The Voice Inside (Frost Easton Book 2)

by Brian Freeman

  “Many of us still meet,” Camille told him. She pursed her lips. “Easton. Your parents are Ned and Janice?”

  “Yes.”

  “So that means—” she began, and he could see empathy in her stare as she put the pieces together. “Your sister? She was one of the victims, too, yes?”

  “Katie,” Frost said.

  “I am very sorry.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Your parents have not been to one of our meetings in a couple of years,” Camille said. “I hope that means they are okay.”

  “They moved to Arizona,” Frost explained. “They split up for a while, but then they got back together. Katie’s death put a lot of stress on their relationship.”

  Camille held up her left hand, which had no ring. “I understand. My own marriage did not survive the grief.”

  The waitress returned with coffee and put a plate of scrambled eggs in front of him. He realized he was hungry, and he ate quickly, in large bites. Camille sipped her next cup of espresso and left behind most of her granola.

  “Those were dark days,” she said. “I wish I could say it’s over, but it’s never really over, is it?”

  “No.”

  “After all, here you are, and you say this has something to do with Melanie.”

  “Yes, it does. I’m sorry.”

  “Well, what can I do for you, Inspector?”

  Frost put down his fork. He felt reluctant to say the things he needed to say. He slid a hand into the inner pocket of his sport coat and extracted the watch, which he’d now secured in a plastic evidence bag. He put the bag on the table between them and watched Camille’s eyes as she studied it. She was cool, but she couldn’t hide a stiffening in how she held herself. She saw the watch, recognized it, and looked away without a word. Maybe it was just the pain of what this watch meant to her. Or maybe it was something more.

  “What is this?” she asked.

  “Someone led me to this watch overnight,” Frost told her. “They wanted me to find it.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “To make me believe that this is Melanie’s watch,” he said. “Not the one that Jess Salceda found in Rudy Cutter’s house.”

  “Obviously, that’s not true.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, but that’s why I’m here. You’d know the truth better than anyone. You bought the original watch for your daughter. I was hoping you could look at it.”

  Camille picked up the bag with obvious reluctance. He waited to see what she would do next. Her face had the strain of profound grief. Her slim, birdlike fingers trembled. Her eyes pored over the watch face, the band, and the jewels, as if caressing it.

  And then she did the one thing he didn’t want her to do. The one gesture that told him everything.

  She turned the watch around.

  She studied the back. Where the inscription was. La rêveuse. Looking at it, her eyes went dead. The life went out of them. She put the bag down on the table as if it were hot to the touch. “It’s a copy. It’s not Melanie’s. Just as you would imagine.”

  “Okay.”

  “Throw it away,” she said lightly, dragging the words out of her throat. “It means nothing.”

  “Thank you for confirming it,” he said, although she’d unintentionally confirmed the opposite of what she was telling him. She expected there to be an inscription on that watch as she picked it up. Just looking at it, she already knew its history. Now he needed to figure out how and why.

  “Are we finished here, Inspector?” she asked.

  “I have a couple more questions,” he said.

  Frost took the bag and slipped it inside his pocket again, and Camille’s mouth twitched as it disappeared from her view. He thought she might reach across the table and grab it from him.

  “This is a very distinctive watch,” he said. “Someone must have gone to a lot of trouble to find an exact duplicate.”

  “It’s distinctive, but apparently not unique.”

  “I recall from the trial that the watch was designed and sold by a small jeweler in Switzerland,” Frost said.

  “Yes, my ex-husband’s family owns a chalet in Wengen. The jeweler was related to my in-laws, a cousin of a cousin or something like that.”

  “So an exact match of Melanie’s watch would probably have come from the same jeweler?”

  Camille shrugged. “I assume so.”

  “Was it expensive? It looks expensive.”

  “Expensive depends on your means.”

  “Did you notice the inscription on the back of the watch?” Frost asked. “That puzzles me.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, why go through the trouble of obtaining an exact duplicate of Melanie’s watch when it has an inscription that clearly indicates that it’s not hers? I mean, Melanie’s watch didn’t have any inscription on the back, right?”

  Her eyes drilled through him as if she could see to the back of his head. “That’s right.”

  “Because obviously you would have noticed if the inscription was missing,” he went on. “I was in court when you testified. I saw you identify the watch that was found in Rudy Cutter’s ceiling. You were very convincing. You were very certain.”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “That’s not something you’re likely to make a mistake about.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Was Melanie’s watch returned to you after the trial?” Frost asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you still have it?”

  Camille bristled. She’d begun to see him as an enemy. “No, I don’t.”

  “Really? What happened to it?”

  “I destroyed it, Inspector. I took a hammer, and I reduced it to pieces. It no longer exists. To me, it was a source of pain and misery, a reminder of what I’d lost, and I wanted to be rid of it.”

  “I understand.”

  “Do you?” she demanded, her voice trembling. “Then for the life of me, I cannot understand why you are here asking me these questions all these years later. Particularly when your own sister was another of Rudy Cutter’s victims. What on earth do you think you’re doing? Why are you bringing this up now?”

