Brian Freeman - The Voice Inside

Frost glanced at his mother. He sensed an ulterior motive. “Sure, Dad.”

“Great.”

His father grabbed a jacket as they left the house, and he zipped it up as they made their way to the sidewalk. The evening didn’t feel cold to Frost, but Arizona life had already thinned Ned’s blood. His father walked fast on his short legs, but Frost’s long strides kept pace with him. He noticed his father eyeing their old home in the glow of a streetlight.

“Do you miss it?” Frost asked.

“Every damn day,” Ned said. “I miss the house, the city, you and your brother. But it is what it is. Janice likes Tucson. She says she’s free there.”

“How are you two doing?”

“Better. I won’t say perfect, but better.”

When his parents had taken the first steps toward reconciling after their split, Janice had made it clear that she needed a fresh start somewhere else if they were going to put their relationship back together. That meant leaving San Francisco. So Ned retired. They sold the house and moved.

“You could come back more often,” Frost pointed out. “Even if Mom doesn’t want to. You could stay with me and Shack. There’s a ton of room in the house.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Ned said, but Frost knew it was never going to happen. His parents always let him down easy about things they didn’t want to do, by telling him they’d keep it in mind. Or they’d run it by the committee. Or they’d put it on the to-do list. Those were the places that ideas went to die.

“Where’s the family gathering this weekend?” Frost asked.

“Natasha Lubin’s parents are hosting it at their house. They have a place near Stern Grove. I know it would mean a lot to your mother if you could join us at this one, Frost.”

“So she said.”

“Look, you know Duane. He never has time. Tabby can’t get out of her shift at the restaurant. So we’ll be on our own, and that’s not good for Janice. This will be a big gathering. A lot of family members from out of town are coming in.”

“I already told her I’ll be there if I can.”

“Good. I appreciate it.”

They kept walking at the same fast pace, and they reached the end of the avenue at the gates of the zoo. The street was quiet. Down the block to their right, invisible in the darkness, was the Pacific, but he could taste it in the strong wind. Mist was in the breeze, too, dampening their faces. His father sucked in a chestful of air, as if he needed to fill himself up with the city again. Ned looked at home here.

“I remember when you and Katie sneaked into the zoo at night that time,” his father reminded him. “You were what? Eleven years old? I still don’t know how you guys got the ladder down here from the garage. Then security caught you, and the cops called us. Jeez, the two of you could be trouble.”

“The scary thing is, it was Katie’s idea,” Frost said. “And she was only seven.”

“That doesn’t surprise me in the least. Nothing ever fazed that girl. She could talk to a stranger for two minutes and know their whole life history.”

“Yes, she could.”

His father jammed his hands in his pants pockets. The ocean breeze rustled his hair, and his face was full of shadows. “Hey, listen, Frost, I want to talk to you about something. That’s why I suggested we take a walk. I didn’t want your mother to hear this. She’s got enough on her mind right now without me adding anything more.”

“What’s up?” Frost asked.

“It’s about Katie. I don’t know if it’s important or not, but with everything happening—”

“Tell me,” Frost said.

“Okay. Look, you remember, three days after we found her — after you found her — it was our anniversary.”

“I remember.”

“You know me. Gift giving has never been my thing. And your mother is not exactly the easiest person to shop for. So the week before, I asked Katie for help. I gave her a hundred bucks and told her to find something nice. Naturally, she picked the perfect thing, like always. A beautiful Tibetan Buddha water fountain. It was delivered on our anniversary. At any other time, Janice would have loved it, but of course, getting it then, she went to pieces. So I put the fountain in a box, stored it in the garage, and we never looked at it again.”

“I’m not sure I’m following you, Dad,” Frost said. “What is this about?”

“Well, the thing is, the box went to Arizona with us. We didn’t really take the time to downsize. Janice wanted to get out of the city as fast as we could. It wasn’t until earlier this year that I started going through a lot of the boxes that were still sitting in storage that we didn’t have room for and had never bothered to unpack. And I found the box with the fountain in it.”

Ned slid an envelope out of the inner pocket of his jacket.

“The receipt from the store was inside with the fountain. I had never even opened it. See, I had given Katie the money a week earlier, so I assumed she’d bought the fountain the next day. She was always efficient. But for some reason, she must have waited, because when I looked at the receipt, I realized that she’d gone to the shop to get the fountain on the day she died.”

His father extended the envelope to him, and Frost took it. He opened the flap and slid out what was inside, and he used the glow of his phone to light it up. It was a handwritten packing slip describing the Tibetan fountain, and stapled to it was a cash register receipt. He read through the details and saw not just the date printed on the receipt, but the time.

March 10. 7:57 p.m.

“Dad, do you realize when she stopped at this store?” Frost asked. “This was after Todd Clary placed his order. She must have stopped there while she was making her last delivery.”

“Yeah, that’s what it looked like to me, too.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about this before?”

“Cutter was in prison. I didn’t think it mattered anymore.”

Frost looked at the receipt again. This time, he noticed the name and address of the Tibetan gift shop where Katie had stopped, and he saw the next piece of the puzzle taking shape in his mind. It was a puzzle piece that didn’t fit.

“Do you know this shop?” he asked his father. “Do you know where it is?”

“I know it’s on Haight.”

“Yes, but the shop is four blocks east of the restaurant where Katie worked. It’s practically as far as Herb’s gallery.”

“So what?”

Ned was directionally challenged. Frost got his own sense of direction, which had saved him time after time during his taxi-driving days, from his mother.

“To get to Todd Clary’s place near USF, Katie should have gone west from the restaurant,” Frost told him. “By stopping at the gift shop, she was headed in the opposite direction of where she needed to deliver the pizza. That doesn’t make any sense. Where the hell was she going?”

“Are you the one who called me?” Jess asked the Asian bartender in the downstairs bar in Japantown. He had plucked eyebrows, and his eyelashes were as full as any model on the cover of Vogue . She thought about asking him what shade of lipstick he was wearing, because she wanted it for herself.

“I called you?” he replied. “Who are you?”

“You said a guy named Rudy had a message for me.”

He checked her out, and his lips bent into a smile. “Oh, you’re the girlfriend . Oh, sure. Well, sorry, your ex is long gone, and he’s not coming back. He left with a horny little thing.”

“When did they leave?”

“I don’t know. I lose track of time in here. An hour ago? It got busy, so I didn’t call you right away. Hey, as long as you’re here, you want to cry into a martini? I make a pretty sweet cosmo.”