Whisper in the Dark (A Thriller) Read online

  “Think about it. Two times four. Four multiplied by two. What does that equal?”

  “Eight.”

  “Exactly. And how many victims have we attributed to Vincent?”

  Carmody hesitated. “Eight,” she said.

  “Right again. But now the circus is in town based solely on the strength of a couple of phone calls. Phone calls accusing Tolan of being a copycat. Of murdering his wife. Which, if true, would mean that Vincent’s victim count is only seven.”

  “If true?”

  “Two times four is a lie.”

  He waited for Carmody to process this, but wasn’t surprised when she balked. “You expect me to believe that this woman somehow knows how many people Vincent has really killed?”

  “No, but maybe she knows that Tolan’s wife wasn’t one of them.”

  Carmody stared at him. “You think Tolan killed his wife.”

  “Just like Vincent said.”

  She clearly wasn’t buying. Seemed amused, in fact. “That’s pretty wild, Frank. Tell me another one.”

  “Don’t be so quick to dismiss me, okay?”

  “There’s a flaw in your logic. If Tolan killed his wife, why would he bother telling us about Vincent’s phone calls in the first place? Wouldn’t he want to keep that to himself?”

  Blackburn waited a moment, then said, “What if I told you those phone calls are complete bullshit? That he made it all up?”

  “That’s ludicrous. Why would he do that?”

  Blackburn shrugged. “Why else? Guilt.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Frank, if you brought me here to spew this nonsense—”

  “Just let me finish, okay?”

  Carmody glared at him. “This had better be good.”

  They said nothing for a moment, launching into an impromptu staring contest, Blackburn trying to decide if he wanted to put a fist in her face or simply lean across the table and plant a kiss on her lips.

  That would certainly catch her off guard.

  “How many times,” he said, breaking away from the stare, “have you gotten a perp in the interrogation room, he’s denying and denying—didn’t know the girl, wasn’t near the place—but you get the sense he’s holding back. And you know he wants to tell you about it, keeps steering the conversation in a direction that makes you think he might want to confess.”

  “And you think that’s Tolan?”

  “Like I said, what if the phone calls from Vincent weren’t real? What if that web page he showed us was a fake? What would that tell you?”

  “That he has some very serious mental health issues. But you’re making an assumption that isn’t backed up by the facts.”

  “Isn’t it?” Blackburn dipped his hand into his coat pocket and brought out the list of cell phone calls. “Right after Tolan pulled his disappearing act, I got a call from De Mello. He faxed me this.”

  He unfolded it and laid it on the table in front of her.

  “Tolan says Vincent called him around three this morning, then again about an hour before we got here. Notice anything missing?”

  Carmody scanned the sheet. “Here’s one right here. A little after three A.M.”

  “Yeah, that’s me, calling about Jane.” He pointed to the next entry. “And this one is Tolan calling me, right before I went into the meeting with Escalante.” He paused. “There’s no activity in between.”

  Carmody frowned. “What about his home and office lines?”

  “We don’t have the records yet, but he specifically said Vincent called him on his cell phone, remember?”

  She remembered, all right. Blackburn could see it in her face.

  “I don’t believe this. He lied to us.”

  “That he did,” Blackburn said, leaning back in his chair. “Right to our fucking faces.”

  31

  LISA HAD BEEN to the parking lot three times in the last half hour and still no sign of him. His parking space was empty.

  She took her cell phone out, dialed his number. It rang several times, then his voice mail answered. Beeped.

  “Michael,” she said, “it’s me again. Where are you? We were supposed to have lunch, remember? Call me when you get this.”

  She hung up, feeling hurt and angry.

  Wanted to wring his neck.

  She knew these crank phone calls, or whatever they were, had rattled him. But she suspected the patient in SR-3 was the real reason for his behavior. Had known it the moment she saw her curled up on the bed—that same petite, fragile frame as Abby’s. The same wild dark hair.

