Whisper in the Dark (A Thriller) (7 page)

He was about to reach for her again when a tiny, cracked voice that was barely audible rose from her small frame:

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

Tolan froze, that wave of familiarity washing over him again. Who was this woman?

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

She spoke quietly, but the tone and tenor of her voice sliced right through him, exposing a raw nerve.

“Two times four is a lie,” she murmured. “Two times four is a lie . . .”

Finally finding his own voice, Tolan said, “Sometimes it seems as if we live in a world full of lies. And lies cause nothing but hurt. Even the small ones.” He paused. “Has someone lied to you? Hurt you?”

She spoke again, but it came out so low and soft that he couldn’t decipher the words. He wasn’t sure if she had responded to his question or had simply repeated the same phrase.

“Talk to me,” he said. “Tell me who hurt you.”

He reached out again, touching her shoulder, her reaction much less violent this time. She began to move, unfolding her arms, slowly turning toward him.

The wild damp hair fell away from her face as she looked up at him for a brief, lucid moment, her voice soft and full of quiet pain:

“You . . .” she said. “You hurt me.”

And in that moment, Tolan felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. He jumped to his feet, backing away from the bed, and he knew with an unblemished certainty that he had just lost his mind, because the face staring up at him, with its fierce, unflinching eyes—

—was Elizabeth Abagail Tolan.

Abby.

His dead wife.

10

B
LACKBURN SAW IT
coming just moments before it actually happened. Pushing his way out of the observation booth, he moved to the seclusion-room door. “Get this thing open. Now!”

Cassie quickly punched in a security code on the keyboard in front of her and, with a faint beep, the lock unlatched.

Blackburn threw the door wide and—

—Psycho Bitch was already midway through her attack, hands going for Tolan’s throat. For some inexplicable reason, Tolan just stood there, looking like a virgin hunter about to be sacrificed to a hungry lion.

Blackburn shot across the room and swatted her, hard, right across the face. With a howl, she grabbed her nose and fell to the floor, immediately drawing her body inward, curling into a ball, as she half-squealed, half-whispered the now familiar chant, her words coming out in wet, nasal gasps:

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

And now Cassie was there, saying, “Get her on the bed.”

They grabbed her limbs, forcing her out of the ball, hoisting her to the mattress as she bucked and twisted, trying to break free.

A moment later, a security guard burst into the room and joined in.

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

Nose bleeding, she rocked her head from side to side as Cassie worked with quiet efficiency and buckled her into restraints, wrists and ankles, then pulled a belt across her waist. She continued to thrash, blood flying, until Cassie held her head in place and pulled a strap across her forehead.

“Two times four is a lie, two times four is a lie . . .”

Blackburn thought about Tolan chastising him for calling these people whack jobs. But if a phrase ever described someone accurately, it was that one, because she was about the wackiest whack job he’d ever encountered.

“Two times four is a lie, two times four is a lie, two times four is a lie, two times four is a lie, two times four is a lie . . .”

After a moment, she finally began to calm down, the words gradually dying on her lips.

Blackburn caught his breath, then turned to find Tolan on the floor, his back against the wall, looking about as shaken as a man can get.

Which surprised him. Until this moment, Tolan had come off as a true professional, a guy in control of himself and his patients. Which was pretty much a miracle when you considered what Tolan had been through over the last year. The guy was a rock.

But there was something now that didn’t quite fit. Something more to Tolan’s demeanor than the sudden surprise of a patient going ape shit. His eyes registered a shock that was far deeper than the situation warranted, as if he had just seen or witnessed an event that Blackburn wasn’t privy to.

The image of the old homeless guy came into Blackburn’s head. He, too, had had that look when he saw the bitch. Not quite as severe as Tolan’s, but he
had
backed away from her with what, at the time, had seemed to be an unwarranted expression of surprise and fear.

Blackburn had just assumed the old guy was off his rocker—so many of the homeless were—but it now appeared that this woman, whoever she was, had some hidden ability to render men powerless. Something in her look or her demeanor or her scent, something Blackburn was unable to see or feel or smell, made them vulnerable to an attack. She was an insect, stinging her victims into submission before she devoured them.

