Whisper in the Dark (A Thriller) (26 page)

But he hadn’t. Because Lisa was right. They would assume that he, not Vincent, had killed Sue Carmody. And before he had a chance to explain, his arms would be yanked behind him, his wrists cuffed, and he’d be spending the rest of his life in a jail cell.

And how, exactly,
would
he explain this?

Because, despite his protests, something Vincent had said kept running through his mind:

We had a lot of fun with her this afternoon
.

It was the
we
that got to him. The
we
, accompanied by his bloodied shirt and his jacked-up memory. He’d had another blackout. Another gap in time. This one bigger than ever.

The image of a blade piercing flesh once again flitted through his mind.

Who, he wondered, was holding that blade?

Lisa stepped into a pair of blue jeans. “We need to get her downstairs.”

“Why are the police looking for me?”

“They wouldn’t elaborate.” She fastened the jeans and grabbed a T-shirt from a hook on the door. “But I guess I could have invited them to dinner. Maybe they would’ve told me all about it.”

It was a pointed jab, and he knew he deserved it.

“Look, I’m sorry. I thought I was protecting you.”

“That’s
my
job, remember?”

She pulled the T-shirt over her head, the words BEST IN SHOW plastered across her chest.

“What happened at the hospital?” Tolan asked. “After I left?”

She gestured to Carmody’s body. “Apparently this did. Now help me get her downstairs.”

Tolan said nothing, reluctantly doing what he was told, grabbing one end of the blanket as Lisa grabbed the other.

But he could barely concentrate on the task. There was another part of Vincent’s
we
that concerned him. Another possibility that had been floating on the distant horizon ever since the night Abby was murdered. Ever since that first blackout.

He thought about his mother and those tumultuous days up in their Arrowhead Springs cabin. She was a nasty woman, prone to vicious mood swings, who took her un-happiness out on Tolan and his father. He could remember hiding in the closet as they fought, his mother using his dad as a verbal punching bag, telling him what a loser he was, bragging about the lovers she’d had, men who were so much better at satisfying her than he ever was.

Tolan had later learned that she’d been in the throes of a classic dissociative episode, as clear a case of multiple personalities that anyone had ever seen. Many years later she had described the feeling to him—the loss of time, the conversations she’d had with the “others.”

“Like phone calls from the dead,” she’d told him.

“Phone calls from the dead?”

“That’s right. Talking to me over an invisible telephone line. A line running all through my brain, cutting it into sections, you know? And in each one of those sections, I’ve got a nice little friend just waiting to—”

“Michael? Are you still with me?”

They were halfway down the stairs now, awkwardly carrying the blanket-wrapped body between them, trying not to leak blood on the carpet or bump it against the wall. And though he’d heard Lisa’s question, he said nothing to her, still thinking about Vincent’s phone calls and wondering. Wondering if it was possible—if he should even
entertain
the notion that the calls he’d gotten . . .

He could barely bring himself to think it.

That the calls he’d gotten were not real.

What if they were nothing more than a troubled mind’s way of filtering out the truth?

Phone calls in his head.

Phone calls from the dead.

How much of this day, this anniversary of death, was a product of his imagination? Jane Doe saying his name, looking so uncannily like Abby, those haunted hazel eyes, the shifting, undulating facial bones—some of which he knew to be, at least in part, a delusion. So why not the rest of it?

Maybe beneath it all, down in the part of his mind where darkness dwelled, where the animal crouched, watching, waiting . . . maybe down there he knew the truth, the real explanation.

That he
had
killed Sue Carmody.

That he
had
killed Abby.

And, who knows, all those years ago in college, after he’d been spurned by Anna Marie Colson, rejected in favor of a law student—a
law
student, for godsakes—maybe he’d killed her, too. Shot her and her new boyfriend dead in the street.

Tolan frowned.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d thought about Anna Marie, so why was she suddenly making an appearance now?

Another image flitted through his mind. Not a knife this time, but the penlight, shining in his eyes. Something being shoved into his mouth.