  Frost had been asking himself the same thing for hours. He wasn’t surprised by Camille’s reaction. Any mother who had gone through what she had would be outraged. However, Camille’s outrage also felt calculated. It masked something else. She knew more than she was telling him.

  “I’ll be honest with you, Ms. Valou,” Frost told her. “My first instinct when I found this watch in my hand was to do what you did. Destroy it.”

  “That’s what you should have done. That’s what you should do right now. I already told you. Throw it away.”

  “I wish I could, but we’re beyond that now.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re lying to me,” Frost said sadly.

  Camille didn’t say anything to deny the accusation. Her body relaxed, and she went back to her espresso. “Let me ask you something, Inspector.”

  “All right.”

  “Do you have the slightest doubt that Rudy Cutter was the man who murdered all those women? Including my daughter. Including your sister.”

  “None at all,” Frost said.

  “Then justice has been served.”

  “That’s true, but justice demands a fair trial that plays by the rules.”

  “Cutter got that.”

  “I hope so. I’d like nothing more than to believe that this watch is nothing but a copy and that the original was found in Cutter’s ceiling.”

  “It was,” Camille snapped. “There’s no mystery here. Melanie was wearing the watch I bought for her when that beast abducted and murdered her. Rudy Cutter kept it. He hid it. His plan was to put it on the wrist of the next woman he killed. Just as he’d done six times before. He would have succeeded, if your fellow detective Ms. Salceda hadn’t discovered it at his house. She found Melanie’s watch, Inspector. I confirmed it when she showed it t
o me. I testified to it under oath at that man’s trial. That’s the only truth that matters.”

  He suspected that she’d said those words to herself many times over the years, as she tried to convince herself that she’d done the right thing.

  “If you’re right, then someone is playing a sick game with me,” Frost said.

  “No doubt someone working with Rudy Cutter,” Camille replied.

  “Most likely. I’d like to know how they managed to locate this watch. What would a person have to do to put their hands on an exact duplicate like this?”

  “Fly to Switzerland,” Camille said impatiently.

  “The jeweler doesn’t have a website?”

  “It’s a one-man business in a small village. Not every corner of the world is online, Inspector.”

  “And do you think the owner would keep records of his customers and what they purchased?” Frost asked. Because he knew what those records would show, and so did she.

  A shadow crossed Camille’s face. “I have no idea.”

  “What was the name of the jeweler?”

  “I really don’t remember. For all I know, he’s dead by now. He was very old even then, and this was a decade ago.”

  “What about your ex-husband? Would he remember? You said the jeweler had some kind of family connection.”

  “You’d have to ask him,” Camille said, her voice growing exasperated. “Honestly, Inspector, I really don’t understand the relevance of any of this. I already told you, it’s not Melanie’s watch.”

  “I’m just trying to understand how hard it would have been to obtain an exact copy,” Frost replied. “It sounds like it would have been pretty hard. Almost impossible, in fact. A very expensive watch from a jeweler in a remote town overseas? I can’t imagine how Cutter would have pulled it off.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t have any answers for you, Inspector.”

  Frost stood up. He picked up the mug and finished his coffee. “Well, I appreciate your time, Ms. Valou. Thank you for breakfast.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  He made sure they were alone. There were no morning pedestrians on Cole Street. The door to the restaurant was closed. He leaned across the table toward Camille and whispered just loud enough for her to hear. “There were two watches, weren’t there?”

  Her nostrils flared with annoyance. Her eyes were hard black sapphires. “What?”

  “You bought two watches back then, didn’t you? One for you, one for your daughter.”

  “I have nothing more to say.”

  “Was it your watch that Jess found in Cutter’s ceiling? And if so, how did it get there?”

  “I think you should leave, Inspector,” Camille said.

  Frost straightened up. “If you’d like.”

  He turned away from the restaurant, but Camille called after him in a loud voice. “Inspector, before you go. There’s an old French proverb you may know. Il ne faut pas réveiller le chat qui dort. It means, when the cat is asleep, you don’t wake it up.”

  “Let sleeping dogs lie?” Frost replied.

  “That is exactly right. Let sleeping dogs lie. You should remember that.”

  4

  Rudy Cutter listened for the boots of the prison guard. He’d been waiting for him for hours. Waiting for news.

  It was late afternoon. Shadows stretched across the lower bunk of his cell at San Quentin. People said the nights were worst in prison, but really, it was the long, dull, dead afternoons. He heard the noises of the south block around him. Smack talk bounced from cell to cell. Someone sang. Someone prayed. Above him, his cellmate, Leon, played the same rap by Lil Wayne over and over. “Hustler Musik.” When Leon played the song more than ten times in a stretch, Rudy would kick the mattress to shut him up, but he didn’t like to anger Leon. If you wanted to stay alive in here, you learned to get along.

  Lying in his bunk, Rudy stretched out his arms. He could touch both stone walls on either side of the cell. He did that sometimes, to remind himself where he was, to confirm that this wasn’t a dream.

  It wasn’t. This was life. Fifty-four square feet. A sink. A toilet. Two men.

  The chaplain had told him to make the most of his time inside. Read. Take classes. Find God. The first step was to accept your fate. Instead, Rudy had spent the last four years making plans. The people of the State of California had said that he would never be a free man again, but the people were wrong.

