Brian Freeman - The Voice Inside

“Denied. If you’re able to build evidence for a new criminal case, I’ll examine the question of bail at that time.”

“In that case, Your Honor, I’d like to raise the issue of electronic monitoring,” Li went on.

Judge Elgin leaned forward on the bench. “Also denied. Mr. Li, you seem to be under the impression that you still have some sort of case against Mr. Cutter, and let me be clear. You don’t. This is not a question of pasting together prior evidence without the watch that was planted in Mr. Cutter’s house. I’m throwing it all out. If you refile charges based on evidence gathered or supervised by Lieutenant Salceda, then I will be forced to dismiss the case, and at that point, I’ll do so with prejudice. Her behavior has poisoned the entire investigation.”

“Your Honor!” Li protested.

“Enough. We’re done here. Everyone who has touched this case should be ashamed of themselves. If you think Mr. Cutter is guilty, and you want to put him back in San Quentin, then you and the police have one job. Start over. ”

And that was that.

Katie’s killer was free.

Frost found himself unable to move. He wanted to get up and leave the courtroom immediately, but the awful reality of what he’d done pinned his feet to the floor. He sat in the back row, in the aisle near the walnut door, as spectators filed past him. The media shouted questions that he ignored. Family members of the victims swore at him. One man, a father, spat in his hair. The guards tried to create a bubble around Frost, but he didn’t care what they did or said.

He blamed himself, just like they did.

Slowly, the courtroom emptied. Rudy Cutter, surrounded by police protection, was the last to leave. Frost wondered if someone from the families would be waiting outside the courthouse with a gun. Or a knife. He had to dig inside himself to ask whether there would be anything wrong with vigilante justice right now.

It didn’t matter what the judge said or what Jess had done. Cutter was guilty. Nothing changed that.

Frost realized that Cutter had stopped right next to him. He stared back at the man, eye to eye, cop to killer. Cutter had cleaned up for his court appearance; his face was smoothly shaved, his blond hair neat, his suit and tie pressed. He could have been Daniel Craig, a suave and sexy spy, not a serial killer. Cutter was whistling under his breath, but loud enough for Frost to hear it. The tune was familiar. The police tried to herd the man away, but he lingered in the aisle, not moving, and then he bent down so close to Frost that no one else could hear what he said. Frost felt the heat of the man’s breath.

“Tick tock, Inspector,” Cutter whispered.

Then he was gone, still whistling. The doors closed on him. The courtroom was empty and silent. Frost was alone.

It took him a moment to identify the tune that had been on Cutter’s lips, and when he did, the chill of it made him clench his fists. Cutter was taunting him, daring him to notice what he was doing. It was a confession that no one else would understand or believe.

Cutter had been whistling the Scott McKenzie song, “San Francisco.”

Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.

That was the song Frost and Katie had joked about — the song that had led him to buy the tiara with the pretty rhinestone flowers that was now hidden away in a box in Frost’s upstairs closet. The tiara had been nestled in Katie’s hair when he found her body at Ocean Beach, but he was the only person in the world who knew that.

Other than her killer.

The waves at Ocean Beach lapped to Frost’s feet with a whooshing rhythm that was like a heartbeat. Other than a few sundown joggers, he didn’t have much company on the drab stretch of sand. The November wind had driven most people away.

Something about being here brought Katie a little closer to him. Memories of her life came and went as he stood near the water. He pictured the two of them, as kids, flying a kite in Golden Gate Park. Katie playing the Nutcracker Suite on the piano at a high school Christmas play. Katie scowling playfully at the camera like Al Capone as he took her on a tour of Alcatraz. Those were good times.

With each in-and-out rumble of the surf, he also heard Rudy Cutter’s voice in his head: Tick tock. It was like Cutter was throwing down a challenge at him to stop what came next. The time on the clock was already counting down to another murder. This was personal for Frost now. He’d been the one to set Cutter free. He had to be the one to put him away again. He owed it to Katie.

Frost felt a presence near him and realized he wasn’t alone on the beach anymore. His head turned, and he saw a black woman no more than twenty yards away. She was looking at him, and she even raised her hand in a little wave. Her face was familiar. He knew her, and yet he didn’t know her.

She took a few tentative steps in his direction. She was as tall as he was and skinny to the point of being gaunt. They were probably close to the same age, halfway between thirty and forty. She had bushy black hair with tight corkscrew curls. Her thick eyebrows got lost in her hair. Her eyes were black marbles, intense and smart, analyzing the world with suspicion. Her face was narrow and long, her nose flat, her mouth a straight, emotionless line.

Her mocha skin was interrupted on her neck by a reddish discolored scar that sliced across her windpipe. She’d had her throat cut.

“Inspector Easton?”

“That’s right.”

“I’m sorry to intrude. My name is—”

She didn’t have to finish the sentence. Her face landed in his memory. They’d never met, but he recognized her from the photo on her book jacket and her appearances on television. It was the scar that distinguished her. She was both a writer and a survivor of a terrible crime.

“Eden Shay,” he said.

She was surprised and looked uncomfortable that he knew who she was. “That’s right.”

“I read your book, Ms. Shay.”

“I’m honored,” she said.

He heard a hint of her Australian roots in her voice, although her time in the US had tamed her accent. He remembered from her memoir that she’d grown up in Melbourne.

“I usually read history, but my sister enjoyed your book,” Frost said. “She made sure I read it, too.”

“Your sister. So that would be—”

“Katie,” he said.

Eden nodded. She didn’t pretend not to know what had happened to Katie. Similarly, he didn’t pretend not to notice the scar, which told Eden’s own horrific story. Ten years earlier, in her twenties, she’d attended the writer’s program at the University of Iowa to get her MFA. During her first term, she’d been kidnapped and held by two sadistic brothers in the basement of their Iowa City house. Imprisoned like a slave. Starved. Tortured. The brothers would kill small animals in front of her and tell her she was next. Eventually, they cut her throat and left her to bleed out, but instead, she escaped in the middle of a February night. She was rescued on a frozen rural highway on the brink of death.

The experience put her on the cover of People magazine. Her memoir about it became a number-one bestseller and a hit movie. Looking at her now, he somehow knew that all the fame and money hadn’t erased a minute of the time she’d spent in that basement.

“How did you find me, Ms. Shay?”

“I’m Eden, please.”

“Okay,” he said. “Eden.”

“Please don’t think I’m stalking you,” she said. “I was coming to see you at your house, and I saw you driving away. I followed you here.”

“That was an hour ago,” Frost pointed out.

“I know. I waited in my car. It seemed to me that you needed your privacy.”