  Lisa hadn’t been able to see the patient’s face, but wouldn’t be surprised if there was a resemblance there, too. Enough to get to Michael.

  And the timing couldn’t be worse.

  Why did she have to show up today of all days?

  Lisa had seen Michael in a lot of different moods over the last year, but he’d never been so distant, so reluctant to communicate as he was today. And she hated it when he kept things from her. Hated the wondering and the worrying.

  All she wanted in this world was to take care of him. He’d been through so much and she wanted to make it right again. To make him see her for once, instead of Abby.

  And just when she thought he was making progress, this woman—this street person—comes along and ruins it.

  Each time Lisa had been out here, she’d hoped to see Michael’s Lexus coming back up the hill. But all she’d found was a sea of parked cars, glinting in the sunlight. No sign of human activity, except during her last trip, when a couple of police officers escorted an old black man toward the EDU.

  The old man had smiled at her as they passed, a knowing twinkle in his eyes. “You look like a woman in search of a lost soul,” he’d said.

  And as surprised as Lisa had been, she couldn’t dispute his words.

  Michael was, in effect, just that. A lost soul.

  Her lost soul.

  “BUT WHY?” Carmody said, staring down at the list again. “Why would he do that? He had to know we’d find out. He gave us permission to pull these records, for godsakes.”

  Blackburn nodded. “I told you. He’s just like that perp who wants to confess, but can’t quite bring himself to do it. So he has some make-believe phantom do it for him.”

  Carmody shook her head. “I don’t know, Frank. Making up phone calls is pretty crazy, and throwing together that website is even crazier, but none of it means he killed his wife. Maybe he’s just an attention whore, like that idiot who confessed to killing JonBenet Ramsey.”

  “Maybe.”

  “And what about Janovic?” she said.

  “What about him?”

  “Even if we entertain the notion that Tolan had something to do with his wife’s death, how does Janovic fit into the equation? Is his murder just a coincidence? Did Vincent kill him? Or is that Tolan playing copycat too?”

  Blackburn hesitated. “I haven’t figured that part out yet.”

  “Surprise, surprise.”

  “But you know me and coincidences. Maybe he was after Jane, and Janovic got in the way.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Carmody said. “From what you’ve told me, it sounds like the killer was interrupted by Jane. And why would Tolan kill his wife, wait a whole year, then go after some street whore?”

  “Like I said, maybe she isn’t just a street whore. Maybe she knows Tolan. She might even be related to him.”

  “Related? How?”

  “I don’t know, but she looks a lot like the wife. Maybe they’re cousins or something. Sisters. When she started singing, he immediately recognized the tune, like it was an old family favorite or something. I thought he was gonna crap his pants.”

  “You’re forgetting something,” Carmody said.

  “What?”

  “The burn marks. The smiley face. How could Tolan know about that?”

  And there it was. The same old stumbling block.

  “Maybe it got leaked somehow.”

  Carmody sho
ok her head. “No way. The task force kept that one under tight lock and key.”

  “Try telling that to the idiots who prosecuted O.J. They’d laugh in your face.”

  She stared at him. “Come on, Frank, I’m hearing a lot of ‘maybes’ but no concrete proof. One of the few things I’ve always admired about you is that when it comes to cases, you never jump to conclusions. You always follow the best evidence.”

  “You’re right,” Blackburn said.

  And she was. Left-handed compliment or not. He had never been the type to finger a suspect then look for evidence to back it up, ignoring all to the contrary. He had always looked to the facts of a case to point him toward a suspect.

  But when a storm comes along and you get hit by a bolt of lightning, it tends to jangle the brain, mix things up. And these cell phone records and Tolan’s bizarre behavior had certainly seeded the clouds.

  Not to mention the photographs he’d found in Tolan’s office.

  “He did it,” Blackburn said. “Two times four is a lie.”

  “The babbling of a sick woman. It means nothing.”