A bite bar?

Then he remembered how much his jaw had ached when he awoke. What the hell was going on here?

“Careful,” Lisa said. “You almost hit her head.”

Her voice brought him back to the here and now, as they cleared the last step. Tolan almost said, “What difference does it make?” but cursed himself the moment he thought it. No matter how Carmody had wound up in this state, she still deserved his respect.

“We’ll take her out the side door,” Lisa said.

They carried her through the living room into the kitchen and laid her on the linoleum.

“Where’s her car?” Lisa asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Did
you
bring her here? I saw yours parked in the garage.”

“I don’t
know
,” Tolan said. “I don’t remember anything since I left the hospital.”

“We’d better leave yours inside. The police will be looking for it.” She turned then, heading back toward the living room. “Go change your clothes and meet me back here in five minutes.”

Tolan looked down at the blood on his shirt, then shifted his gaze to Carmody’s body, wishing he could teleport to some distant planet.

Beam me up, Scotty.

The side door led from the kitchen to a small, sheltered courtyard. Beyond that was an alleyway that separated Lisa’s house from her neighbor’s. A seasonal resident, the neighbor was rarely here this time of year, leaving the alleyway secluded and quiet, even this early in the night. The only illumination was a distant string of streetlights that didn’t come on until cars passed.

The chances of anyone seeing them were slim. If they were careful, if they timed it right, nobody would ever know that Sue Carmody had been here.

Nobody but Tolan. And Lisa.

And Vincent?

No, Tolan thought. Not even Vincent.

47

B
LACKBURN WAS WAITING
in his sedan when the squad car pulled up behind him. A moment later, Kat Pendergast and her partner, Dave Hogan, got out, Kat frowning as she approached his window.

“What happened to your head?”

Blackburn caught himself touching the butterfly bandage. He’d almost forgotten about it.

“A lesson on how not to subdue an armed suspect,” he said. “I’ll have to tell you about it sometime.”

She nodded, then gestured to the row of houses lining the street. It was a cul-de-sac in the middle of Bryant Park, an unassuming, upper-middle-class neighborhood. “So which one is Tolan’s?”

Blackburn pointed to a small three bedroom/two bath in the center of the curve. According to De Mello, Tolan had lived here for six years, four of them with his wife.

There was no car in the drive.

No lights on inside.

“You sure he isn’t hiding in there somewhere?” Kat asked.

“You sure he wasn’t at the girlfriend’s place?”

She shrugged. “Like I said when you called, I don’t think so. But I could be wrong.”

“So could I,” Blackburn said as he popped open his door and climbed out, “but I’ve got a feeling he’s still in the wind.”

“And you just want us to wait here, right? Give you the heads-up in case he decides to show?”

“That’s the general idea.”

“What about the neighbors? Won’t they be curious? Wonder why we’re hanging around?”

Blackburn looked at the surrounding houses, saw lights in the kitchen and living-room windows, families going about their business, living their lives.

“Let ’em wonder,” he said.

“You do realize we’ll be breaking about a hundred different laws.”

“Just one, actually. Maybe two. But we’re on a fact-finding mission, remember?”

“What about a search warrant?”

After his conversation with Soren, Blackburn had pretty much convinced himself that Soren wasn’t Tolan’s connection to Hastert and Janovic. Soren didn’t strike Blackburn as the kind of guy who would let himself get caught in the middle of a blackmail scheme. Especially one that involved multiple murders.

But with Psycho Bitch currently incapacitated, Blackburn needed to find some other connection, some concrete piece of evidence that linked Tolan to the two victims. If for no other reason than to confirm that he was on the right track with this thing.

But he knew a judge would never allow him to go on a hunting expedition. Not without probable cause.

So he’d go in anyway, see what he could find, and worry about the search warrant later.

“Look,” he told Kat, “if you don’t feel comfortable about this, feel free to—”

“I want to go in with you,” she said.

Blackburn saw the excitement on her face, but shook his head. “No way.”

