Whisper in the Dark Read online

  He could’ve sworn those were junkie arms he’d seen in that passageway. Would’ve bet a year’s salary on it.

  Maybe he was the one who was high.

  “I’ve got somewhere to be,” he said, then gestured to Cassie and crossed to the door. She moved to the keypad mounted next to it and punched in a brief code.

  The door beeped and clicked open.

  “If anything changes,” Blackburn told Tolan, “be sure to give me a call.”

  He looked at Psycho Bitch’s arms again, wondering how the hell he could’ve been so wrong, the theme to The Twilight Zone rolling through his head as he opened the door and left.

  11

  The county morgue was located in the Government Center just off Victoria Avenue. Blackburn got there in about twenty minutes and found Mats waiting for him in one of the autopsy rooms, the body of Carl Janovic laid out on a stainless-steel table.

  It looked like Mats had been busy. The body had been stripped down and prepped for cutting, which was a surprise. The coroner’s office rarely moved this quickly. For some reason Janovic’s autopsy had been bumped to the top of the list.

  What was going on here?

  “Any luck with the Jane Doe?” Mats asked.

  Blackburn sighed. “She’s about half a step away from being a lost cause.”

  “Where’d you take her? County?”

  Blackburn shook his head. “Place is a zoo. I need results, not a Band-Aid.”

  “Don’t tell me you took her to Baycliff?” There was a trace of alarm in his voice.

  “Yeah,” Blackburn said. “Is that a problem?”

  Mats hooked a finger, gesturing for Blackburn to take a closer look at the body. “You tell me.”

  Putting gloved fingers to Janovic’s left ear, he pinched the lobe and gently pulled on it. The ear flopped back, connected to the head by only a strip of bloody tissue.

  Blackburn felt the Snickers bar he’d scarfed down on the way over start to back up a bit.

  “I didn’t notice this until I got the wig off,” Mats said. “Looks like our perp tried to sever the ear. My guess is he was interrupted in the process. Possibly by your Jane Doe.”

  Blackburn knew what this meant, but wanted it confirmed. “What are you telling me?”

  “Exactly what you think,” Mats said. “It’s Vincent. He’s back.”

  The Snickers bar rolled over a couple of times, then settled with a thud.

  Vincent.

  Holy Jesus.

  The man they called Vincent was a serial perp who had taken the department and the city on a seven-month wild ride. Blackburn had only been peripherally involved in the case, but he’d felt the burn, just like everyone else.

  Over the course of those seven months, eight Bayside County residents had been found obscenely butchered, their corpses carved up and rearranged as if the killer was using their body parts as some sort of artistic statement.

  Each victim’s left ear had been sliced off, nowhere to be found.

  When that little detail was leaked to the press, the killer was immediately dubbed Van Gogh, and members of the task force assigned to the case soon started calling him Vincent.

  The search for the killer had been extensive, had nearly exhausted the resources of the department, and had caused the early retirement of the task force leader, a borderline alcoholic who had been in over his head from the start.

  And they got nothing.

  No leads. No suspects. No DNA. No arrest.

  The FBI was consulted, but hadn’t worked up more than a generic unsub profile that was virtually useless to the investigation.

  Then, shortly after he’d taken number eight, Vincent fell off the map and hadn’t been heard from since. Several weeks passed, then a year, and as frustrating as the case was, the collective sigh of relief was audible at least three counties over. Wherever he’d gone, they all hoped to hell he wouldn’t come back.

  Wishful thinking, from the looks of it.

  Blackburn stared at the nearly severed ear. If Mats was right, if Vincent was indeed back, then taking a possible witness to Tolan had been a fairly large mistake.

  Tolan’s wife had been Vincent’s eighth victim.

  “Tell me you’re kidding,” Blackburn said. “Tell me you’re just having a little fun at my expense.”

  “Believe me, I wish I could.”

  “You sure this isn’t some kind of half-assed copycat?”

