The Night Bird (Frost Easton #1)(63)

Frost put his badge in front of the man’s face and introduced himself.

“Is there a problem, Inspector?”

Frost showed him a photograph of Lucy. “Have you seen this woman? She’s missing and at risk. We need to find her.”

The man squinted at the picture through his reading glasses. “I don’t think so. Not while I’ve been here.”

“One of the street performers in the square told me he saw this woman enter the building,” Frost snapped. He used his cop’s don’t-screw-with-me tone of voice. “He was dead sure it was her, and she never came out.”

“Well, I don’t know. I guess I could be wrong.”

“The woman is a patient of Dr. Francesca Stein,” Frost said.

“Oh. Sure. Her office is on the top floor.”

“Then let’s get up there. Now.”

The guard eyed the phone in front of him. “I should probably call somebody.”

“Call whoever you want after you let me in there. This woman is in imminent danger.”

Frost marched to the elevator bank without waiting for an answer. He heard the guard’s chair scraping on the marble floor and then the tap, tap of the man’s leather shoes as he ran to catch up to him. The guard breathed heavily and stabbed the elevator button. The two of them got inside the car and rode in silence. When the doors opened at the top of the building, he let the man lead the way to the far end of the hallway. Double wooden doors led to Francesca Stein’s office, and her name was on a brass plate on the wall.

The guard swiped a passkey against the lock. As he reached for the door handle, Frost stepped in front of him.

“You can go back downstairs now,” Frost said.

“The rules say I need to go in with you.”

“I can’t be responsible for your safety.”

The guard studied Frost’s eyes, which were hidden behind sunglasses. He looked as if he might gin up the courage to question him, but Frost slid his service pistol from the holster inside his jacket as he inched the door open. Seeing the gun, the man beat a quick retreat back to the elevators.

Frost slipped inside and closed the office door. He reholstered his gun. He found the light switch for the office suite and turned on the lights in the waiting room. The door to Dr. Stein’s private office was directly in front of him, and he headed quickly across the carpet and let himself inside.

Like most scientists, Stein was obsessively organized. That was unfortunate. When he’d been here before, she’d kept patient files on her large oak desk, but she’d refiled them in two locked cabinets on the wall. He sat down in her chair and booted up her computer, but the hard drive required a password to access her files. He shut it down again and frowned.

Stein kept a yellow manila pad on the desk for notes, but the pages were blank. He turned on her desk light and held the pad near the bulb to see if there were visible indentations of the notes she’d made. He found nothing. Then he pulled a garbage can from under her desk and saw two wadded balls of paper inside. He removed them and flattened them on the surface of the desk.

On one page, he saw a handwritten address. The location was near the city’s container ship piers. That was one advantage of his past life as a taxi driver; he knew every street location around San Francisco. He folded the page and shoved it in his pocket.

He checked the other note. Stein had written,



White room. Where? Near Dogpatch?



Owns warehouses.



TF. Fall guy. Same as before.



And then a little lower on the page,



Something not right! What?



Frost tried to make sense of the notes, but he didn’t have enough information. He reached forward and pulled the office phone closer to him. He navigated the menu to the list of recent calls, and he punched redial on the last call she’d made, which was several hours earlier.

The phone rang six times, and then a male voice answered. “So what is it now, Frankie? Can’t stay away from me?”

Frost waited. He let the silence draw out without speaking.

“Frankie?” the man went on, his voice colored with suspicion. “Don’t be shy. We both know what you want.”

Finally, when Frost let the dead air continue, the man hung up.

Frost grabbed his own phone to call for a reverse directory on the number, but the listing came back with no identification. Whoever Stein had called was using a pay-as-you-go burner phone.

He didn’t have much, but he had an address near the pier.

Frost stood up to leave, but then he heard another male voice. This one was in the room with him.

“Who the hell are you?”

A man stood in the doorway of Stein’s office, with a gun lodged tightly in his fist, pointed across the room. Frost put his hands in the air slowly and carefully. He studied the man’s face and recognized him. It was Dr. Stein’s husband.

“Take it easy and put the gun down,” Frost said. “I’m with the police. You’re Jason, aren’t you?”

“Let me see your badge.”

Frost peeled back the flap of his coat with his fingertips and removed his badge with his other hand. He held it up so Jason could see. “I’ve been in contact with your wife about the Night Bird case. My name is Frost Easton.”