Whisper in the Dark (A Thriller)

by Robert Gregory Browne

  “Jesus,” Blackburn muttered.

  Tolan shot him a look, then returned his attention to Fremont. The kid had been in and out of jailhouses and psych wards since he was eleven years old, presenting the typical behavior associated with the disorder: truancy, stealing, vandalism, assault, and more fights than he was able or willing to remember.

  The cops, who dealt with him on a regular basis, had brought him here two days earlier for his umpteenth psych evaluation after he’d beaten a drug dealer almost senseless and urinated on his head. Just another day for Bobby.

  A sudden thought occurred to Tolan.

  This morning’s phone call.

  I just wanted to wish you a happy anniversary before I slit your throat.

  Could the caller have been Bobby? He certainly had the necessary temperament. But how could he have gotten hold of a phone? Or, for that matter, Tolan’s cell phone number?

  Making a mental note to check with staff, Tolan said, “Why don’t we talk about this in session?”

  Fremont slapped a palm against the glass. “Fuck session. Just let me out of this freak factory.”

  “It’s either here or jail, Bobby. You know that.”

  “Fuck you,” Fremont said. “You’re a dead man. You hear me? Don’t you ever turn your back on me.” He kicked the door, then disappeared from sight.

  Tolan flicked off the intercom and sighed. Aggressive behavior had kept Fremont from maintaining a job or any significant social relationships for the better part of his life. After treating him on and off for the last several months, Tolan was convinced that, despite claims to the contrary, Bobby was purposely looking for ways to get himself back inside.

  He suspected it was loneliness more than anything else that brought him here. The only staff member Fremont had developed a decent relationship with was Lisa, and Tolan wouldn’t be surprised to discover that she was part of the allure.

  “And I thought I had the world’s shittiest job,” Blackburn said.

  Tolan turned. “Do me a favor and keep your comments to yourself. Especially when I’m talking to a patient.”

  “Sorry, Doc.”

  “You keep saying that.”

  “I’ve got a couple of exes don’t think I say it enough.”

  “I can only imagine.”

  CASSIE GERRITT, a third-year med school student who moonlighted as an orderly, was stationed inside the observation booth. She was a ruddy-faced kid with an easy, Southern smile, who just happened to be built like a fullback—a physical trait that often came in handy when dealing with some of their more uncooperative patients.

  She was seated at a computer, her concentration centered on the glowing monitor, when Tolan and Blackburn stepped into the booth.

  She looked up in surprise. “Dr. Tolan. You’re up awfully early.”

  “Nothing like a little Circadian Rhythm Disorder to keep things interesting,” he said. “This is Frank Blackburn.”

  As Cassie and Blackburn exchanged hellos and shook hands, Tolan looked through the one-way mirror into the small room beyond, which, like everything else in the building, was showing its age.

  A single fluorescent fixture above the bed did little to illuminate pale green walls that had been scarred by several decades of graffiti. Each year a new coat of paint was slapped on, only to be followed by another layer of desperate and often incoherent messages scratched into the surface by fingernail, pencil, or anything else a patient could manage to get his hands on.

  Some of them were written in blood.

  Jane Doe Number 314 lay in the fetal position, her back to the glass, her hair still damp from the shower the nursing staff had given her. Her blanket lay at her feet and she was hugging herself, the thin white hospital smock doing little to warm her.

  Tolan turned to Cassie. “She’s shivering. You might want to turn up the heat in there.” One of the few good things the unit had been blessed with was climate-controlled rooms. In theory, at least.

  “She isn’t reacting to the cold,” Cassie said. “It’s already set at seventy-eight degrees.”

  “Oh?”

  “Ever since we put her in there, she’s been shivering and twitching like she’s got bugs in her veins. You ask me, we’re looking at an acute case of RLS.” Like most med school students, Cassie was always anxious to demonstrate her diagnostic skills, but her accuracy rate left something to be desired.

  Blackburn said, “That’s that restless leg thing, right?”

  She nodded. “It’s a neurologic movement disorder. Affects about ten percent of the population.”

  “I think my first wife had it. Drove me nuts with all her kicking and twitching in the middle of the night. I always told her she was possessed by the Devil. Which pretty much turned out to be true.”

  They both looked at him and Blackburn shrugged. “Just making conversation.”

  Tolan returned his gaze to Jane Doe. She was much smaller than he had expected.

