Brian Freeman - The Voice Inside

“What about you? Any unidentified Jane Does dropping into your life lately?”

“Sorry. Shack and I are confirmed bachelors.”

“No one at all?” Herb challenged him, with the impish smile of someone who had inside information.

“Did you have someone in mind?”

“Oh, I hear that you’ve made the acquaintance of an attractive journalist. Eden Shay.”

“How do you know about her, you old fox?”

“She came to interview me yesterday,” Herb told him.

“About the murders?”

“No, about you. She knew we were friends.”

“What did you tell her?”

“Nothing. I simply confirmed what she already knew — that you were handsome, unattached, and a notable philosopher on love and romance.”

“Ha.”

“She seemed interested in you, Frost, and in more than a professional way.”

“Don’t get carried away. What Eden wants is a good story, and she’ll do whatever it takes to be in the middle of it. That’s her thing, you know. She likes to get close to the people she’s writing about.”

“She called you the hero of her new book,” Herb said.

“I’m not. Just a guest star at the end.”

Herb clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t be so sure. You’ve been a part of this particular book for some time.”

“Longer than I want.”

“Well, remember what they say,” Herb told him slyly. “Sooner or later, all writers fall in love with their heroes.”

Frost grinned. “Yeah, or they get them killed.”

“I’m glad you called me,” Eden said.

She sat in the passenger seat of Frost’s Suburban. They were parked on Silver Avenue across from the home of Gilda and Anthony Flores. Nina’s parents.

“I needed your help,” Frost admitted. “Gilda Flores was one of the family members screaming at me in the courtroom. She turned me down when I asked to talk to her. I’m glad you were able to change her mind.”

“I relate well to victims. Gilda was the very first interview I did when I started working on the book. She trusts me.” Eden played with her black curls as if she wanted to flirt with him, but then she put her hands in her lap. “But you don’t trust me, do you?”

“I don’t know where the writer ends and where Eden Shay begins.”

“That’s easy. We’re the same person.”

“And that’s why I don’t trust you,” Frost said.

“Aw. What a shame.” She was flirty again.

“I hear you’ve been talking to my friends.”

“That’s what writers do.”

“What did you learn?”

“I learned that with Frost Easton, what you see is what you get,” Eden told him. “You don’t play games and pretend to be something you’re not.”

“Is that all?” he asked.

“You want more? Okay. You’re smart, but that’s a given. You’re an introvert, and you don’t fit in with the cop buddy system. Most of your friends are outside the force. You don’t seek out relationships with women, because you don’t think you’re good at them and you don’t want to hurt anybody. You know you’re good-looking. You probably know that a little too well. The biggest love in your life is San Francisco, but if you had your choice, you’d probably go back to an earlier time in the city’s history, not now. The 1860s maybe. Mark Twain days. Just you and Shack out on the frontier.”

Frost smiled, but he was a little unsettled by the accuracy of everything she’d said. “We should go.”

“Whatever you say, partner.”

He climbed out into the afternoon drizzle. The Flores family home was a Spanish-style two-story house with freshly painted white stucco and cherry-red shutters. Flowers grew in a brick-lined bed by the sidewalk. A fuchsia tree had been trimmed into a neat ball by the front door, and the door itself was protected by a locked gate. This was a family that had learned the hard way to take no chances.

Gilda Flores answered the buzzer. Her face was hostile, but she said nothing as she unlocked the outer gate and ushered them into the house. He noticed that Gilda hugged Eden as if they were long-lost friends. Inside, the Flores home was dark on a dark day, but the furniture shined, as if dust had no place here. The air bloomed with a smell of roasting peppers.

“Thank you for seeing me,” Frost said.

“Ms. Shay said it was important that I talk to you, so I’m talking to you.”

“Is your husband here?”

“No, he didn’t think he could be civil.”

Frost felt the woman’s lingering anger, and he didn’t blame her. He looked for a different way to connect with her. “I met one of Nina’s closest friends recently. Tabby Blaine. She said to say hello when I saw you.”

Gilda’s face brightened. She was plump and small, but he could see a resemblance to her daughter, Nina, in her bushy brown hair and wide-open eyes. She wore a yellow one-piece dress with a belt tied around the middle.

“Tabby! I haven’t seen her in ages. She is such a ray of light, that girl. She and Nina were inseparable. Much like me and her mother. We were pregnant at the same time, and Nina and Tabby were first babies for both of us, so we went through it all together.”

“Tabby’s dating my brother,” Frost told her before he remembered to stop himself. Immediately, he saw Eden’s face awaken with interest. This was a new angle for the book.

“Really?” Gilda said. “I guess grief can bring people together. I know that you and your brother lost a family member, too. Please don’t think — based on my behavior in the courtroom — that I forgot that. I really didn’t.”

“I understand.”

“Eden, do you know Tabby?” Gilda asked.

“I talked to her years ago,” Eden replied. “I know she was very close to Nina.”

“Oh yes, those two were like sisters. I had three more children after Nina, but they were all boys. I don’t think it’s the same thing for a girl, having brothers.”

Frost, who’d been closer to Katie than anyone else in his life, didn’t bother correcting her. “I’m sorry to reopen an old wound, Mrs. Flores, but your daughter is an important part of this case. In order to get Rudy Cutter back in prison — and make sure he doesn’t harm anyone else — we need to understand what really happened between him and Nina.”

Gilda’s weary face showed that she’d been down this road many times. “Yes, I know. She was the first.”

“That’s right.”

“I don’t know what more I can tell you. Nothing I said back then seemed to help.”

“We know a lot more about this case — and about Rudy Cutter — than we did in those days,” Frost said.

“I suppose so, but by the time we found out about Cutter, years had gone by. It’s been even longer now. What exactly do you want?”

“I’m interested in finding similarities between Nina and the other victims,” Frost said. “I know the families have gotten together over the years. Did you discover personal connections to any of them? Was there any overlap in your lives? It doesn’t matter how trivial it may have been.”

“No, Tony and I never really got to know the other families. We went to a couple of the early support-group meetings, but we chose not to participate after that. It was too painful to be reminded of it.”

“Is there anything else about Nina that might help me?” Frost asked.

Gilda glanced over her shoulder at the stairs. “Would you like to see her bedroom?”

“Yes, I would. Thank you.”

Nina’s mother led Frost and Eden to the second floor. It was obvious that Gilda’s hip bothered her; she didn’t climb well. At the top of the stairs, she pointed at a bedroom with a closed door at the end of the hallway. A framed photograph of Nina — one of her high school graduation pictures — was hung on the door.