The Crooked Street

by Brian Freeman

  Frost went into the kitchen and dampened a towel in the sink. He returned to the dining room and handed it to the detective, who dabbed it gingerly against the wounds on his head.

  “Okay, Coyle, tell me why I shouldn’t arrest you,” Frost said.

  “Because we’re both doing the same thing. Investigating a murder.”

  Frost shook his head. Another Sam Spade. “Whose murder?”

  “Denny Clark.”

  “How do you know Denny? Was he a client of yours or something?”

  “No, I never met him.”

  “Then why are you so interested in his murder?” Frost asked.

  Coyle pursed his thick pale lips and shot covert glances in both directions. He leaned across the table. “Is this room secure?”

  “What?”

  “Do I need to worry about bugs?”

  Frost was ready to laugh, but then he thought about Denny Clark being killed with the kind of poison that was usually reserved for spies. And about hidden cameras on a multimillion-dollar yacht. And about Captain Hayden showing up at the crime scene in the middle of the night. He decided to indulge the detective’s paranoia. He synched his phone to the Bose speakers in the dining room and played Bastille’s “Pompeii” at a loud volume.

  Frost crooked a finger at Coyle and spoke softly with the music thumping in the background. “Talk.”

  Coyle used a conspiratorial whisper. “This murder isn’t what you think.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “There’s a serial killer working in the city,” Coyle told Frost. “He’s been at it for years, but nobody knows about him except me. He’s the one who murdered Denny Clark, and I can prove it.”

  5

  Frost needed to get out of his wet clothes. He didn’t think that Coyle was going to run, but he wasn’t going to take any chances. He handcuffed the private investigator to the iron railing on the patio while he went upstairs to take a shower. When he’d changed, he returned to the patio and released him.

  “So is it safe to talk outside?” Frost asked with a sarcastic smile. “No bugs?”

  Coyle rubbed the kinks out of his wrist where the cuff had pinched his skin. “I guess it’s okay.”

  “Then tell me what you were looking for inside my house.”

  It wasn’t entirely accurate to call it his house. The house actually belonged to Shack, which made it one of the odder living arrangements in the city. Frost had adopted the cat from an older woman who’d been killed in the upstairs bedroom, and her will had made the house available nearly rent-free to whoever agreed to keep Shack there. So Frost now had a home in an exclusive neighborhood that wasn’t really his home at all.

  “You won’t believe me when I tell you,” Coyle replied.

  “Try me.”

  “A snake,” Coyle said.

  “A snake? Why would you expect to find a snake in the house? And what does this have to do with a serial killer?”

  “It’s not a real snake. It’s a painting of a snake. It’s not large, maybe a foot by a foot, and it’s always done in red spray paint. Wherever this killer strikes, he leaves the same kind of snake painting near the crime scene. It’s like his calling card. So far, I’m the only one who’s figured it out.”

  Frost had no time for conspiracy theories. “That sounds pretty crazy, Coyle.”

  “I know it does. I didn’t believe it at first, either.”

  “How many of these snakes have you found?”

  “Eleven,” Coyle replied.

  “Eleven?” Frost exclaimed, unable to hide his surprise.

  “That’s right. Eleven victims, eleven snakes.”

  Frost rubbed his beard and studied the earnest naivete on Coyle’s face. The detective still sounded crazy, but the number eleven had Frost’s attention. “Well, do you have any idea who this so-called serial killer is?”

  “No. Some killers like the chase, but not this one. He’s smart. He doesn’t brag to the cops or the media about what he’s doing. I haven’t identified any pattern in how he picks his victims. The only thing each murder has in common is the snake he leaves behind.”

  Frost wandered to the edge of the patio, which looked north toward the city and the bay. A few early morning sailboats dotted the blue water. “Did you find a snake painting inside my house?”

