Whisper in the Dark (A Thriller) Read online

  He looked around the room again. “Lisa?”

  He waited a moment, but got no answer.

  Climbing to his feet, he swayed slightly, then checked the table near her front door. There was a small basket there, where she usually left her keys, but it was empty.

  “Lisa?”

  No response. Was she even here?

  Maybe she’d taken her keys upstairs with her. She did that sometimes, then spent half an hour trying to remember where she’d left them.

  But the place seemed empty. Except for the sound of the waves, it was as silent as a new morning. Deciding to check anyway, he moved to the stairway, about to take the first step, when his phone buzzed again, stirring up images of a dream he’d had.

  The old hospital. A dark doorway.

  Abby?

  He turned, watching it vibrate, knowing instinctively who the caller was, wondering if he should let it ring. But a moment later, he was standing over it, then snatching it up, flipping it open.

  “Hello?”

  “You’re finally awake,” the voice said. “I hope you enjoyed your sleep, Doctor. You’ve needed it for so long.”

  Heat blossomed in the pit of Tolan’s stomach, an image flashing through his mind. Darkness. A narrow beam of light shining in his eyes.

  And pain. Indescribable pain.

  His muscles tightened involuntarily. “What did you do to me?”

  “Nothing special. Just had a little fun.” A pause. “Now I’m about to give you the credit you’ve been so anxious to receive. Han van Meegeren will look like a rank amateur by the time this night is over.”

  Tolan said nothing. Didn’t know what to say. More images were hurtling through his mind now. Moving so quickly that he couldn’t decipher them.

  “You still there, Doctor?”

  “Yes.”

  “I take it you haven’t been upstairs yet.”

  Tolan’s heart skipped. He turned abruptly, looking toward the stairway. He glanced toward the top of the steps, where darkness waited.

  “Dr. Tolan?”

  “What?”

  “If we’re going to have a conversation, you’ll have to respond to my questions. Have you been upstairs?”

  “No,” Tolan said, his dread deepening. “What have you done?”

  “There’s a little anniversary present waiting for you there. A friend of yours. We had a lot of fun with her this afternoon.”

  Another image flashed through Tolan’s mind: a blade piercing flesh. Then, as if he was only now becoming fully aware of his surroundings—of himself—he glanced down at the front of his shirt.

  It was covered with blood. Drying blood.

  Oh, Jesus, no.

  Lisa?

  “You sonofabitch.”

  “Me? This is all about you now, remember?”

  “No,” Tolan said. “You did this. You. Not me. And I swear to God if you hurt her, I’ll hunt you down and kill you, you fucking animal.”

  “That’s the spirit. Keep it up, Doctor. You’re making this easier and easier. Why don’t you get upstairs now? Assess the damage you’ve done.”

  Tolan looked again at his bloody shirt, then toward the top of the stairs, wondering what waited for him up there.

  “You’re on your own now, Doctor. I have to admit, I’m quite anxious to see how you’ll wiggle out of this one.”

  “Fuck you,” Tolan said, then hurled the phone at the nearest wall with every bit of strength he had. It broke into three pieces and dropped to the floor, leaving an indentation in the wall.

  Moving to the stairway, Tolan stared up at the darkness, hesitating only a moment before he started upward, his dread deepening with each step he took.

  As he reached the second-floor landing, he heard water running. Lisa’s shower.

  He looked down the short hallway at her closed bedroom door. But he didn’t hesitate this time. Crossing to it, he put his hand on the knob, then, mustering up his courage, turned it and pushed inside.

  The sound of the shower was much louder in here and he could see that her bathroom door was hanging open.

  Moving past the bed, he stepped through the doorway and looked toward the shower, at its pebbled glass enclosure.

  The image was distorted, but he could see someone—a woman—sitting on the tile inside, water cascading down on her head.

  No. Please, no.

  “Lisa?”

  No answer. Tolan slowly moved to the shower door and pulled it open, nausea bubbling up in his chest as he stared down at a face frozen in death, eyes wide open, mouth agape, as if she’d been caught by surprise.

