Whisper in the Dark (A Thriller) Read online

He shoved the bite bar back into Tolan’s mouth, tightened the strap, then flipped a switch and—

  Pain shot through Tolan’s skull, vibrating through his body with such intensity that, for a moment, he thought he might burst apart. It was like sticking your nose in a light socket. And what popped into his head was the image of a cartoon wolf, his body lit up like a thousand-watt bulb, Bugs Bunny gripping the throw switch.

  Then it was gone. Mercifully gone.

  The bite bar came out again. Followed by another wave of nausea. More spitting. Bile stung his throat.

  “Are you ready to confess? Or shall I kick it up another notch?”

  “No . . .” Tolan said. “Please . . .” He could barely breathe. “Stop . . .”

  “I have to hear the words, Doctor.”

  Tolan thought about that last night with Abby. About his accusation. The slap. The blackout.

  He shook his head. “I didn’t kill her. I couldn’t have. I loved her.”

  “Oh, please, Doctor. The I-loved-her defense? Surely you can come up with something more convincing than that. Unless, of course, you aren’t entirely convinced yourself.”

  “I could never hurt her. I’ve never hurt anybody.”

  “Oh, really? Are you sure about that?”

  “Yes . . .”

  “What about Anna Marie Colson?”

  Tolan felt another jolt go through him, but this one had nothing to do with the ECT machine.

  “You didn’t think anyone knew about her, did you?”

  Anna Marie Colson was a young coed Tolan had briefly dated back during his pre-med days at UCLA. One of his housemates. She had, in fact, broken his post-adolescent heart by hooking up with a law student and never looking back. Several months later, both Anna and her new boyfriend were killed in a street robbery gone wrong.

  “She was mugged,” Tolan said.

  “But they never found her attacker, did they? And I think the police were quite interested in you for a while there, weren’t they?”

  “No, you’ve got it wrong, you’ve got it—”

  The bite bar was shoved back in, the strap tightened, a switch flipped and—

  Pain radiated through Tolan’s body a third time—the worst jolt yet—forcing him to buck and shiver, arching his back, bending his toes. His bones felt as if they might crack, his head ready to explode. And just when he thought he’d faint dead away, it stopped.

  Then the nausea was back with a vengeance and he retched against the bite bar. Vincent quickly removed it and grabbed Tolan’s head, turning it to the side. Tolan retched again, spewing thick threads of saliva onto the table.

  He was going to die.

  Felt it coming.

  Another jolt and he’d be gone.

  He spit again, trying to evacuate the fluid from his mouth. Normally, atropine would have been administered to reduce the secretions, but there was nothing normal about this situation at all. He felt like a fugitive from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

  “No more,” he croaked.

  “Then I take it you’re ready to confess?”

  Tolan said nothing. If he denied killing Abby, it would only be more of the same.

  “Don’t try my patience, Doctor.”

  Tolan remained silent. Maybe Vincent knew something about him that he couldn’t or didn’t want to see. Maybe Vincent had some killer radar that let him know when he’d met one of his own kind.

  Tolan couldn’t, with any certainty, say whether or not he had killed Abby. He simply couldn’t remember. But what difference did that make to Vincent? Vincent only wanted to hear one thing.

  And anything was better than this. Anything.

  Vincent grabbed the bite bar again and was about to reinsert it when Tolan shook his head, warning him away.

  “All right,” he said. “All right. I confess. If that’s what you want to hear, I confess.”

  The penlight shone directly in his eyes. “Not very convincing, Doctor. Say it.”

  “I just di—”

  “Say it, or I swear to God I’ll fry your fucking brain.”

  Tolan closed his eyes against the light, tried to catch his breath. Then, after a long moment, he said, “I killed my wife. I killed Abby. We fought that night and, God have mercy on me, I killed her.”

  Vincent leaned in close to his ear. “Thank you, Doctor.”

  Then, without warning, a needle stabbed Tolan’s neck and he once again disappeared down the rabbit hole.

