Coyle popped open the refrigerator door. “You want a beer? I’ve got Coors. I’m not into all the IPAs and microbrews.”
“No, thanks.” Frost nodded at the wooden barriers over the windows. “You’re taking some pretty serious precautions against spies.”
“I suppose you think I’m paranoid.”
Frost took a seat on a fold-up chair. “Well, I’m not sure you’re wrong to be cautious. I’ve already been followed myself.”
Coyle straddled one of the other chairs and smoothed down his thinning hair. “I knew I wasn’t crazy. Somebody’s been watching me, too.”
“Do you know who?”
“I don’t, but I think there’s more than one. Like a network.” Coyle leaned forward, and his heavy face was flushed. “I was wrong, wasn’t I? We’re not talking about a serial killer.”
“No.”
“Then what the hell is this, Inspector?”
“I don’t know yet, but I’m pretty sure you’ve latched on to something big.”
Coyle looked pleased with the compliment. “So what do you think it means that I saw this girl Fawn talking to Alan Detlowe?”
“It could explain why Detlowe was killed,” Frost replied. “According to her sister, Fawn was upset about the death of her friend Naomi and wanted to do something about it. Then you saw Fawn talking to Detlowe and he wound up with his throat cut. I checked the dates. All of this happened within a one-week span. The timing can’t be coincidental.”
Coyle rubbed the whiskers on his chin. “You think Fawn asked Detlowe to look into Naomi’s death?”
“Could be. Then he started asking questions that made somebody nervous. The thing is, you were watching Detlowe that whole time. You were following him after he met with Fawn. So maybe you saw him checking out whatever she told him. That might give us a clue about what he found out.”
Coyle hopped up from the chair. “Okay, let’s grab my Detlowe file. I keep all my cases on flash drives in the library. Notes, photos, videos, everything.”
“Your library? Where’s your library?”
Coyle’s eyebrows danced, and he gave Frost a little smirk. The detective went to the wood-paneled wall and tapped the base of one of the panels with the toe of his shoe. The panel clicked open and moved aside like an accordion, revealing a door built into the wall.
“Come on, Coyle,” Frost laughed. “A hidden door? Really?”
“Hey, I have to have some fun.”
Coyle opened the next door and flicked on the overhead fluorescent lights in the adjacent room. Frost followed him inside and saw that the next room was at least three times larger than Coyle’s office. The space stretched to the far wall of the building. As in the office, the windows were nailed shut with heavy plywood, so the only light was from overhead. The room was a combination of library and gaming space. Built-in bookshelves lined three of the walls, stocked with hundreds of mystery and science fiction novels dating back decades. There was a huge array of collectible Hot Wheels cars on some of the shelves, too. The fourth wall featured a large flat-screen television with virtual-reality goggles slung over the screen. Frost saw a set of golf clubs, a putting green, and a treadmill that was being used to store boxes of DVDs and VHS tapes.
“You realize you’re the ultimate nerd, don’t you?” Frost asked.
“Guilty,” Coyle admitted.
He crossed the concrete floor of the large library to a shelf that contained shoeboxes labeled by year. He opened a box marked three years earlier and dug inside it until he came out with a thumb drive labeled with black marker.
“This is what I gathered on Detlowe,” he said. “Let’s check it out.”
They returned to the office. Coyle still had the thumb drive in his hand.
That was when the computer monitors and the office lights all went out simultaneously with an electrical pop. The machines sighed as they switched off. With the windows shuttered by plywood, they were in total darkness. There was absolutely no light at all.
“Power’s out,” Coyle announced, his voice oddly disconnected from his body.
“Does that happen a lot?” Frost asked.
“No, it’s weird. I can’t remember when it last happened.”
Frost dug in a pocket for his phone and switched it to flashlight mode, throwing a beam of light between the two of them. Coyle’s round face was a worried mess of shadows.
“Do you think it’s them?” Coyle asked.
“We better find out.”
Frost used the glowing screen to guide them to the anteroom, which was brighter because the outside window was uncovered. He switched off the phone to avoid highlighting their location and crept to the side of the window. The streetlights up and down the block were still on.
“It’s just us,” he said. “The power’s on everywhere else.”
Coyle came up beside him and stood directly in front of the glass, and Frost grabbed his arm and yanked him away.
“Don’t stand where anyone can see you,” Frost warned him.
“What do we do?” Coyle murmured, his voice cracking with anxiety. The game was over. This was real.
“Stay here. I’ll go downstairs and check it out.”
Frost went to the office door and shined a light up and down the hallway. It was empty. He crept to the stairwell. The glass door on the first floor let in enough light from the street to confirm that no one was waiting in the lobby below him. He went down the steps and slipped through the outer door and used an empty soda cup to keep the door from locking.
He followed the walkway to the curb. His Suburban was the only vehicle in sight. The overhead streetlights made a glowing white trail down the block. He checked the driveway next to the building, but it was fenced off by a gate topped with barbed wire. He was alone. The city felt like a ghost town here.
The midnight air had turned colder. The wind blew down the lonely street with a growl. Frost retraced his steps to the front of the building, and that was when he saw that one of the downstairs windows had been shattered, leaving broken fragments around the frame. Someone was already inside. He dashed back through the front door and took the stairs two at a time.
“Coyle?” Frost hissed from the hallway.
The detective didn’t reply.
Frost stopped where he was. He reached inside his jacket for his gun. He pressed against the wall and moved sideways toward the open doorway of the anteroom. Faint light from the window spilled into the corridor. He squatted and snapped around the corner. No one was there.
The door to Coyle’s inner office was open. He called Coyle’s name again, but the detective still didn’t answer.
Frost approached the doorway step by step with his gun leading the way. When he was almost there, he took shelter behind the wall and switched the light of his phone quickly on and off. The glow of white light attracted no attention. He spun past the door frame and used his phone to survey the room. The small office was empty. Coyle wasn’t there, but he noticed that the wooden panel concealing the hidden door into the library wasn’t fully latched.
He put his phone back in his pocket.
Frost slid back the accordion panel silently. The inner door was closed. He stood clear of the doorway and reached around to twist the knob with one hand and push the door open several inches.
“Coyle?” he called again.
No answer.
The interior of the library was blacker than night. So was the office where Frost was standing. He couldn’t see inside, and if anyone was waiting for him in the library, they couldn’t see out. He held his breath, not wanting to make a sound. He listened to his senses for any noise, any smell, that would tell him that the room wasn’t empty. He heard only one thing, faintly.