  “I’m sure,” Mats said.

  Putting the ear back in place, he shifted a hand to Janovic’s mouth and grabbed hold of his lower lip.

  In every homicide, particularly those involving serial murders, investigators try to keep at least one detail out of the press. That detail helps weed out the chaff and send the false confessors packing. The theory being that only the killer would know about it.

  In the Van Gogh murders, the killer had left behind a very distinctive calling card that only a select few in the department were aware of. Even Blackburn had been in the dark until recently.

  He watched as Mats pulled the lip downward, exposing the pink flesh inside. There was a tiny mark burned into it with what the medical examiners had determined was a battery-powered cauterizing tool. The kind fishermen use.

  Anyone who got e-mail or surfed the Net had seen the mark a thousand times:

  ;)

  Blackburn stared at it.

  “Ohhh, fuck,” he said. “The shit has just officially hit the fan.”

  12

  Tolan wasn’t sure what had happened in seclusion room three, but he knew it wasn’t something he could easily dismiss.

  After leaving Cassie to keep an eye on Jane Doe Number 314, he found Lisa at the nurses’ station, signing in for her shift and getting ready for the morning handover. She was wearing her blue scrubs and carrying what looked like a half gallon of coffee in a Starbucks cup. She took one look at him and said, “What’s wrong?”

  Tolan shook his head. “Nothing, I’m fine.”

  “You don’t look fine.”

  “I had a long night, remember? Do me a favor and cancel my morning session.”

  “Michael, what—”

  “Just cancel it, okay?”

  He immediately realized he’d been too abrupt, so he softened and said, “I’m sorry. Everything’s fine, but I’m wrapped up with this new patient and I need some time to think.”

  Lisa eyed him skeptically, but finally nodded. She had always had the good sense to know when to back off. She squeezed his hand. “Consider it canceled.”

  “Thanks.”

  Then he left her there and headed straight to his office.

  * * *

  Self-analysis can sometimes be a dangerous thing, but Tolan knew he needed to sit himself down for a careful review.

  He was obviously losing touch with reality. That much was certain.

  The face he’d seen, the voice he’d heard, was clearly Abby’s, yet the patient in that room just as clearly wasn’t. Once he’d gotten to his feet and taken another look at her, he saw a petite, not unattractive young woman who bore only the slightest resemblance to his dead wife.

  So why, then, had it seemed so real?

  Was it this day? Could the anniversary of Abby’s death be having that much of an effect on him?

  You. You hurt me.

  It was true. He had hurt Abby. Many times in the last months of their marriage. But the biggest hurt of all had come in the form of a betrayal. A betrayal she had never even known about.

  On the night she died, Tolan was not alone.

  When the police called to tell him the tragic news, that she’d been found in her studio, murdered, her body brutally shredded, the shower had been going full blast in the bathroom behind him.

  And waiting inside was a woman he’d met only hours before.

  He could always make the claim that nothing had happened yet, that no bodily parts had been compromised, no fluids exchanged, but the betrayal of trust had already been committed. And in those l
ast few hours, he had become the kind of man he had always despised.

  A cheat. A philanderer. A liar.

  You. You hurt me.

  He had come to Los Angeles for a business meeting. His book, What Color Is Your Anger?, had been a surprise New York Times bestseller. Several national television appearances had put him on the network radar. Book signings that usually attracted a crowd of one or two people, suddenly had lines around the block. And celebrities he had known only from their television and movie work were calling to meet him.

  It was a pretty heady experience, and he hadn’t handled it well. Like so many others assaulted by sudden fame, he had begun to believe the hype and had started to lose touch with what was important to him.

  He was, after all, a rising star — George Clooney meets Dr. Phil. At least that’s how one talk show host had described him. His network Q-rating among women ages twenty-two to fifty was through the roof and rising. He was the man of the moment. The media’s new darling.

