The guide shrugged. “Hey, we all have to do something.”
“Yeah. Have you been giving these tours for a while?”
“Three years,” the man said. “It brings in some extra bucks.”
“Well, like I say, you guys are all really good. Last time I was out here, we had an amazing tour guide on the bus. This woman was like an actress, acting out stories at all the stops, singing, telling jokes. She was great. Do you know her?”
“Long dark hair?” the guide asked.
“I think so.”
“That would be Maria. Maria Lopes. You’re right, she really got into it. Got terrific tips. We were all jealous.”
“Is Maria still with the bus company? I’d love to take one of her tours again.”
“No, she left a couple years ago.”
“Oh, too bad,” Rudy said. He waited a beat and made sure his voice was casual. “What’s she doing now?”
The guide shook his head. “I don’t know. Some office job near the Civic Center, I think. I heard she got married, too. Some rich tech guy.”
Rudy hid his disappointment. “Well, good for her.”
“Yeah, no kidding.” The tour guide checked his watch. “I better start herding the cats onto the bus. Time to go.”
Rudy didn’t say anything else. He got back on the bus ahead of the other tourists and made his way to the upper level, where he took a seat in the front row. The East Bay air was cold, but on the other side of the fog, the city would be warm. He turned up the collar of his jacket.
Maria Lopes didn’t work at her old job.
She didn’t live in her old apartment; he’d already checked. It was a setback, but that was to be expected after four years. Maria was still somewhere in the city. She could run, but she couldn’t hide.
He’d find her.
30
Frost found Phil Cutter’s house on the southern fringe of the city in the Crocker-Amazon area, near the border with Daly City. The two-story house was an eyesore on a street where most of the homes around it were small but well maintained. The yellow siding hadn’t seen paint in years. The windows were shaded by misaligned horizontal miniblinds. A sad little boulevard tree needed water. The only other thing alive on the postage-stamp front yard were tall weeds that had squeezed out the grass.
The house’s garage door was open, and the interior was crowded with so many boxes and so much rusted junk that no one would have been able to fit a car inside. A dirty black Cadillac from the ’90s was parked on the street, blocking the driveway. Frost took a quick look inside the car, which was littered with old newspapers and crumpled fast-food bags. An air freshener in the shape of an evergreen tree hung from the mirror.
He climbed the steps and banged a fist on the house’s front door. Phil Cutter answered with a bottle of brandy in his hand. His clothes drooped on his tall, skeletal frame, and so did his gray skin. He was in his early fifties and looked seventy.
“Easton, right?” the man said with a raspy voice that ended in a cough. He smoothed down his wispy dark hair.
“You know me?”
“Sure, I figured you’d be here sooner or later. A couple other cops already stopped by a few hours ago. Don’t you guys talk to each other?”
“This isn’t an official visit,” Frost said. “I just want to chat.”
“Just a chat, huh? Okay, come on in.”
Frost followed the man into the house. It had the smell of someone who hadn’t showered recently, with a layer of cigarette smoke on top of the body odor. Phil had an impatient, wiry walk, which was more athletic than his appearance suggested. In the living room, which faced the street, the man dropped into an armchair near the windows, and his knee bounced like a tic. Rows of shadows from the blinds fell across his face. Frost didn’t want to sit on any of the musty furniture, so he stood.
“You look tired, Easton,” Phil said. “Don’t you get enough sleep? Alarm clocks keeping you up or something?”
The man’s weathered face bent into a ghost of a smile.
Frost got the joke. He also realized the cigarette smoke in the house had a familiar bitterness. “It was you? You broke into my house. You sent me on a chase to find the watch.”
Phil retrieved a smoldering cigarette from a tin ashtray. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Who really found the watch?” Frost asked him. Phil looked like a man who could follow instructions, but it was hard to imagine him connecting the dots to the street thug who’d mugged Melanie Valou and stolen her watch. Rudy would have needed a private investigator for that.
“Like I said,” Phil repeated, blowing out smoke and reaching for his brandy bottle. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Frost studied the small room. The wallpaper was heavy and dark, and it was peeling away at the ceiling. An old Doberman — as skinny as its owner — slept on the floor. It hadn’t even barked when Frost arrived. He examined a few photographs hung on the walls and recognized younger versions of Rudy and Phil Cutter among the people in the pictures.
He turned back to Phil.
“Where’s your brother?” Frost asked.
“No idea.”
“Last night, he murdered a close friend of mine.”
“That cop? I heard about that. But you won’t pin that on Rudy. He was here with me when that woman got killed. He came here straight from the Fillmore.”
“That’s your story? We had a police car on your street. The officer didn’t see a thing. Nobody came or went.”
Phil shrugged. “Rudy came in the back.”
“Climbing fences? Sneaking through yards? Why would he do that?”
“He’s done it since he was a boy. He was always good at coming and going without our parents knowing about it. So was I. We made a good team.”
Frost studied the man in the chair. He had bags under his eyes and a two-day beard on his face. His forehead was high and furrowed with long lines. He looked lost, like one of those men who falls behind early in life and never catches up to the rest of the world.
“Why do you cover for him?” Frost asked. “You know what he does.”
Phil was silent. His jaw moved, as if he were trying to dislodge food from his teeth. Then he said, “You got a brother?”
“Yes.”
“Then you should understand.”
“I wouldn’t protect my brother if he killed someone,” Frost said. “I wouldn’t lie for him over something like that.”
“It’s easy to say that if you’ve never faced it.”
“All those years, you knew what Rudy was doing, and you never said a word to anyone. I don’t know how you live with that, Phil.”
“What I know is that Rudy is everything I’ve got, and he always has been. For thirty years, it’s been him and me. Longer than that if you go back to when we were kids.”
Frost didn’t push him. He wanted to plant a seed of guilt, and that was all. He pointed to a photograph on the wall that showed two young boys with their parents. The background looked like a Giants game, and he figured the picture had been taken at the old Candlestick Park.
“Is this you and Rudy and your folks?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Are they still alive?”
“You know they’re not,” Phil replied. “They died when Rudy and I were in our teens. Car accident. Truck driver lost control on 280 and nailed them both. This was their house.”
“Do you work?” Frost asked. “Other than breaking and entering, that is. I know about your record.”
“I was an electrician for BART. I got injured on the job a decade ago.”
“So how do you spend your days?”
“What does it look like?” Phil asked, holding up the bottle.
What it looked like was a man who was committing slow-motion suicide.