Whispers

by Lisa Jackson

  “Help me! Help! HELP! she cried, shrieking and clawing wildly at the top of the coffin. She tore at the smooth satin lining, her fingernails breaking, her skin ripping, sharp pain searing up the back of her hands. The stench was overwhelming, the air so cold and thin . . . it had to be a dream . . . had to. And yet the pain in her fingertips, the blood flowing under her nails convinced her that she was living her own worst fear, a nightmare so evil she could barely imagine it.

  Horror strangled her and she thought she might pass out. Screaming at the top of her lungs, she kicked and scratched, willing someone, anyone to help her out of this tomb of death.

  But the darkness remained. The squishy body beneath her didn’t move and above her own screams she thought she heard the thud of dirt and stones being piled on top of this hideous coffin. “No! No!” she pounded, pleading and crying. “Let me out! Please, please!”

  Who would do this to her?

  Why . . . oh, God why . . . who had she wronged so horribly? There were many, she realized as panic squeezed through her. Who would hate her enough to torture her this way? Who would have cause? She was fading, gasping. Her mind spun crazily to thoughts of the men in her life and to one in particular, one who probably didn’t remember her name, one she had wronged fiercely.

  Pierce Reed. Detective with the Savannah Police Department.

  No . . . Reed wouldn’t do this to her, didn’t really know how deeply their lives were entwined, didn’t care.

  It was another man, some monster who had trapped her here.

  She began to shiver and weep.

  “Let me out! Let me out,” she screamed, sobbing, her throat raw, her skin crawling with the thought of the decomposing human that was her bed. “Please, please, let me out of here . . . I’ll do anything . . . anything, oh, please, don’t do this . . .” but she didn’t even know to whom she was begging and the shovels of dirt and pebbles kept raining on the grave.

  She gasped, drawing in a ragged, burning breath of what was left of the air. Her lungs were on fire from lack of oxygen and she felt suddenly weak.

  Helpless.

  Doomed.

  She made one last vain attempt to claw her way out of her prison, but it was no use. The blackness crashed over her, crushing the fight from her, squeezing the life from her and her hands fell to her sides. This, then, was her tomb. Forever.

  Above the gruesome silence she thought she heard laughter. It sounded far away, but she knew it was meant for her to hear. He wanted her to know. To hear him before she drew her last breath.

  Whoever had done this to her was enjoying it.

  One

  “That son of a bitch is taking me back to court!” Morrisette blazed into Reed’s office and slapped some legal papers on the corner of his desk. “Can you believe it? Bart wants to reduce my child support by thirty percent!” Bart Yelkis was Sylvie Morrisette’s fourth and latest ex-husband and father of her two kids. For as long as Reed had been with the Savannah Police Department, Sylvie and Bart had been at odds over how she raised Priscilla and Toby. Sylvie was tough as dried leather and rarely kept her razor-sharp tongue in check. She smoked, drank, drove as if she was in the time trials for the Indy 500, swore like a sailor and dressed as if she was pushing twenty rather than thirty-five, but she was first and foremost a mother. Nothing could bristle her neck hairs faster than criticism of her kids.

  “I thought he was caught up in his payments.”

  “He was, but it was short-lived, believe me. I should have known. It was just too effin’ good to be true. Damn it all, why can’t the guy be a dad, huh?” She dropped her over-sized purse onto the floor and shot Reed a glance that convinced him right now all of the men in Morrisette’s life were suddenly considered big-time losers. Including him. Morrisette had a reputation for being tough, a woman hell-bent to do a man’s job, a prickly female cop whose tongue was razor sharp, her opinions unpopular, her patience with “good ol’ boys” nil, and her language as bald as any detective’s on the force. She wore snakeskin boots that were far from department issue, spiked platinum hair that looked as if Billy Idol had been her hairdresser, and an attitude that would make any young tough think twice about taking her on. Reed had suffered many a sympathetic glance from other cops who pitied him for luck in the partner draw. Not that he cared. In the short time he’d been back in Savannah, Reed had learned to respect Sylvie Morrisette, even if he did have to walk on eggshells upon occasion. This morning she was flush in the face and looked as if she could spit nails. “Can he do that—reduce the payments?” Reed had been opening his mail but, for the moment, set his letter opener on a desk that was a jungle of papers.

  “If he can find himself a wimp of a judge who’ll buy into his pathetic, poor, pitiful me act. So Bart lost his job, so what? He should get off his ass and get another one. Instead he thinks he’ll cut back on me and the kids.” She rolled her eyes and straightened her petite frame from the worn heels of her boots to the top of her spiked blond hair. Her west-Texas drawl was stronger than ever when she was on a tear and she was on a major one this morning. “Bastard. That’s what he is! A card-carrying, dyed-in-the wool, fucking bastard.” She stalked to the window and glowered outside to the gray Savannah winter. “Jesus, it’s not as if he pays us millions to begin with. And they’re his kids. His kids. The ones he always complains about not seeing enough!” She stomped a booted foot and swore under her breath. “I need a drink.”

