Whisper in the Dark (A Thriller) (15 page)

The signal from his cell phone, Sue Carmody explained, would be picked up at a cellular switching station. And if Vincent was using one to make his calls, current technology allowed them to track his whereabouts within a three-hundred-foot radius.

There was a palpable, almost desperate excitement in the air. A hope that this might be it. An actual shot at catching a serial killer.

But Tolan didn’t share the excitement. As much as he appreciated the effort, it was, he thought, a waste of time.

Vincent was no dummy. He knew that Tolan would go straight to the police. There wouldn’t be anymore phone calls. And despite what Blackburn had said, Tolan knew that Vincent wasn’t playing games with him. Not about this.

Not about Abby.

You
.
You hurt me
.

As he stood near his office doorway, watching a technician test his land line, Tolan thought back to that night again, to the fight he’d had with Abby.

It had all started with a stick of gum.

Craving a sugar fix, Tolan had been searching through her purse, looking for the pack of Doublemint she always kept in there—when he found something else. Something entirely out of place.

A small blue box.

The words on the label were still imprinted on his brain: Lifestyles Sheer Pleasure. Three-pack.

A box of condoms.

A box of condoms that had been opened.

And two of them were missing.

At first, Tolan couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. Had even checked to make sure it was Abby’s purse. But the gesture was pointless. He knew it was hers, the one she carried wherever she went. And as he began to understand what this meant, what that open blue box signified, surprise gave way to hurt, then anger, then . . .

Then . . .

Then what, Michael? Keep going.

One of the police technicians coughed, bringing Tolan back to the present as dread blossomed inside him like a malignant growth.

But it wasn’t Vincent’s threat that weighed on him now. It was that simple, dark truth he had kept hidden away for over a year. A simple truth that Vincent’s phone calls and this morning’s events had brought screaming back to the surface.

Tolan had a blank spot.

A gap in his memory.

Was missing time from that night.

You
.
You hurt me
.

Abby had been coming out of the bathroom when he confronted her, waving the open box in her face.

“What the hell is this?”

He remembered her startled expression when she realized what he was holding. The fading smile. The puzzled frown. “Where did you get that?”

“Where do you think?” He indicated her purse.

She just stood there a moment, then shook her head. “You’re kidding me, right? Those aren’t mine.”

But he wasn’t kidding. And when she realized that, her expression immediately changed. Hurt. Guilt. Fear? He wasn’t sure which.

“Who is he?” Tolan demanded.

“There’s no one, Michael. You know I wouldn’t—”

“—a client of yours? That guitar guy? You take him in for a little darkroom quickie?”

Abby just stared at him. “Is this what we’ve come to?”

But Tolan didn’t let up. He asked her again, and then again, growing more and more agitated. And despite her denials, despite her insistence that she would never betray him like that, every uncertainty Tolan had about their marriage, every doubt, every concern, coalesced into a rage so all-consuming that his whole body began to shake.

He had shouted at her then and, stunned by his behavior, she had given it right back—

—until he finally crossed the line. Called her a name he knew would cut her to the bone.

You. Fucking. Whore.

That was when Abby slapped him. Right across the face. Tears in her eyes.

Then . . . nothing.

T
HAT SLAP WAS
the last thing Tolan remembered until a honking horn on the 101 jolted him back to consciousness. He had drifted out of his lane and immediately cut the wheel, righting himself.

It had taken him a moment to catch his bearings. He was alone, headed south toward Los Angeles.

What the hell?

He glanced at the dashboard clock. Two hours had passed. Two hours that seemed like two seconds.

And as the realization that he had just emerged from some kind of mental fog began to register, he wondered if he should call her.

What had happened in those last two hours? How had he wound up here?

He dialed her cell phone, but she didn’t answer. After two rings it went straight to voice mail. And as he waited for the beep, he wondered what he should say to her.

