The Night Bird (Frost Easton #1)

Twenty-four hours.

Lucy had been gone for an entire day, and Frost was no closer to finding her. The frustration of the search left him angry, and he focused his anger on Francesca Stein. He was certain she knew more than she was telling him, but he couldn’t reach her to demand answers. He’d already called her home phone. Her cell phone. Her office. She didn’t call back.

Frost stood in Union Square, wrestling with himself over what to do next. He was about to cross a line. He knew plenty of cops who bent rules and broke rules, but he’d never been one of them. Jess Salceda called him a Boy Scout and told him real cops couldn’t be Boy Scouts if they wanted to solve a case. He’d never believed her.

Until now. He didn’t care about the consequences.

He crossed the street to the dark office building and went through the revolving door. He left his sunglasses on. Inside the lobby, he spotted the building security guard, who was in his fifties and sat behind a check-in desk near the elevators. The large man had his suit jacket draped on a chair behind him and drank Diet Coke straight out of the can. He had the Chronicle puzzle page open on the desk, with half the crossword completed in pencil.

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.”

“What are you doing in here?”

Frost could have lied. He could have used the same story he gave to the guard, but he didn’t bother covering up his intentions. “Your wife is hiding something from me. I need to know what it is.”

“You don’t have a warrant. I could have you fired.”

“Yes, you probably could, but a young woman is missing, and her life is at stake. She’s connected to your wife, just like three other women who are dead now. I think Dr. Stein knows something that could help me find this woman. If you know what’s going on, you need to tell me.”

Jason’s grip on the gun loosened. He dropped it into a pocket. “I only know what Frankie shares with me, which isn’t much.”

“What did she tell you?”

Jason came and stood in front of Frankie’s desk. “A former patient tracked her down this week. He said he was having fugues—losing time—and waking up with memories that didn’t make any sense. He had visions of being in a white room where he saw women being tortured. They were the women who died. Frankie’s patients.”

White room. Where?

Something not right!

“What’s this man’s name?” Frost asked.

Jason shook his head. “She won’t tell me. It’s privileged. This guy is convinced that he’s the Night Bird, but Frankie now thinks it’s possible that he’s being set up by someone else. Framed to take the fall for what’s happening to these women.”

TF. Fall guy.

“Why does she think that?”