  “No, but your cat interrupted me before I was done searching,” Coyle said, grimacing as he pressed the towel to the cuts on the side of his forehead. “Look, give me fifteen minutes. We can go over the whole place together. If we don’t find anything, fine, I was wrong. But I don’t think I am. Denny Clark is the latest victim of this killer. If he was murdered here, there’s a snake close by.”

  “Denny wasn’t murdered inside the house,” Frost told him.

  Coyle’s brown eyes widened. “The call on the police band made it sound like he was.”

  “He died here, but the assault took place somewhere else.”

  “That means I was searching in the wrong place!” Coyle said.

  “And by ‘searching,’ you mean breaking and entering, right?”

  The private detective blanched. “Look, Inspector, I’m sorry. I got carried away. Can we let bygones be bygones? Please?”

  “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  “Find me a snake,” Frost said. “Get me some proof that any of this is real.”

  Coyle’s head bobbed with enthusiasm. He headed back into the house practically at a run. Below his khakis, he wore neon-yellow sneakers. As heavy as he was, Coyle was surprisingly light on his feet. Frost followed the detective out the front door with an apology to Shack for leaving him behind. At Green Street, Coyle spun in a circle and pointed in different directions.

  “Do you know where Clark came from?”

  “Up the stairs from Taylor,” Frost replied.

  Coyle charged downhill with one hand clutching the iron railing. Dense trees filled the slope with shadows, and the hillside was a sea of mud and dead leaves. Apartment buildings with stucco walls were terraced on the north side of the steps. Coyle stopped to peer through the foliage at every exposed section of stucco wall beyond the greenery.

  There was no sign of a red snake.

  At the base of the hill, Coyle broke from the trees onto Taylor Street and put his hands on his hips as he examined the buildings around them. When he found nothing, he huffed and puffed to the summit of the next hill, where a sweeping view opened up on the eastern section of the city. The day was perfect, and wind streaked across the hilltop. Coyle again made a point of checking every wall and sidewalk for snakes.

  Frost glanced at his watch. Half an hour had already passed, and he was growing impatient with the detective’s quest.

  “Come on, Coyle, we’re done here,” Frost said.

  Coyle wiped sweat from his forehead and upper lip. He pushed down his hair as the wind flew it like a flag. He took a few steps down the hillside that led through Coolbrith Park. “Ten more minutes. Please.”

  “We don’t even know that Denny came up through the park.”

  “That’s okay. Look, you can go home if you want. I’ll come back if I find anything.”

  Coyle lumbered into the park alone with a determined gait. Frost heaved a sigh and headed after him. The brick stairs went almost straight down, with the bay water and rolling San Francisco hills spread out under the sky. There were no buildings here, just landscaped trees, scrub brush, and spring flowers. The steps ended at the base of the park, and two parallel staircases continued on either side of the thick woodland. Coyle, who had a head start, took the steps on the left. When Frost eventually caught up with him, the detective was resting on a low concrete wall at the dead end of Vallejo. His round face looked glum, and his arms hung limply at his sides. He was breathing heavily at the distance they’d traveled.

  “Nothing?” Frost guessed.

  “I guess I was wrong. I don’t understand it.”

  “Why were you so sure that Denny was a victim o
f this killer?”

  Coyle unhooked his phone from a holster on his belt. He thumbed his way through several pictures and then showed one to Frost. The photograph had been taken aboard the Roughing It, and it showed Denny Clark standing between an attractive thirty-something blond woman and a tall, older man in a tan suit. The man’s face looked familiar, but Frost couldn’t place him.

  “This guy next to Denny,” Frost said. “Who is he?”

  “His name’s Greg Howell. He was a big real estate developer.”

  Frost remembered now. “Okay, sure. Howell died a few months ago.”

  “That’s right. Howell was the last snake victim. Until Denny Clark.”

  “Howell had a heart attack while he was jogging in Golden Gate Park,” Frost pointed out. “He wasn’t murdered.”

