Frost left Magnolia in her apartment. He checked Sutter one more time and did another survey of the alley in back of the building. Nothing had changed, but he was still troubled. He found a dark doorway on the corner where he could see the front of the building and the entrance to the alley, and he waited there. It was late, but most of Cutter’s dirty work was done in the middle of the night. He might still show up.
He texted Jess: Found the girl Cutter was with. She’s safe.
And then a minute later, he sent another text: No sign of him, but I’m staking out the neighborhood.
He shoved his phone back into his pocket.
He tried to understand Cutter’s plan. Jess said Cutter always had a plan; he knew what he was doing. First, he hooks up with a stranger at a bar, and then he brags about it to Jess and leaves a trail a mile wide. He was practically begging her to chase him. Then Frost hunts him down inside the Fillmore, and Cutter disappears.
He was beginning to suspect that this was all a diversion. A head fake. While Frost cooled his heels outside the girl’s apartment, Cutter was somewhere completely different.
Where?
Frost grabbed his phone and texted again: I think he’s playing us.
That was when he noticed that his earlier texts to Jess had been delivered, but not read. She hadn’t checked messages on her phone, which was normally like an extension of her arm, day or night. He felt a tiny chill of anxiety, like a pinprick on the back of his neck.
He texted: Jess?
And again: Jess? Where are you?
He punched the speed-dial number for her phone. On the other end, the phone rang without being picked up, and it shifted to her voice mail. He heard her message, which was the same as it had been for years. He listened to the impatient voice he knew so well. This was the woman he’d been with less than an hour earlier, the woman whose face he could see in his sleep.
“Jess? Are you there? Call me as soon as you get this.”
In the brief silence before he hung up, he added, “Are you back at your apartment? If you’re not, don’t go home. Go to my place. Meet me there.”
Frost stepped out of the darkness of the doorway. He realized that he’d been right all along. Cutter had set up the events at the theater as a ruse. Magnolia was the distraction, and the man’s real target was someone else entirely. Something washed over Frost like a wave, but the rain had stopped. This was something else. This was terror. This was every instinct, every intuition, screaming at him to run.
He did.
He sprinted for his truck, his chest hammering.
But he knew that his closet of horrors, the closet where he kept the memory of Katie, had a new monster inside. He already knew that he was too late.
Two uniformed officers, a man and a woman, met him at Jess’s apartment building. He’d called for backup from the Suburban.
“There’s no answer at her apartment, Inspector,” the policewoman told him.
“Have you searched the area?” Frost asked.
“No, we just got here.”
“Circle the building,” he told her. “Be careful. This is Rudy Cutter, so expect him to be armed and dangerous.”
“Yes, sir.”
He gestured to the other officer. “Let’s check the back.”
The two of them headed for the rear of the building, where the apartments faced a dead-end alley and the densely wooded hillside. A river ran along the curb, where rainwater trickled from the muddy slope. Jess’s apartment was on the second floor. He stood below her balcony, and then he walked out to the other side of the alley to get a better view. Even in the darkness, he could see it.
The broken window. The open door.
Frost bolted for the locked gate below her apartment and hauled himself up until he could grab the railing of the second-floor balcony. He shouted at the cop waiting for him. “Get around to the front, I’ll let you in. Call more backup out here right now! And an ambulance!”
He swung his leg up, jumped, and landed hard on the other side of the railing. The vertical blinds beyond the open patio door slapped back and forth with the breeze. Glass glittered on the carpet. He had his gun out, and he stormed into the apartment.
“Jess!”
His voice was loud, but no one answered. The apartment smelled like Jess, which meant it smelled like cigarettes. He couldn’t see anything in the darkness. He knew where the light switches were, and he turned on the nearest lamp, squinting at the sudden brightness. Then his gaze swept the living room.
His heart stopped.
She was there. Just inside the front door. On her back, limbs sprawled. Blood was everywhere.
“Jess.”
He didn’t know if he’d said her name out loud or whether it was simply in his heart. He went to her and knelt over her. He checked her pulse, but there was nothing for him to do. Grayness had painted over her face. Her eyes were closed. Her skin was still warm, but she was gone. Fragments from the Taser blast that had stunned her sprayed the carpet. The knife that had opened up her throat, drowned her, bled her out, lay on the floor next to her.
Frost saw a chair tipped over on the carpet. It wasn’t in the right place. Cutter had sat in that chair and waited for Jess to come home. He’d lured her out of her apartment and sent them on a false chase at the Fillmore after a girl who meant nothing, while Cutter crossed the city to stalk his real target.
Jess was the eighth victim.
Every “what if” that might have changed this moment played out in Frost’s mind in a split second. There were a thousand different things he could have done, and Jess would still be alive.
What if he’d stopped Cutter at the Fillmore.
What if he’d gone home with Jess tonight, instead of leaving her alone.
What if he’d thrown Melanie Valou’s watch off the Golden Gate Bridge and let Cutter rot in prison.
But none of it changed the reality that he’d failed her. Cutter had won. Jess was dead.
Frost took her hand. He squeezed, but she didn’t squeeze back. That was when he noticed that Jess had a slim gold watch on her wrist. Jess never wore a watch. The crystal on the face was smashed, but he could still make out the time, which was frozen in place and would stay that way forever.
3:42 a.m.
27
The night passed for Frost in a haze of sleeplessness and grief.
He never went home. Instead, he spent hours in a small interview room in the police headquarters building in the Mission Bay District. This was where he typically talked to witnesses and suspects, but this time, he was the witness. The detectives on the case went over the details of the night with him. They asked the same questions again and again, trying to tease out new facts from his memory. In the end, he didn’t have much to tell them.
He hadn’t been there when the murder happened. He hadn’t seen anything.
Everyone knew Rudy Cutter was guilty, but knowing something was true didn’t mean they could prove it.
The building was dead quiet. The death of a cop always hung over the force like a cloud, but this was Jess. She was a cop’s cop, third-generation SFPD, an angry fighter for all things blue. Except, Frost knew, that was all in the past. She’d lost her badge. She’d gone down in disgrace and had been staring at prison time for her sins. Her murder was a tragedy, but there would be no city funeral, no parade, no speech from the chief and the mayor.
It was still dark when they were done with the interview.
He stopped at his desk and could feel the eyes of everyone watching him, but no one said a thing. He had a reputation for being a lone wolf, and it was mostly deserved. He didn’t hang out in the police bars; he didn’t party and drink with the other cops. That made him different, still a stranger after five years. His one real ally was Jess, and now she was gone.