Whisper in the Dark (A Thriller) (32 page)

There was a table in the center, slanted slightly toward the floor, and next to it sat a rolling cart with an ECT machine atop it.

Hanging above it all was a blackened ceiling, holding the charred remains of a light fixture with missing bulbs.

He’d seen that fixture before.

But when?

Before he could give it too much thought, he heard the sound again and turned, listening carefully.

Not a whimper this time, but the faint echo of someone crying.

Tolan quickly followed it until he found himself in another long hallway. At the far end, open double doors led to a room he remembered from his time here with Abby.

The Day Room.

She’d taken his photo in there, the one that now hung over his bed.

Moving down the hall, he passed through the doorway into a cavernous room lined with high, wire-mesh windows, moonlight slanting toward its center, illuminating a grouping of dilapidated tables and chairs, each of them bolted to the floor.

A small figure was huddled near the foot of one of the tables, half hidden in the shadows.

Abby.

Tolan stopped, the sight of her riveting him to the spot.

Sensing his presence, she turned, looking up at him with wet, lucid eyes. “Michael?”

At the sound of her voice, Tolan felt something loosen inside his chest, a flood of emotion washing through him.

Rising, Abby held out her arms to him, opening them wide.

“It’s me, Michael. I’ve come back to you.”

And then he was across the room and in her arms, pulling her close, holding her so tight he thought she might break, but she didn’t seem to mind, the tears coming again, and he was crying too, unable to contain himself.

“It took me so long to get here,” she whispered. “I tried so hard to get here. I thought I was too late.”

“It’s all right, Abby. You’re here now. You’re with me.”

They held each other for a long moment, Tolan overcome by joy and guilt, not wanting to think about what he’d done to her. The savagery.

“I won’t lie to you,” she said finally, as if she knew exactly what was going through his mind. “You hurt me, Michael. So many times in those last few days. And then that night . . .”

“I’m so sorry,” he said, squeezing her tighter, fighting his tears.

“But that’s not why I’m here,” she continued. “None of that matters. Not now. Not anymore.”

He pulled away from her, surprised. “How can you say that? What I did to you is unforgivable.”

“No, Michael—”

“—I don’t even remember it. I don’t
want
to remember.” He closed his eyes, hearing Lisa’s voice in his head. “But she told me what she saw. She saw it all.”

“What are you talking about? Who?”

“Lisa. She was there that night. And she told me more than I wanted to know.”

Abby frowned. “What did she tell you?”

“Everything. Everything that happened. The fight. The knife in my hand. The blood . . .” More tears filled his eyes. “I never wanted to hurt you, Abby. Never. Please believe that.”

Abby just stared at him for a moment, as if she wasn’t quite sure what he was trying to say. Then sudden realization set in and she pulled him toward her. “Oh, my God, Michael, no . . . Don’t blame yourself for this. It isn’t your fault.”

Tolan pulled away from her again. “. . .
What
?”

“I can’t believe she’s got you thinking this way. It wasn’t you. It wasn’t you at all.”

Tolan was confused. “What are saying?”

“Lisa’s
lying
to you. Everything about her is a lie. That’s why I came back. To
warn
you about her.”

“Warn me?”

“You can’t trust anything she tells you,” Abby said. “
You
weren’t the one holding the knife.
She
was.”

And as Tolan tried to process these words, Lisa stepped into the doorway and pointed Blackburn’s gun directly at Abby’s chest.

“I think it’s time for you to go now.”

58

B
LACKBURN WAS HALFWAY
up the stairs when he heard the echo of voices.

For a moment he thought they might be the voices inside his own head, the way everything was so jangled up in there. He felt dizzy and nauseous and wished he could just lie down and sleep for a long, long time.

But when you’re on a mission, there’s no time for sleep. When you’re on a mission, you keep climbing, keep walking, keep going until you reach your stated objective, no matter how difficult that may be.

And while Blackburn’s objective at this particular moment was not noble, not smart, and most decidedly not danger-free—especially when you considered the fact that his Glock had been stolen from him—it was all he had to keep him upright.

