The Night Bird (Frost Easton #1)(94)

Eventually, he met her eyes. They knew each other well. You couldn’t look at someone the same way after you’d seen them naked. It was like taking off a superhero’s mask. He and Jess didn’t love each other, and there were days when they didn’t even like each other. They were oil and water, but it didn’t matter. They would always be connected, more than most cops, more than most friends.

“You doing okay?” he asked her.

He knew he wasn’t the only one who was struggling. Jess had pulled the trigger tonight. No cop did that without going through hell. It didn’t matter who was on the other end of the bullet. Frost had never faced that split-second choice, or the consequences that came with it.

“Not really,” she replied.

“I know you had to do it, Jess. If you didn’t, Dr. Stein would have taken a knife in her chest. Lucy wasn’t Lucy.”

“I know that, too, but it doesn’t mean I’m not going to see the girl’s face when I close my eyes. She was an innocent kid, and she was a friend of yours. I’m sorry, Frost.”

It took a lot for Jess to say that, and they both knew it. Jess locked up her emotions behind her badge. She had only one philosophy on the job. You do what you have to do. You make the tough choices, because no one else will.

“You talk to the doctors?” she asked.

Frost nodded. “The outlook is good, but the surgery will take several more hours.”

“Keep me posted.”

“I will. Her parents are on the way. I’m waiting for them.”

“You want me to talk to them?” Jess asked.

“No, I’d like to do it.”

“Whatever you want.” She studied him up and down. “You look like you could use a doctor yourself. They should run a CT or an MRI on that thick head of yours.”

Frost smiled. “Yeah. Soon.”

Jess got up from the chair. She headed for the door, and his eyes followed her until she was gone. They’d said what they needed to say to each other. They’d had disagreements over the years, but they always made peace.

He lingered in the cafeteria. His headache was back, and he popped more Advil. He thought about Lucy, on the operating table, and he pictured the faces of the women in the photographs in Darren Newman’s storage locker. Victims. Lock it down, Jess would tell him, but he felt a wave of anger at the world. That was how he’d felt when Katie died, too.

“Frost?”

He looked up in surprise. Francesca Stein was in front of him. He hadn’t even heard her as she walked across the cafeteria floor.

“Dr. Stein,” he said, dropping into her formal name again. She wore the same clothes she’d worn all evening. She hadn’t been home. “I thought I asked an officer to take you back to your place.”

“You did. I needed to see you.”

He gestured at the chair that Jess had left pulled out, and Frankie sat down. She laced her long fingers together and looked uncomfortable. It was a strange look for a woman who always seemed in control of things around her.

He could read the trouble in her eyes.

“What’s bothering you, Frankie?”

“I wanted to talk to you about something. I think—well, I think there’s a problem.”

“What kind of problem?”

She leaned back in the chair and put her palms flat on the table. Her fingers were slim and long. Even when she was wet and upset, she had a precision about every motion she made.

“Do you remember what Darren Newman was wearing tonight?” she asked.

“Orange shirt, black pants, some kind of psychedelic tie.”

“That’s right.”

Frankie didn’t say anything more. Her lips were pressed together.

“Is that supposed to mean something to me?” Frost asked her.

“I’m not sure.”

Frost smiled. “Look, it’s been a long night for you. Maybe you should get some sleep. We can talk things over tomorrow.”

“No. I don’t think this can wait. Tell me something, do you have any police officers searching Darren’s house?”

“Near the Panhandle? Yes, there’s a team there now.”

“Are you able to reach them?” Frankie asked.

“Sure. What is it you’re concerned about?”

“I was hoping they could text you a picture of Darren’s living room and bedroom.”

Frost cocked his head. “Why?”

“I’ll explain when I see it. I could be completely wrong about all of this, but I want to be sure.”

She was upset enough that he was willing to indulge her. He called the head of the forensics team and put in a request for photos from inside Newman’s house. Less than ninety seconds later, his phone began to chime, and he downloaded a series of pictures of the house from multiple rooms and multiple angles. He handed his phone to Frankie, who scrolled through the photos. The more she did, the more her face darkened.

Finally, she handed him his phone again.

“Well?” Frost asked. “Do we have a problem?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. What is it?”

She breathed in and out, and then she said, “When Darren first came to me, he told me a story from his childhood. He grew up in a rural area not far from Green Bay. He was an only child. When he was seven years old, he built a snow fort for himself during a Thanksgiving Day blizzard. The fort collapsed on him. He nearly suffocated and died before anyone realized what had happened. A lot of the stories he told me in therapy were lies, but that one was true. His mother showed me a newspaper article about it.”