Brian Freeman - The Voice Inside

Clary hadn’t forgotten. He stormed across the street toward Frost.

“You!” the man shouted. “Get the hell out of here!”

Frost rolled down the window. “Mr. Clary—”

“I knew you’d be back here! I saw they released that guy, and I knew you’d be looking at me again. It never ends! Do you know how many people threw crap at my house? Do you know how many neighbors called me a killer? All because I ordered a damn pizza!”

“Mr. Clary,” Frost said calmly, “I know you weren’t treated fairly by anyone, including me.”

“I didn’t see anything! I told you people that over and over and over. I was watching TV. I ordered a pizza, and when it wasn’t there an hour later, I called the store and asked where it was. That’s it. The next day, I’ve got cops going up and down the block, searching my house, going through my garbage, talking to my boss, making my life hell. Do you think I got an apology from anybody? No!”

“I’m sorry. Really.”

Clary acted as if he didn’t hear him. “Even after you caught the guy, you people kept saying I had something to do with it! Like this Cutter guy had me order a pizza so he could wait outside and grab the girl. I never met him! I had no idea who he was!”

“Mr. Clary, I know you’re innocent,” Frost told him. “I can’t say it any plainer than that. I apologize for the suspicion that landed on your head. All I can say is, what happened that night was hell for me, too.”

The man breathed heavily. His face was red, and his comb-over hung in the wind like the fin of a catamaran. Even so, Frost’s words got through to him. He opened his mouth, and then he clamped it shut again. Finally, he said, more quietly, “Look, I know this girl was your sister. I’m sorry for what happened to her. Nobody was happier than me to see that guy behind bars. It makes me sick to have him out on the streets again.”

“Me, too. I want to get him back in prison, and that means I need to go back to the crimes he committed and figure out what we missed. That includes the night when Katie disappeared.”

Clary shook his head. “I don’t know what happened to her.”

“I understand.” Frost knew that the man was wearing his armor. Clary had been saying no, no, no for years, without even listening to what people were asking him. “This may sound strange, Mr. Clary, but you were probably the last person to talk to my sister alive.”

Clary smoothed down his hair. He looked embarrassed. “I get what you’re saying, but all I did was order a pizza. It’s not like I had a conversation with her.”

Frost laughed. “I think you may be the first person in history to say that. Katie had a rubber mouth, always talking. Most people couldn’t shut her up. The restaurant guys had to keep telling her to get off the phone, because she’d have half a dozen people on hold while she was still gabbing with the last person placing an order.”

Clary cocked his head. “You’re right, I told the cops that. She was a chatty one. Kinda scattered, too.”

“How so?” Frost asked.

“Oh, I remember she rattled off ‘onions’ instead of ‘olives’ when she read the order back to me. I was nervous she was going to get it wrong.”

“That sounds like Katie.”

“She was nice, though. Bubbly.”

“Yeah, she was. Anything else?”

Clary shrugged. “Sorry. It was a long time ago.”

“Well, I appreciate your talking to me.”

“Hey, I’m not trying to be a jerk, but you’re wasting your time. You’re not going to find any answers at my place.”

Frost nodded without replying. Clary turned around and retreated into his apartment. When the man was gone, Frost got out of the Suburban and studied the street in both directions. The neighborhood was empty. So was the wooded hillside leading up to the college. He tried to imagine Rudy Cutter at night, hiding in the bushes, but he knew that theory didn’t make sense. Cutter didn’t simply grab random women off the street, and there was no way he could have known in advance that Katie would be making a delivery to this address.

Todd Clary was right. Frost was wasting his time.

Somewhere in his head, he could also hear Katie talking back to him. It was as if she were sitting in his Suburban with Shack on her lap, impatiently waiting for him to drive away. Her chatty, scattered, bubbly voice called through the open window to him.

Katie said, Get a clue, Frost. I was never here.

Frost had to navigate a gauntlet of security to get to the elevators in Eden Shay’s building. Eden owned a condo in the Rincon Hill neighborhood in a tower that was new, modern, and glass. When she answered the door and led him inside, he saw varnished gray wood, floor-to-ceiling windows, and appliances that were so clean he wondered if she ever used them. Her twentieth-floor flat faced east toward the Bay Bridge.

“Pretty nice place,” he said, which was an understatement. It was beautiful, but it had a sterile, impersonal feel.

“Says the cop with the house on Russian Hill,” Eden replied, smiling.

“That’s a long story.”

“I know. Your cat.”

He stood at the window, but he looked back at her, impressed. She wasn’t lying when she said she did her research.

“Do you want a Sierra Nevada?” she asked, as if to emphasize the point. “I bought a six-pack of Torpedo for you.”

“No, thanks.”

“I’m an afternoon wine gal myself, so I hope you don’t mind if I indulge.” She toasted him with a wineglass from the counter that was already poured high with pinot grigio. “Wine is just one of my unhealthy obsessions.”

“Go ahead,” Frost said.

Eden joined him by the window. Her corkscrew curls danced on her face. In her heels, she was as tall as he was. She wore gray slacks that somehow matched the colors of the condo, and her sleeveless pink blouse showed off a lot of smooth skin. Her body had a faint citrus aroma, like grapefruit.

“Why’d you choose to buy here?” he asked, watching her in profile as she drank her wine.

“I had a house when I lived in the city the first time, but a house is more work than I want right now. I was looking to go simpler and smaller when I came back. This building is mostly filled with finance geeks and corporate lawyers. Not exactly my type, but that’s okay. I don’t hang out with the neighbors.”

“Who do you hang out with?” Frost asked.

“An Aussie girl like me? Mostly midgets, priests, and carnival workers.”

He realized she was teasing him, and he smiled. He also felt guilty because his gaze kept drifting to the scar on her neck. It made him feel like a cliché, because he was sure that everyone she met did the same thing. She drank more wine, then ran one of her fingers along the zipper-like seam in her skin.

“Do you want to ask me about it?” she said.

“Only if you want to talk about it.”

“Well, the kid hesitated when he slashed me,” Eden told him. “That’s what saved my life. He’d never killed anyone before. He didn’t go deep enough, and then he didn’t stick around to make sure I bled out. He and his brother just wanted to get the hell away from me after it was done. They were scared to death. More scared than me. Isn’t that strange? My brother always told me that a writer had to be aware of every single moment. The whole time in that basement, I was so focused on remembering the experience that I was never scared.”

“Was it hard to write about it?”

“It was like living it all over again,” she admitted. “It nearly killed me. After I wrote the scene about them cutting me open, do you know what I did? I spent two weeks volunteering at an animal shelter that had to perform euthanasia on cats and dogs.”