Brian Freeman - The Crooked Street

Trent and Fawn.

This changed everything.

Yes, Gorham had been waiting at the yacht harbor on Wednesday morning, but not because he was in league with Lombard. He’d been waiting for his girlfriend to return from the Tuesday-night cruise. And knowing that secret led Frost to a cascade of other questions.

Why did Fawn agree to go on a cruise with Martin Filko, a man she hated and feared?

Why did Gorham call Denny before the cruise?

Why were there hidden cameras on the boat?

He began to realize that he’d been wrong, wrong, wrong. Wrong about Trent. Wrong about Fawn. And all wrong about the cruise on Tuesday. He could only think of one explanation that tied everything together. One answer to solve the mysteries.

The cruise had been a sting.

A setup.

It was Trent Gorham’s plan to trap Martin Filko and lure Lombard out of hiding.

The night was dark on the Roughing It .

The only lights were from the city on the other side of the harbor. There was no moon and no stars overhead. The bay was angry, slapping against the breakwater with gusts of wind and surging across the pier into clouds of spray. When Frost climbed onto the yacht, he tried the lights, but the power was off. All he had was his flashlight to guide him.

The windswept sway of the boat took him back to his own past. He could remember being out in the open water with Denny, where the ocean would come to life without warning and toss you around like a cork. He remembered the loneliness out there with no other crafts around, out of sight of land. He wondered if Denny had thought about those days, too, when he took the Roughing It under the Golden Gate Bridge that night and out to sea.

Frost cast his light around the luxury interior. He knew there would be nothing to find on the upper decks. Lombard’s team had been here to remove the evidence, and they’d been thorough. He descended to the bowels of the boat, following the beam of his flashlight. He passed the crew quarters and could imagine Chester there, playing cards with Carla and Mr. Jin. He wondered if the awful noise from upstairs would have carried to the lower deck for the others to hear. Martin Filko, alone with Fawn. The sex. The drugs. The abuse.

All with cameras secretly rolling in a panel on the wall.

Fawn had been on the boat for a reason. There was no way Trent Gorham would have let his girlfriend walk into harm’s way without some other motive. There was no way Fawn would have agreed if she didn’t think that the night would end in revenge against Martin Filko and justice for Naomi.

But how had it all gone wrong?

Sooner or later, the people on the boat would have gone to sleep. Except for Denny. He was the captain, and the captain was always awake. The Roughing It would have been dead silent, the way it was now, riding the swells of the Pacific. Denny would have been on the flybridge, keyed up and nervous, alone with the ocean and the night.

And then what?

What happened next?

Frost made his way to Denny’s office at the rear of the boat. There wasn’t much to find. Denny’s bunk. A filing cabinet. His desk. Pictures on the wall. Behind the desk, tightly locked, was a narrow door that led to the mechanical areas of the ship. No one went there without the captain opening the door. It was the one place on the ship that Denny always kept private and secure.

Frost could have picked the lock, but he knew Denny. Some things never changed. He opened the desk drawer and located the blue gift box that housed Denny’s silver Waterman pen. He opened the box top and lifted out the cardboard platform where the fountain pen was nestled among velvet.

Underneath the velvet layer was a Schlage key. Same old Denny.

He put the key in the engine room door and unlocked it. It was cold on the other side. Iron steps took him down below the waterline. He was surrounded by gleaming silver ductwork reflecting his flashlight, propulsion engines, heat exchangers, and electrical generators. Everything was squeezed together. The corridor among the machinery was narrow, and he had to turn sideways. When the boat was operating, the throbbing noise would be deafening down here, but now it was silent, and he could hear every one of his footsteps.

He followed his flashlight.

He wasn’t sure what he expected to find. Maybe Denny had been able to grab the cameras before Lombard’s team arrived. Maybe the evidence was still here. Or maybe there was nothing left and the plan had ended in failure.

But no.

This was something completely different.

At the very end of the engine room, where the ceiling narrowed with the shape of the boat, was a makeshift cot. It had a four-inch foam mattress and a single pillow. He examined every inch of the cot, looking for clues to who had been hiding here. At first, he came up empty, but when he yanked the mattress off the frame, he saw a few strands of long hair caught in the coils of the spring. Most were jet-black, her natural color, but one was tinted red.

Just as it had been in the portrait on her bedroom wall.

Fawn.

Frost took out his phone in the silent darkness of the boat. He dialed the number and got her message. The same message he’d heard every time he called her all week. This time he knew what to say.

“Fawn, this is Frost Easton again,” he said. “You’re in danger, and you have to call me right now. I know about you and Trent. I know about the cruise on Tuesday. And I know you’re alive.”

Frost didn’t know when or if Fawn would call him back. His phone was dead quiet as he drove home from the yacht harbor. The rain had started again. The next wave of the storm was stronger and harder than the morning showers. A deluge poured across his windshield. He climbed the sharp peaks of Russian Hill and watched rivers flooding back down the asphalt. It wasn’t even safe to stop at the uphill intersections; all he could do was slow down and keep driving upward with his foot on the gas. By the time he arrived home, it was almost eleven o’clock. He opened his truck door and ran for the stairs, and in the few fast paces it took him to get there, he was drenched.

Someone was waiting for him.

She sat in the pouring rain at the top of the steps. Her red hair was pasted to her face and neck. She stood up as he climbed to his front door.

Tabby.

“I’m sorry to ambush you,” she said.

Frost shrugged. “It’s fine.”

“We need to talk.”

“I know. Come on in.”

He let them both inside, where it was warm. She wasn’t dressed for the downpour. All she wore was a simple blue dress with spaghetti straps. She shivered, and water dripped from her skin in the foyer.

“Do you want some dry clothes?” he asked. “I probably have something upstairs you could put on.”

“No. Not right now.” Her voice sounded low and distressed. She kicked off her heels; her feet were bare. She was nothing like the girl who’d danced and sung with him two days earlier.

“Well, wrap yourself in a blanket,” he said. “I have to go rescue Shack.”

“Where is he?”

“I made a little nest for him in the attic. I couldn’t take him with me today, and I wanted him out of the way in case I had visitors.”

Tabby made no effort to move from the foyer, and he went to the living room and grabbed a fleece blanket and came back and wrapped it around her. He led her to the sofa, where she sat down and made a cocoon around herself. He got a towel from the kitchen, and she used it to dry her face.

“I’ll be right back,” he said.

Frost ran upstairs. There was a drop-down ladder in the walk-in closet that led to the attic, and he lowered it to the floor, leaving a rectangular hole above him. Shack’s unhappy face peered over the edge. Frost climbed to the top of the ladder and let the cat hop onto his shoulder.