Brian Freeman - The Voice Inside

“Would you mind looking at some more photos?” Frost asked. He took back his phone and found the folder where he kept the photos of Cutter’s victims. “If you swipe through this album, you’ll find several women here. I want to know if you remember any of them.”

“Who are they?”

“They’re the women Cutter killed,” Frost said.

Maria’s mouth pinched into a frown, but she went slowly through the pictures. “I remember seeing some of these photos on television back then. I followed the Golden Gate Murders pretty closely. Everybody in the city did. But I didn’t know any of these women personally.”

“What about their names?” He rattled off their names from his memory, where they were all indelibly filed. Including Katie. “Do you remember any of these names among people you knew or worked with or grew up with?”

“I’m sorry, no.” Then she noted Katie’s last name. “Easton? Is there a connection?”

“My sister.”

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you.” He pushed Katie’s shadow from his mind and went on. “I’m not trying to scare you unnecessarily, Ms. Lopes, but I want you to be vigilant. Do you have an alarm system in your home? Is it typically turned on?”

“Always.”

He handed her his card. “My contact information is on here if you need to reach me for any reason. If you see Rudy Cutter anywhere near you, don’t approach him. Don’t talk to him. Don’t indicate that you’ve seen him or recognized him. Just call nine one one.”

“Wow.” Maria looked shaken.

“I know. This is a lot to take in.”

“You really think he picks these women for a reason? It’s not random?”

“He was in the library yesterday, and he was looking up someone with your name. That’s not random.”

Maria stood up from the rocking chair, and she still had his card in her hand. He noticed that her fingers were trembling. “What makes a person do something like this? What kind of diseased soul could take a stranger’s life so purposefully? I don’t understand it.”

Frost stood up, too. “After Katie was killed, my mother said that some mirrors were too dark to look at.”

“I think that sounds right.”

Maria led him back to the front door. He heard the squeal of a boy playing somewhere in the house, and a smile instinctively sprang to her face. She was a happy woman with an ordinary life. It was unimaginable that she could be put in the path of someone like Rudy Cutter. But that was how it worked.

“Remember, if you see anything that concerns you, call me,” Frost told her. “If I find out any more details that you should know about, I’ll be in touch.”

“Thank you, Inspector.”

Frost went back outside, and Maria closed the door behind him. He heard the click of the deadbolt. She was taking no chances, and that was good. He went down the steps, but before he got into the Suburban, he took a short walk to the deserted end of the road, where dirt trails climbed toward Sweeney Ridge. The gray day had kept away most of the hikers. The seam of the valley made a V like the jaws of an open mouth. Dense green brush clung to the hillsides.

He saw a hawk circling overhead. Circling and circling beneath the low clouds. Looking for prey.

It reminded him that Rudy Cutter was out there somewhere, doing the same thing.

Rudy studied Frost Easton through binoculars. The detective’s head swiveled as he watched the hills and tracked the ridgeline. Rudy was too far away to be seen, no more than a dot on the hillside, and there was no sunlight to catch on the lenses of his binoculars. Even so, he wondered if the detective’s intuition told him he was being watched. He’d found that to be true with victims sometimes. Every now and then, one of them would turn for no reason, as if some instinct for self-preservation had alerted them.

Five minutes passed. They stared at each across the distance, invisibly. Eventually, Easton turned around and went back to his truck and drove away.

Rudy frowned. Seeing Easton here meant the police knew about Maria Lopes.

He wondered how that had happened and how far it had gone. Did Easton know why ? Did he know about Hope and the other victims? If he did, then the game was up, and they would be coming for him. Regardless, Rudy had no intention of going back to San Quentin. Not again. He wouldn’t be locked up in a cell with Hope’s ghost. He wouldn’t wake up every night at 3:42 a.m. That road had come to an end.

The cold ocean air climbed over the peak, settling on top of him. Under his camouflage fleece blanket, he shivered. He’d built a nest for himself off the trail, on the eastern slope of the summit, where he was invisible to anyone hiking above him. He’d borrowed Phil’s Cadillac today, and the sedan was parked half a mile away in the parking lot of Skyline College. From there, he’d hiked into the hills that gave him a bird’s-eye view of Maria’s house.

Her new location had been easy to find. He’d stopped at the San Bruno library that morning and run a couple of Google searches and found a local website with Maria’s name, address, and phone number. In this case, it was a community theater group that had posted contact information for all their board members. There Maria was, living on Sneath Lane.

Now, hidden in the hills, Rudy could spy on her yard and her windows. He’d spotted her several times inside the house. She’d had coffee on the back porch and done yoga in her bedroom. Soon enough, she would do what she always did, assuming her daily routine hadn’t changed completely in four years. She would run. She ran every day, rain or shine. Seeing her now, he could tell that she still had the lean, wiry build of a runner. And she’d moved here, to the fringe of a park, where the running trails were literally outside her front door.

The cold didn’t matter. The fog didn’t matter. Not to a real runner. Maria would come, and he would be waiting for her.

I’m going to take another one, Hope. Watch me. There’s nothing you can do about it.

It was all a question of how much time he had. Sooner or later, the police would find him. He could measure it in hours, or he could measure it in days. It was a race between him and Frost Easton, and there was only one way to find out if Easton was getting close. Rudy dug in the backpack for his pay-as-you-go phone, and he dialed a number.

It rang once, and then a voice answered.

“Inspector Easton.”

Rudy took a breath. “Hello, Inspector.”

There was a long stretch of silence on the phone. He could hear the noise of traffic outside the truck. The detective was already back on the freeway. Finally, Easton said, “Cutter. Where are you?”

“I’m watching someone. Do you know who I’m watching?”

Easton didn’t answer. Rudy listened for a change in the vehicle’s engine. If the detective had figured out the truth, he’d be turning around. He’d go back to find Maria Lopes and scour the ridge. But he didn’t. The traffic noise didn’t change. Easton kept driving. He knew the name Maria Lopes, but he didn’t know more than that. Not yet.

Rudy thought, The library.

The guy with the motorcycle magazine had spotted him at the downtown library, and they’d found his search history.

“What do you want?” Easton asked.

“I thought we should talk,” Rudy said. “The way these things go, we might not have a chance to talk again. The next time we meet will probably be under more difficult circumstances. It’s easier now, when we both have time.”

“You have less time than you think,” the detective said.

“Really? I think you’re bluffing. I don’t think you know anything about me at all.”