  In retrospect, it was all pretty ridiculous. His star had been a lot brighter and hotter than it had any right to be and had threatened to burn a hole right through his four-year marriage. He had become difficult to live with and he and Abby had begun fighting on a regular basis.

  Vicious fights sometimes. And none more vicious than the one they’d had the night she died.

  * * *

  He had accused her of cheating on him. An accusation she vehemently denied. But the color of his anger was black, as black as an empty soul, and he couldn’t be reasoned with.

  He had been planning to drive the three hours to Los Angeles the next morning, but left that night instead and drove straight to the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, nearly causing an accident on his way there.

  His meeting was scheduled for eleven A.M., an exploratory meet-and-greet at Paramount Pictures’ syndication wing, which had been making noise about featuring him in a new daily talk show.

  After checking into the hotel, he’d gone straight to the bar, looking to quell his anger with as many drinks as he could manage.

  And he managed quite a few.

  He was a couple hours into it when a soft voice at his shoulder said, “Aren’t you that doctor? The one who wrote the book?”

  He turned to find a stunning young woman of about twenty-six standing next to him. She looked vaguely familiar and he was sure he had seen her on television or in the movies. What the tabloids would call a starlet.

  “It’s Tolan, right? Michael Tolan?”

  By then his anger had dissolved into a drunken, formless melancholy. “Right now I’m not sure who I am.”

  The young woman smiled and shook his hand, telling him her name. The warmth of her skin sent a small tremor through him.

  “I just love your book,” she said. “It’s my new bible.”

  He’d had no real response to that. Was sure that whatever he’d said, it was only semicoherent.

  Then she asked if she could buy him dinner.

  * * *

  There were a dozen different rationalizations for his behavior. He could blame it on the trouble in his marriage, or his sudden fame, could point to some typical psychological quirk that drove him, could even cite his newfound belief that his wife was no angel herself — but what was the point? None of it excused him.

  Just three days after he and Abby had spent that wonderful afternoon exploring the old hospital grounds, he had discovered what he was capable of.

  And he didn’t like it.

  He and the young woman dined in the hotel restaurant, Tolan refusing to let her pay for it. They had a nightcap at the bar, then finally parted ways just past midnight, Tolan claiming he had to get some sleep. Truth was, he didn’t want to be around her anymore. The temptation was too strong. And he was feeling weak right now. Very weak.

  But when he got back to his room, he couldn’t sleep. Not a wink.

  Instead, he sustained his alcohol buzz by attacking the minibar, knowing full well that he’d pay for this tomorrow, would likely show up at Paramount hungover and smelling of booze.

  But he didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything at that moment. He just sat there, watching lame comedians make lamer jokes on late-night television, feeling more and more sorry for himself with each new bottle he consumed.

  Despite her denials, he was almost certain that Abby had cheated on him. With whom, he wasn’t sure, but he had found the proof in her purse. Proof that was pretty hard to deny.

  So Tolan sat there, drinking his umpteenth bottle from the minibar, the numbers on the clock above the TV swimming before him: 2:48 A.M.

  Then there was a knock at the door.

  It took him a moment to navigate his way over. He opened it to find his new number-one fan standing there in a hotel bathrobe. A very short hotel bathrobe.

  And the legs below it were smooth and tan and finely muscled.

  “My shower’s broken,” she said. “Mind if I use yours?”

  * * *

  Sitting in his office now, Tolan remembered the white noise of that shower, remembered standing near the bed, listening to his cell phone ring not ten minutes after the woman had come to his door. He had finally picked it up, guilt washing over him in sustained, repeated waves, and he had felt like a child caught masturbating in the tub.

  Not one of his finer moments.

  The caller, a homicide detective named Rossbach, had broken the bad news.

  Now, plagued by his memories and the growing sense that he might be losing it, Tolan took a key from his pants pocket, reached down to the bottom desk drawer, and unlocked it. Sliding it open, he pulled out a manila envelope, unfastened it, and poured its contents out onto the desktop.