  33

  SOLOMON SAT CUFFED to a chair just inside the security cage. The chair, in turn, was bolted to the floor.

  He’d been waiting here awhile now, watching the nurses and security guards go about their business, listening too, hoping he might hear something about Myra.

  When the cops dropped him off, the angry one, the one who’d beat on him, had said to the guard, “Watch your pecker with this one.”

  “Don’t you worry,” the guard had said. “He tries anything, he’ll be pulling back a bloody stump.”

  “It isn’t his hands you gotta worry about.”

  They’d both gotten a good chuckle over that, the guard saying, “Yeah, well, I’d threaten to knock his teeth out, but he probably doesn’t have any.”

  They laughed again, and after that touching moment of male bonding, the cops were gone, leaving Solomon to wonder what kind of men wanted to treat people like that. He had his share of problems, sure, but he’d always tried to treat others with respect. Even the cops.

  Even after one of them had killed Henry.

  He could see the lobby doors from here, and on out past them to the walkway leading to the parking lot. Saw that pretty nurse go out there a couple more times, scanning the lot, looking for someone.

  He’d noticed her name tag when the cops had pushed him past her. Could only remember the first name: Lisa. Saw she was a director of some kind. A woman in charge.

  She didn’t seem all that in charge right now. Kinda worried-looking. And he’d sensed a storm inside her. The Rhythm off balance. Struggling.

  Solomon couldn’t really tell you why, but he knew she was the one he needed to talk to. To tell about Myra.

  So he sat there, quiet, waiting. Didn’t have much choice in the matter.

  After a while she came back through the lobby doors and the guard buzzed her into the security cage. She looked distracted, but he tried to get her attention anyway.

  “Excuse me, ma’am.”

  The guard was talking to her now and she hadn’t heard him.

  “Ma’am? Excuse me.”

  She turned, looking over at Solomon. “Yes, sir?”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  She smiled then, but it was a polite smile, not a happy one. “Let me guess. You found my lost soul?”

  He thought for a moment she might be mocking him, but she didn’t seem the type.

  “Still workin’ on it,” he said. “Can’t do much chained to this chair.”

  “You shouldn’t have to wait much longer. The intake clerk will process you, then we’ll get you into the showers and find you a bunk.”

  “I got somethin’ I need to tell you. Somethin’ important.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “As soon as you’re processed you’ll be assigned a doctor.”

  Solomon shook his head. “No, no doctors. You. It’s about the woman the police brought in here early this morning. My friend Myra. Little bitty thing.”

  This caught her off guard. She came over to him then. “You know her?”

  “That’s just it,” Solomon said. “That’s what I want to talk to you about. But it’s hard to explain, sittin’ out here in the open like this.”

  She looked at him for a long moment as if trying to decide what to make of him. But Solomon could see that her curiosity was piqued.

  “Let the intake clerk process you,” she said. “Then I’ll come find you.”

  “Thank you, ma’am. I appreciate that.”

  She nodded to him, then started down
the hall, stopping to talk to a nurse, pointing in his direction as she spoke, throwing another smile his way.

  Watching her, Solomon knew he’d made the right choice. Despite the smile, he still sensed that storm inside her. Something bothering her. Weighing on her mind.

  She glanced out toward the parking lot and Solomon wondered what she was looking for out there.

  Wondered if she’d ever find it.

  34

  THEY PUT OUT an alert on Tolan, had the patrol units out looking for his black Lexus. A unit was dispatched to his home, but came up empty.

  The other members of the task force had been apprised of his deception and sudden disappearance, and after an impromptu telephone conference, Rossbach made a command decision. They would now take a two-pronged approach to this investigation. The task force would continue working the previous victims and the Janovic case on the assumption that Vincent was indeed back in action, while Blackburn took a closer look at Tolan.

  “I think it’s a dead end,” Rossbach said. “There’s no way we sprung a leak, I can tell you that. But Tolan’s behavior is just fucked-up enough to raise a lot of questions. So find him, sit him down, and get him talking.”

