Brian Freeman - The Night Bird

Lucy grabbed her phone and dialed. She wanted to talk to Frost, and she was disappointed when the call went to his voice mail.

“Hey, it’s me,” she said, leaving him a message. “I’d love to talk to you. Will you be able to come by later? Or I could come to your place. Don’t worry, everything’s fine.”

She hung up. Then, almost immediately, she called him again.

“Actually, no, everything’s not fine. Something’s wrong. I don’t know what it is. Call me as soon as you can, okay?”

Lucy put down her phone and went to get paper towels to sop up the spilled tea. Before she got there, her phone started ringing, and she sprinted back to scoop it up and answer it on the second ring. “Wow, that was fast,” she told him. “I’m so glad you called back. I really needed to hear your voice.”

But it wasn’t Frost.

At first, there was a long stretch of eerie quiet.

Then the music began.

She heard a flourish of drums and guitar and the whine of a synthesized keyboard. The monster beat started in her ear and wormed into her brain. Her jaw went slack. Her breathing got faster. She didn’t want to look down, but she had no choice, and when she did, she saw the gorge below her and felt the sway of the rope bridge. Her body was paralyzed. She couldn’t move.

“Luuuucy,” the Night Bird whispered into the phone. “Luuuucy.”

“Please... no... please... don’t do this...”

The song thumped its rhythm over and over. The synthesizer drowned out the storm and the wind. Spasms rippled through her muscles. She didn’t see her apartment anymore. Her world was a thousand feet of air, descending past stone cliffs to an icy glacial river.

“Listen to me, do you want to be free?”

“Yes... yes... what do you want?”

“It’s up to you, you know what to do.”

Tears streamed down Lucy’s face. She listened to the music. She felt the bridge go back and forth, bucking with the gusts. She wanted to fly, to die, to go anywhere, to do anything, if only she could make it stop.

“It’s up to you, you know what to do.”

He said it again. And again.

“You know what to do. You know what to do. You know what to do.”

Calmly, Lucy hung up the phone. Yes, she knew what to do. She walked to her closet and collected her raincoat and umbrella. She gathered up her purse from the dinette table.

Go out the back, she remembered.

She marched to the door of her apartment and opened it, but she paused as she stared into the dusty hallway. Her work wasn’t done. Not yet. She wasn’t ready to leave. There was one more thing.

Leaving the door ajar, Lucy turned around and went to the kitchen.

She opened the middle drawer, extracted a carving knife with a ten-inch blade, and slid it inside her purse.

Frankie waited as long as she could.

Five minutes passed. Lightning lit up the trees, and thunder followed, reverberating under the ground. Frost didn’t come back. The backup he’d requested didn’t arrive.

Sitting alone in the car, she heard a distant noise. It was almost part of the air. Moments later, she heard it a second time. She opened the door, letting in the rain, and leaned out to listen. Whatever the noise was, it was gone now, and it didn’t happen again. She pulled the door shut. Her impatience grew. She called Frost’s phone number, but there was no answer.

Ten minutes passed.

He should have been back by now.

Frankie climbed out of the truck into the driving rain. The street was empty. Trees bent, waving their branches at her. She continued past the bend in the road and saw that Darren Newman’s Lexus was gone. It had left recently; there was still a dry patch where the car had been parked. She squinted into the storm but couldn’t see taillights.

“Frost!” she shouted. Her voice sounded muffled, and she shouted again, as loud as she could. “Frost!”

She hiked up the shoulder to the gravel trail beside Stow Lake. The first thing she saw, sopping wet and lying in the mud, was a wool cap.

It was Todd’s.

Six feet away, in the middle of the path, was a gun.

“Frost!” she screamed again, but he didn’t answer. A finger of worry crept up her spine.

She started running into the wind. At the stone arch bridge, she crossed over the water to Strawberry Hill. Her hair was plastered to her skin, and she wiped rain from her eyes. The mud grabbed at her shoes. She followed overlapping footprints next to the lake, with leaves and pine needles blowing into her face. Where the path curved, she found a cross trail leading sharply uphill.

There she saw a ghost.

It wasn’t the White Lady. A man rose in darkness from the ground, barely visible against the forest. It was Frost. His skin was pale. Dirt matted his hair and clothes. He moved slowly, cupping the back of his skull with one hand. His other hand was striped with blood. He navigated one step downward, and Frankie rushed to his side and let him ease his weight against her with an arm around his waist. They struggled to the lakeside trail.

“Did you see them?” he asked.

Frankie shook her head. “No. Darren’s car is gone. I think he has Todd Ferris with him. I saw a gun on the trail.”

“One of them jumped me,” Frost said. “I don’t know which one. He hit me from behind. Did the backup get here?”

“Not yet.”

She checked the back of his head. Rain had washed away most of the blood, but she found swelling near the back of his ear, and when she grazed the area with her fingers, he winced with pain.

“Let’s get you to a hospital. They’ll need to check for concussion.”

“I’m okay.”

“Did you pass out?”

“A couple seconds, no more.”

“You’re not okay,” Frankie said.

She helped him along the path and across the stone bridge. The rain showed no signs of stopping. They retrieved the gun from the trail, and then Frankie helped Frost into the passenger seat of the Suburban. She went around the other side and got behind the wheel, but before she could start the engine, red lights flared ahead and behind, lighting up the park and the downpour. Silently, without sirens, four police cars surrounded her like phantoms. A dark-blue sedan joined them and pulled adjacent to the window, close enough that Frankie couldn’t open the door. She saw a severe, heavyset Hispanic woman climb out of the sedan.

“That’s my lieutenant,” Frost said. “Jess Salceda.”

“I know her,” Frankie murmured. “From last year.”

Frost lowered the passenger window. The lieutenant leaned inside, dripping rain. Her eyes acknowledged Frankie, but there was no love lost between them. Frankie knew that Salceda blamed her for Darren Newman. Then and now.

“Did you pass Newman’s car on the way in?” Frost asked.

“No.”

“We need a BOLO. He has a hostage with him.”

Salceda passed on the details to another officer, but she didn’t move from the Suburban. Her eyes shot coldly to Frankie and then back to Frost. “Lucy Hagen is gone,” she said.

“What?”

“Violet checked on her. The apartment is empty. I’m sorry, Frost, but I wanted you to know. We’ve put out a report on her, but right now, the best thing we can do is find Newman. Chances are, if we find him, we find Lucy.”

Salceda marched back to her sedan. Frankie watched Frost stare through the windshield. His face was black with shadows. He didn’t even roll up the window. Rain swept inside. The red lights of the police cars made the water shine like blood.

“Frost?” she said.

He didn’t answer.

“Are you okay?”

He still said nothing.

And then, making her jump, her phone rang. She didn’t recognize the number, but she knew who it was.