Whisper in the Dark (A Thriller) Read online

  He decided not to waste any time getting to the point.

  “It’s Vincent,” he said. “He’s back.”

  Blackburn and Carmody exchanged looks.

  “How did you know that?” Carmody asked. “Did someone from the department call you?”

  “No,” Tolan said, a little thrown by the question. “He did.”

  Carmody’s face went blank for a moment, as if she hadn’t quite heard him right. She glanced at Blackburn, whose expression mirrored hers. “Vincent called you? Vincent Van Gogh?”

  Tolan nodded. “Twice. On my cell phone. This morning, around three A.M., then again, a little over an hour ago. I don’t know how he got my number.”

  Blackburn’s eyes narrowed. “And you didn’t feel the need to tell me about this before?”

  “I didn’t know who I was dealing with. Thought it might be one of my old patients.”

  “What made you change your mind?”

  “These,” he said, then took the folded pages from his back pocket and handed them across the table to Blackburn. “I got them from Vincent’s website.”

  Blackburn and Carmody exchanged another look. “His what?”

  “You heard me.” He gestured to the pages. “He calls it his abstract collection.”

  Blackburn unfolded and slowly leafed through them, his expression darkening. “Jesus H. Christ . . .”

  “I don’t get it,” Carmody said. “Why would he call you? What did he want?”

  “It seems I’ve upset him.”

  “Upset him? How?”

  Tolan paused, remembering the threat as if Vincent were whispering in his ear at that very moment.

  “He thinks I killed my wife.”

  THREE

  The Artist Presently Known as Vincent

  21

  HE COULDN’T REMEMBER her name.

  The day itself was fresh in his mind, imprinted there, and he found himself thinking about it almost as often as a normal man thinks about sex.

  But then he wasn’t normal. He knew that. Had known it since he was five years old, chasing spiders across the front porch of his parents’ small house in Carsonville, using his father’s shoe to smack them dead, feeling the thrill of excitment when that tiny round body popped against the wood, spewing gooey yellow spider guts. Gooey yellow spider guts that, to the one they called Vincent, tasted just like candy.

  The family kitten came next. His sister’s kitten, to be more precise. Little more than a rodent, really, a stray she had picked up on her way home from school one day, an annoying piece of gray fuzz and sharp nails that crawled up his pantleg one time too many.

  He was nine then, and had already killed and eaten his share of insects—a secret he kept to himself, much like the boy down the street who picked his nose and ate his boogers. He had stayed home sick from school and was reading a comic book in bed when the fur ball climbed up onto the blanket, purring furiously.

  He couldn’t tell you what possessed him to reach for his baseball glove, but he did, and quietly slipped it on, smothering the pathetic little creature right where it sat.

  He took it into the backyard then, and using his father’s rusty hacksaw, cut it into several pieces, which he scattered in the woods.

  His grandmother had once told him that, as a child, living on an egg ranch in Oklahoma, it was her job to destroy the chickens when they were past their prime. She would step on the chicken’s neck, then yank its body, ripping its head from its torso.

  The chicken, unaware that its head was missing, would shake and shimmy and flap its wings until it drained of blood and finally died. Then it was off for a good plucking and a place on the Sunday dinner table.

  This had always been one of Vincent’s favorite stories. Especially the ripping part. He had tried several times in his short life to duplicate the event, using whatever stray animal he might come across.

  But the truth was, killing animals bored him. Seemed like some true crime story cliché that had never really given him that kick to the psyche he craved. And by the time he was fourteen, Vincent began looking for a new thrill. A real thrill.

  So he killed his first human.

  Ten years old, she was a cute little blonde with freckles on her nose, wearing a pink and green Care Bear T-shirt.

  But try as he might, he just couldn’t remember her name.

  Nancy? Natalie?

  Neither one sounded right.

  Naomi? No. Strike that one off the list too.

  As much as this bothered Vincent, he didn’t suppose it mattered. Despite this small failure, the moment itself was still etched in his mind. The words they spoke, the path they took, the look of spoiled innocence on her young face.

  It’s true what they say.

  You never forget your first time.

  “WHERE ARE WE going?” she asked.

  “I told you,” Vincent said. “We’re gonna get ice cream.”

  “Out here?”

  They were walking through the woods about a block and half from Vincent’s house, Vincent trying to hide his giddiness, wondering if anyone had seen them take the pathway into the trees.

  He didn’t think so.

  Tightening his grip on the chunk of rock in his pocket, he said, “I had to hide it. My mom doesn’t like me eating sweet stuff. Especially ice cream.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m diabetic. Have to take shots every day.”

  “Eww,” the little girl said. “I don’t like shots. Does it hurt?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “How come?”

  “You get used to it.”

  They were nearing the spot now, the small clearing where Vincent had dug a hole. “We’re almost there,” he told her. “What’s your favorite flavor?”

  “Mint and chip. What’s yours?”

  “Same thing. I even brought some cones.”

  “Really?”

  Vincent nodded. “Sugar cones. Just like Baskin-Robbins.”

