Brian Freeman - The Voice Inside

“Those furies can stay inside a person for a long time,” Frost said.

“I won’t hear talk like that!”

Eden interrupted to calm her down. “Josephine, please, we’re not blaming Hope. This is all on Rudy and no one else.”

“That’s right,” Frost said. “We’re just trying to understand why he picked the women he did. If we can establish a connection that links the victims together, it will help us gather the evidence we need to put him back in prison. And we’re wondering whether that connection somehow involves Hope.”

“I don’t know anything about that.”

“I’m sure you read about the murders. You must have followed Rudy’s original trial. Was there anything about the victims that made you think of Hope? Did you know any of them or their families? Was there some physical resemblance? Some behavior? It might have been the smallest thing.”

She shook her head firmly, without even thinking about it. “Nothing at all. Now are we done? I have to go.”

“Just one more thing,” Frost said. “I’d like you to look at some pictures.”

Frost slid his phone out of his pocket. He found the photos he’d taken of the buttons that Nina Flores had worn on her birthday. He held out the phone so that Josephine could swipe through the pictures, and she took the device from him with obvious reluctance.

“The girl in these photos is Nina Flores,” he told her. “She was Rudy’s first victim. There are pictures of her family here, too. Nina was wearing these buttons the day that Rudy met her. He saw them. I want to know if something in these photographs could have brought back his anger over Hope.”

Josephine studied the pictures one by one, but she didn’t say a word. Her face was dismissive. He could see her getting ready to hand back the phone with an impatient sigh, because he’d wasted her time. And then she stopped. Her finger hovered over the screen with the tiniest quiver. Her eyes narrowed. Something about one of the images grabbed her like a magnet.

“Do you see something, Mrs. Stillman?” Frost asked.

The woman’s mouth puckered unhappily. She was silent.

“Josephine?” Eden asked.

She pushed the phone back into his hands with a decisive gesture. She was done. “I don’t know any of these people.”

And yet her face was ashen.

“They may be strangers, but if you can think of anything—” he said.

“I can’t. I told you. Now I’m late, and you really have to leave.”

The woman busied herself with her purse. Clearly, the interview was over. She wanted them gone. Frost turned his phone over and looked at the photo that had grabbed her attention.

It was the picture of Nina and Tabby.

He saw them in Nina’s bedroom. Two young women. Nina with her dark hair and round, smiling face, about to turn twenty-one. Tabby, redheaded and already sure of herself. They were dressed for the night, ready to party and dance.

He didn’t see anything in the photograph that could be a motive for murder, but Hope’s mother obviously had. He could see a strange horror hiding behind the woman’s eyes. In five seconds, she’d spotted something about Nina Flores that he and Jess had missed for years. Something that connected Nina and Hope.

She had no intention of telling him what it was.

When they were back at the Suburban, Herb called to report that one of his contacts on Street Twitter had spotted Rudy Cutter. Frost gunned the engine of the Suburban and headed for the 280 freeway, which was the fastest way back uptown. Unfortunately, in late-afternoon San Francisco, there was no way to get anywhere fast. Every route was a parking lot.

“Where are we heading?” Eden asked him.

“The library at the Civic Center. Cutter was there.”

He wondered if it was a mistake to tell her everything about the investigation. He’d already decided that it was safer to keep her close than to push her away, but their interests were likely to diverge sooner or later. He’d sacrifice her book and keep things from her if it meant getting Cutter. She’d sacrifice just about anything if it meant a better story.

Her expression, the wary smile on her face, was obvious. She seemed to read his mind and know that he was doubting her.

“We want the same thing, Frost,” Eden reassured him.

“Do we? I thought you just wanted a bestseller.”

“I want Cutter back behind bars. Or dead, if it comes to that. That’s how the book is supposed to end. With justice.”

“Then you’re right. We want the same thing.”

But he wasn’t convinced, and she knew it.

“Do you mind if I ask you an uncomfortable question?” she said.

“That seems to be your specialty.”

“Why aren’t we having sex? I’ve made it pretty obvious that I’m interested, haven’t I?”

“Yes, you have.”

“Well? Most men don’t play hard to get with me.”

“I think you’ve got the wrong idea about why I suggested you stay with me,” Frost said.

“I don’t think so. Like I said, we want the same thing.”

Frost kept driving with his eyes on the road. “Are you always so direct?”

“Aussie girls aren’t shy about what we want. We usually get it, too.”

“And then you write about it in your book?” he asked.

“Maybe, but you shouldn’t let that scare you. I don’t give performance reviews.” She smiled at him. “Unless you turn out to be Iron Man, that is.”

“You’re a public person, Eden. I’m not. I like to keep it that way.”

“At least let me make dinner for us tonight,” she suggested. “Wine. Candlelight. No book talk. It’s my way of saying thanks for letting me stay with you and being my protector. Then we can see what happens.”

“Sorry, I have a family dinner tonight,” he told her. “It’s my parents, plus Duane and his girlfriend.”

“You mean Tabby Blaine?” she asked with a penetrating stare.

“That’s right.”

Eden was silent for a while. Then she said, “Well, maybe I’ll wait up for you.”

They didn’t talk the rest of the way.

Frost finally exited the freeway and wound through the streets to the Civic Center. He parked outside the library building, and he and Eden made their way into the atrium. Herb was waiting near the elevators with a scrawny black man wearing a jean jacket covered in patches. Herb had a suitcase with him, in which he typically carried his painting supplies.

“Thanks for calling,” Frost told Herb. “I think you’ve met Eden Shay before.”

Herb’s mouth broke into a little smirk. “Indeed I have. Hello, Ms. Shay. And both of you, this is my friend Bike. He’s the one who spotted Rudy Cutter in the computer room on the fifth floor.”

The man in the jean jacket looked nervous talking to a cop. He twisted an old Alcatraz baseball cap between his fingers. “I rode up in the elevator with him first. I was telling him about my motorcycle magazines, but he didn’t say much. Then, yeah, just like Herb says, I saw him again, and he was using one of the computers.”

“When was this?” Frost asked.

Bike glanced at the clock in the atrium. “About two hours ago, I guess.”

“Can you show us where?”

“Oh yeah. Sure.”

Herb leaned in. “I took the liberty of asking the librarians upstairs to take the specific unit offline that Cutter was using. I didn’t want someone accidentally deleting any of the cache.”

“Good thinking,” Frost agreed. He said to Bike, “Did you recognize this man immediately?”

“No, I was thinking he looked familiar, but I didn’t put it together until later, when I saw him leaving. There was some kind of argument in the computer room, and Black Hoodie hightailed out of there fast.”