“Come on, Frank. Hogan can handle lookout. And you could use another pair of eyes.”

“Not gonna happen.”

“Why?”

“This isn’t a date, Kat. We aren’t talking about a movie and a milkshake.”

“Yeah?” She leaned in close to him then, whispering in his ear. “If you ever
want
that milkshake, you’d better reconsider.”

Blackburn stared at her, not doubting for a moment what she meant by that. A bold move, to be sure. An ultimatum. Appealing to his baser instincts.

And he liked that. Hell, he
loved
it—especially the reward being offered.

But the moment he thought about the visual she had so generously supplied him, an image of Carmody intruded. Carmody, lying across her bed, pulling him toward her. Carmody, who still hadn’t bothered to return his last phone call.

He had no reason to feel loyal to the woman. Had every reason
not
to be. But sitting in that hospital cafeteria today, he’d felt a renewed vibe between them. That old spark. An intangible link that a loner like Blackburn didn’t often find.

And for all his sexual bravado, he hadn’t slept with another woman since that night of drunken bliss.

But he also knew that Carmody was a dead end. Treated him with about the same amount of dignity she’d afford a piece of used toilet paper. More interested in advancing her career than getting involved with an overbearing jerk like him.

So why the sudden conflict?

Why was he wasting his time fretting over a cold fish when he had a potential sure thing standing right here in front of him? All he had to say was
yes
.

Maybe having a second set of eyes in there wasn’t a bad idea after all.

“Well?” Kat said.

Blackburn stared at her. God, she was cute. He didn’t need much more convincing.

“What are you doing for dinner Saturday night?”

48

“
TURN LEFT,”
Lisa said.

She had lined her trunk with black Hefty bags before they put the body inside. The trunk was small, but they managed to get Carmody to fit with a minimum of fuss.

A minimum of fuss, Tolan thought. How callous is that?

They were driving now, Tolan behind the wheel of Lisa’s BMW. He was still in shock, letting her take the lead, continually amazed by her calm under fire, and continually grateful that she was willing to take this risk for him.

But how could she?

How could she remain so loyal to a monster?

Because if he’d done this, if he had butchered Carmody, that’s exactly what he was.

Something stirred at the periphery of his brain, like an image from a dream. Abby standing near a dark doorway.

“Where are we taking her?” he asked.

“The old hospital.”

“The old hospital? We can’t just dump her there.”

“We don’t have much choice.”

“But—”

“Nobody goes up there anymore, Michael. And there are plenty of places to hide a body.”

He glanced at her and saw the set look on her face, her expression unreadable. This was beyond the usual focused concentration now. Something deeper. Colder.

“Why are you doing this, Lisa? How can you even be in the same car with me?”

“I already told you why.”

“No, this is above and beyond. You think I killed her. You probably think I killed Abby, too.”

They pulled onto Baycliff Drive now, winding up the mountain.

She looked at him. “It doesn’t matter, Michael. Don’t you know that by now? I love you. I’ve always loved you. You’re my lost soul.”

“Your what?”

She shook her head. “If you don’t get it by now, there’s no point in trying to explain it to you.”

“No,” Tolan insisted. “Tell me. What do you mean?”

“It’s something the old man said. That I looked like a woman in search of a lost soul. I think it’s fitting. Don’t you?”

Another image from the dream assaulted Tolan. Abby pointing her camera. A flash of light.

Ask the old man, Michael
.
He knows
.

“Who are you talking about? What old man?”

“The police brought him in today. He had some interesting things to say about your new girlfriend.”

“My what?”

Lisa sighed. “Jane Doe, Michael, Jane Doe. But according to him, that’s not who she really is. Not now, at least. And I think you already know that.”

Tolan tried to find a suitable response to this, but couldn’t. His mind was reeling.

Lisa pointed. “Take the access road.”

“Lisa—”

“Turn.”

He did as he was told, pulling onto a narrow road that snaked through the mountains toward the old hospital. He waited as Lisa gathered herself to tell him whatever it was she was trying to tell him.