Brian Freeman - The Night Bird

Frost stood up and rubbed a hand over his beard. “You can’t move at all?”

“No. I can turn my head, but my arms and legs don’t work.”

Frost gestured to one of the uniformed ambulance workers. Lucy shook her head as she saw a paramedic coming closer.

“There’s nothing physically wrong with me,” she told him. “This has happened before. I’ll be fine as soon as I’m off the bridge. Sometimes the fear just overwhelms me, and my body shuts down.”

“We’ll take you to the hospital and get you checked out,” Frost said.

“I don’t need to go to the hospital. I just need to get off the bridge.”

“Well, unless you start moving soon, you’re going to the hospital, Lucy. It’s kind of a rule we have. Last time I left a woman paralyzed in the middle of the Bay Bridge, my lieutenant got really pissed at me.”

He smiled again. His cheeks and eyes had deep laugh lines. This time, Lucy’s mouth twitched upward into a shy smile of her own, and a blush deepened on her face.

“Please just get me out of this car,” she said. “I dragged myself back here after Brynn went over the side, and then I couldn’t move. It’s been an hour. I’m really cold.”

“I can carry you if you’d like. Or I could ask one of the EMTs to do it.”

“Do whatever you have to do,” Lucy said. “As long as I don’t have to watch. I can’t look over the edge.”

Frost opened the passenger door of the Camaro. Lucy Hagen was small, maybe five foot three. Her shoulder-length brunette hair had been mussed into tangles by the wind. She wore a long-sleeve gray shirt untucked over black tights, with calf-high boots. He guessed that she was no more than twenty-five years old. Life was about perspective; to Frost, at thirty-four, twenty-five sounded young. Her skin was creamy, her large brown eyes sunken by darker moons underneath. She had lips that pushed out from her mouth in a permanent pucker, and her lipstick was deep red. Her rounded nose was slightly too large for her face, but she was pretty.

Lucy closed her eyes. Frost leaned down to her waist and lifted her effortlessly. She was as limp as a sack of Chinatown rice. He hoisted her so that her torso nudged over his shoulder and carried her the short distance to his Suburban. With one hand, he opened the passenger door, and then he gently draped her inside. When he went around to the other side of the truck and got behind the wheel, her big eyes were open, and she was staring at him.

“Thank you.”

“No problem,” Frost said. He turned on the engine. Heat surged from the vents. “How are you feeling?”

“It’s better inside. The convertible makes the bridge thing worse.”

“That makes sense.” He tugged the knot to tighten his tie and smoothed his hair down as much as he could. It was still messy as it swept back high on his forehead, but messy worked for him. His hair was buzzed short on the sides of his head, emphasizing his small ears. “Can you move yet?”

“No, but I’m sure the feeling will come back soon.”

“Okay. Can you tell me what happened out there?”

“Brynn went nuts,” Lucy said. “That’s what happened.”

“Nuts how?”

“We were stuck in traffic. I was scared because of the bridge, but Brynn was fine. Joking, singing. Totally normal. And then she turned psycho. It came out of nowhere. She was screaming, going crazy, clawing at herself. She tried to climb the bridge, like she was being chased, and she fell. It was horrible.”

“Did she fall or did she jump?”

“I think she fell. I mean, she wasn’t trying to kill herself. This was something else, but I don’t know what it was.”

“Did she say anything while this was going on?”

“No, she never said a word. She just screamed.”

“Where were the two of you coming from?” Frost asked.

“A party in Alameda.”

“Was Brynn drinking at the party? Did she take any drugs?”

Lucy shook her head firmly. “No drugs. That wasn’t her thing. Brynn had a martini at the party, but that was it.”

“Could someone have slipped something into her drink?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. There are freak jobs who will do anything. But she seemed fine as we were driving home.”

Frost didn’t say anything for a while. He was making connections. “Do you know a woman named Monica Farr? Or do you know if Brynn did?”

“Monica Farr? I don’t think so.”

He slid his iPhone from his belt clip and swished through a few photos. He showed Lucy a picture of a young redhead. “Do you recognize this woman?”

“No. Who is she?”

Frost didn’t answer. “How well did you know Brynn?”

“Pretty well. We’ve been roommates for a year. We both worked at Macy’s.”

“Did she seem depressed or unstable? Did you notice any other instances of erratic behavior?”

“Brynn? No way. She’s Mary McCheery. Nothing gets her down. If anything, she’s been even happier the past few months. She’s dating a guy, and I think she felt like he might be the one, you know? Wedding bells. She’s been sleeping over at his place a lot. I didn’t see her the past couple of nights.”

“What’s the boyfriend’s name?” Frost asked.

“Gabriel Tejada. He’s an attorney in Sausalito.”

“How’d they meet?”

“He was in Macy’s, buying perfume for his girlfriend before Christmas. She became an ex-girlfriend pretty fast after Gabe met Brynn.”

“Okay.”

Frost paused as he heard a gravelly noise from the far back of the truck. He looked over his shoulder as a noxious cloud wafted into the front seat, making him cover his nose. “Aw, c’mon, Shack, really? Now?”

Lucy’s face scrunched in confusion. Then she screamed as a tiny tuxedo cat flew over the seat and landed on the dashboard of the SUV. It had huge, curious dark eyes, a pink nose, and a black chin set against white cheeks and chest. Its stubby ears ended in white wingtips. The cat cocked its head, snaked a short tail around its paws, and analyzed her face like a psychiatrist.

“Sorry,” Frost told her. “He always waits to hit the litter box until I have someone in the car.”

“Your cat?”

“Yeah, sort of. Long story. This is Shack.”

“Shaq? Like the basketball player?”

“No, Shack as in Ernest Shackleton. The Antarctic explorer.”

“Oh,” Lucy said.

“I’m sort of a history buff. Sorry, are you allergic?”

“No.”

Shack took that as an invitation. He padded from the dashboard onto Lucy’s lap, kneaded her thigh briefly, and stretched across her legs, exposing a black stomach with a single white stripe that looked like an Oreo cookie. The cat was barely a foot from nose to tail. Lucy lifted a hand and stroked under Shack’s chin, and Frost noted the movement in her arm.

“Looks like you’re not paralyzed anymore,” he pointed out.

“Oh!” Lucy exclaimed. She wiggled her fingers. “You’re right. I told you, it’s always temporary.”

“Do you want me to put Shack in the back? I have a carrier for him.”

“No, he’s fine,” Lucy said. “Is he like a police cat? I didn’t know they had such things.”

“No, he’s just a cat cat. He likes to ride along with me sometimes.”

“I thought cats hated cars.”

“Not Shack. He goes everywhere. He’s got the heart of an explorer. Hence the name.”

“I think that’s sweet,” Lucy told him. “I mean, that you take him with you.”

“Yeah, homicide inspectors. We’re as sweet as they come.”

Lucy’s eyebrows arched. “Homicide?”

“That’s my department. We look at any death that’s considered suspicious. Based on what you’re telling me, Brynn’s behavior is way out of character for her, and I’d like to know what caused it.”