  “Will do,” Blackburn said.

  “Oh, and Frank? Just so you know, since you’re the bonehead who took our only witness to Dr. Dementia, you’re the goat on this. Understand? We get any blowback, you’re the goddamn goat.”

  Blackburn wouldn’t expect anything less.

  They considered finally transferring Jane Doe to County, but were told that County had had an unusually busy morning and didn’t have a bed to spare. At this point, nobody was expecting much out of her anyway, so they left her where she was, posting a uniformed officer right outside her room with specific instructions that, should Tolan return, he be immediately detained and not allowed inside.

  Carmody agreed to stay behind to question staff and wait for Clayton Simm, still a no-show. Blackburn had gotten his number from admin and called him at home, only to wake him from a sound sleep.

  “What the hell, Doc? You should’ve been here an hour ago.”

  Simm seemed befuddled. “Who is this?”

  “Frank Blackburn. We met this morning, remember?”

  Simm’s voice hardened. He obviously wasn’t a fan. “Right,” he said. “What’s this about?”

  “Tolan didn’t tell you?”

  “Tell me what? What’s going on?”

  Christ, Blackburn thought, that sonofabitch Tolan had never even called the guy. A lie stands on one leg, all right. And Tolan had long ago reached the tipping point.

  Blackburn filled Simm in, explained the conflict of interest, but remained purposely sketchy with the details. He and Carmody had decided to keep the recent revelations about Tolan under wraps. All Simm needed to know was that they had a witness they wanted answers from.

  Sounding as groggy as a two-year-old past midnight, Simm agreed to get there as soon as he possibly could.

  No telling when that would be. He was Carmody’s problem now.

  After they hung up, Blackburn decided to catch a ride back to headquarters with the audio-tech boys, leaving the sedan in the lot for Sue to use.

  Before they left, he took one last look in on Jane, wishing he could shake her a few times and get her talking. But he had a feeling the cocoon she’d wrapped herself in was like a Kevlar vest.

  Not meant to be penetrated.

  35

  WHEN BLACKBURN GOT to the station house, De Mello was playing his iPod so loud you could make out the tune from all the way across the squad room.

  Sympathy for the Devil.

  It was a wonder the guy still had eardrums.

  His attention was centered on his computer screen, fingers ripping through the keys. Around him lay the remnants of a serious junk food overload. Candy and cupcake wrappers, an empty liter of soda, and a half-eaten Hostess apple pie. And, of course, coffee. Always coffee.

  When Blackburn started his way, De Mello shut off the music. “Just the man I want to see.”

  “You finally get a name for our witness?”

  “Not yet. But things are popping here since we last spoke. Got two new items of interest.”

  “Let’s have ’em,” Blackburn said.

  De Mello slipped his headphones off and tossed them aside. “First, I’ve got Janovic’s bank statements. He definitely had a steady source of income.”

  “Yeah? What’d you find?”

  De Mello punched a key and an electronic bank record popped up on the computer screen. Using the mouse, he highlighted a handful of entries.

  “He’s been making regular deposits over the last several months,” De Mello said. “Always the same amount. Always cash. But he’s got no visible means of support.”

  Blackburn stared at the screen. “Two grand a month. Drug money?”

  De Mello shook his head. “I checked with narcotics and they say he was strictly a consumer. And to bring in that kind of cash, he’d have to sell a lot of crack. Or suck a lot of dick.”

  “Maybe it isn’t how many, but whose.”

  “Extortion?”

  “Steady deposits,” Blackburn said. “Always the same amount. Makes sense to me.”

  He thought about what Mats had said at the crime scene. That Janovic knew his attacker. Blackmail was a pretty strong motive for murder.

  The question was, who was Janovic blackmailing and why? Was there a way to connect Tolan to this?

