Brian Freeman - The Night Bird

“Frost?”

He looked up in surprise. Francesca Stein was in front of him. He hadn’t even heard her as she walked across the cafeteria floor.

“Dr. Stein,” he said, dropping into her formal name again. She wore the same clothes she’d worn all evening. She hadn’t been home. “I thought I asked an officer to take you back to your place.”

“You did. I needed to see you.”

He gestured at the chair that Jess had left pulled out, and Frankie sat down. She laced her long fingers together and looked uncomfortable. It was a strange look for a woman who always seemed in control of things around her.

He could read the trouble in her eyes.

“What’s bothering you, Frankie?”

“I wanted to talk to you about something. I think — well, I think there’s a problem.”

“What kind of problem?”

She leaned back in the chair and put her palms flat on the table. Her fingers were slim and long. Even when she was wet and upset, she had a precision about every motion she made.

“Do you remember what Darren Newman was wearing tonight?” she asked.

“Orange shirt, black pants, some kind of psychedelic tie.”

“That’s right.”

Frankie didn’t say anything more. Her lips were pressed together.

“Is that supposed to mean something to me?” Frost asked her.

“I’m not sure.”

Frost smiled. “Look, it’s been a long night for you. Maybe you should get some sleep. We can talk things over tomorrow.”

“No. I don’t think this can wait. Tell me something, do you have any police officers searching Darren’s house?”

“Near the Panhandle? Yes, there’s a team there now.”

“Are you able to reach them?” Frankie asked.

“Sure. What is it you’re concerned about?”

“I was hoping they could text you a picture of Darren’s living room and bedroom.”

Frost cocked his head. “Why?”

“I’ll explain when I see it. I could be completely wrong about all of this, but I want to be sure.”

She was upset enough that he was willing to indulge her. He called the head of the forensics team and put in a request for photos from inside Newman’s house. Less than ninety seconds later, his phone began to chime, and he downloaded a series of pictures of the house from multiple rooms and multiple angles. He handed his phone to Frankie, who scrolled through the photos. The more she did, the more her face darkened.

Finally, she handed him his phone again.

“Well?” Frost asked. “Do we have a problem?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. What is it?”

She breathed in and out, and then she said, “When Darren first came to me, he told me a story from his childhood. He grew up in a rural area not far from Green Bay. He was an only child. When he was seven years old, he built a snow fort for himself during a Thanksgiving Day blizzard. The fort collapsed on him. He nearly suffocated and died before anyone realized what had happened. A lot of the stories he told me in therapy were lies, but that one was true. His mother showed me a newspaper article about it.”

Frost shrugged. “Must have been scary for a kid, but I hope you’re not saying it excuses the monster he became.”

“No. No, that’s not it at all. Do you know what leukophobia is?”

“I don’t.”

“It’s a pathological aversion to the color white,” Frankie said.

“That’s a real thing?”

“Yes. And it can be triggered by exactly the kind of experience that Darren went through as a child. The color white becomes a symbol in the brain of the near-death experience he went through in the snow. That was all he could see as he tried to breathe. Nothing but whiteness. So the color brings back the terror.”

“You think Darren Newman suffered from leukophobia?” Frost asked.

“He never talked to me about it, and I didn’t catch it at the time, but yes, I think so. I never saw him wear anything except brightly colored shirts. His car? Candy red. And remember his storage locker? The door was painted green. All the other lockers had white doors, but Darren’s door was green.”

“That seems like a stretch,” Frost said.

Frankie grabbed his phone and put it on the table in front of him. She used her finger to swipe through the photos. “These pictures were all taken inside Newman’s house. Look at the walls. There’s not a white wall anywhere in the house. It’s either wallpaper or bright pastels. Look, you can see, even the ceilings aren’t white. Who does that?”

Frost studied the photos. “Okay, let’s assume you’re right about Newman’s condition. What does that mean? Why is it important?”

But he already knew what she was going to say.

“The torture chamber,” Frankie told him. “ It was all white. Don’t you see? If Darren had leukophobia, he would never have painted that room white. He would never even have been able to walk inside that room. He couldn’t make it past the doorway. It’s impossible.”

“Maybe Newman worked through his leukophobia after he saw you. It’s been a year.”

“No. Not based on his house. Not based on how he dressed.”

Frost frowned. “You saw the pictures inside that storage locker. You know what kind of man Newman was. He wasn’t an innocent victim.”

“I’m not saying Darren wasn’t a murderer and a sociopath, but I’m telling you what I know as a psychiatrist, Frost. If that was the room used to manipulate those women, then Darren didn’t do it. He couldn’t have done it. A man with leukophobia going into that room is as likely as Lucy Hagen voluntarily climbing the span of the Bay Bridge.”

“Frankie, he was there ,” Frost pointed out. “He was wearing the mask. Lucy killed him. We both heard it happen.”

Frankie shook her head. “Did we? I’m not sure about that. Maybe that’s what we’re supposed to think. I came into the room and saw Lucy holding a knife. Darren was dying. And Todd Ferris was just sitting in the corner, watching the whole thing. He could have been the one who stabbed Darren.”

“Todd was drugged,” Frost said.

“Are you sure? Did you run a blood test? What if Darren was drugged? What if Todd won the fight in Golden Gate Park? Todd could have called me and then put the mask on Darren while I was running into the building. He had time to stab Darren himself, put the knife in Lucy’s hands, and sit down and wait for us. He would have been there to see Lucy attack me. To watch me die, just like he promised.”

Frost thought about it. He replayed the timing in his head and thought about the white room as he ran inside. Frankie was right. It could all have happened that way.

“Why?” Frost asked. “Why would he do all that?”

“I don’t know why, but I think Todd played me from the beginning,” Frankie said. “He came to me because he wanted to understand my methods. He bugged my phone to find his targets. He told me the truth about himself, and I was too arrogant to believe him, but this has been his twisted scheme all along. It wasn’t Darren at all. Todd Ferris is the Night Bird.”

“Ferris is a ghost,” Jess said.

The three of them stood in an empty hospital room. Frost, Frankie, and Jess. Todd had checked in for observation hours earlier, under the watch of one of the uniformed officers. He’d pretended to sleep, and when the officer at his door took two minutes to go to the restroom, he’d made a silent escape. The cop hadn’t even realized that Todd was gone until Frost came looking for him.

“What does that mean?” Frankie asked. “A ghost?”

“It means there’s no such person,” Jess replied. “There’s no one by that name in any of the state databases. The address in Pacifica that he used with you is a fake. Todd Ferris doesn’t exist.”