  “She saw something, Sue. I don’t know what it was, but now we’ve got Tolan in the middle of a meltdown, caught in a complete fabrication. It’s all connected somehow. It’s gotta be.” He paused. “And then there’s these.”

  Reaching into his pocket again, he pulled out the second stack of snapshots he’d taken from the envelope in Tolan’s desk drawer. Shoving his tray aside, he laid them out in front of her.

  Six photos. Each a shot of Abby Tolan. At the beach. The park. On the street. Standing in her gallery. And she was smiling for the camera. A radiant smile.

  But in every single photo, there was one thing missing.

  Carmody stared down at them, the color draining from her face. “My God . . .”

  My God, indeed, Blackburn thought.

  Someone had gone through them, one by one—

  —and cut out Abby Tolan’s eyes.

  “Tell me now the sonofabitch didn’t kill her.”

  32

  HE COULDN’T MOVE his arms and legs.

  He had awakened to near darkness, lying on his back, on a table of some kind, slanted slightly toward the floor, his wrists and ankles strapped down.

  Four-point restraints.

  A small patch of light bled in through a crack in the wall, giving him just enough illumination to get a sense of his surroundings. He was in a windowless room that smelled of mold and burned wood and plaster.

  The ornate light fixture mounted on the blackened ceiling above him was cracked and broken, with missing bulbs. Whatever this place was, it had been abandoned decades ago.

  The old hospital? He couldn’t be sure.

  The drug he had been given still sluiced through his veins, slowing his thought processes, but its effects were starting to wear off.

  Something was stuck to the sides of his head, to his temples—pieces of tape, perhaps. But as his brain began to clear, he realized it wasn’t just tape . . . but disposable electrodes.

  What exactly was going on here?

  If he had to guess—and he supposed that was all he could do—he’d say he had been prepped for some kind of sleep study.

  Which made no sense. He wasn’t at Baycliff, wasn’t even in a fully functioning structure as far as he could tell. There were no doctors here, no technicians, no hospital staff at all. He was alone. Alone with the darkness and the faint, muffled hum of a motor.

  A generator of some kind?

  He couldn’t be sure. But the sound was familiar to him. Much like the rumble of the ten-gallon trifuel his parents had used to power their cabin near Arrowhead Springs so many years ago.

  He didn’t often think about those days. The months they’d spent up in the mountains, away from the rest of the world, as his mother tried to deal with one of her many “episodes.” She had become cruel and unmanageable, and his father had been at his wit’s end trying to look after her. Tolan didn’t find out until years later that she had been suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder, but he was certain that her illness was what had spurred him to become a psychiatrist.

  He heard another sound. The squeak of rusty wheels. Then a door creaked open, muted sunlight momentarily slicing through the room, giving him a glimpse of charred furniture and broken glass cabinets.

  A figure was silhouetted in the doorway. Judging by the size, it was a man, and he was pushing a cart, a cart loaded with a small, boxy piece of machinery. Hard to tell in the dim light, but it looked like an ECT instrument.

  Fear blossomed in Tolan’s stomach.

  A moment later, the door closed again, returning the room to near darkness. Then a whispery voice said:

  “You’re awake, I see.”

  Vincent.

  “What’s going on? Why did you bring me here?”

  There was movement, the squeak of wheels again. The cart being repositioned.

  “When I was a boy,” Vincent said, “I suffered occasional bouts of depression. My mother and father, being the concerned parents they were, brought me to a hospital very much like this one used to be. To a doctor just like you.”

  A penlight flicked on, shining directly in Tolan’s eyes. He squinted.

  “The doctor felt I was in need of a quick fix. That medication would take much too long to kick in. So he prescribed six rounds of bilateral electroconvulsive therapy. And twice a week, for three long weeks, a very attractive young nurse marched me into a room like this one and strapped me down to a table just like the one you currently occupy.”

  The fear in Tolan’s belly spread through him like a virus.