  “It’s nine in the morning.”

  “Who cares?”

  Reed wasn’t too concerned. Morrisette was known to go into overdrive in the theatrics department, especially when her kids or one of her four ex-husbands was involved. “Can’t you fight him?” Reed drained a cup of tepid coffee, then crushed the paper cup and tossed it into an overflowing wastebasket.

  “Yeah, but it’ll cost. I’ll need a damned attorney.”

  “The town’s lousy with them.”

  “That’s the problem. Bart’s got a friend who owes him a favor—a lawyer friend. So he called in his marker and she filed a motion or whatever the hell it is. A woman. Can you believe it? Where’s the sisterhood, huh? That’s what I’d like to know. Isn’t there supposed to be some kind of woman-bond where ya don’t go trompin’ all over another woman’s child support?”

  Reed didn’t touch that one with a ten-foot pole. As far as he knew Morrisette wasn’t part of any sisterhood. She ran roughshod over men and women with equal vigor. He picked up his letter opener again and began slitting a plain white envelope addressed to him in care of the Savannah Police Department written in plain block letters. The return address seemed familiar, but he couldn’t place it.

  “So this is it,” Morrisette groused. “My kids’ future in the toilet because Bart built this woman a fence for her dogs a few years back and whamo—she goes after my paltry support check.” Morrisette’s eyes slitted. “There oughta be a law, ya know. Don’t people in the legal profession, and I use the term loosely, have better things to do than file stupid lawsuits to screw little kids out of a piece of their father’s paycheck?” She raked her fingers through her already unruly hair before storming back to the desk and scooping up her legal papers. Flopping into a side chair she added, “I guess I’ll be putting in for overtime and lots of it.”

  “You’ll get through this.”

  “Screw you,” she spat. “The last thing I expected from you, Reed, is platitudes, okay, so stuff ’em.”

  He swallowed a smile and slit the envelope. “Whatever you say.”

  “Yeah, right.” But she seemed to cool off a bit.

  “Why don’t you sue Bart for more money? Turn the tables on him.”

  “Don’t think I haven’t considered it, but it’s the old adage of tryin’ to get blood out of a damned turnip.”

  Reed glanced up at her and grinned. “You might not get anything but the squeezing might be fun.”

  “Let’s not talk about it.”

  “You brought it up,” he reminded her as he extr
acted a single sheet of white paper from the envelope.

  “Don’t remind me. My luck with men.” She sighed through her nose. “If I were smart I’d become a nun.”

  “Oh, yeah, that would work,” Reed mocked. He unfolded the single page. There was nothing on the paper save one line written in the same neat block letters that had been used in the envelope’s address.

  THE CLOCK IS TICKING AND

  THERE ISN’T MUCH TIME

  “What the hell is this?” Reed muttered.

  Morrisette was on her feet in an instant. She rounded the desk and studied the simple note.

  “A prank?”

  “Maybe,” he muttered.

  “A warning?”

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know. You think maybe a bomb?” She frowned. “I don’t like the mention of ticking.” She studied the block lettering, then looked at the envelope. “Mailed directly to you.” Her eyes narrowed on the postmark. “From here in Savannah. And the return address is downtown on Abercorn . . . Jesus, just around the corner.”

  “Colonial Cemetery,” Reed said.

  “The cemetery. Who would send a letter from there?”

  “Another crackpot. This letter’s a crank,” he said, frowning. “Someone who read about the Montgomery case and wants to jerk my chain.” Since last summer when he’d been on the trail of a killer who had a vendetta against the Montgomery family, Reed had gotten a lot of press. Too much of the kind of publicity he abhorred. Credited with cracking the case, Pierce Reed was suddenly looked upon as a hero and sought after as an expert by other departments, by reporters who were still reliving the case, even by the attorney general in Atlanta. His reputation had been exaggerated and his personal life picked and prodded ever since capturing Atropos, a woman determined to decimate one of Savannah’s wealthiest and most infamous families. In the past six months, he’d been quoted, photographed, and interviewed more times than he wanted to think about. He’d never liked the limelight, had always been an intensely private man. He had a few demons of his own, secrets he’d rather keep hidden, but hell, who didn’t. Reed would have preferred to go on about his job without the inconvenience of fame. He hated all the attention, especially from those reporters who seemed fascinated with his past, who had taken it upon themselves to find out every little piece of information about him and to tell the world what made detective Pierce Reed tick. As if they had any idea. He picked up the letter and envelope with a handkerchief, then found a plastic bag in his desk drawer. Carefully he slipped envelope and note into the bag. “I think it’s nothing but you never know. Better keep it in case it ends up being evidence.”