  Abby had been the photographer in the family, had made a living at it, but he had taken a few snapshots of his own, most of them lying in front of him now, waiting to be mounted in a photo album he knew he’d never buy.

  After Lisa got into the habit of sleeping over at his house several nights a week, he had brought the photos here to the office. Didn’t see any point in contributing to the pain he knew she carried, no matter how hard she tried to hide it. She had been patient with him, suffering in silence as he grieved, but he could see it behind her eyes sometimes, that fear that she was playing second fiddle to a phantom. A memory. The wondering if it would ever change.

  He obviously couldn’t yet make that promise. But he didn’t need to rub her nose in it, either.

  Carefully spreading the snapshots out, he stared down at the face of his dead wife and felt his chest tighten.

  This was the real Abby, not a hallucination.

  And she had been so beautiful.

  So fucking beautiful.

  The coffee-and-cream skin. The dark, curly hair. The spark in those hazel eyes. That sardonic, half-smile she’d use on Tolan whenever he pointed a camera in her direction. The soft, compact body that she gave to him so completely, so willingly, so free of inhibition.

  Had she given it to someone else? It was a question that would never be answered.

  She’d had a faint Southern lilt to her voice and a goofy humor that had always made him laugh and amplified her beauty tenfold.

  Why had he allowed himself to get so angry with her that night? Why hadn’t he believed her?

  And why couldn’t he let her go?

  That, he knew, was what the encounter with Jane Doe had been about. He had allowed his guilt over Abby to get so bad that now — on this anniversary of her death — he was seeing her in the face of his own patient. Instead of getting better, as Lisa had promised, he was worse. Much worse.

  In the back of his mind he could hear Abby’s voice:

  Sleep, Michael.

  Sleep will make it all go away.

  Staring at the photos a moment longer, he sighed, then gathered them up and put them back in the envelope, returning it to the drawer.

  Leaning back, he closed his eyes. Twenty minutes was all he needed. Twenty blissful minutes.

  * * *
<
br />   Just as Tolan was starting to drift off, the memory of Abby’s smile imprinted on his brain, his cell phone rang.

  Shit.

  Groaning, he groped for it, put it to his ear. “Yes?”

  There was a pause, then:

  “Dr. Tolan?”

  He opened his eyes, something small and nasty fluttering in his stomach. “Who is this?”

  A soft laugh. “You’ve forgotten me so soon?”

  The caller from this morning. The whisperer.

  Tolan sat up, keeping his tone low and even. “Look, I know you’re trying to frighten me, but I’ve heard it all before. So why don’t we move beyond the theatrics and talk about—”

  “Oh, please, Doctor. Fear is such a mundane emotion, don’t you think? I really have no desire to scare you or anyone else.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  “It isn’t a matter of what I want, but what I intend to do. And I believe I’ve already told you that. But before you get into a game of twenty questions, let me ask you one: Do you have a computer nearby?”

  The question threw Tolan. “What?”

  “You do know what a computer is, don’t you? A pornographer like yourself should be well-versed in the ways of the Internet.”

  Tolan wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but he’d had enough. He wasn’t in the mood to play understanding shrink right now.

  “Do yourself a favor and get some help,” he said.

  Then he hung up.

  13

  Tolan sat there, feeling anger rise.

  Even if the caller hadn’t been trying to frighten him — which was bullshit, of course — he felt frightened nonetheless, and he wasn’t sure why. This kind of thing was nothing new.

  But despite the low whisper, there was something about the man’s voice that rattled him. Something invasive. Primal.

  Had he heard it before?

  He thought about Bobby Fremont again and wondered if he had somehow smuggled a phone into the hospital. Reaching for the land line, he started dialing the security desk—

  — then his cell phone rang again.

  Hanging up, he grabbed it and checked caller ID. Nothing.