  “Unfortunately,” Vincent continued, “rather than prescribe the usual anesthesia and muscle relaxers associated with the treatment, the doctor decided to administer it drug-free.”

  “That’s barbaric,” Tolan said.

  “Yes, I thought so. But I was only fourteen years old at the time. What say did I have in the matter?”

  Despite the whisper, the voice sounded familiar to Tolan. But he couldn’t place it. Wished he could see the man’s face—not that it would do him any good.

  Vincent redirected the penlight to the side of Tolan’s head. Leaning forward, he attached a wire to the right electrode, then shifted the light and attached another to the left.

  “What about your parents?” Tolan asked.

  “They were wonderful people, but not very sophisticated. They trusted the doctor. And why shouldn’t they have? He assured them that electroshock was safe and effective.”

  Most people believed that ECT had been discontinued by the psychiatric community, but nothing could be further from the truth. Close to 100,000 people a year received the treatment.

  “It usually is safe,” Tolan said.

  “That’s up for debate. But it certainly doesn’t help when your doctor’s a sadist. And there’s no arguing about what it does to your memory.”

  He was right. Studies had shown that electroconvulsive therapy caused short-term memory loss. People undergoing ECT had difficulty remembering events just prior to and during treatment.

  Vincent turned away and Tolan felt a slight tug on the wires.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “That’s a silly question, don’t you think?”

  Tolan heard the flick of switches, and panic rose in his chest. “You can’t.”

  “I don’t think you’re really in a position to stop me, Doctor. Just think of yourself as a fourteen-year-old boy.”

  Tolan tried to protest, but before he could get the words out, a rubber bite bar was shoved into his mouth and secured by a strap around his head.

  Tolan tossed from side to side, using his tongue to try to push it out, but it was no use. The strap tightened, lodging it in place.

  “Just a little precaution. I don’t want you biting your tongue off.”

  An ECT instrument typically put out as much power as a wall jack, sending an electrical current through the patie
nt’s brain. Tolan had never been a recipient of electroconvulsive therapy, had never administered it himself, but he knew that in the wrong hands, and without anesthesia, it could not only be painful and dangerous—it could kill you.

  “What dosage do you think we should start with?” Vincent asked. “Too high will knock you out—and we don’t want that. Too low and we’ve defeated the purpose of the treatment in the first place.”

  Tolan jerked his arms upward, straining against the restraints, trying to break the straps. But it was no use.

  “Let’s start at two hundred fifty volts and work our way upward.”

  Another switch was flipped and a faint whir filled Tolan’s ears.

  Jesus Christ, he thought. Jesus fucking Christ. He’s going to do it. He’s going to—

  Pain shot through Tolan’s skull, a piercing, hot blade of fire that expanded and spread throughout his body. A bone-cracking pain, worse than anything he could remember. He bucked involuntarily against it, squeezing his eyes shut, clamping his jaw down so hard on the bite bar that he thought his teeth might break, a muffled scream working its way between them.

  Then it was done. Over.

  And the relief was sweet. So fucking sweet.

  Vincent reached down, loosened the strap, and pulled the bite bar free, letting Tolan spit away the foam that had gathered in the corners of his mouth. Then a wave of nausea swept over him, and for a moment he felt as if he might throw up.

  “Jesus,” he said.

  “I’m afraid Jesus won’t help you,” Vincent told him. “But an answer to my question will.”

  “. . . What question?”

  “You have to understand that I’ve always tried to be a fair man. I believe in due process. Innocent until proven guilty and all that.”

  Tolan didn’t know how to respond.

  “And while I’m reasonably certain of your guilt, I think it would be unfair to continue with the plans I’ve laid out for you, until I hear your confession.” He paused. “So tell me, Doctor. Are you ready to confess?”

  “. . . you can’t do this,” Tolan croaked.

  “Oh, I can and I will. Let’s ramp it up a bit, shall we?”