“Do you still have copies of those sketches?” Frost asked.
Josephine nodded. “Yes, I kept them in an album.”
“I really need to take that album with me,” he said.
A wistfulness came over Josephine’s face. “I know. I already went and retrieved it from the attic. It’s in the other room. I’ll get it for you. I was going to call you today to tell you about it. I couldn’t live with the secret. Back then, you have to believe me, I had no idea that those sketches had any importance. It never occurred to me. If I’d realized what Rudy was doing, I would have told someone.”
Frost wondered if that was true, but it didn’t matter.
What mattered was seeing the faces, names, and birthdates in those sketches.
Josephine left the room. He waited near the fireplace with Hope. He could feel her watching him. The portrait had an odd way of making her come to life. Her madness hadn’t left; it had somehow found its way from those sketches into Rudy Cutter’s mind.
Hope’s mother returned, carrying a small photo album with both hands. She handed it to Frost, who treated it delicately. The album had a musty smell, and dust was on the spine. When he opened it carefully, he saw that the album had nothing but black paper pages with rough, unfinished edges. No hooks, no plastic. On every page, Josephine had carefully taped one of Hope’s sketches. They were all the same, but they were all different. The paper and tape had become brittle; the ink was fading.
Frost turned one page after another. He saw the faces and names. Mothers and children. Many were strangers, but he also saw those he recognized. Daughters who had become victims.
Camille and Melanie.
Gilda and Nina.
Kelly and Hazel.
Weng and Shu.
This album, gathering dust in an attic, could have changed everything. Cutter would still be in prison. Some of the victims might still be alive. Katie might be alive. And Jess.
He turned another page, and he saw two names under the next sketch.
Sonja and Maria.
Maybe there were others — Maria was a common name — but he knew he’d found Maria Lopes, simply by looking at the mother’s face. The woman he’d met earlier that day in the hills of San Bruno looked just like her mother. He called up on his phone the DMV records he’d pulled for the various women named Maria Lopes in the Bay Area, and when he checked the birthday for Maria Lopes in San Bruno, he saw that it matched the birthdate written on the faded sketch.
She was the woman he was looking for.
He thought about Maria’s house, near the hills and trails of Sweeney Ridge.
He remembered the phone call from Rudy Cutter and the fierce, intermittent noise of the wind blowing in the background.
Frost knew where Cutter was. He grabbed his phone to send the police to hunt him down.
41
The late afternoon became dusk.
Fog massed like an army on the ridge, and the temperature fell. Lights began to come on in the houses that dotted the valley. Rudy waited, motionless and half-frozen, in the nest on the hillside where he’d spied on Maria Lopes for hours.
He didn’t feel alone. Hope was with him. She was always with him, like a bad angel. Every time he wielded the knife, he killed her, but time after time, she came back to life, and he had to do it all over again. One by one by one by one, he erased each glimmer of who she was. Each trace of what she’d left on earth.
And still she sat beside him.
It had been a long, terrible journey from April 1 nine years ago until now. He had never sought it out; instead, fate had found him that day, like an April Fool’s joke. It was supposed to be the last day of his life. He’d finally been ready to kill himself, to shut the door on his empty world. He’d tried several times before and failed. With pills. With a rope. With the tailpipe of Phil’s Cadillac. In the end, he’d backed out every time before death took him away.
But not again.
He’d had it all planned. April 1. He was going to go to one last Giants game with Phil. He was going to have a burger and a beer. And then, as it neared midnight, he was going to drive to the Golden Gate Bridge and follow the example of the jumpers who’d come before him. Once he cleared the rail, second thoughts didn’t matter. You couldn’t change your mind on the way down.
Instead, his life and destiny had changed completely before he got to the bridge. He thought of all the improbable things that had happened that day to set him on a different path.
If Phil hadn’t been late to pick him up for the game, Rudy would be dead at the bottom of the bay.
If he’d chosen another coffee shop in the Ferry Building, he’d be dead at the bottom of the bay.
If he’d picked a different day, not April 1, he’d be dead at the bottom of the bay.
Instead, he’d gone to that coffee shop to wait for Phil and met Nina Flores on her twenty-first birthday.
He remembered sitting on the stool at the coffee bar, with an iced latte in front of him getting watery and warm because he could barely summon any interest in taking a sip. That had been Rudy’s life at that moment, sucked clean of purpose. The stool next to him had been vacant, but Hope was there in his mind, as she always was, immortal and inextinguishable. He’d felt numb. He’d wanted nothing more than to die, if it meant it would finally drive her away.
Meanwhile, Nina Flores talked.
He’d never met anyone who could talk so much. He didn’t know how she found the time to breathe, because she filled every second with chatter. She talked. She sang. She laughed. She danced. She called out to people passing in the Ferry Building: “Hey, come wish me a happy birthday!”
Rudy had done his best to ignore her. When you are getting ready to throw yourself off a bridge, the last thing you need is a chirpy barista telling you how wonderful her life is. And it was impossible not to do the math. This girl was twenty-one years old. Wren, if she’d lived, would have been turning twenty-one in November.
Until Hope snuffed out her life. Until 3:42 a.m. came.
He’d found himself staring at Nina and thinking what Wren would have looked like at this point in her life. He’d tried to imagine her face, all grown up. He’d thought about the things they would have done together, father and daughter. The things he’d missed. The Giants game tonight? He’d be going with Wren.
The longer he’d stayed at the coffee shop, the more oppressive it had felt to be there. He’d wanted to get up and leave, but something had kept him glued to the seat, listening to this young girl babble about her life. Again, fate had conspired. If he’d left, if he’d walked away, nothing would have changed. He would have gone to the bridge. He would have gone through with his plan.
Instead, he stayed.
The less attention he’d paid to Nina Flores, the more she’d made it her mission to draw him out. After half an hour, that meant shoving her body halfway over the counter to point out the buttons she wore on her T-shirt.
“And this is my high school grad photo. Can you believe that hair? Look at all of it! I was heavier then, too. That was twenty pounds ago. These days, no carbs! Or at least, not very many. Of course, everybody has to have cake on their birthday, so I’ll make an exception tonight. Plus, I have to have a drink. What do you think? Beer? I was thinking of something stronger. Maybe tequila shots.
“This photo here, these are all of my brothers! Three brothers, no sisters. Tabby here is as close to a sister as I’ll ever have. Do you have sisters? It can be a struggle, brothers and sisters, but I’m the oldest, so they know they can’t get away with much around me. I love them, but don’t tell them I said that.