“Your job? Your job is to let murderers out of prison?”
“Jess committed a crime, Duane. She rigged the whole system. Don’t you get it? Cops can’t do that. If I let that slide—”
“He murdered Katie!” Duane shouted, his voice filling the room.
Frost stopped talking. There was nothing to say.
“I can’t believe you,” Duane snapped. “I can’t believe you would do this. You’re going to have to tell Mom and Dad, you know that? You realize what this is going to do to them?”
Frost didn’t have an answer. He knew Duane didn’t really want one.
“We’re out of here,” Duane went on. “Come on, Tabs.”
His girlfriend finally looked up. Her bubbly, ever-present smile was gone, and her face had clouded with sorrow. “Actually, Duane, could you wait in the car for a minute? I want to talk to Frost.”
Duane nodded and then said something that Frost didn’t understand. “Yeah, that’s right. You can tell him what he’s done.”
His brother stalked out of the dining room, and Frost heard the thunder of the front door slamming.
The two of them were alone. Tabby stared at him. The sparkle had left her green eyes, but he saw something he hadn’t seen in his brother’s face. Empathy. She brushed away a strand of red hair.
“I know how hard this is for you,” Tabby said. “Duane knows, too. He’s just angry.”
“I’m angry at myself,” Frost admitted.
“You didn’t have a choice, did you?” Tabby got up and came around to the other side of the table and sat in the chair next to him. She took his hand; her skin was warm. “Listen, Frost, I didn’t realize that Duane hadn’t told you about me, which pisses me off a little. I guess that means you don’t know how we met.”
“He said my parents introduced you.”
“Sort of. I’ve known your parents for several years. When they found out I was a chef, they told me about Duane. Of course, I already knew who he was. Everybody in the culinary community knows Duane. Your mom said I should meet him, but I wasn’t really interested. He has a reputation for playing the field. But earlier this year, Duane called me. I guess your mom was pressuring him, too.”
“My mom usually gets what she wants,” Frost said.
“Apparently.”
“How do you know my parents?” he asked.
“Through the victim support group meetings.”
He closed his eyes. Suddenly, it made sense. “Who are you connected to?”
“Nina Flores. Cutter’s first victim. Nina was my best friend. We grew up two blocks apart. Actually, Nina and I knew each other before we could walk. She was more like a sister to me than my own sister was. The families were kind enough to include me in the support group.”
“I was never really into that sort of thing,” Frost said. Grief wasn’t something he shared with strangers. It was personal and private. He had to feel close to someone to invite them into that part of his life.
“That’s okay. It’s not for everyone. Anyway, believe me when I say, I really do understand what this is doing to you.”
“Thanks.”
“I should go,” Tabby said. “Duane is waiting for me.”
“Sure.”
She let go of his hand, and she stood up. “I don’t blame you for any of this. Duane won’t, either, when he settles down. It’s not your fault.”
She bent down very near his face, and he realized how pretty she was in close-up. A hint of perfume drifted across the space between them. He was jealous of his brother, having this woman in his life.
“What happens next?” she asked. “I mean, if they let Cutter out of prison.”
“I put him back inside,” Frost said without hesitation.
“Good,” Tabby replied with a casual confidence that he was a man who kept his promises. “That’s what I was hoping you’d say.”
9
Frost sat in the last row of the courtroom.
He’d already testified for two hours that morning, questioned by Rudy Cutter’s attorney and then cross-examined by Hang Li, the San Francisco district attorney. He related the whole story, including his temptation to destroy the watch that first night on the Golden Gate Bridge. He stuck to the facts of what he’d found, but facts didn’t matter to the stone faces of victims’ families packing the courtroom.
To them, he was the enemy. He was the man who’d brought the monster back to life.
The media filled the courtroom, too. Print. TV. Radio. Bloggers. To them, he was a study in contradictions. Brother of a victim. Cop. Whistle-blower. They’d made the story front-page news for days, and they all wanted interviews with him. He’d turned them down. The last thing he wanted was publicity.
Yolanda Rhodes followed him on the stand. She testified about her brother, Lamar, giving her the watch with the funny inscription on the back. When the attorney showed her the watch, she identified it right away and confirmed that she’d been wearing it since long before the other watch was found in Rudy Cutter’s ceiling.
“That’s it. That’s mine. I wish I could get it back, too.”
And then Jess came.
Frost didn’t know what Jess would say. That was the mystery of the day that made everyone hold their breath. He wondered if she’d lie and try to hide behind the blue wall. She could say that Frost was mistaken, that Yolanda was lying, and that the watch Jess had found was the one and only watch belonging to Melanie Valou. Melanie’s mother, Camille, would probably back her up.
Instead, she told the truth.
Her testimony caused a gasp of disbelief among the spectators. She admitted the entire conspiracy. The watch never belonged to Melanie. She planted it in Rudy Cutter’s house. She perjured herself during his trial. She never flinched once as she laid out what she’d done, and the entire time, she stared at Frost in the back row. When her testimony was over, she marched out of the courtroom with her back straight, ignoring the shouts and taunts that followed her as the judge swung his gavel hard for silence.
Now it was almost done. The final arguments. And then the ruling.
District Attorney Hang Li stood in front of Judge Elwood Elgin.
Li was small, slim, forty years old. He had a shock of black hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and an expensive brown suit.
“Your Honor, I’m not going to defend Lieutenant Salceda,” Li told the judge. “She falsified evidence. She lied to the court. The police have already dismissed her from her job, and I assure you, she will face legal consequences for her actions, too. The watch that she planted in the defendant’s house no longer has any evidentiary weight against Mr. Cutter. However, I would argue that the other evidence that was presented at trial would be sufficient to sustain a guilty verdict against him. Simply put, the jury did not need the watch to reach their decision. As such, the fraudulent behavior by Lieutenant Salceda — while illegal and inexcusable — shouldn’t prejudice the rest of the case against Mr. Cutter.”
Cutter’s attorney rose to his feet with outrage turning his face red, but Judge Elgin calmly waved him back to his chair. “Save your breath, Counselor,” the judge told him in an unflappable voice. “I’ve got this.”
Frost knew what was coming. Everyone did.
Judge Elgin was a long-time member of the San Francisco Democratic political establishment, an environmental lawyer with roots in Nancy Pelosi’s congressional office. He was fifty years old, a white-bread liberal who spoke softly but wielded a big stick from the bench. He’d railed against the excesses of police misbehavior in the city for twenty years, and Hang Li had just handed him a cut-and-dried case of a rogue police officer rigging the justice system.
“Mr. Li, do you know what you get when you add rat poison to a steak?” Judge Elgin asked.