  “Well, that’s the story, but I don’t believe it. I found a red snake on the trail just fifty yards from where his body was found. His death was made to look like a heart attack, but I’m telling you, he was killed.”

  Frost was having a hard time deciding whether Coyle was serious or whether he belonged on the other side of Area 51 with his nose pressed against the fence. “And you’ve really found eleven of these snakes?”

  “Right. Each one was within a stone’s throw of some unusual death. I did my research. I talked to neighbors. I found online photos. As far as I can tell, the snake paintings all showed up right after the person died.”

  “Have you found anything that ties the victims together?”

  “Not until now. When I was looking into Greg Howell’s death, I found this photo on Facebook, and I identified Denny Clark through the boat. When I heard the police report about his murder, I didn’t think it could be a coincidence. I figured, maybe this case would finally give me a clue about who the killer is and how he picks his victims.”

  Frost took a look at the photograph again. “Who’s the blond woman with Denny and Howell?”

  “I don’t know. I was never able to identify her.”

  Frost handed the phone back to Coyle. “The snake thing is weird, I’ll give you that, but this is San Francisco, Coyle. Nobody ever had to start a campaign to Keep San Francisco Weird.”

  “At least look into it,” Coyle urged him. “Please.”

  “Right now, my priority is Denny Clark. If I have time, I’ll see what I can find about the other victims on your list. I’ll keep an eye out for connections to my case. That’s all I can promise.”

  “Thank you, Inspector.”

  “I have to head home,” Frost said. “You coming with me?”

  Coyle looked over his shoulder at the steep hill. “I need to rest before tackling that monster again.”

  “Okay. See you, Coyle. And stay out of other people’s houses from now on.”

  Frost got up and made his way to the stairs that led into the park. Without thinking about it, he headed for the opposite set of steps from the one they’d taken down. The street around him was a mess of cigarette butts, and the mortar in the low retaining wall was pockmarked, as if it had been used for target practice. As he turned the corner, he glanced toward his feet. Then he froze.

  He called to Coyle. “Hey, you better get over here.”

  Frost squatted in front of the wall, studying the bright-red painting he’d found there. He drew a finger across the graffiti. The paint was dry but looked fresh.

  It was a snake.

  The head was enlarged, with empty spaces to mark its slitted eyes and a forked tongue spitting sideways from wide-open jaws. The braided body twisted and turned all the way to its tail, which ended in the coils of a rattle. The blood-red snake glared at him like a warning. It looked like a harbinger of death.

  But Frost realized it looked like something else, too.

  The ripples of the snake’s body wound back and forth through a series of sharp turns. He counted exactly eight turns from head to tail.

  Just like the hill at Lombard Street.

  6

  Frost and Coyle sat in his Suburban near a softball field in Potrero Hill, which was a finger-shaped neighborhood on the east side of the city, nestled between the 101 and 280 freeways. They both ate hot dogs that they’d purchased near the Ferry Building.

  “I found the first snake right here three years ago,” Coyle told him, licking mustard from his finger. “It was one of my first cases as a PI. The usual thing, wife thought her husband was cheating and wanted to catch him in the act. I’d been following the guy for a couple of weeks. He was a vice cop, so you might remember him. Alan Detlowe.”

  “I remember the name,” Frost said. “He was killed.”

  Coyle chewed his hot dog and then kept talking. “Exactly. It happened while I was doing my surveillance. The funny thing is, I’m not even sure Detlowe was cheating. If he was, I never nailed him at it. I remember spotting him with this Indian girl at a Peruvian restaurant in Pacific Heights. Weak-in-the-knees gorgeous. I thought, Gotcha. But all he did was listen while she talked to him and then buy her dinner and kiss her on the head. It didn’t look like anything was going on between them.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Come on, I’ll show you.”

  Coyle got out of the truck, and Frost followed. The grass of the softball field was freshly mowed in diagonal rows. They were near a recreational center with a half-cylinder roof. The downtown skyline was visible to the north.