Then the vision of that blue box filled his head and, despite his confusion, he realized he didn’t want to say
anything
to her. He was still angry. Still hurt by what she’d done. So he simply left a quick message telling her he was close to L.A. and would call her back in the morning. Then he hung up. Whatever had happened after that slap would eventually come back to him and he’d deal with it then.

But it hadn’t come back. Not that night. Not the next morning. Not ever.

Not even after the 3:00 A.M. phone call that changed his life.

And no one had asked him about it either. Not Lisa. Not Ned, his ex-partner and therapist. Not the police.

The detectives had questioned him, yes, but never as a suspect. Abby was, after all, the victim of a high-profile serial killer. It was right there in the details. They were more interested to know if Tolan had ever noticed anyone hanging around the house or near Abby’s studio. Or if she had ever complained of unusual or threatening phone calls or encounters with strangers.

When asked what time he had last seen her, he had used his arrival at the hotel as a marker and merely subtracted three hours.

He hadn’t told them about what he’d found in her purse. Or the fight. Or his blinding anger. He hadn’t told them because it didn’t matter. They had known from the very beginning who her killer was—and Tolan had believed it too.

Or had he?

He had always carried a small measure of doubt about that night. An uneasiness. And maybe that was why he’d had so much trouble sleeping over the last year. Maybe that was the true source of his grief. His guilt.

Was Vincent right? Justified in his outrage?

Could he, Michael Tolan, have killed his own wife?

Impossible. He had been angry that night, yes, angrier than he’d ever been before—an anger so debilitating it had caused some sort of cognitive misfire. But he had never been a violent man. Would never raise a finger against anyone, let alone Abby. He had loved her too much.

His anger had been a momentary aberration, is all, brought on by the sudden fear that she had betrayed him. And yes, he had shouted at her, had called her a whore—an inexcusable insult considering her past—but to think that he could cut her up so savagely, was so far beyond imagining that he almost laughed.

Almost.

Because Tolan knew full well that people often delude themselves about what they’re capable of doing. History has proven time and again that, being the savage animals we are, our instinct for violence often gets the better of us.

That anyone can cross that line. Anyone.

And the trigger is usually something mundane. Something simple and unexpected.

Like an open box of condoms.

25

B
LACKBURN HATED CIRCUSES
, and the scene at the detention unit was quickly turning into one.

Carmody had already shifted into Advance Man mode, working the phone until a crew of dancing bears arrived, all carrying the dim hope that a killer would behave in a way that was contrary to human logic.

Blackburn stood in the observation booth adjacent to Psycho Bitch’s room. Someone had taken her out of her restraints—big mistake—and she was curled up in that fetal ball she seemed to love so much, using only a fraction of the real estate on her hospital bed.

The orderly, Cassie, sat behind the computer, dutifully watching over her.

Tolan’s wonder boy, Clayton Simm, had yet to make an appearance. Tolan had called him at least twice and gotten his machine.

So they were in a holding pattern for the moment. And as much as Blackburn hated circuses, he absolutely despised holding patterns.

He was debating the pros and cons of a frontal lobotomy—could probably get one right down the hall—when the vestibule door opened and a tall, well-toned female in hospital scrubs stepped into the booth.

Yowza.

“Cassie, why don’t you take a break?”

The orderly looked up at her and smiled. “Thanks. I could use a smoke.”

So could I, Blackburn thought. He didn’t figure there was ever an easy time to quit, but it seemed he’d picked the worst one possible. He thought about that bag of carrots on his desk and wished he had one right now to chew on. Pendergast had been right. It was an oral fixation. He needed something in his mouth—which, when he considered the implication, didn’t say much for his masculinity.

But the woman in scrubs did. She was hotter than a goddamn firecracker.

As Cassie left the booth, Scrubs turned to him and offered a hand to shake. “Detective Blackburn, right?”

“So they tell me,” he said, as he shook it.

“I’m Lisa Paymer, director of the EDU nursing staff. You probably don’t remember me, but we met when you were here a few months ago.”

Ahh. He’d thought she looked familiar.