  “Evidence of what? That there’s another looney on the loose?”

  “There’s always another looney on the loose. I’ll keep it just in case and then send out an APB over the local system and through NCIC, just in case any other department in the country has gotten anything like it.” He turned to his computer, accessed the National Crime Information Center run by the FBI. “Maybe we’ll get lucky,” he said to Morrisette. “In the meantime I think I’ll take a break and walk over to the cemetery.”

  “You think you’ll find something?”

  “Nah. Not really. But you never know.” He stuffed his arms through the sleeves of his jacket. “As I said, it’s probably just a crank. Someone getting his jollies by making a vague threat against the department.”

  “Not the department. This particular crazy has zeroed in on you.” Sylvie was adjusting her shoulder holster. “I’m coming with you.”

  He didn’t argue. It would have been useless. Sylvie was the kind of cop who followed her instincts and bent the rules; the kind of hardheaded woman who couldn’t be talked out of a decision once she’d made it. He slid the note into a file drawer, then headed out a side door to the parking lot where a cold wind slapped him in the face. The usually mild weather had a bite to it, a damp chill that reminded him of his years in San Francisco. He’d lived on the West Coast over a decade, having moved there from Savannah over a dozen years ago.

  They walked outside through a side door and the December wind slapped Reed hard on the face. The weather, usually warm in December had a definite bite to it, the product of a cold snap that was roaring down the east coast and threatening crops as far south as Florida. Morrisette, fighting the stiff breeze, managed to light a cigarette as they walked the few blocks past Columbia Square. Colonial Cemetery, Savannah’s oldest, was the final resting place to over seven hundred victims of the nineteenth-century yellow fever epidemic and was the site of far too many duels in centuries past. General Sherman used this plot of land in the middle of Savannah as a campground during the Civil War, or, as many of the locals referred to it, the War of Northern Aggression. Shade trees, now barren of leaves, seemed to shiver in the wind and dry leaves skated down the pathways that cut through the ancient gravestones and historic markers where so many people believed demons resided.

  It was all bunk as far as Reed was concerned. And this morning, this burial place seemed as much a park as graveyard even though dark, thick-bellied clouds scudded overhead.

  Only a few pedestrians wandered through the tombstones and nothing about them looked suspicious, they seemed nothing out of the ordinary. An elderly couple held gloved hands as they read the markers, three teenagers who probably should have been in school smoked and clustered together as they whispered among themselves and a middle-aged woman bundled in ski cap, parka, and wool gloves was walking a scrap of a dog wearing a natty little sweater and pulling on its leash as it tried to sniff every old tombstone. No one seemed to be lurking and watching, no graves appeared disturbed, no cars with tinted windows rolled slowly past.

  “Don’t we have better things to do?” Sylvie asked, struggling to keep her cigarette lit. She drew hard on the filter tip.

  “You’d think.” Still Reed scanned the dried grass and weathered grave markers. He thought of the cases that he was working on. One was domestic violence, pure and simple. A wife of twenty years finally had decided enough was enough and before suffering another black eye or cracked rib had shot her husband point-blank while he slept. Her attorney was crying self-defense and it was up to Reed to prove otherwise—which wasn’t that hard, but didn’t make him feel good. Another case involved a murder-suicide pact between lovers, in this case a couple of gay boys, one seventeen, the other almost twenty. The triggerman, the younger of the two, was still hanging onto life in the hospital. If and when he got off the ventilator and came to, he’d find himself looking at a murder charge. The third recent homicide case wasn’t as defined. A body pulled out of the Savannah River two days before. No ID and not much left of her. Just another Jane Doe. No one seemed to be looking for her, no missing persons report was on file for a black woman whom, the ME thought, was around thirty years old, had type O positive blood, extensive dental work, and had borne at least one child.

  Yeah, he did have better things to do. But as his gaze swept the cemetery that was the final resting place of Savannahians who died two hundred and fifty years ago, a graveyard where it was rumored ghosts resided, he had the unnerving sensation that the crank letter wasn’t the last he’d hear from its author.

  THE CLOCK IS TICKING

  AND THERE ISN’T MUCH TIME.

  What the hell did that mean?

  No doubt, he’d soon find out.

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  Copyright © 1996 by Susan Crose, copyright © 2003 by Susan Lisa Jackson

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  ISBN: 978-1-4201-5158-9