Whisper in the Dark (A Thriller) (18 page)

Lisa hadn’t been able to see the patient’s face, but wouldn’t be surprised if there was a resemblance there, too. Enough to get to Michael.

And the timing couldn’t be worse.

Why did she have to show up today of all days?

Lisa had seen Michael in a lot of different moods over the last year, but he’d never been so distant, so reluctant to communicate as he was today. And she hated it when he kept things from her. Hated the wondering and the worrying.

All she wanted in this world was to take care of him. He’d been through so much and she wanted to make it right again. To make him see
her
for once, instead of Abby.

And just when she thought he was making progress, this woman—this street person—comes along and ruins it.

Each time Lisa had been out here, she’d hoped to see Michael’s Lexus coming back up the hill. But all she’d found was a sea of parked cars, glinting in the sunlight. No sign of human activity, except during her last trip, when a couple of police officers escorted an old black man toward the EDU.

The old man had smiled at her as they passed, a knowing twinkle in his eyes. “You look like a woman in search of a lost soul,” he’d said.

And as surprised as Lisa had been, she couldn’t dispute his words.

Michael
was
, in effect, just that. A lost soul.

Her lost soul.

“
BUT WHY?”
Carmody said, staring down at the list again. “Why would he do that? He had to know we’d find out. He gave us permission to pull these records, for godsakes.”

Blackburn nodded. “I told you. He’s just like that perp who wants to confess, but can’t quite bring himself to do it. So he has some make-believe phantom do it for him.”

Carmody shook her head. “I don’t know, Frank. Making up phone calls is pretty crazy, and throwing together that website is even crazier, but none of it means he killed his wife. Maybe he’s just an attention whore, like that idiot who confessed to killing JonBenet Ramsey.”

“Maybe.”

“And what about Janovic?” she said.

“What about him?”

“Even if we entertain the notion that Tolan had something to do with his wife’s death, how does Janovic fit into the equation? Is his murder just a coincidence? Did Vincent kill him? Or is that Tolan playing copycat too?”

Blackburn hesitated. “I haven’t figured that part out yet.”

“Surprise, surprise.”

“But you know me and coincidences. Maybe he was after Jane, and Janovic got in the way.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Carmody said. “From what you’ve told me, it sounds like the killer was
interrupted
by Jane. And why would Tolan kill his wife, wait a whole year, then go after some street whore?”

“Like I said, maybe she isn’t just a street whore. Maybe she knows Tolan. She might even be related to him.”

“Related? How?”

“I don’t know, but she looks a lot like the wife. Maybe they’re cousins or something. Sisters. When she started singing, he immediately recognized the tune, like it was an old family favorite or something. I thought he was gonna crap his pants.”

“You’re forgetting something,” Carmody said.

“What?”

“The burn marks. The smiley face. How could Tolan know about that?”

And there it was. The same old stumbling block.

“Maybe it got leaked somehow.”

Carmody shook her head. “No way. The task force kept that one under tight lock and key.”

“Try telling that to the idiots who prosecuted O.J. They’d laugh in your face.”

She stared at him. “Come on, Frank, I’m hearing a lot of ‘maybes’ but no concrete proof. One of the few things I’ve always admired about you is that when it comes to cases, you never jump to conclusions. You always follow the best evidence.”

“You’re right,” Blackburn said.

And she was. Left-handed compliment or not. He had never been the type to finger a suspect then look for evidence to back it up, ignoring all to the contrary. He had always looked to the facts of a case to point him
toward
a suspect.

But when a storm comes along and you get hit by a bolt of lightning, it tends to jangle the brain, mix things up. And these cell phone records and Tolan’s bizarre behavior had certainly seeded the clouds.

Not to mention the photographs he’d found in Tolan’s office.

“He did it,” Blackburn said. “Two times four is a lie.”

“The babbling of a sick woman. It means nothing.”

“She saw something, Sue. I don’t know what it was, but now we’ve got Tolan in the middle of a meltdown, caught in a complete fabrication. It’s all connected somehow. It’s gotta be.” He paused. “And then there’s these.”

Reaching into his pocket again, he pulled out the second stack of snapshots he’d taken from the envelope in Tolan’s desk drawer. Shoving his tray aside, he laid them out in front of her.

Six photos. Each a shot of Abby Tolan. At the beach. The park. On the street. Standing in her gallery. And she was smiling for the camera. A radiant smile.

But in every single photo, there was one thing missing.

Carmody stared down at them, the color draining from her face. “My God . . .”

My God, indeed, Blackburn thought.

Someone had gone through them, one by one—

—and cut out Abby Tolan’s eyes.

“Tell me now the sonofabitch didn’t kill her.”

32

H
E COULDN’T MOVE
his arms and legs.

He had awakened to near darkness, lying on his back, on a table of some kind, slanted slightly toward the floor, his wrists and ankles strapped down.

Four-point restraints.

A small patch of light bled in through a crack in the wall, giving him just enough illumination to get a sense of his surroundings. He was in a windowless room that smelled of mold and burned wood and plaster.

The ornate light fixture mounted on the blackened ceiling above him was cracked and broken, with missing bulbs. Whatever this place was, it had been abandoned decades ago.

The old hospital? He couldn’t be sure.

The drug he had been given still sluiced through his veins, slowing his thought processes, but its effects were starting to wear off.

Something was stuck to the sides of his head, to his temples—pieces of tape, perhaps. But as his brain began to clear, he realized it wasn’t just tape . . . but disposable electrodes.

What exactly was going on here?

If he had to guess—and he supposed that was all he
could
do—he’d say he had been prepped for some kind of sleep study.

