Driving past the land where the stadium had been, he could picture Katie with her Giants cap tugged low over her blond hair and mustard on her face as she ate a foot-long hot dog. Duane was right. He missed Katie; he missed having a sister he could talk to.
Duane was also wrong. Frost didn’t see Tabby as a sister at all, and the guilt behind his feelings was eating away at him.
He pulled into a parking area practically across the street from the old stadium site. He was alone for now. He took his sport jacket and slipped it on as he got out. The wind blew in from the water not even a hundred yards away. The sun was high, but the air was cold. He followed a paved trail past flat marshland that was emerald green after a winter of rains. He didn’t look back to see if anyone had shown up behind him. When he reached the water’s edge, he tramped off the trail into the shelter of a thick stand of fir trees, where he was invisible.
He didn’t have to wait long.
Another man appeared on the walkway that led to the bay. Frost peered through the branches at him. He was young, probably not more than twenty-five years old, with tanned Hispanic skin, glasses, and a trimmed businessman’s haircut. He wore a suit, which was unusual in San Francisco, but he also wore athletic shoes that muffled his footsteps. He wasn’t tall or muscled; he was the kind of unmemorable man who would blend in with just about any surroundings. The cords of his earphones wound from his suit pocket to his ears, as if he were listening to music on his phone, but Frost knew he was listening to something else.
Him.
He could see a flash of puzzlement in the man’s eyes as he studied the trail ahead of him. He was wondering where Frost had gone.
In the trees, Frost murmured aloud, “That’s far enough. Stop right there.”
The man was good. He covered his shocked reaction so quickly that Frost would have missed it if he hadn’t been watching carefully. The man stopped dead on the trail. He removed his phone from inside his suit pocket and fiddled with the buttons as if he were simply switching songs on his playlist. But his eyes were moving, and he glanced sharply in every direction around him.
Frost took out his gun and badge and emerged from the trees.
“Looking for me?” he asked.
The man slid his earphones out of his ears. His gaze shifted to the badge and the gun in turn, and he demonstrated just the right amount of surprise and fear. He let the earphone wires hang down his suitcoat and raised both arms in the air with his fingers spread wide. “I’m sorry, Officer, is there a problem?”
Frost pushed through the brush to the paved trail. He kept his gun pointed at the ground. “I know you’ve been following me,” he said. “Let’s not pretend, okay? I found the bug.”
The man acted his part. His eyes widened. “I think there’s been some kind of mistake. I’m just here taking a walk.”
“What’s your name?” Frost asked.
“Luis Moreno.”
“What kind of car do you drive, Mr. Moreno?”
“A gray BMW.”
“And where were you coming from?”
“Nowhere, really. I mean, my last job was in South Beach, so I thought I’d come down here and take a hike on my lunch hour.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m a city inspector,” Moreno replied. “I can show you identification.”
Frost nodded. “Slowly, please.”
“Oh yeah. Of course.”
Moreno did as he was told. He peeled back the flap of his suit coat and carefully removed his wallet using two fingers. Awkwardly, he flipped it open and held out his driver’s license and city identification for Frost to see. He was telling the truth. Luis Moreno worked in code enforcement for the city’s Department of Building Inspection.
“Hand me the earphones,” Frost told him.
“What?”
“I want to hear what you’re listening to.”
Moreno’s brow wrinkled with confusion, but he held the purple earbuds out to Frost, who held one of them close enough to hear the beat of loud music. He recognized a song by Pitbull, rather than an echo of their own conversation. Moreno had already switched away from the listening device as soon as he knew Frost had spotted him. Frost was sure that the man had also deleted the app on his phone that controlled the electronic surveillance.
These people were professionals.
Professional spies. Professional assassins.
“Are you armed, Mr. Moreno?” Frost asked.
“What, like a gun? No, of course not.”
“Gun, knife, any kind of weapon,” Frost said.
“Well, I carry pepper spray. It’s for self-defense. I deal with a lot of people who aren’t too happy to see me, and I’m often inside abandoned buildings where criminal activity goes on.”
The man had an answer for everything. His cover story was perfect. He was also a liar, but Frost knew he was never going to prove it.
“Let me see your fingernails,” Frost said.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
Moreno held out his hands, and Frost checked the nails carefully. There were no traces of blood. If Moreno had been the man to kill Coyle, he’d cleaned up well, but Frost didn’t think this was the same man. Even so, there was one way to be certain.
“Untuck your shirt, lift it up. Let me see your stomach.”
“Look, Officer, I’ve been very patient—”
“We can do this here, or we can do it at our central processing facility, Mr. Moreno.”
The man nodded quickly. He yanked the flaps of his dress shirt out of his belt and bunched the fabric so that his midriff was revealed. Frost checked his stomach and sides and saw no bruises. He’d landed a solid blow on the body of the man last night, and there would have been evidence of where the golf club had hit him. Moreno wasn’t the killer.
Frost reached behind his collar and slid the small listening device into his hand. He dropped it on the concrete trail and crushed it under his shoe. Then he waved his hand toward the marshland on the other side of the trees.
“Get the hell out of here, Mr. Moreno. I better not see your car behind me again, okay?”
“Um, sure, yes,” the man replied.
Moreno stuffed part of his shirt into his pants again and backed up awkwardly, just like an innocent man who’d been accosted by the police. But he wasn’t innocent. Frost knew that. When he was a few yards away, Moreno turned and half walked, half ran toward the parking area.
“Hey, Moreno,” Frost called after him.
The man looked over his shoulder. At that distance, Frost could see a glint of the truth in the man’s eyes. The I-know-nothing expression on his face had disappeared, and his mouth had hardened into an arrogant smirk. Moreno knew he’d won.
“I’ve got a message for you,” Frost said.
“What kind of message?”
“I’m coming for Lombard,” Frost told him. “Pass it along.”
22
Captain Hayden looked up over his reading glasses as Frost came into his office. The captain filled the high-backed chair, all bulk and muscle. His hand-carved walnut desk was as big and imposing as he was. Cyril stood behind him in crisp dress blues, and the angle made Hayden’s assistant look like a vulture perched on the captain’s shoulder. Trent Gorham was in the office, too, leaning against the wall near the large window that looked north toward AT&T Park.
“Close the door, will you, Easton?” Hayden said.
Frost did, and then he sat in a chair across from the captain. He felt surrounded by the other men, as if the setup had been designed to intimidate him.
“Nasty business last night,” Hayden continued, shaking his head. “You wrote up your statement? You gave Trent the information he needs?”
“I did.”
Hayden’s mottled black-and-tan brow wrinkled like a topographical map of the world. “I’m not happy that the killer got the better of you, Easton. You had a murderer in the room with you, and you let him get away. Now we’re starting from scratch to catch whoever it was.”