  The little girl smiled at him then, and he could see that she was jazzed, her dim little mind probably filled with the image of a double-decker cone, too stupid to realize that a carton of ice cream wouldn’t last ten minutes out here in the woods before the heat and an army of ants got to it.

  They walked through the last cluster of trees into the clearing and the little girl frowned, pointing at his handiwork.

  “Look,” she said, stopping in her tracks. “Somebody dug a hole. You think it was a coyote?”

  “Could be,” Vincent said.

  “I don’t like coyotes.”

  “Why not?”

  “My dad says they ate Melody.”

  “Who’s Melody?”

  “My cat. She disappeared last month.”

  “Oh?” Vincent said. “What did she look like?”

  “Orange and white, with stripes and a little black patch by her nose.”

  Vincent smiled and brought the rock out of his pocket, feeling his heart start to thump inside his chest.

  “I think I remember her,” he said.

  IT HAD BEEN an unsatisfying kill. Probably because the girl had been too stupid to know what was coming, and the reaction was not quite what Vincent had anticipated. She had merely stared at him with a confused look on her face, said “Ow,” then dropped to the ground like an empty sack.

  He had thought about trying to step on her neck, but considering her size, that would have been impractical. Instead, he hit her several more times with the rock until she was finally dead. Watching her eyes go dim had given him a small charge—made him come in his pants as a matter of fact—but it was all too abrupt. Too rushed.

  The real satisfaction had been in the aftermath of the deed. Not only had he looked at her smashed head and thought, how beautiful, but later, when the police and fire department and his neighbors all gathered together to search for the missing girl, he had felt for the first time as if he were something special.

  He remembered traipsing through the woods with his budd
y Larry and some of the other neighborhood kids, calling out her name, knowing that he had a secret, and wanting desperately to tell them what it was.

  But Vincent wasn’t stupid. Although he knew in his heart that what he’d done was not wrong—she was a moronic kid who deserved to die—he was smart enough to also know that the people around him would never understand.

  How could they? Their vision was blurred by the rules of society. Rules that did not apply to someone like Vincent.

  He was, after all, an artist. And an artist who follows any rigid set of rules could not really call himself an artist at all.

  As his namesake once said, “Nature always begins by resisting the artist, but he who really takes it seriously does not allow that resistance to put him off his stride.”

  Wise words, those.

  Words of a genius.

  Not that any of this went through Vincent’s mind at fourteen. He’d been more of an instinctual being then. And his instincts were very good indeed.

  The greatest satisfaction from that first kill came a few hours later, when the dogs finally found the girl’s body. The look of horror on the faces of his neighbors, the tears, the cries of anguish—all of it caused by him, his handiwork—had sent such a pleasing jolt through his body that he nearly came in his pants again right then and there.

  It was a high that had lasted for days. Weeks, in fact. A memory that he still cherished, even now, all these years—and bodies—later.

  If only he could remember her goddamn name.

  VINCENT HAD LOST track of the number of people he’d killed since then. So many of them had been taken before he’d reached his own stride as an artist, when he was little more than an apprentice to the craft, when quantity seemed more important than quality. He could not claim the astronomical body count of, say, Herman Mudgett. But he had reached double digits a while ago.

  The majority of them had been done when he was still a teenager. Every spring break, every summer, every three-day weekend, he’d jump into his prized vintage 280ZX and drive to a new town, trolling for subjects.

  He had no particular preferences in those days, had not yet learned to plan and categorize his work. His choice of subjects was random, based on circumstance and opportunity.

  That changed during his college and grad-school years, when he learned to slow down, be more selective. His workload at school gave him little time for outside activities, so he limited himself to one or two a year, leaning toward young coeds, using the techniques of Ted Bundy to lure them, techniques he gradually refined and reshaped to make his own.

  One he remembered quite fondly was a redheaded Oakland girl he’d picked up hitchhiking on the highway. She had turned to hooking, she told him, to help pay her school tuition.

  The story was bullshit, of course, but he’d invited her to climb inside.

  After they pulled into the far end of a department store parking lot, the redhead hitched up her skirt, yanked the crotch of her panties aside and straddled him, working her hips as if she were churning butter.

  “Oh, yeah, baby. That feels real good.”

  Just as they were both getting into it, Vincent put his thumbs against her throat and squeezed.

  The startled look on her face had been precious. She began to struggle then, thrashing about in the small car, trying to pull herself off him, hammering at him with her fists. But he jammed his pelvis upward and squeezed a little harder until her windpipe gave out and she finally slumped forward, slack and lifeless.

  Then he came.

  And as she lay there against him, he spotted a little brown spider crawling along the edge of the car door. Elated, he smacked it dead and popped it into his mouth, savoring its sweet nectar.

  Leaving the redhead in the car, he went into the department store and bought a hacksaw and the biggest, baddest hunting blade he could find. Then he took her to the nearby woods, cut her into a dozen pieces, and arranged them on the ground in several different configurations, creating what could only be classified as works of art.