Which made no sense. He wasn’t at Baycliff, wasn’t even in a fully functioning structure as far as he could tell. There were no doctors here, no technicians, no hospital staff at all. He was alone. Alone with the darkness and the faint, muffled hum of a motor.

A generator of some kind?

He couldn’t be sure. But the sound was familiar to him. Much like the rumble of the ten-gallon trifuel his parents had used to power their cabin near Arrowhead Springs so many years ago.

He didn’t often think about those days. The months they’d spent up in the mountains, away from the rest of the world, as his mother tried to deal with one of her many “episodes.” She had become cruel and unmanageable, and his father had been at his wit’s end trying to look after her. Tolan didn’t find out until years later that she had been suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder, but he was certain that her illness was what had spurred him to become a psychiatrist.

He heard another sound. The squeak of rusty wheels. Then a door creaked open, muted sunlight momentarily slicing through the room, giving him a glimpse of charred furniture and broken glass cabinets.

A figure was silhouetted in the doorway. Judging by the size, it was a man, and he was pushing a cart, a cart loaded with a small, boxy piece of machinery. Hard to tell in the dim light, but it looked like an ECT instrument.

Fear blossomed in Tolan’s stomach.

A moment later, the door closed again, returning the room to near darkness. Then a whispery voice said:

“You’re awake, I see.”

Vincent.

“What’s going on? Why did you bring me here?”

There was movement, the squeak of wheels again. The cart being repositioned.

“When I was a boy,” Vincent said, “I suffered occasional bouts of depression. My mother and father, being the concerned parents they were, brought me to a hospital very much like this one used to be. To a doctor just like you.”

A penlight flicked on, shining directly in Tolan’s eyes. He squinted.

“The doctor felt I was in need of a quick fix. That medication would take much too long to kick in. So he prescribed six rounds of bilateral electroconvulsive therapy. And twice a week, for three long weeks, a very attractive young nurse marched me into a room like this one and strapped me down to a table just like the one you currently occupy.”

The fear in Tolan’s belly spread through him like a virus.

“Unfortunately,” Vincent continued, “rather than prescribe the usual anesthesia and muscle relaxers associated with the treatment, the doctor decided to administer it drug-free.”

“That’s barbaric,” Tolan said.

“Yes, I thought so. But I was only fourteen years old at the time. What say did I have in the matter?”

Despite the whisper, the voice sounded familiar to Tolan. But he couldn’t place it. Wished he could see the man’s face—not that it would do him any good.

Vincent redirected the penlight to the side of Tolan’s head. Leaning forward, he attached a wire to the right electrode, then shifted the light and attached another to the left.

“What about your parents?” Tolan asked.

“They were wonderful people, but not very sophisticated. They trusted the doctor. And why shouldn’t they have? He assured them that electroshock was safe and effective.”

Most people believed that ECT had been discontinued by the psychiatric community, but nothing could be further from the truth. Close to 100,000 people a year received the treatment.

“It usually
is
safe,” Tolan said.

“That’s up for debate. But it certainly doesn’t help when your doctor’s a sadist. And there’s no arguing about what it does to your memory.”

He was right. Studies had shown that electroconvulsive therapy caused short-term memory loss. People undergoing ECT had difficulty remembering events just prior to and during treatment.

Vincent turned away and Tolan felt a slight tug on the wires.

“What are you going to do?”

“That’s a silly question, don’t you think?”

Tolan heard the flick of switches, and panic rose in his chest. “You can’t.”

“I don’t think you’re really in a position to stop me, Doctor. Just think of yourself as a fourteen-year-old boy.”

Tolan tried to protest, but before he could get the words out, a rubber bite bar was shoved into his mouth and secured by a strap around his head.

Tolan tossed from side to side, using his tongue to try to push it out, but it was no use. The strap tightened, lodging it in place.

“Just a little precaution. I don’t want you biting your tongue off.”

An ECT instrument typically put out as much power as a wall jack, sending an electrical current through the patient’s brain. Tolan had never been a recipient of electroconvulsive therapy, had never administered it himself, but he knew that in the wrong hands, and without anesthesia, it could not only be painful and dangerous—it could kill you.

“What dosage do you think we should start with?” Vincent asked. “Too high will knock you out—and we don’t want that. Too low and we’ve defeated the purpose of the treatment in the first place.”

Tolan jerked his arms upward, straining against the restraints, trying to break the straps. But it was no use.

“Let’s start at two hundred fifty volts and work our way upward.”

Another switch was flipped and a faint whir filled Tolan’s ears.

Jesus Christ, he thought. Jesus fucking Christ. He’s going to do it. He’s going to—

Pain shot through Tolan’s skull, a piercing, hot blade of fire that expanded and spread throughout his body. A bone-cracking pain, worse than anything he could remember. He bucked involuntarily against it, squeezing his eyes shut, clamping his jaw down so hard on the bite bar that he thought his teeth might break, a muffled scream working its way between them.

Then it was done. Over.

And the relief was sweet. So fucking sweet.

Vincent reached down, loosened the strap, and pulled the bite bar free, letting Tolan spit away the foam that had gathered in the corners of his mouth. Then a wave of nausea swept over him, and for a moment he felt as if he might throw up.

“Jesus,” he said.

“I’m afraid Jesus won’t help you,” Vincent told him. “But an answer to my question will.”

“. . . What question?”

“You have to understand that I’ve always tried to be a fair man. I believe in due process. Innocent until proven guilty and all that.”

Tolan didn’t know how to respond.

“And while I’m reasonably certain of your guilt, I think it would be unfair to continue with the plans I’ve laid out for you, until I hear your confession.” He paused. “So tell me, Doctor. Are you ready to confess?”

“. . . you can’t do this,” Tolan croaked.

“Oh, I can and I will. Let’s ramp it up a bit, shall we?”

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.”