  But it wasn’t Lisa.

  The woman who sat there, her blouse ripped open, her abdomen a gaping crimson hole, her intestines snaking toward the drain, floating in a swirl of bloodied water—

  —was Sue Carmody.

  Detective Sue Carmody.

  Tolan’s legs went numb. He stared at her, trying to keep the nausea at bay.

  And as awful as this tableau was, it was rendered even more horrifying by the simple fact that Carmody was missing her left ear.

  Tolan backed away from her.

  Why? he thought. Why is this happening?

  “Michael?”

  He jerked around to find Lisa standing in her bedroom doorway, a look of concern on her face.

  She moved toward him. “I just got your text message. Thank God you’re here, I . . .”

  The words caught in her throat as her attention was abruptly drawn to the blood on his shirt, then past him to the running water, the shower stall, the carnage that waited there.

  She said nothing for a long moment, her expression a mix of revulsion and disbelief as her brain caught up to what her eyes were seeing.

  Then, in a voice that was barely a croak, she said, “Oh, my God, Michael. Oh, my God.”

  42

  DR. NED Soren wasn’t an easy guy to pin down.

  A typical day, Blackburn discovered, was spent bouncing between his office on Terrington Avenue, the psych ward at County General, and the Bayside Country Club, where he played golf three afternoons a week.

  According to his secretary, a cute little Angelina Jolie wannabe (who was definitely more “be” than “wanna”), today was a golf day. But by the time Blackburn reached the country club it was already dark outside, and he had a sneaking suspicion that any golf-related activities were over and done with.

  The closest Blackburn had ever come to playing the game was the hour he’d spent hacking at balls on the municipal driving range while surveilling a suspected pedophile. But he had enough sense to know that once the scorecards were tallied and the clubs were back in the bag, the players usually drove their little electric go-carts straight to the nearest bar.

  Blackburn was able to zero in on his target the moment he pulled into the country club parking lot. There were a dozen or so of the aforementioned go-carts parked atop a small embankment, surrounding a structure that sported the name The 19th Hole.

  Originality was obviously not the goal here.

  On the drive over, Blackburn had considered the information he now had. There were two possible connections between Hastert, Janovic, and Tolan—the first being Soren, and the second being Jane Doe herself. She’d worked for Abby Tolan as a model and, in turn, may have known her husband. Was it possible they were having an affair? Was that why Tolan had reacted the way he did when he saw her?

  Unless Blackburn could get either Soren or Jane to admit to the connection, his chances of proving anything against Tolan were slim. And considering Jane’s condition, it was doubtful he’d get anything from her anytime soon.

  So Soren was his man.

  Blackburn didn’t bother with the formality of checking in at the country club guest desk. Instead, he trudged up the embankment and went straight into the bar.

  The tables were packed, mostly with men sporting deep tans and dressed in the standard-issue golfer uniform: polo shirts and slacks of various nauseating colors. A good 80 per
cent of them were already half in the bag, while the other 20 were borderline comatose. Blackburn didn’t even want to think about what the parking lot would look like in a couple hours.

  Although he had managed to change into a new suit shortly after leaving the Hastert crime scene, his lack of appropriately casual attire and the lovely bandage adorning his forehead got him quite a few drunken stares as he approached the bartender.

  The noise level was just a few decibels below deafening. Leaning in close, Blackburn showed the guy his badge and said, “Dr. Ned Soren.”

  The bartender’s gaze zeroed in on Blackburn’s forehead, then quickly shifted, scanning the room. He pointed. “Table six. The one with the black stripe.”

  Blackburn turned in the direction of the finger. Across the room, four boisterous men sat hammering back what looked like Scotch ale, the one on the farthest side of the table wearing a badly sunburned nose and a tasteful gray knit polo with a fat black stripe across the chest.

  Blackburn nodded thanks and headed over, showing his badge again when he reached the table. “Dr. Soren?”

