relationship they’d kept secret, the escort and the cop. She’d kept her own portrait, and he kept his, the opposite of what couples would usually do.