The thing that drove him.

Ever since he’d seen that ruby earring, then the bloody blanket in the trunk of the BMW, the sense of loss he’d felt, the sense of finality, the realization that he would never again see Sue Carmody alive, told him exactly what that objective needed to be.

He was no longer looking to catch a killer.

He was looking to kill one.

Funny thing was, the man he’d initially suspected was no longer the one he was after. When he stood with Clayton Simm in the forest, looking down at the newspaper photo of those fresh-faced college kids, he was shocked to realize that the only one who wasn’t smiling, the only one who wasn’t looking directly at the camera—

—was Nurse Lisa Paymer.

A much younger Lisa, to be sure, but it was unmistakably her, as unmistakable as the barely disguised scowl on her face.

And instead of smiling for the camera, she was looking directly at the victim.

At Anna Marie Colson.

And in that moment, Blackburn realized his mistake. Unlike Tolan, he was no expert on the inner workings of the human mind, but that one look into Paymer’s soul put it all in perspective for him. What he was dealing with here was a classic obsessive psychotic, and the old, stale proverb rang especially true:

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

When Anna Marie Colson messed with Paymer’s man, Paymer had gunned her down. Then, when history repeated itself fourteen years later, Paymer had taken a knife, a PowerBlast cauterizing tool, and had gone to work again.

Her only mistake had been Todd Hastert and Carl Janovic.

Blackburn couldn’t give you the wheres and the whys of her introduction to Hastert, but Paymer herself had told him she’d worked at County General, and he was sure that the crucial information about Vincent Van Gogh had been passed along to her there.

A look at Paymer’s bank records would undoubtedly yield some interesting activity.

The wild card, of course, was the evidence he’d found in Tolan’s house, but he hadn’t abandoned his theory that Tolan may have been set up.

Yet none of that really interested Blackburn right now.

For him it was all Paymer, all the time.

And she wouldn’t make it through the night.

A
S BLACKBURN REACHED
the end of a long hallway, the voices grew louder and more distinct.

“Don’t you listen to her, Michael. She’s a freak of nature. A goddamn demon.”

“Put it down, Lisa. Nobody needs to get hurt.”

Blackburn picked up speed—or at least the best approximation of speed he could muster in his condition—and rounded a corner, finding himself in another long hallway, a wide doorway at the far end.

Standing in the room beyond, in a pool of pale moonlight, were three familiar figures: Tolan, Psycho Bitch, and Paymer.

Paymer was holding the gun.
His
gun.

Stopping short, Blackburn quickly ducked into a darkened dooway. His Mag-Lite had disappeared along with his Glock, and he needed a weapon of some kind, something heavy to wield.

It was dark, but he could see that there were several loose chunks of cement on the floor—reminding him of the one Psycho Bitch had tried to use on him this morning. But they’d be too awkward to deal with.

He needed a pipe. A piece of two-by-four.

He wished he’d had enough sense to get the crowbar from that trunk.

Scanning the darkness, he saw nothing he could use and was about to step outside again when he instinctively stopped, sensing a presence behind him.

What the hell?

Hearing the faint shuffling of shoes on cement, Blackburn spun, bringing his arms up defensively, but his reflexes were shot and he moved too slow.

A hard blow to his solar plexus doubled him over, then a fist slammed down on his back. He crumpled to the floor, the world once again spinning.

This was getting tiresome.

Then a dark figure crouched next to him, putting a hand over his mouth.

“Quiet now. Let’s let the children have their fun.”

L
ISA WAS WAVING
the gun around and Tolan stepped in front of Abby, shielding her. “Lisa, listen to me. . . .”

“Don’t you try to protect her, you sonofabitch.”

“I’m begging you, leave her alone. You don’t have to do this.”

“Oh, please, Michael. Are you gonna tell me how much you love me now? Huh? Promise me it’ll all be better in the morning?” Her eyes were wild. The eyes of a psychotic.

“Waving that gun around won’t get you what you want.”

“Won’t it? It did before.”

