Brian Freeman - The Night Bird

“Thanks.”

Shack nudged the door of the carrier with his paw, demanding more syrup, and Lucy obliged. She dabbed a little on his pink nose, and Shack used his tongue to clean it. Frost found himself staring at Lucy, and he knew she was aware of his eyes. Her cheeks blushed red. She had a shy contentment in her face, looking back at him and then looking away. He knew the signs when a relationship with a stranger was on the brink of becoming something deeper. Her glow sent him a romantic invitation: come get me.

What Frost couldn’t tell her was that he felt a completely different emotion when he was with her. He missed his baby sister. Something about being with Lucy made Katie feel not so far away.

“There’s a reason I wanted you to know about the song,” he said.

Lucy sighed as he steered their conversation away from personal things. “To scare the crap out of me?”

“Sort of, yes. These incidents didn’t happen by accident. The jukebox in the bar last night is controlled by a phone app, and someone hacked the app to play that song. I called the DJ who did the music at the wedding where Monica Farr died. He said someone in the crowd requested ‘Nightingale.’”

“What about Brynn on the bridge?” Lucy asked.

“Someone posted a request for the song on the radio station’s Facebook page. Take a look.”

He’d saved the post on his phone, and he showed it to Lucy. Her smooth forehead crinkled as she spotted the name of the user behind the post.

“The Night Bird?” she asked.

“That’s right. Does the name mean anything to you? Have you heard it before?”

“No, never. What does this mean, Frost?”

“It means that what happened to Brynn and these other women was murder. Someone targeted them.”

“Now you really are scaring me,” Lucy said.

“I’m sorry, but that’s the point. Remember what we talked about yesterday? About you going to see Francesca Stein? I don’t want you to do it. Not now. That’s why I asked you to meet me. I think you should cancel your appointment.”

Lucy thought about it, but then she shook her head. “It’s just to find out more. I’m not going to do anything yet.”

“It’s too dangerous, Lucy. At least right now.”

“I understand what you’re saying, but you know what? I’m sick of being afraid. I’m sick of what happens to me when I try to cross a bridge. Dr. Stein helped Brynn. She really did. So I’d like to find out whether she thinks she can help me, too.”

“If you do this, I want to be waiting outside the building.”

Lucy giggled. “My hero.”

“I’m serious. I want to make sure no one is watching you when you leave.”

“Okay, fine. If that’s what you want.”

“It is. And keep your eyes open. If you see anything that looks weird, you call me right away. Got it?”

She saluted him. “Got it.”

“I have to go,” he told her.

“Yeah, I need to get to work, too. Thanks for breakfast.”

He gestured at the food truck behind her and waved to his brother. “Thank Duane. If it were up to me, we’d be eating Cap’n Crunch.”

“Well, I love Cap’n Crunch, too,” Lucy said.

She stood up and reached a finger into Shack’s carrier to say good-bye. The cat licked her fingertip. Frost stood up, too, and walked around the bench to be next to her.

Their faces were close. Before he could stop her, she leaned quickly toward him and grazed his lips with her own. Her mouth had the sweetness of syrup.

“I just wanted to put that out there,” she said. “For what it’s worth.”

“Lucy...,” he murmured, in a tone of voice that meant disappointment for someone on the other side of a kiss.

“It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything.”

With a fragile smile and a shake of her brown hair, she was gone. He could still taste her. No matter how wrong it was, he couldn’t pretend that he didn’t enjoy the kiss, but he also knew that she was looking for something that he couldn’t give her. She was sweet and lonely, and she was misreading the signs from him. Or maybe he was accidentally sending the wrong signals.

Duane saw the kiss, too. From the food truck, his brother called something crude, and Frost shook his head, as if to say, It’s not what you think . He shouted out a good-bye and grabbed Shack’s carrier. He pushed through the crowd toward Eleventh Street, but he stopped when a text tone chimed on his phone. He set the carrier between his ankles and grabbed his phone from his belt.

The number was unfamiliar.

He read the message, and he realized that the game had gone to a new level.

Hello, Inspector Easton. What’s your worst memory?

Frankie was right about her patients. They’d seen the news, and they were scared. When she got to her office, she found messages from six patients who’d canceled all their future appointments. Ten others wanted to know whether it was safe to see her. She spent two hours on the phone, reaching out to all of them, but it was hard to offer answers when she didn’t know what was going on.

Finally, she put down the phone and wandered into her treatment room, which was her oasis. One wall was devoted to books. On quiet weekend days, she would come here to read. She activated the surround-sound speakers and played the noise of a rain storm, with the plink, plink of showers and a distant turbulence of thunder. She turned on a video of Fern Canyon. It was at the end of a trail in Prairie Creek State Park that she and Jason had hiked on their honeymoon, where the narrow riverbed was lined by vertical stone walls dense with green ferns. Life had felt good then.

She stretched out in the chaise that her patients used. She tried to read more of The Magus by Fowles. The novel was about a young, self-centered teacher in Greece facing erotic manipulation by two sisters and a mysterious magician. She’d read it before. Some days she felt as if she were the magus herself. The manipulator, using dreams and drugs. But she was the one being manipulated now, and the plot felt too close to the reality of her world.

She put the book down. When she glanced at the doorway, she saw Jason watching her. She hadn’t heard him enter the office. His thumb and forefinger stroked his chin, which was unshaved. He wasn’t smiling. Fern Canyon played on the screen, and the rain fell, which it had done on that long hike together. There had been a real chemistry between them on that trip. It felt like a long time ago.

“You heard what’s going on?” Frankie said.

“Yes.”

“I canceled my appointments this week, at least until the police catch this guy. I’m calling everyone else to warn them to be careful.”

“I suppose that’s a good idea,” Jason said.

He sat down next to the chaise in the chair she usually used as a therapist. It was strange having him there, as if he were the doctor and she were the patient. Somehow, it took away her power, and she didn’t like it. She got up. She switched off the music and video. The treatment room, with its sound-baffled walls, was as silent as a crypt.

“Do you think the person who’s doing this is one of your patients?” Jason asked.

“I don’t know. The fact that he seems to be manipulating their behavior with some kind of hypnotic programming makes me think he must have seen my techniques up close, but he could have simply read up on me in the psychology journals, too. A lot of people think I’m evil. They’d love to hurt me.”

“Don’t exaggerate, Frankie.”

“I’m not. I don’t show you the mail I get.”

She’d testified in many lawsuits about the unreliability of recovered memories, even among people who believed they were victims of abuse. She’d also testified in criminal court about the problems of eyewitness identification, and thanks to her, accused murderers had been acquitted. She’d made a lot of money as an expert witness, and she’d made a lot of enemies, too. Nothing she said in court was false, but that didn’t matter to people who felt robbed of justice.