He stared at the watch and shook his head.
“Why me, Cutter? Why the game?”
“I could have had my attorney talk to the district attorney, but do you think anyone would listen to him? I don’t think so. They’d cover it up to protect their own. But a cop on the inside? A cop with a personal stake? If you’re the messenger, they have to take it seriously.”
“Why were you so sure I wouldn’t destroy the watch?” Frost asked. “I thought about it.”
“Because I hear you’re a Boy Scout,” Cutter said. “Don’t worry, we got an affidavit from Yolanda, along with photos. Even if you’d gotten rid of the watch, it wouldn’t have made a difference. But I didn’t think you would. The word is, you’re a cop who does what you have to do.”
Cutter was right. Frost knew what he had to do.
He was going to make bad things happen. He was going to confirm Cutter’s story. He was going to destroy Jess. He was going to set his sister’s killer free.
6
Frost sat in total darkness in the window seat of his Russian Hill house, where he’d spent the last two hours. He nursed a pale ale, but the beer had grown warm as he held the bottle. Outside, rain slapped like gunfire against the glass. Thanks to the fog and the storm, the hillside and the city below him were mostly invisible.
The house smelled of reheated Peruvian saltado, which his brother, Duane, had delivered to his refrigerator sometime during the day. Everything Duane prepared was delicious, but Frost didn’t have much of an appetite. He’d given up after a couple of bites, and Shack had eaten more of the dish than Frost had.
Now Shack slept on Frost’s knee, his legs splayed as if he didn’t have a bone in his little body. The black-and-white cat was as tiny as a kitten, but he was full grown. They’d been roommates for two years. The ornate, old-fashioned house didn’t belong to Frost, and he’d never felt at home here, but living in this place was a requirement for staying with Shack. The cat’s original owner was an old woman who had been murdered in the upstairs master bedroom, and Frost and Shack had adopted each other when he investigated the case. What Frost hadn’t realized was that the woman’s will included a provision requiring anyone who adopted Shack to stay in the house for the rest of the cat’s life at a rental price of one dollar per year.
So Frost had given up his apartment near the baseball stadium, and now he lived with Shack in one of the most exclusive addresses in the city. The only furniture he’d brought with him was his old tweed sofa, which he kept in the living room and doubled as his bed.
It was nearly midnight. It had been a long day and evening. From San Quentin, he’d returned to police headquarters to look up the Mission District muggings, and he’d confirmed the details Cutter had given him about Lamar Rhodes. An hour later, he’d found Lamar’s sister, Yolanda, who identified the watch. She’d had it on her wrist for five years, and she had the photos to prove it. It was all true.
He needed to think about what came next, but he wasn’t ready to do that yet. Instead, he thought about his sister.
Katie, with the blond hair that made you think of a summer day. Katie, four years younger than Frost, although strangers had sometimes thought they were twins. They’d been as different as a brother and sister could be, but they’d also been best friends. Frost was an introvert, content to sit in silence and read history books. He’d never had a serious attachment to a woman in his life; his relationship with Shack was more of a commitment than he’d made to anyone else. Katie was the opposite. She’d lived for people. Strangers became friends. Boys fell at her feet.
Katie, with handwriting so bad she couldn’t read it herself.
Katie, who could play Schubert on the piano like Horowitz and follow it up with “The Vatican Rag.”
Katie, who should have been thirty-one years old now, but who had died in the back seat of her Malibu at the hands of Rudy Cutter.
Thinking of it, thinking of finding her body, thinking of the blood, made Frost squeeze his eyes shut with pain. Six years in between hadn’t softened his grief. The memory burned like a fire that made it impossible to breathe.
He got up from the window seat, dislodging Shack. The cat blinked blearily, but then climbed up his shoulder and hung on for the ride as Frost went upstairs. He made his way into the master bedroom — across the white carpet, which still bore the faded bloodstain where Shack’s original owner had died — and into the huge walk-in closet that stored almost everything Frost owned.
His “Katie box” was on the top shelf at the back. He slid it into his arms and sat down cross-legged in the closet with the box in front of him. He put aside the lid, which Shack hopped down to explore. Inside the box was everything he had from his relationship with his sister. Silly things. Theater programs. Paper fortunes from the cookies at Chinese restaurants. Photographs from a family camping trip to Yosemite when he, Katie, and Duane were all young. Postcards and letters. Frost had only crossed the California border twice in his life, but Katie had traveled a lot. She’d gone to Europe twice, to Hawaii, to Mexico, and to Alaska. He grabbed a postcard she’d mailed from Barcelona and tried to read it, but as usual, her handwriting was all but indecipherable. Even so, seeing her writing helped him hear her voice in his head.
He thought about the last time he’d heard that voice, two hours before she disappeared from the restaurant where she worked.
Haight Pizza, she’d answered the phone, unmistakably Katie.
Really? he’d said. How can anyone hate pizza?
Really? How many times can one brother make the same joke?
I’ll let you know. How late are you delivering tonight?
Ten. Want me to bring you a pie when I go?
Definitely. Sausage and pineapple.
Got it. Sausage, absolutely no pineapple.
But she never showed up.
At eight forty-five, Katie had left for a delivery run in her Malibu. An hour later, a man named Todd Clary had called to complain that he’d never received his pizza. The pizza place tried to reach her, but Katie wasn’t answering her phone. They’d called Frost, and Frost had called Duane, his parents, and Katie’s friends. No one had seen her. He’d driven to Haight Pizza and traced out the route between the restaurant and Todd Clary’s house, in case Katie’s unreliable Malibu had died somewhere along the way. There was no sign of her anywhere.
And then the phone call came. The phone call that had sent him to Ocean Beach.
The man’s voice had been distorted, like the hiss of a snake. He’d only learned much later that the voice belonged to Rudy Cutter.
Frost picked through the box on the floor, taking out keepsakes and memories one by one. It took him a while to find what he was looking for. Then, behind a true-crime memoir — Katie was a voracious reader, like him, and they always traded copies of books they liked — he spotted the jewelry case that held the flower tiara.
He’d given it to her on her last birthday as a joke. She was always complaining that she lived in San Francisco, but she’d never seen anyone with flowers in their hair. So he’d bought her a cheap silver tiara studded with rhinestone flowers and fake pearls. Looking at it now, he realized that it was pretty hideous, but Katie had worn it everywhere. She hardly ever took it off.
She’d been wearing it when he found her at Ocean Beach. Her skin was gray, her eyes closed. Blood was everywhere, on her neck, on her clothes, pooling obscenely on the seat and the floor of the Malibu. And there was the flower tiara, nestled in her hair, as if any second her fingers would come to life and trill across the piano keys and she would break into the Scott McKenzie song. Finding her that way, he’d peeled the tiara from her head and slipped it into the pocket of his coat without even thinking about it.