Tolan’s receptors were on overload, the information coming at him too quickly to be processed. All the things he’d thought about himself, all the damage he thought he’d done, had been a fabrication. A jealous woman’s lie. And what frightened him most was that he’d actually allowed himself to believe her.

“She’s a whore. You said it yourself. And you just stood there like a pathetic fool and let her slap you.”

As she spoke, the information train continued to roll through Tolan’s head, transmitting images in rapid-fire succession, a fast-forward replay of Abby’s last night on earth.

He was remembering it now.

It was all coming back.

The blackout he’d suffered had not been the product of a dissociative personality at all, but a reaction to severe trauma. The trauma of seeing his wife stabbed to death by his best friend.

“She was cheating on you, Michael. I tried to prove that to you when I put those condoms in her purse. I knew you’d confront her and she’d have to confess.”

Tolan heard a rustling behind him as Abby took a step backward, receding into the shadows.

“You’re not making any sense,” he said. “Abby always considered you a friend. She never did a thing to you.”

“She took you away from me, didn’t she? And when the two of you started to fight so much, I thought there might be a chance for us. But then you took that little field trip up here and let her snap her precious pictures. I followed you, watched the two of you, and I knew, I knew she’d never let you go. She had her hooks in you and she’d keep them in, for as long as she could.”

“She didn’t trap me, Lisa. I was in love with her. I’m still in love with her.”

Another rustling sound behind him. A small whimper of pain. Tolan turned, peering into the darkness.

“Abby?”

“. . . A lie stands on one leg, the truth on two . . .”

He returned his gaze to Lisa. “You hear that? That’s you she’s talking about.”

“. . . A lie stands on one leg, the truth on two . . .”

“I did what I had to,” Lisa said.

“What about that murder last night? The one on The Avenue? Was that you too?”

“He was threatening us.”

“Us?”

“You and me.”

There was another murmur behind him. Unintelligible this time.

Tolan eyed the gun, then inched backward toward Abby, trying to see her in the darkness.

“If you wanted her dead, why didn’t you just kill her last night, when she walked in on you?”

Lisa’s eyes flared. “You think I wouldn’t have? I didn’t even know she was there. I heard a sound and ran like a scared rabbit.”

More rustling behind him.

Something about Abby seemed to be changing and he was reminded of what he’d seen in the seclusion room, the shifting of bones, the missing ear.

“Abby, are you okay?”

Lisa moved toward them, trying to peer into the darkness. “Don’t you get it, Michael? It’s happening. Just like the old man said. She’s one of the children now. The children of the drum.”

“Stay away from her.”

Lisa leveled the gun. “I can’t do that.”

“Put it down,” he said. “You’re not going to hurt her.”

“Move! I don’t want to hit you too.”

But Tolan didn’t move.

Face hardening, Lisa shifted her hand, pointing the gun toward the shadows behind him.

“Come out of there, you bitch. Show yourself. Show him what a freak you are.”

Her finger brushed the trigger, about to squeeze it, but before she could, a high, piercing shriek filled the room as a figure sprang from the darkness.

And what emerged no longer looked like Abby at all.

Was not even human.

Instead, a sleek, animal-like creature lunged for Lisa as—

—she stumbled back, wide-eyed, ready to fire and—

Tolan shouted, “No!” leaping in front of her as the gun went off, heat blossoming in the center of his chest.

He tumbled to the floor and the gun went off again and then again, followed by an agonizing screech of pain as something or someone fell nearby.

Then silence.

59

S
OMEONE WAS CRYING
.

Tolan rolled, reaching up to touch his chest, his hand coming back red and wet.

Turning to see who or what had fallen next to him, he was surprised to find that it wasn’t the animal he’d seen only a moment ago, but Abby, her own chest and stomach covered with blood.

Her breathing was shallow, just like his, and he knew that she wasn’t long for this world.

Not again, he thought. I can’t lose her again.

Reaching across to her, he touched her hand, and she grabbed a hold of his fingers, her words coming out in slow, wet gasps:

“. . . It’s time, Michael. . . . You can come with me now. . . .”