  They could try checking Tolan’s bank records for any steady withdrawals, but there was no way they’d ever get a warrant at this point in the game. Not without something stronger than a bunch of defaced photographs and a couple of bogus phone calls. Blackburn had already dropped off the copies of the website pages to the crime scene techs for closer examination, but figured Tolan had simply faked them to bolster his story. Attempts to connect with the actual site had ended with a 404 Page Not Found error.

  “What else’ve you got?” Blackburn asked.

  “Janovic didn’t have a home phone,” De Mello said. “So I went through his cell records and compiled a list of possible friends to look at. But unlike the rest of America, he didn’t seem to spend much time on the phone.”

  “So what did he use? Smoke signals?”

  “His favorite means of communication was the Internet. Some email, but mostly instant messages. Which leads me to the second item.”

  De Mello dug around in the mess on his desk until he found a LifeDrive Palm Pilot. “Billy’s a wiz. Cracked this thing in record time.” He flicked it on, then handed it to Blackburn. “It’s got a wireless connection, and since Janovic didn’t have a computer, I figure he did his web browsing and instant messaging with this.”

  “What am I looking for?”

  “Check out the folder labeled BUNK BUDDIES.”

  “You gotta be kidding me.”

  Blackburn pulled out the Palm Pilot’s stylus and began clicking through the menus until he found the folder in question. Another click brought up a list of what looked like code names.

  “Notice all the asterisks?” De Mello said. “I’m guessing it’s a rating system of some kind. Take a look at the fourth one down.”

  “DickMan229. Three stars. What about it?”

  “It’s obviously an online nickname. So I tried Googling the words Bunk Buddies and found a small social networking website.”

  “A what?” Blackburn had spent probably an entire fifteen minutes of his life on the Internet. Had found the place too impersonal, completely devoid of conversational nuance. Make a simple sarcastic quip and it was likely to be interpreted as a declaration of war.

  “It’s a virtual community,” De Mello said. “A kind of gathering place where people with common interests make online friends, like Facebook and MySpace. Only Bunk Buddies is regional and caters to the local underground gay crowd. People looking to hook up.”

  Blackburn risked asking the obvious. “I take it Janovic was part of this thing?�
�

  De Mello nodded, then hit a few computer keys and a web page blossomed on his screen, showing a photo of Carl Janovic in full drag, listed as Carly921. Except for the hint of a five o’clock shadow, he didn’t look half bad. If Blackburn were blind drunk and suicidal, he might mistake him for Carmody.

  In a box next to the photograph was a list of Janovic’s likes and dislikes, favorite bands, movies, books. It was all pretty innocuous.

  “So what’s this have to do with DickMan229?”

  “Take a look.” De Mello scrolled down to a section of the page that read CARLY’S BUNKMATES, which featured several thumbnail photographs. Men in various degrees of undress. He highlighted one of them, a shirtless guy who looked to be in his late twenties. DickMan229.

  “If you click here,” De Mello said, wielding the mouse, “you go straight to an instant messaging system—Pillow Chat. I hot-synced the Palm Pilot and downloaded this log to the computer.”

  He clicked a tab, changing to another screen. A text log popped up, showing an exchange between Carly921 and DickMan229. Blackburn read it. Or at least tried to.

  CARLY921: hey b hru

  DICKMAN229: iash

  CARLY921: u up for some i&i

  DICKMAN229: waw

  CARLY921: 2nite spst

  DICKMAN229: btwbo

  Blackburn scratched his head. “What the fuck is this? Morse code?”

  De Mello grinned. “Close. It’s chat speak. They’re setting up a date.”

  Blackburn was dumbfounded and didn’t bother to hide it.

  “Let me translate,” De Mello said, then pointed to each entry as he spoke:

  “Hey, babe. How are you?

  “I am so horny.

  “You up for some intercourse and inebriation?

  “Where and when?

  “Tonight. Same place, same time.

  “Be there with bells on.”

  Blackburn stared at the screen, suddenly regretting that the computer had ever been invented. Hell, that human beings had ever been invented.

  “When did all this take place?”

  “Three nights ago, around eleven P.M.”

  “I assume you’ve already figured out who this DickMan character is?”