“We okay in here?” the guard asked Cassie.

She nodded and he headed back out the door.

Glancing down at the smear of blood on the back of his hand, Blackburn watched as Cassie used a tissue to swab Psycho Bitch’s face and nose. He didn’t think he’d broken anything, but she was certainly a mess.

And she was no longer fighting. Just stared at the ceiling as if none of this had happened, looking for all the world like a corpse waiting for the embalmer.

Blackburn wondered if she was too far gone to help him. She was about as cracked as you can get, and no amount of spit and bailing wire would put her back together again. And judging by Tolan’s demeanor, he wasn’t in any shape to help out.

Blackburn held out a hand to him. “You all right, Doc?”

Tolan ignored the offer. “Her face . . .” he said.

He still looked dazed.

Blackburn frowned, remembering something similar coming out of the old homeless guy’s mouth. Looking over at the bitch again, he realized he’d never seen her without blood all over her face.

“Yeah, I guess I banged her up pretty good.”

“No,” Tolan said, “that’s not what I mean. She . . . she looks just like . . .”

Then he paused, letting the words trail off as he dragged himself to his feet. His gaze had fallen on Psycho Bitch, his eyes abruptly coming into focus as the shock that had been clouding them for the last few moments seemed to vanish in an instant. Now they showed relief.

“Doc?”

Tolan shook his head. “Nothing. It’s nothing,” he said. “I . . . I don’t know what happened. She just took me by surprise.”

Sensing there was a lot more to it than that, Blackburn was about to respond when his cell phone bleeped. He took it from his coat pocket, checked the screen.

Mats Hansen.

He clicked it on. “I’m kinda in the middle of something here.”

“So am I,” Mats said. “And you’re gonna want to see this.”

“What’ve you got?”

“Not over a cell. You never know who’s listening.”

“Oh, for crissakes,” Blackburn said. “Give.”

“No way. This is too hot. This case just took a major left turn. So get your ass over to the lab ASAP.”

Then the line went dead.

Mats had always been something of a drama queen, but this was ridiculous.

Blackburn looked at Tolan, who seemed to have almost fully recovered now and was crossing to the bed. When he got there, he stared down at Psycho Bitch with only a trace of hesitation. Whatever had spooked him was gone.

“So what’s the prognosis, Doc? Any chance you’ll get her to open up?”

Tolan kept staring at her, as if he wasn’t quite sure he trusted his eyes. “I don’t have an answer for you,” he said. “Or a timetable, for that matter.” Then he turned to Blackburn. “But one thing I do know: You owe my colleague an apology.”

Blackburn frowned. “How so?”

Tolan nodded to Psycho Bitch’s forearms, which were fully displayed under the fluorescent light. “No needle marks.”

Blackburn stared at them for a long moment.

In all the excitement, he hadn’t noticed them until now. And Tolan was right. There were a few bruises there but nothing else.

What the fuck?

He could’ve sworn those were junkie arms he’d seen in that passageway. Would’ve bet a year’s salary on it.

Maybe
he
was the one who was high.

“I’ve got somewhere to be,” he said, then gestured to Cassie and crossed to the door. She moved to the keypad mounted next to it and punched in a brief code.

The door beeped and clicked open.

“If anything changes,” Blackburn told Tolan, “be sure to give me a call.”

He looked at Psycho Bitch’s arms again, wondering how the hell he could’ve been so wrong, the theme to
The Twilight Zone
rolling through his head as he opened the door and left.

11

T
HE COUNTY MORGUE
was located in the Government Center just off Victoria Avenue. Blackburn got there in about twenty minutes and found Mats waiting for him in one of the autopsy rooms, the body of Carl Janovic laid out on a stainless-steel table.

It looked like Mats had been busy. The body had been stripped down and prepped for cutting, which was a surprise. The coroner’s office rarely moved this quickly. For some reason Janovic’s autopsy had been bumped to the top of the list.

What was going on here?