  He wished he’d had a camera then. Something to help him capture the moment. He had grabbed his art pad from the trunk and made a few sketches, leaving blood stains on the paper—but drawing had never been his strong suit. Like his namesake, he was less interested in the sketch itself than the color: broad strokes that expressed mood and emotion.

  And a simple drawing could never capture that.

  VINCENT DID HAVE a camera now. An twelve megapixel piece of perfection that crystallized his work with such clarity that you almost felt as if you were there.

  He had bought it two years ago, shortly before he came to Ocean City, and paid top dollar for it, too. By then, he felt as if he had finally come into his own as an artist, creating true masterpieces in blood. Work that screamed out to be photographed, captured for eternity, remembered.

  Then, a little over a year ago, he had begun in earnest to create his abstract collection. After the first, a young bartender named Trudy Dewhurst, he had been struck by a moment of inspiration—a sudden desire to honor his favorite painter.

  He had sliced away Trudy’s left ear.

  The work itself was more reminiscent of Picasso or Cézanne or even Gleizes. But it was Van Gogh who had always inspired him with his bold use of color, the detailed brush strokes.

  His genius.

  His madness.

  His refusal to compromise.

  Taking Trudy’s ear had been Vincent’s way of paying homage to his hero. And the mark he left inside her lower lip—the little smiley face—was a wink and a nod to the police. His special little fuck-you.

  This, however, had all been spoiled by Dr. Michael Tolan.

  Seven new works completed and still going strong—and this impostor, this fraud, this charlatan, this . . . this cretin . . . had destroyed everything Vincent had worked for.

  When he first heard about Abby Tolan’s murder, saw the reporter on TV attributing her death to him, he had thought he might actually have a heart attack. His chest tightened, his head tingled, and each breath he drew was constricted by rage. He’d wanted to run to his apartment balcony and howl at the moon.

  But he restrained himself. Struggled to regain his usual cool.

  He couldn’t quite believe what they were saying, yet there it was in the newspaper the next morning, in bold black typeface:

  VAN GOGH TAKES EIGHTH VICTIM

  The words seemed to burn his retinas, as if someone had used his cauterizing tool on his eyes.

  What they didn’t understand—what they could never understand—was that Vincent’s subjects were not victims at all. To be a victim, you must be victimized—exploited in some way. But Vincent’s subjects were, in fact, revered. He treasured them. Just as any artist treasures the canvas he paints, the colors he mixes, the brushes he wields.

  They weren’t victims, but tools, as important to him as his camera and hacksaw and knife. They were a means to an end.

  And the end always justified the means.

  As for his eighth subject—a laughable count when you considered all of his previous work—Vincent hadn’t even chosen one yet. He’d had a number of possibilities in mind, certainly, but none of them had been Abby Tolan.

  Even if he’d known the woman existed, it wouldn’t have mattered.

  The papers said she photographed celebrities for a living, had seen her work published in Rolling Stone and Newsweek, had shown it at some of the most prestigious galleries in the country. And the samples they’d printed had been superb, inspired.

  The New Times ran a profile of her a week after the murder, a fairly morbid piece called “A Study in Darkness” that featured several photos she’d taken just days before her death. Haunting shots of the crumbling ruins near Baycliff Hospital. Black-and-white studies of a once majestic structure, of its charred and dilapidated hallways, a communal shower full of moldy, broken tile, a shock therapy table with frayed wrist and ankle straps.

  Those shots in particular had touched
Vincent. Reminded him of a part of his childhood when the adults around him had decided that they knew more about what was going on inside his head than he did.

  The last person Vincent would ever dream of killing was the woman who had created those photographs. She was an artist. And there were already too few of them in the world.

  Yet Tolan, who had no interest whatsoever in artistic integrity, had simply wanted the woman dead.

  Tolan had used Vincent. Had used his work in a most hateful way. Had snuffed out the life of a beautiful, talented woman, sliced off her ear, then had somehow found out about his little fuck-you—all in a pathetic attempt to cover for his crime.

  The police investigators’ failure to see the vast artistic differences between so-called victim number eight and the seven works of genius that preceded her was not surprising to Vincent. Police are pedestrian animals, lacking the sophisticated nature one needs to appreciate fine art.

  He had considered sending a letter to the newspaper, pointing out the obvious forgery and expressing his condolences for the unnecessary loss of life. But that would only make him sound like a whiny crybaby.

  And Vincent was not a crybaby.

  Instead, he got away from Ocean City for a while. Traveled north to see his mother.

  But while he was there, he had started drinking again, and one night, found himself in the middle of a bar fight. Someone was stabbed—a minor injury, it turned out—but the blade had been Vincent’s, and the police who arrested him and the judge who heard the case did not take kindly to the use of weapons. Vincent was sentenced to alcohol rehabilitation and several months on an honor farm.

  Those months, however, had turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Had given him perspective.

  He knew now what it was he needed to do. Had thought of a way to turn this travesty of justice around. It would be a private victory, but a victory nonetheless. One that would allow him to reclaim his artistic integrity.

  A month after he was released, he headed back to Ocean City—anxious to begin hunting his prey.