  Although psychotic rage—if that indeed was what she had experienced—often gave its victims strength beyond their size, the way Blackburn had described her, Tolan had envisioned another Cassie.

  An Amazon, not a pixie.

  He guessed she was about 5’ 1”, with a weight count just over 100 lbs.

  With the exception of Lisa and, of course, Cassie, it seemed to Tolan that he had always been surrounded by an inordinate amount of petite women: his mother and two sisters, several of the nurses on staff—and Abby, who had often shopped in the junior section of Macy’s because the clothes fit her better.

  At 6’ 2”, he had towered over her. To some, their pairing had seemed incongruous, like an old vaudevillian comedy team. But he had loved the compactness of her body, the small, soft curves, and the way it fit so naturally with his.

  Adjusting to Lisa’s taller, more muscular frame had taken time. And sometimes, like this morning, when they made love, he found himself yearning for, even imagining, those small, soft curves. Then he’d open his eyes, see Lisa staring up at him, and the feeling of finality, the sense of loss that had plagued him for so long, was as devastating as a blow to the chest.

  Tolan suddenly realized that Cassie was saying something. A jumble of words flitted by without fully registering on the radar.

  “Sorry,” he said. “What was that?”

  “I hear she’s quite a handful. You want me to go in there with you?”

  Tolan shook his head. “I’ll manage. But stay alert.” He turned to Blackburn. “And don’t expect much. It may take awhile to get her to trust me.”

  “Faith, Doc, that’s what I’ve got. I know you won’t let me down.”

  Tolan had no response to that.

  9

  SHE DIDN’T STIR when he entered the room. Showed no indication that she even knew he was there. She had stopped shivering, but her back still faced him, her body pulled into that tight fetal ball.

  He grabbed a chair from the corner and sat next to her. As he got in close, staring at her frail, hunched shoulders, an odd feeling washed over him. A feeling of . . . how could he describe it?

  Of familiarity.

  Which, of course, made no sense. As far as he knew, he’d never seen this woman before in his life. Yet the feeling persisted, like an old memory that weighs on the mind but refuses to surface.

  Tolan sat there a moment, watching her, noting the gentle rise and fall of her back as she breathed, wondering what it was that brought that feeling on.

  Then, doing his best to push it aside, he said softly, “Good morning.”

  The shoulders stiffened. He’d startled her. Not what he’d wanted to do, but he pressed on. “Easy now, I just want to talk.” He paused. “I’m Dr. Tolan. You think you could tell me your name?”

  A sound rose from her small figure, an animal-like whimper. Frightened. In pain. But it wasn’t in response to his question. It was an involuntary utterance, as if she were struggling with a nightmare. But he was sure she was wide awake.

  She started
shivering again, reminding him, oddly enough, of an old dog he’d once had. A black Akita that suffered from Cognitive Dysfunction Syndrome. Canine Alzheimer’s. The dog would sometimes shiver uncontrollably, her head low, tail tucked between her legs, as if she’d forgotten who or where she was and couldn’t find her way home.

  Watching Jane Doe shiver, he remembered Blackburn’s insistence that she was a junkie, and wondered if he might be right. Her erratic behavior, coupled with the body spasms, might indicate the beginning stages of withdrawal.

  Or maybe, as Simm had suggested, her symptoms were trauma-induced. Severe trauma could produce a number of unpredictable psychological and physical reactions, and this woman had possibly seen or even participated in a brutal murder.

  He leaned in closer. “If you can’t or don’t want to tell me your name,” he said, “what do I call you?”

  Another whimper. No telling what it meant.

  “All right,” Tolan said. “No names for now. Let’s try something different.”

  Despite his faith in Simm’s examination, he wanted to check her arms for needle marks, hoping he’d be able to avoid too severe a reaction. He thought about calling Cassie into the room, but decided against it. He sensed no threat from this woman. Not even a hint.

  “Dr. Simm did a wonderful job of making sure you’re physically healthy, but there are still a couple things I need to check. So I’m going to have to touch you. Do you understand?”

  No sound at all this time.

  She was still hugging herself, elbows tucked inward. He waited a moment, then carefully reached over and took hold of her exposed right hand, which gripped her left shoulder so tightly the knuckles were white.

  The touch seemed to set off a spark and she jerked away from him, hugging herself even tighter.

  Tolan gave her a moment and she relaxed a bit.

  “Let’s try one more time,” he said. “I promise I won’t hurt you.”

  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

  BLACKBURN 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 some
thing 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.”