“I must’ve been preoccupied,” he said, “because you’d be awfully hard to forget.”

The remark went over with a resounding thud. She wasn’t biting. She wasn’t even swimming in the same pond.

“We see a lot of uniformed officers around here,” she said stiffly, “but very few detectives. Especially so many all at once. Our patients are getting pretty upset with you people traipsing up and down the . . .”

She paused, her gaze now fixed on Psycho Bitch.

“My God . . .”

“What?”

“I read her workup, but this is the first time I’ve seen her. I didn’t realize . . .”

“Realize what? You know her?”

She thought about that for a moment, then shook her head. “No, but she reminds me of someone.” She shifted her gaze to Blackburn. “Is this all because of her?”

“Part of it,” Blackburn said. “The rest you’ll have to get from Doc Tolan.”

“That’s the problem. He isn’t talking.”

“He doesn’t exactly strike me as the shy type, so he must have a good reason.”

She looked again at Psycho Bitch. “I can see that. But I’m concerned about him. He said something about crank phone calls. Is he in some kind of trouble?”

Blackburn assessed her. “I take it the two of you have more than a professional relationship?”

She nodded.

Well, well, Blackburn thought. The doc wasn’t doing so bad after all. Dipping your pen in the company inkwell is always an iffy proposition—as Blackburn knew too well—but if you’ve gotta break office protocol, you might as well go for the gold.

“He worries about me,” she said. “So he won’t tell me what’s going on. I’m hoping you will.”

Uh-oh. No way was Blackburn getting in the middle of that. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to tell her about Vincent.

“I think this is where I say, sorry, ma’am, police business.”

“Which means?”

“That it’s none of yours.”

She didn’t like that response. There was a momentary flash of anger in her eyes, then she softened. Blackburn got the feeling she did that a lot. Kept her anger bottled up. Controlled. She reminded him of his second wife, who’d always had a kind of Stepford quality about her, until the facade finally cracked. He still had a scar on his scalp as a souvenir.

“I’ve been a psychiatric nurse for over fifteen years, Detective. I worked at County General, for godsakes, and that’s about the worst of the worst. So I think I can handle whatever bad news you people are hiding.”

Blackburn shook his head. “Sorry, ma’am, but I’ve got nothing to tell you. I’m sure the doc’ll clue you in when the time is right.”

And speaking of timing, that’s when the door opened again and Tolan stepped into the booth, obviously surprised to see them. He paused in the doorway, his gaze shifting from one to the other.

“Am I interrupting something?”

“I was just leaving,” Lisa said. She glanced in at Psycho Bitch again, then stared pointedly at Tolan. “Don’t forget our lunch date.” She turned to Blackburn. “Nice to see you again.”

Nice to see you, too, Blackburn thought.

Then she was gone.

Tolan watched after her, looking a lot like a naughty kindergartner who had just been scolded by his teacher. Maybe there was a spanking in his future.

“If you want to hang on to that one,” Blackburn said, “you’d better start communicating with her. And soon.”

“With all due respect, Detective, you’re probably the last person in the world I’d ask for relationship advice.”

“Good point,” Blackburn said.

26

V
INCENT ALMOST HAD
to laugh.

He had been sitting here for quite some time now, watching the activity around the hospital, the arrival of the unmarked police van, the scurry of technicians.

All because of him, of course.

All because of his genius.

How funny that they didn’t even know just how close he was. Close enough to touch.

It was a scene he’d witnessed dozens of times in his life. Almost routine at this point, but he still enjoyed the spectacle as much as he had after that first kill, so many years ago.

Little ice cream girl.

Oddly enough, one of the detectives reminded him of her. The one with the pale yellow hair.

Unlike the little ice cream girl, however, this one kept it pulled back into a tight ponytail. And there was a sense of intelligence about her. No-nonsense. Always in control.

He liked that. Liked it a lot.

But he had always liked watching the police. The concern laced with excitement. The sense of purpose. As if they might catch him this time.

Oh, they’d catch him, all right.