  “Detlowe was part of a Tuesday-night softball league,” Coyle said. “I watched him play ball for a couple of hours. I had to go to the bathroom, so I dashed inside the rec center. Let’s just say it was one of those visits that took longer than I was expecting. When I came back outside, the game was over, and I didn’t see Alan among the guys who were hanging out in the field. But his car was still there. I wandered over and took a look inside, and there he was in the front seat. Dead. Blood everywhere. Somebody cut his throat and did a really thorough job. It couldn’t have happened more than five minutes earlier.”

  Coyle started walking toward the rec center. He led Frost up a driveway that bordered a stand of trees. “I heard somebody over here in the woods. I figured it was probably the killer getting away. I hustled this way as fast as I could, but the guy was already gone. That’s when I found this.”

  He pointed at a concrete wall that bordered the driveway.

  Frost saw another red snake spray-painted in a discreet section of the wall that faced the woods. The paint had chipped and faded after three years of rain and elements, but it was otherwise identical to the snake he’d found on Vallejo.

  “The paint was still wet,” Coyle said. “I figured it had to be connected to Detlowe’s murder somehow, but I didn’t know what it meant. So I asked around the city to see if anyone had seen a snake like that before. I figured maybe it was a gang symbol, but I never traced it to any of the usual suspects. Eventually, somebody told me they’d seen a snake like that over in Alta Plaza Park. I went over there to search, and I found another snake near the steps on Clay Street.”

  Coyle showed Frost a new photo on his phone. It was the same snake and a different location, but Frost didn’t need Coyle to tell him its significance. He remembered the case.

  “There was an Episcopal priest shot in a church near there,” Frost said.

  “Exactly,” Coyle replied. “I could stand where the snake was and look right into the church windows. That’s when I started getting curious. It became a hobby for me. Whenever I had free time, I began looking for snakes, and over the next six months, I found five more. Balboa Park. The Presidio. Glen Canyon. McLaren Park. Even a bathroom stall inside Westfield Centre. All of them were near where bodies had recently been found. Mostly homicides, but also one OD. I’m convinced that one was a murder, too.”

  Frost flipped through the photos on Coyle’s phone. He saw more snakes and more crime scenes. Some he recognized, some he didn’t.

  “Did you talk to the police about this?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I talked to the inspector who was working
on Alan Detlowe’s murder. Guy named Trent Gorham. Do you know him?”

  “I do,” Frost said. “He used to be in vice, too.”

  “Well, Detlowe’s wife sent Gorham to me so he could look at my surveillance notes. I told him about the snake thing. He wasn’t impressed. To him, it sounded like a wild conspiracy. He told me to leave the police work to the police. He even suggested that I was leaving the snake paintings behind myself, like I was trying to get publicity for my detective agency.” Coyle eyed Frost curiously. “I’m sort of surprised you didn’t say the same thing.”

  “Oh, I thought about it,” Frost told him. He pointed at the detective’s hands. “No red paint under your fingernails.”

  “Well, you can check my car, too, and pull my PI license if you want. Do your homework on me. I’m not making any of this up.”

  “I know that. So what happened after Trent Gorham blew you off?”

  Coyle finished his hot dog. He had an inch of bun left, which he pulled into pieces and tossed onto the lawn for the birds. “I’ve been on the case ever since. I tracked down a couple more snakes, but the cases were too cold to find anything useful. So I decided to go at it another way.”

  “How so?”

  “Whenever there was an unusual death in the city, I went to check it out to see if I could find a snake. I figured the sooner I knew which ones were victims of my killer, the better chance I had of nailing him. That’s how I found Greg Howell. I heard about his body turning up in the park, and I went over there right away. The park police told me it was a heart attack, so I thought it would turn out to be a dead end, but then I found another snake. That’s how I knew Howell had been murdered. So I started digging into his life to see if I could explain how and why the killer chose him.”