  The day was almost here, and he was ready.

  Rudy stared into nothingness. His blue eyes were sunken into his face, surrounded by deep wrinkles and dark bags. Haunted eyes, some people said. Or predator eyes, others said. They were focused and unblinking, like alligator jaws that clamped around you without letting go. His skin was pale and freckled, his blond hair short and dirty. When he rubbed his chin, he felt the roughness of half-gray stubble. He was fifty-three years old, but one advantage of prison was that he was in the best shape of his life. In here, it paid to be muscled and strong and to develop a sixth sense for what was happening behind your back.

  Over his head, Lil Wayne rapped about not being a killer. The lyrics always annoyed Rudy when he heard them. If you weren’t a killer, you couldn’t understand what it felt like, so don’t sing about it, don’t talk about it, don’t write about it. The only way to really know was to do it. That was the fraternity of murderers.

  He thought about his late wife, Hope, who was part of that fraternity. She was always with him. She never went away. When he closed his eyes, she was in his dreams. When he stared outside the cell, he could see her taunting him on the other side of the bars. Her smile. Her blood. Her grotesque pride in what she’d done.

  Thirty years in between had changed nothing.

  Looking back, he wondered why he’d ever married Hope. They were both only twenty years old then. He was still in college, and she was in nursing school. What did he see in her? It wasn’t her looks. She was slightly heavy, and it showed in her face. She had puffy cheeks and a rounded chin. Her mousy hair was short and practical. Her face was forgettable. Ten minutes after meeting Hope, you’d struggle to describe her.

  What was it?

  Maybe he’d thought he could fix her. Hope was bipolar, and when she had her episodes, she would scream, she would explode in jealous rage, she would throw things, she would cut him, she would hit him. When he talked about leaving, she would tell him how much she needed him, how much she loved him, and how she would kill herself if he left her. So he stayed.

  It wasn’t all bad. For a while, after college, things got better. He got a job as an underwriter at a savings and loan; it was a boring job, but boring worked for him. He didn’t have to deal with people. He could focus on numbers and formulas. He could plan, analyze, and make risk assessments, and he discovered that he was good at it. Like a chess player, he could anticipate options and alternatives ten moves away. The company promoted him quickly.

  Hope became an ER nurse. She got on meds, which smoothed out her moods. She started seeing a therapist, who advised her to turn to her artistic side and paint or sketch when she felt the stress of life overwhelming her. Her violent outbursts faded. He began to think that they were happy.

  And then came Wren. Their daughter.

  Until Wren, Rudy had never had a clue what love really was. That little girl, in his arms, became his reason to live. She was beautiful. She was innocent. She was perfect. He found it nearly unbearable to leave for work in the morning. On the bus coming home, he would grow agitated, because he was so anxious to see his daughter again. Seeing her face made every bad thing in the world vanish.

  He was so enraptured with Wren that he hardly noticed Hope beginning to disintegrate again.

  Her moods swooped up and down; her meds seemed to have no effect. The art she used to escape wasn’t nearly enough. She began to lash out at him, the way she had in college, and she spent less and less time with their daughter. When she held the girl, her face grew empty and pained. Eventually, the doctors
would tell him it was postpartum depression, magnified by her existing mental illness, but by then, it was too late. The baby sucked up all of Rudy’s time and love, and Hope herself seemed incapable of giving any love to either of them.

  He thought it would pass with time. He didn’t realize how volatile the situation had become. And how dangerous.

  Not until the November night that changed everything.

  Hope had come home late from an exhausting shift at the ER. She found Rudy holding Wren in the nursery, and she flew into a rage, screaming obscenities, telling him that he loved his daughter more than he loved her—and it was a difficult accusation to deny, because it was true. He tried to calm Hope without success. Wren began crying and was inconsolable. Eventually, he put their daughter in his wife’s arms to give the two of them time to be together. He’d always believed that Wren had magical healing powers. If the little girl could make him happy, then she could do anything at all.

  Rudy slept. He slept until the middle of the night. He didn’t know what awakened him, but maybe it was the sudden silence. Wren was crying, and then she was not. Hope wasn’t in bed. He got up and called his wife’s name, several times, louder and louder, and she didn’t answer. A feeling crept over him, like a foreboding of evil, strong enough to make it hard to breathe.

  He went to the nursery and crossed the river into hell.

  His girl, his angel, his perfect daughter, was blue. In that instant, he could physically feel God reach into his chest, remove his heart, rip it to pieces, and tread on it. He wailed. He bellowed. He went to Wren to revive her, but she was gone, her life suffocated by nothing more than a bunny pillow that lay next to her. He held her, sobbing, pacing back and forth.

  Wren was dead. Rudy felt as if he had died with her.

  Only then did he notice the blood on the floor, trickling in little ribbons downhill from under the crib.

  He went around to the other side and found Hope on her back, arms and legs spread wide. She had a terrible, wicked grin fixed on her face. Her eyes were open, lifeless but still staring at him. She had a kitchen knife clutched in one hand that she’d used to slice open her own throat in a grotesque U from below one ear to the other.