It was a slow, terrible, intermittent drip splattering on the floor. He remembered the layout of the room and could think of only one thing that would be dripping inside the library.
Blood.
Frost got down on his hands and knees. He crawled with agonizing slowness through the doorway, avoiding every noise. He was utterly blind. The room was a coffin, devoid of light. He reached out with his hands, feeling his way into the larger space of the library. With each movement, he stopped. If someone was here with him, they were frozen, too. Waiting.
He crawled and reached out, crawled and reached out.
Something dripped again. Very close by. The sheer silence around him made it sound loud.
His hand bumped against the warmth of skin. There was a body on the floor. He traced the fingers of a hand and followed the arm until he reached the face. His knuckles scratched against the stubble of a weak beard. It was Coyle, lying on his back, head turned sideways. Frost went to check the detective’s pulse, but when he did, his fingers sank into a sea of blood. He recoiled, clamping his mouth shut. Coyle’s neck had been cut, viciously and deeply, nearly decapitating him. His arteries had already bled out. Frost bent to the man’s chest to listen for a heartbeat and heard none.
Coyle was dead.
Frost didn’t have time to feel regret. He knew he wasn’t alone in the room. Coyle’s murderer was here with him, too. Silent and deadly, hidden somewhere, invisible in the darkness.
Frost eased himself to his feet and backed away from the body. It didn’t matter whether his eyes were open or closed; he couldn’t see anything. He backed up until he felt bookshelves pressing into his back. At least he knew no one was behind him now. He extended his gun in one hand and slid out his phone, but before he could turn on the screen, the folds of his jacket snagged on something on the shelf behind him. A small object rolled and fell. Even as it slipped off the bookshelf, Frost knew what it was. One of Coyle’s Hot Wheels cars.
The toy clanged to the ground, giving him away. Instantly, he felt a whip of air from his left side. He turned, pointing his gun, but he wasn’t fast enough. Someone crashed into him, taking him to the floor and knocking away his gun and phone. A wildly aimed knife sliced through the air and cut into his jeans and skin. Frost gasped with pain and rolled. The knife came down again, but it missed this time and struck against the concrete floor with a metallic clatter.
Frost kicked hard. He got lucky. The blow landed, yielding a grunt of breath, but by the time he threw himself toward the sound, the killer had already moved. Frost pushed himself up. The cut on his leg stung. Blood pulsed down his skin. He tried not to breathe, but the exertion made his chest demand oxygen. He had to inhale. As soon as he did, the noise brought his assailant charging through the darkness and landing against his torso like a battering ram. Frost staggered backward. He heard the swish of the knife again and ran blindly, coughing as he tried to suck air back into his lungs. He zigzagged, hearing footsteps chasing him, and collided with the wall. Boxes flew, and books tumbled around him.
Another assault barely missed him as he dove free. The entire bookshelf toppled with a crash.
Frost skidded across the floor and stopped. So did the other person. He could hear breathing in the room, but the noise came from everywhere and nowhere in the darkness. His senses began to play tricks on him. He was seeing things when he couldn’t see anything at all. Shapes moved. False lights fooled his eyes. Frost stretched out his arms and felt nothing at the end of his reach. He took a few silent steps and reached out again.
Nothing.
And again.
Then he felt something cool and leathery under his hands and realized it was Coyle’s golf bag. It toppled away from his grasp and fell with an obscene noise. He ducked away from the sound, but as he did, he slipped on something under his feet and hit the ground. Golf balls rolled wildly around the floor. When he crawled, he came upon the clubs that had spilled from the leather bag.
Frost grabbed a golf club and stood up. He swung it through the darkness like a baseball bat, causing a ripple of air. He moved and swung it again. He kept swinging over and over, making fast, vicious circles.
There he was.
The club slammed hard against the other person in the room and produced a howl of pain. Frost dropped the club and landed a blow with his fist. And another. Then a foot shot into Frost’s stomach with the impact of a brick and threw him off his feet. His skull hit the concrete. Even in blackness, the room spun; he could feel his brain doing somersaults. Nausea rose in his throat.
He didn’t have much time. The man was coming for him. He skittered backward along the floor, and as his hands scraped across the concrete, a miracle happened.
His fingers closed over his gun.
Frost scrambled to his feet. With no hesitation, he rammed back the slide and fired. He couldn’t see anything but a kaleidoscope in the orange flash. He fired again. And again. The noise of running footsteps banged on the floor. And again. And again. The man was getting away. He fired wildly as the door opened somewhere in the spinning darkness. He fired twice more, causing blows of thunder in his ears, but he was alone with the echoes now. He’d missed; the killer was gone. He stood there, breathing hard, as sweat poured down his face.
20
Frost stared at the snake.
The paint was still wet, dripping from its jaws like blood. He’d found it two blocks from Coyle’s building on a concrete pillar underneath the 280 freeway. This one looked rushed, as if the killer had been in a hurry to get away. Frost wondered if the plan had been to have a second snake painted under the first one. If he hadn’t stumbled across his gun, he’d be dead, too.
He reached around to the back of his head and felt sticky blood in his hair. The cut on his leg throbbed. When a speeding truck above him made the freeway shudder, the vibration shot like spasms up his neck and made his headache worse. He closed his eyes and squeezed his forehead.
“You look like crap, Easton.”
Frost turned around. Trent Gorham stood a few feet away, his shoulders slightly slumped on his tall frame. Behind him, at the end of the block, the whirling lights of emergency vehicles clustered near Coyle’s building. Frost leaned against the highway column, feeling dizzy.
“I’m fine,” Frost told him.
“That’s not what I hear. The EMTs want you in the ambulance to tape up your leg, and then they want you at the hospital for a CT scan. You could be dealing with a concussion.”
“I’ll worry about that later.”
“Not later. Now. You need to get checked out. I’ll put you in cuffs if I need to.”
Frost didn’t protest. “Fine. Whatever.”
“Listen, I’m sorry about Coyle,” Gorham added. “The guy was a wacko, but I have to admit, I liked him.”
“I liked him, too.” Frost nodded his head at the graffiti on the freeway column. “Another murder, another snake. Do you still think this is just a crazy conspiracy?”
Gorham’s pale blond face gave nothing away. He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked over his shoulder at the police officers standing nearby. They were out of earshot, but he lowered his voice anyway.
“A snake doesn’t prove anything, Easton. Half the people on the street probably knew about Coyle and his serial-killer-snake theory. If it was me going to knock him off, I’d paint a snake nearby, too, just to throw us off the scent.”
“You don’t believe that,” Frost said.