“Any luck with the Jane Doe?” Mats asked.

Blackburn sighed. “She’s about half a step away from being a lost cause.”

“Where’d you take her? County?”

Blackburn shook his head. “Place is a zoo. I need results, not a Band-Aid.”

“Don’t tell me you took her to Baycliff?” There was a trace of alarm in his voice.

“Yeah,” Blackburn said. “Is that a problem?”

Mats hooked a finger, gesturing for Blackburn to take a closer look at the body. “You tell me.”

Putting gloved fingers to Janovic’s left ear, he pinched the lobe and gently pulled on it. The ear flopped back, connected to the head by only a strip of bloody tissue.

Blackburn felt the Snickers bar he’d scarfed down on the way over start to back up a bit.

“I didn’t notice this until I got the wig off,” Mats said. “Looks like our perp tried to sever the ear. My guess is he was interrupted in the process. Possibly by your Jane Doe.”

Blackburn knew what this meant, but wanted it confirmed. “What are you telling me?”

“Exactly what you think,” Mats said. “It’s Vincent. He’s back.”

The Snickers bar rolled over a couple of times, then settled with a thud.

Vincent.

Holy Jesus.

The man they called Vincent was a serial perp who had taken the department and the city on a seven-month wild ride. Blackburn had only been peripherally involved in the case, but he’d felt the burn, just like everyone else.

Over the course of those seven months, eight Bayside County residents had been found obscenely butchered, their corpses carved up and rearranged as if the killer was using their body parts as some sort of artistic statement.

Each victim’s left ear had been sliced off, nowhere to be found.

When that little detail was leaked to the press, the killer was immediately dubbed Van Gogh, and members of the task force assigned to the case soon started calling him Vincent.

The search for the killer had been extensive, had nearly exhausted the resources of the department, and had caused the early retirement of the task force leader, a borderline alcoholic who had been in over his head from the start.

And they got nothing.

No leads. No suspects. No DNA. No arrest.

The FBI was consulted, but hadn’t worked up more than a generic unsub profile that was virtually useless to the investigation.

Then, shortly after he’d taken number eight, Vincent fell off the map and hadn’t been heard from since. Several weeks passed, then a year, and as frustrating as the case was, the collective sigh of relief was audible at least three counties over. Wherever he’d gone, they all hoped to hell he wouldn’t come back.

Wishful thinking, from the looks of it.

Blackburn stared at the nearly severed ear. If Mats was right, if Vincent was indeed back, then taking a possible witness to Tolan had been a fairly large mistake.

Tolan’s wife had been Vincent’s eighth victim. 

“Tell me you’re kidding,” Blackburn said. “Tell me you’re just having a little fun at my expense.”

“Believe me, I wish I could.”

“You sure this isn’t some kind of half-assed copycat?”

“I’m sure,” Mats said.

Putting the ear back in place, he shifted a hand to Janovic’s mouth and grabbed hold of his lower lip.

In every homicide, particularly those involving serial murders, investigators try to keep at least one detail out of the press. That detail helps weed out the chaff and send the false confessors packing. The theory being that only the killer would know about it.

In the Van Gogh murders, the killer had left behind a very distinctive calling card that only a select few in the department were aware of. Even Blackburn had been in the dark until recently.

He watched as Mats pulled the lip downward, exposing the pink flesh inside. There was a tiny mark burned into it with what the medical examiners had determined was a battery-powered cauterizing tool. The kind fishermen use.

Anyone who got e-mail or surfed the Net had seen the mark a thousand times:

;) 

Blackburn stared at it.

“Ohhh, fuck,” he said. “The shit has just officially hit the fan.”

12

T
OLAN WASN’T SURE
what had happened in seclusion room three, but he knew it wasn’t something he could easily dismiss.

After leaving Cassie to keep an eye on Jane Doe Number 314, he found Lisa at the nurses’ station, signing in for her shift and getting ready for the morning handover. She was wearing her blue scrubs and carrying what looked like a half gallon of coffee in a Starbucks cup. She took one look at him and said, “What’s wrong?”