Brian Freeman - The Voice Inside

“You should be a writer yourself,” Eden snapped. “You’re quite the storyteller.”

“I’m curious, how exactly did it work?” Frost went on, ignoring her denials. “Did you approach Rudy and tell him what you knew? Did you make a deal with him? You’d keep his secret if he let you follow along with everything he did? After all, that was the same deal you made with me. How far did it go, Eden? How far did you take it? Were you with him as he stalked Hazel Dixon? Were you actually there when he slashed her throat? Did he let you watch ?”

He looked into her eyes, and he knew he was right. She’d been there. She’d been part of the crime. And from that moment forward, she could never go back. She’d become an accessory to murder.

“I think I should go,” Eden said.

“You’re not going anywhere. Not until you tell me about Katie.”

“I’m sorry, Frost. I know you’ve been under a lot of pressure lately, but you’re delusional.”

“Did I ever tell you about Katie’s handwriting?” Frost asked.

“Excuse me?”

“Her handwriting was awful. Terrible. She’d write things down, and she couldn’t even read them herself.”

“So what?”

Frost walked over to the dining room table on the other side of the kitchen. He came back with the receipt from Haight Pizza, which he’d secured in an evidence bag. “Recognize this?”

Eden did. Her eyes widened in shock but only for a split second before she regained her control.

“What is that? Where did you get it?”

“Phil Cutter paid us a little visit overnight. Apparently, Rudy decided a while ago that if he was going down, he was going to take you with him. So Phil dropped off this receipt for me. It’s the receipt Katie wrote to take a pizza to Todd Clary at 415 Parker. The trouble is, by the time the pizza was ready, she didn’t remember the address, and she misread her own handwriting. See what the address actually looks like? She didn’t go west from the restaurant to 415 Parker . She headed east on her way to 415 Baker .”

Eden said nothing. Nothing at all.

“And guess who was living at that address back then?” Frost went on. “You.”

He reached over to the counter behind her and picked up the copy of Eden’s memoir he’d retrieved earlier. He held it up and showed her the author photo on the back cover, which she knew only too well.

“This is your house on Baker, Eden. This is where you lived. If you look closely, you can even see the house number. 415. So why don’t you tell me how it happened? Was Rudy in the house with you when Katie came to deliver the pizza? Did she see both of you together? She would have recognized you. You were practically a household name at that point. You were on all the talk shows. Katie had read your book. She would have gone on and on about how excited she was to meet you. Did she ask what you were working on? Did she want to be introduced to Rudy Cutter? You must have been panicking. You couldn’t let her leave, could you? She would have told everybody about seeing you.”

Eden summoned up a fake smile. “Is this the part where I’m supposed to weep and confess?”

“You can do whatever you want. I already know the truth. I only want to know one thing. Who actually killed Katie? Who actually used the knife? Was it Rudy? Or was it you ?”

Eden took a deep breath. He could see her weighing her options. Trying to figure out how to get out of the maze.

“Here’s what I want to know, Frost,” she said. “Do you think I’m stupid? I know a bluff when I hear it. A pizza receipt? A coincidence about a delivery address? Good luck with that. You don’t have any proof.”

“Actually, you already proved it yourself, Eden.”

“And just how did I do that?”

“In your new book.”

He saw her hesitate. “What do you mean?”

“I know what kind of writer you are. And I know the kind of odd little detail you can’t resist.”

“Like what?”

“Like a girl in San Francisco wearing flowers in her hair,” Frost said.

Eden couldn’t hide the concern on her face. She realized that she’d made a mistake. She just didn’t know why.

“I read the chapter you wrote about Katie to see if you mentioned the flower tiara she was wearing when she was killed,” Frost went on. “And sure enough, you did.”

“What difference does that make?” Eden asked. “I saw the crime scene photos.”

“You should have looked more closely at them. The tiara isn’t in the photos. I took Katie’s tiara with me when I found the body. I’ve had it ever since. That’s my secret. Nobody knew Katie was wearing it. Nobody except me and the two people who killed her. Rudy Cutter and you.”

Eden laughed.

It was a cruel, bitter laugh. A laugh of self-disgust. A laugh of giving up. He should have been ready for what she did next, but his emotions had overrun him. He was too consumed with his own rage and grief to stop her. She was fast, and he wasn’t fast enough. Her hand grabbed a plastic jar of chili spice on the counter, which she’d been planning to use in the eggs, and she threw the contents at him. He didn’t even have time to blink. The powder struck his open eyes like a thousand knives. He was instantly blind and in agony, and his hands flew to his face. All he felt was a searing burn as he squinted and tried to see. He staggered backward, and Eden grabbed the frying pan from the stovetop and swung it toward his head. It connected violently, causing a hot explosion that ricocheted inside his skull. She stepped forward and shoved hard on his chest with both hands, and he tumbled backward onto the floor.

He tried to get up, but his brain was a carnival ride, dizzying him, making him sick. Through his scorched eyes, Eden was a blur. She stood over him, but he couldn’t stop her body from whirling in and out of focus. She knelt on top of him, pressing her knees heavily into his chest. He swung a fist at her, but he missed. Eden bent forward. She had a kitchen knife in her hand now, and she lay the edge against his neck. She pressed it in so far that he could feel his skin tearing and the liquid warmth of blood.

“Since you’re so curious, Frost,” she told him, “ it was me .”

He struggled to right his mind and clear his eyes. All he needed was a few seconds.

“Rudy said I’d never understand what it was like to kill someone until I used the knife myself, and he was right. If I was going to write about it, I couldn’t just watch. I had to do it. And you know what? It was exhilarating. Life and death was right there in the palm of my hand. The feeling was so strong it scared me. That’s why I ran back to Australia. I had to get away from what I’d done.”

Frost kept blinking, and the fire in his eyes eased as tears worked their way down his face. The spinning world began to drift to a stop. He could feel pain popping like fireworks inside his head, but he could see Eden clearly now, leaning over him. Her curls draped forward. The scar on her neck wriggled as she talked. She had one hand propped on the floor and one holding the blade to his throat.

“It’s a shame I can’t write about this part,” Eden went on. “Because this is a hell of an ending.”

He saw the muscles in her hand squeezing tightly around the handle of the knife. Their eyes met, lover to lover, killer to victim. This woman was about to cut his throat and watch him die.

And then something happened.

Frost heard a noise unlike anything he’d heard in his life. An animal noise, primal and savage, enough to run gooseflesh up a human’s skin, the noise you would hear from a leopard preying in the nighttime jungle. Eden heard it, too, and she froze in confusion. Frost heard thunder on the floor. He saw a lightning flash of motion in black and white.