Just like the hill at Lombard Street.
6
Frost and Coyle sat in his Suburban near a softball field in Potrero Hill, which was a finger-shaped neighborhood on the east side of the city, nestled between the 101 and 280 freeways. They both ate hot dogs that they’d purchased near the Ferry Building.
“I found the first snake right here three years ago,” Coyle told him, licking mustard from his finger. “It was one of my first cases as a PI. The usual thing, wife thought her husband was cheating and wanted to catch him in the act. I’d been following the guy for a couple of weeks. He was a vice cop, so you might remember him. Alan Detlowe.”
“I remember the name,” Frost said. “He was killed.”
Coyle chewed his hot dog and then kept talking. “Exactly. It happened while I was doing my surveillance. The funny thing is, I’m not even sure Detlowe was cheating. If he was, I never nailed him at it. I remember spotting him with this Indian girl at a Peruvian restaurant in Pacific Heights. Weak-in-the-knees gorgeous. I thought, Gotcha. But all he did was listen while she talked to him and then buy her dinner and kiss her on the head. It didn’t look like anything was going on between them.”
“So what happened?”
“Come on, I’ll show you.”
Coyle got out of the truck, and Frost followed. The grass of the softball field was freshly mowed in diagonal rows. They were near a recreational center with a half-cylinder roof. The downtown skyline was visible to the north.
“Detlowe was part of a Tuesday-night softball league,” Coyle said. “I watched him play ball for a couple of hours. I had to go to the bathroom, so I dashed inside the rec center. Let’s just say it was one of those visits that took longer than I was expecting. When I came back outside, the game was over, and I didn’t see Alan among the guys who were hanging out in the field. But his car was still there. I wandered over and took a look inside, and there he was in the front seat. Dead. Blood everywhere. Somebody cut his throat and did a really thorough job. It couldn’t have happened more than five minutes earlier.”
Coyle started walking toward the rec center. He led Frost up a driveway that bordered a stand of trees. “I heard somebody over here in the woods. I figured it was probably the killer getting away. I hustled this way as fast as I could, but the guy was already gone. That’s when I found this.”
He pointed at a concrete wall that bordered the driveway.
Frost saw another red snake spray-painted in a discreet section of the wall that faced the woods. The paint had chipped and faded after three years of rain and elements, but it was otherwise identical to the snake he’d found on Vallejo.
“The paint was still wet,” Coyle said. “I figured it had to be connected to Detlowe’s murder somehow, but I didn’t know what it meant. So I asked around the city to see if anyone had seen a snake like that before. I figured maybe it was a gang symbol, but I never traced it to any of the usual suspects. Eventually, somebody told me they’d seen a snake like that over in Alta Plaza Park. I went over there to search, and I found another snake near the steps on Clay Street.”
Coyle showed Frost a new photo on his phone. It was the same snake and a different location, but Frost didn’t need Coyle to tell him its significance. He remembered the case.
“There was an Episcopal priest shot in a church near there,” Frost said.
“Exactly,” Coyle replied. “I could stand where the snake was and look right into the church windows. That’s when I started getting curious. It became a hobby for me. Whenever I had free time, I began looking for snakes, and over the next six months, I found five more. Balboa Park. The Presidio. Glen Canyon. McLaren Park. Even a bathroom stall inside Westfield Centre. All of them were near where bodies had recently been found. Mostly homicides, but also one OD. I’m convinced that one was a murder, too.”
Frost flipped through the photos on Coyle’s phone. He saw more snakes and more crime scenes. Some he recognized, some he didn’t.
“Did you talk to the police about this?” he asked.
“Yeah, I talked to the inspector who was working on Alan Detlowe’s murder. Guy named Trent Gorham. Do you know him?”
“I do,” Frost said. “He used to be in vice, too.”
“Well, Detlowe’s wife sent Gorham to me so he could look at my surveillance notes. I told him about the snake thing. He wasn’t impressed. To him, it sounded like a wild conspiracy. He told me to leave the police work to the police. He even suggested that I was leaving the snake paintings behind myself, like I was trying to get publicity for my detective agency.” Coyle eyed Frost curiously. “I’m sort of surprised you didn’t say the same thing.”
“Oh, I thought about it,” Frost told him. He pointed at the detective’s hands. “No red paint under your fingernails.”
“Well, you can check my car, too, and pull my PI license if you want. Do your homework on me. I’m not making any of this up.”
“I know that. So what happened after Trent Gorham blew you off?”
Coyle finished his hot dog. He had an inch of bun left, which he pulled into pieces and tossed onto the lawn for the birds. “I’ve been on the case ever since. I tracked down a couple more snakes, but the cases were too cold to find anything useful. So I decided to go at it another way.”
“How so?”
“Whenever there was an unusual death in the city, I went to check it out to see if I could find a snake. I figured the sooner I knew which ones were victims of my killer, the better chance I had of nailing him. That’s how I found Greg Howell. I heard about his body turning up in the park, and I went over there right away. The park police told me it was a heart attack, so I thought it would turn out to be a dead end, but then I found another snake. That’s how I knew Howell had been murdered. So I started digging into his life to see if I could explain how and why the killer chose him.”
“Did you find anything?” Frost asked.
Coyle danced on his yellow sneakers. He looked uncomfortable standing on his feet for too long. “No, Howell was a big fish. He had his fingers in city projects everywhere. There were too many ways a killer might have zeroed in on him. But that Facebook photo of Howell on Denny Clark’s boat has to be important. It’s the first time I’ve found a direct link between two of the snake victims.”
Frost leaned against the wall and made sure that no one was nearby. “I’m curious whether you came across a name in any of your research.”
“What name is that?” Coyle asked.
“Lombard.”
“Like the street? No, it never came up. Why?”
“Well, what does that snake remind you of?”
Coyle bent down in front of the small painting with a notable oof from his mouth. He cocked his head as he studied it, and his brown eyes widened in recognition. “Wow, you’re right. It looks just like the crookedest street. I never noticed that before. What do you think it means?”
“I don’t know,” Frost admitted.
Coyle’s knees popped as he straightened up. “You sound like you believe me about this.”
“I think it’s unusual enough to be worth a look,” Frost said.
Relief flooded in a flush across Coyle’s face. “I’ve waited a long time to hear a cop say that.”
“Well, don’t get carried away. It may still prove to be nothing. In the meantime, send me whatever you’ve got. Victims, photos, anything that I can use to try to figure out why Denny Clark died.”
Coyle’s lips bent into a grin. “Yeah. Okay.”
Frost headed back toward his Suburban, but Coyle stopped him with a hand on his sleeve.