  Soren looked up in surprise, his gaze shifting from the badge to Blackburn’s forehead, Blackburn beginning to understand how it might feel to be a top-heavy female.

  “Yes?” Soren said.

  “I need to talk to you about a patient of yours.”

  “A patient? Is something wrong?”

  “You mind if we step outside?”

  Soren frowned now. He was fairly well lit, but still had enough presence of mind to be protective of his clientele. “If you’re here to ask me questions about a patient, Officer, I’m not sure I can be of much help. Patient-doctor privilege and all that.”

  The other guys around the table started nodding. Apparently they were doctors as well.

  “Does that extend to the dead ones?”

  There was a momentary trace of alarm on Soren’s face, but it quickly passed. “Yes, I’m afraid it does.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” Blackburn said. “Why don’t we step outside and if my questions get too invasive you can slap me down. But at least give me the courtesy of letting me ask them first.”

  Soren looked around the table at his buddies. One of them, an old geezer with a bright pink bald spot, said, “Careful, Ned, he sounds like a tricky bastard.”

  This must have been funny in the world of the marginally sober, because they all laughed. Blackburn was still trying to figure out where the joke was when Soren scraped back his chair and got to his feet. “I’m all yours, Officer. I need a smoke anyway.”

  Blackburn gestured toward the door. “After you.”

  43

  ONCE SHE HAD assessed the situation, Lisa immediately went into mop-up mode.

  Tolan had seen it a million times in the years they’d known each other, whenever she was faced with any kind of crisis. At home. At the hospital. There’d be that initial moment of shock, then she’d put on her game face and go to work, her focus so narrow that it seemed as if everything else around her had ceased to exist.

  He’d once asked her about it and she’d said that she’d always had the ability to remove herself from the emotion of a situation. To concentrate solely on the task that needed to be done and save the nervous breakdowns for later.

  But what lay before her this time wasn’t a simple task.

  There was a dead woman in her shower. A dead woman with her guts ripped open. A dead woman missing her left ear.

  The full weight of that fact had not completely hit Tolan. He knew he was in shock himself and it would take awhile for the numbness now creeping through his entire body to wear off. He figured it was the same for Lisa. And his only concern at that moment was convincing her he wasn’t a killer.

  “I didn’t do this,” he said. “This wasn’t me.”

  Lisa ignored the comment and stepped past him into the bathroom. Reaching into the shower, she shut off the spigot, then turned to Tolan, her expression fixed and emotionless.

  “Get the comforter off the bed,” she said.

  Tolan hesitated. “We need to call the police. Call Blackburn.”

  She glanced at his shirt. “If we call the police, you’ll spend the rest of your life in jail.”

  “I didn’t do this.”

  “I hate to break it to you, Michael, but that’s not how it looks. Now get the comforter.”

  Tolan didn’t argue. As he moved to the bed and stripped off its lavender cover, he heard Lisa banging around in the medicine cabinet. When he got back to the bathroom, she was wearing a pair of latex gloves. She took the comforter from him and handed him a pair.

  “Put these on.”

  As he did, she lay the comforter on the bathroom tile and spread it out. Then, reaching into the shower again, she carefully retrieved Sue Carmody’s lower intestine from the drain and did her best to pack it back into the abdominal cavity.

  Tolan felt a wave of nausea wash over him again. He had a medical degree, yes, and had seen some pretty horrific things in his time, but something about the matter-of-fact way in which Lisa handled those intestines made him want to puke.

  He looked into Sue Carmody’s lifeless eyes, and couldn’t help thinking about how excited she’d been only hours before, after he’d told them about Vincent’s phone calls. An intense sadness overcame him and he struggled to contain it.

  Lisa, however, was all business.

  “Grab her legs,” she said.

  “Lisa, we can’t do this.”

  “We don’t have a choice.”

