Whisper in the Dark (A Thriller) (12 page)

She looked stung. “I guess that answers my question.”

She turned, went outside.

“Lisa, wait.”

Then she closed the door.

So much for that cloudless sky.

H
E DIDN’T KNOW
how long he sat there, brooding over the morning’s events, but it had begun to stir something inside of him. Something dark. Got him thinking about the true source of his guilt, the one thing about those last moments with Abby that he hadn’t yet shared with anyone. Not even Lisa.

Probably never would.

Closing his eyes, he tried to will it away, to relegate it to the periphery of his brain where it always sat, like some crouching beast. But it was too late. Damage done.

He needed a distraction.

Taking the pages from the printer tray, he folded them twice, then stood and shoved them into his back pocket. The only thing he could think to do now was to get back to work. Quickly make his rounds, then check in on Jane.

When Tolan and Lisa were undergrads at UCLA, one of their housemates remarked that most shrinks are crazier than their patients.

Maybe there was some truth to that.

19

C
ASSIE WAS IN
the observation booth, fiddling with the controls on the computer cam. There were two small video cameras mounted in the seclusion room, broadcasting a wide angle and overhead view. Tolan had had them installed shortly after he took over as director, thinking that the more eyes they kept on their problem patients, the better off they’d be.

He looked at the computer screen. Jane wasn’t moving. Stared blankly at the ceiling. “Any changes?”

“Not much,” Cassie said. “She stopped twitching, that’s about it. Oh, and she was singing for a while there.”

“Singing?”

“Some kind of nursery rhyme, I think. I couldn’t really make it out.”

Singing was good. A form of communication beyond the few words she’d spoken before and after her break. Although, at this point, Tolan couldn’t be sure how much of that was real and how much was a product of his sleep-starved imagination.

A large part of his job involved observation and interpretation. But if you couldn’t rely on the accuracy of your own senses, you were in serious trouble.

“I’m going in,” he said. “Feel free to join me this time.”

Cassie slid off her stool and they moved outside to the seclusion-room door. Tolan keyed in the security code, then the lock unlatched with a faint beep and a moment later, they were standing over Jane.

Her eyes were closed now.

“Let’s get these things off her,” Tolan said, indicating the restraints.

“You sure you want to do that?”

“Yes. They’re more a hindrance than a help. We can always slap them back on if we absolutely have to.”

“You’re the boss,” Cassie said.

He knew she thought he was being reckless, but she went to work without any further comment.

As she unbuckled the restraints, Tolan watched for Jane’s reaction. Her catatonia seemed to have deepened. She gave no indication she even knew what was happening.

A small clot of blood clogged her left nostril—a remnant of Blackburn’s backhand.

Tolan moved to the toilet and sink in a corner of the room, took a paper towel from the dispenser, and wet it with warm water.

Moving back to the bed, he said to Jane, “Easy now, I’m just going to wipe your nose a bit.”

No response.

No reaction at all.

Sensing it was safe to proceed, he carefully dabbed at the clot, doing his best to clear her nostril.

As he worked, she opened her eyes again.

She was, he now realized, quite beautiful. And as he took a closer look at those eyes, he was surprised by what he saw. Something he hadn’t noticed during their last encounter.

He turned to Cassie. “Did you read Simm’s workup on her?”

Cassie was down by Jane’s feet, unbuckling the last of the restraints. “Yeah, it was pretty thorough.”

He thought back to his conversation with Simm and Blackburn. “I could’ve sworn he said she suffered from heterochromia.”

“Right,” Cassie said. “Green and brown.”

Tolan frowned, then took a penlight from his breast pocket and shone it in Jane’s eyes. She shifted her focus toward Tolan, squinting against the intrusion.

So there was life in there after all.

He killed the light, stared at her. She stopped squinting, but seemed to be looking right through him.

There was no sign of heterochromia at all. No corneal damage whatsoever.

Both of her eyes were brown.

Hazel, to be more precise.

What the hell was going on here?

First, Blackburn had insisted he’d seen, to use his words, an armload of smack tracks. Yet there were none. Then Clayton Simm had said the patient had a clear case of heterochromia. Also wrong.

Adding his own lapse of judgment to the mix, Tolan wondered how three competent men could be so obviously mistaken about what they’d seen. What were they dealing with here? Some kind of human chameleon?

The intercom came to life behind him. “Dr. Tolan?”

The voice belonged to Martinez, one of the unit’s security guards.

Tolan turned, seeing his reflection in the two-way glass. Despite the circles under his eyes, he looked a lot better than he felt. “What is it?”

“Detective Blackburn is here.”

So soon? The last forty minutes seemed like five. But time has a way of getting away from you when you’re in the middle of a breakdown.

“Have him wait in the staff lounge. I’ll be there in a minute.”

Returning his attention to Jane, he stared into those vacant hazel eyes. Was this another hallucination?

“Do me a favor,” he said to Cassie, then gestured to Jane. “Take a look at her eyes and tell me what color they are.”

Cassie did as she was told, furrowed her brow.

“That’s weird. They’re both brown. Looks like Clayton screwed up.”

Tolan said nothing.

With Cassie’s confirmation, he immediately felt better about his momentary lapse this morning, because it was obvious now what had triggered it.

Jane’s eyes reminded him of . . .

—scratch that.

They
looked
just like Abby’s.

20

H
E WAS SURPRISED
to find that Blackburn wasn’t alone. Detective Sue Carmody, Miss Anal-Retentive herself, stood near the soda machine, eyes brightening as he entered the room.

Tolan looked at the two of them and immediately sensed tension. This was not a happy couple.

“Detective Carmody,” he said. “I thought you and Frank parted ways.”

“Only in an ideal world,” Blackburn muttered.

Carmody shot him a look, then offered Tolan a telegenic smile and shook his hand. “It’s good to see you again, Doctor. Did Frank tell you how Sarah’s doing?”

Sarah was the rape victim they’d brought to him several months ago. A frail fourteen-year-old who was not only able to describe and identify her attacker, but had testified against him at trial, never once taking her eyes off the man. Brave girl.

“We haven’t had much time to catch up.”

“Her mother says the psychologist you recommended is a godsend. Her therapy’s going great and she’s thriving in school. She was chosen to be part of the county’s academic decathlon.”

“That’s good to hear,” he said. And it was. The last he’d seen the girl was at trial. But this line of conversation was so far off subject that he felt annoyed. They weren’t here for a trip down memory lane, and he wanted to get to the meat of the matter.

Apparently Blackburn felt the same. Throwing Carmody a sidelong glance, he said, “Now that we’ve got that fascinating bit of news out of the way, let’s concentrate on the here and now.” He looked at Tolan. “Seems this case has developed a little wrinkle you should know about.”

“Which is?”

“Let’s get your news out of the way first. You sounded pretty shook up over the phone.”

Shook up couldn’t begin to describe how he felt. He was a new recruit waiting for dawn to bring him his first taste of battle.

He gestured them toward a nearby door, then opened it and led them outside to a small open courtyard that held three patio tables shaded by maple trees. It was a beautiful place to escape from the drab hospital confines, but was rarely occupied at this time of day and would afford them some privacy.

Closing the door behind them, he gestured toward one of the tables. They all sat, the two detectives waiting patiently as Tolan gathered himself.

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

H
E 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.”