  “Why would you want to risk your life, your career—”

  “For godsakes, Michael, we’ve known each other for fifteen years and you still haven’t figured me out? This is what I do. I take care of things. I take care of you. I always have and I always will. Now shut up and grab her legs.”

  “This is the road to hell,” he said.

  “Better than the road to prison.”

  Despite his protests, Tolan knew she was right. Nobody would believe this wasn’t his doing. He had a feeling even Lisa didn’t believe it.

  He bent down and grabbed hold of Sue Carmody’s ankles, which were wet with shower water.

  Trying not to stare at the gaping wound in her abdomen, he waited while Lisa grabbed her wrists, then helped her hoist the body onto the blanket.

  “I need you to know this, Lisa. I need you to understand I didn’t kill her.”

  “That isn’t how it’ll look to the police.”

  “Maybe not, but this wasn’t me. It was Vincent. The body, the blood on my shirt. He’s setting me up.”

  She dropped Sue Carmody’s arms and looked at him. “Vincent? What are you talking about?”

  “Those crank phone calls I got this morning? The ones I was so evasive about? They weren’t just a prank. They were real.”

  Lisa’s brow furrowed. “From Vincent? The Vincent?”

  Tolan nodded. “He says he didn’t kill Abby. And he thinks I did. Thinks I’m some kind of psychotic plagiarist.”

  “And you told this to the police.”

  Tolan nodded.

  “Which explains why they were all over the hospital this morning.”

  “Right,” Tolan said. “But now Vincent is looking for revenge. First he kills some guy on The Avenue, now this.”

  Lisa’s frown momentarily deepened, then her face went blank. “Help me roll her up.”

  Tolan looked down at Sue Carmody’s body again, his instinct for survival overruling any hesitation he felt.

  “God forgive us.”

  “God gave up on us a long time ago,” Lisa said.

  Then the doorbell rang.

  44

  THE MOMENT SOREN lit up, Blackburn wished he had a cigarette of his own. But he’d never made it through an entire day without succumbing to temptation and was determined to make this one an exception.

  So rather than bum a smoke, he said, “I think you know a friend of mine.”

  “Oh?”

  “Michael T
olan. We’ve worked together on a couple cases. He used to be your partner, right?”

  “Yes,” Soren said, exhaling a plume of smoke. Then the alarm returned to his face. “This isn’t about Michael, is it? The dead patient?”

  The question surprised Blackburn. “Is Tolan a patient too?”

  Soren shook his head, looking a bit befuddled. “No—I mean, that’s privileged. He’s okay, isn’t he?”

  “As far as I know, he’s fine.”

  “Then who are we talking about?”

  “A guy by the name of Hastert,” Blackburn said. “Todd Hastert.”

  Soren took a moment to search the memory banks, but seemed to draw a blank.

  “You prescribed Paxil to him a little over a year ago. He filled it at the County General Pharmacy, so I’m assuming he might’ve been a pro bono patient.”

  Still no sign of recognition. And it seemed unforced. Genuine. “And he’s dead?”

  “I’m afraid so. Somebody carved him up pretty good last night.” Blackburn reached into his coat pocket and brought out Hastert’s mug shot. “Maybe this will refresh your memory.”

  Soren took a long drag off his cigarette and squinted at the photo. Nodding now, he exhaled and said, “Right. I saw him a few times at the hospital clinic. But that’s about all I’m willing to say.”

  “The man was murdered, Doc.”

  “That doesn’t change the law. Or my duty to my patients.”

  “Did he ever express any concerns to you? That someone might be threatening him?”

  “I haven’t seen him in over a year. So I highly doubt anything he may have said would have much bearing on the here and now.”

  “What about Dr. Tolan? Did he ever treat the patient?”

  Soren was about to put the cigarette between his lips again, when he paused. “Why don’t you ask him?”

  “I would, if I could find him.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “He’s MIA,” Blackburn said. “And I have reason to believe he may be in danger.”

  This wasn’t strictly a lie, of course. Tolan was certainly in danger of being arrested. But Soren didn’t need to know that.