Whispers of a Killer

by Jen Haeger

  “Stop!” I reach the fence and snatch at Trentwood’s ankle, but my fingers only brush his sock. “Dammit!”

  I’m already running along the fence again looking for an opening, when I hear the barking and snarling of a large dog and a man screaming for help. Shit. I reach the corner of the fence line, overturn a garbage can and clamber on it to get over top of the fence. On the other side, Trentwood is on the ground, one bloody pant leg in the jaws of a Rottweiler, his WHISP writhing next to him.

  I bang on the fence to get the dog’s attention. “Hey! Hey Doggie!”

  The dog doesn’t respond, but Trentwood looks up at me. “Shoot it!”

  “I’m not going to shoot a dog for protecting its own yard, asshole.” Balancing myself, I radio Crone. “It’s me. Suspect is one street behind and one house over, a green two story with lighter green trim. We may need animal control.”

  ***

  Turns out we don’t need animal control. The owner, a recent immigrant from Cambodia, was taking a nap, and once roused by Crone pounding on her door, she is able to call off the dog, Bolla, whilst we corralled and handcuffed a traumatized Trentwood. After paramedics bandage his leg and we double check the dog’s rabies vaccination papers, the uniform, Officer Saunders, transports Trentwood back to the precinct for us. Getting there just a few minutes before them, I have time to map out an interrogation strategy with Crone. Not long after, he and I sit facing Trentwood in the interrogation room.

  Trentwood is twitchy and fidgeting, and it’s hard not to get distracted by his WHISP as it shimmies and ripples behind him. Casually, Crone opens Trentwood’s file and begins paging through it.

  “Hooboy, Stan, I can see why you tried to bolt. You’ve got quite the record here. Let’s see, we’ve got some B and E’s, some assaults, a grand theft auto, and now there’s this matter with your unpaid parking tickets.”

  Stan’s eyebrows knit. “Wait. This is about my parking tickets? You chased me, threatened to shoot me, and got me mauled by a rockwilder, for some fucking parking tickets? What’s wrong with you people?”

  “What’s wrong with us? What’s wrong with you, Stan? Why can’t you seem to obey the law for five minutes?”

  Shaking his head, Stan leans back in his chair. “You’re all crazy. And I do what I gotta do to get by.”

  “Interesting, is there anything you had to do the other night you want to tell us about?”

  “Nope. I’ve seen a bunch of Law and Order and I’m just gonna sit here and wait for my court-appointed lawyer.” Trentwood sets his jaw and leans back in his chair.

  That’s my cue. “Actually, I noticed something very interesting about one of those parking tickets.”

  Crone’s eyebrows lift as his eyes widen. “Oh, Detective Harbinger, and what was that?”

  “One of them was within four blocks of Alice Petrie’s apartment the night of her murder.”

  “You don’t say.”

  I nod. “Since Stan dated the victim, I bet it’s enough to get a warrant for his house.”

  “Wait, wait, wait, you don’t think I had something to do with Alice’s…with what happened to Alice?”

  Crone ticks points off his fingers as he says, “You’re a scumbag, she broke it off with you, you decided to take a page out of your good buddy Rachel Chester’s notebook and teach her a lesson. Motive, opportunity, it’s all there.”

  Stan’s eyes tear up and he wipes at them with the backs of his cuffed hands. “That’s just fucked up. I loved that girl. I would never have hurt her, and I don’t even know Rachel Chester.”

  Leaning forward, I smack a hand down on the table. “Cut the sad boyfriend act, Stan, you both went to the same WHISP support group.”

  “What? No we didn’t.”

  I produce a photocopy of a sign-in sheet from the group and slide it toward him. Stan’s name is four names down from Chester’s. He stares at it with his mouth hanging open and then looks up and pushes the paper back at me.

  “That wasn’t me.”

  “Funny, looks like your name right there is black and white, four names down from Chester.” I lift the paper and hold it in front of Crone. ”Doesn’t it look like his name, Crone?”

  Crone scrutinizes the page and nods. “It really does.”

  Stan’s eyes dart back and forth between us. Sweating now, his breaths are shallow with panic. “No, I mean, yeah, that’s my name, but it ain’t me. It wasn’t me. I didn’t wanna go to some retarded meeting, but the judge said I had to, so I paid a buddy of mine to go for me. He also got a WHISP. It’s not like they check ID at a group therapy session, so all he had to do was sign my name.”

  “That’s a pretty convenient story, Stan.”

  “It’s true, you can even ask him. His name’s Benny, Benny J. I paid him twenty dollars. Check it. Or better yet, do one of those handwriting thingy things y’all do. It ain’t gonna match.”

  Peeking over at Crone, I can tell he’s pissed. If Stan’s story is true, then we’ve got no connection from Stan to Chester. We’ve got nothing.

  “Oh, don’t worry, we’ll check.”

  Chapter Ten

  WHISP21: U get spit on yet?

  WhIsP447: No, but had 2 chnge #, 2 many dth thrts

  WHISP21: Wlcme 2 the club

  Twitter posts, December 2030

  The next day I’m trying not to throw things because Trentwood’s alibi Benny J. checked out.

  “Detective Harbinger?”

  I glance up at a perky blonde officer and have an irrational desire to smack the grin off her face. “Hmmm.”

  “You have a phone call on line two.”

  “Thank you.”

  She flounces away and my mood isn’t improved. Expecting a cranky Ben wondering when I’m going to be home for dinner, I lift the receiver with two fingers and almost just say hello before I catch myself. “Detective Harbinger.”

  There’s silence for a few seconds, then a wavering voice pushes through the line. “Yeah, hi, um, you ah, were the detective on the Chester case.”

  The caller doesn’t sound like someone from the press. “Yes, one of them. Who, may I ask, is calling?”

  “Oh, I thought I recognized you. I, ah, I’d thought you’d retired, but then I saw you at the station after…”

  “I’ve been brought back into the NYPD to consult for a short time. What can I do for you?”

  The caller clears their throat. “Um, I, ah, saw something…the other night, when my neighbor, Alice Petrie, was…killed.”

  The mysterious caller has my full attention now. Sounds like a male, older, forties maybe? I check the phone for recording and tapping capabilities, nada. “I’m sorry, what was your name again, sir?”

  “Oh, I, ah, prefer not to…it’s just…what I saw was, um, odd, and I, ah, don’t want you to think I’m some kind of crack pot or anything…but um, you can call me, ah, Mike.”

  “Okay, Mike, what did you see?”

  His sigh whistles through the receiver. “I saw a WHISP.”

  This is huge. If the killer has a WHISP, that narrows down the pool of suspects considerably. “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “So, you saw a person with a WHISP at your neighbor’s, on the night she was killed. What did they look like?”

  “Ah…no…ah…you don’t understand. It wasn’t a person with a WHISP, it was just a WHISP all by itself. I know it sounds crazy. That’s why I didn’t come forward before. But I had to tell somebody, and then I saw you and then people say that you have a thing about WHISPs so then I thought if anyone would believe me, it would be you.”

  Goddamn that reporter. During the trial, one snot-nosed reporter got wind of my therapy, snooped around for gossip and somehow found out about my aversion to WHISPs. She’d written a scathing article about society’s bias against people with WHISPs, how they were the new oppressed minority…and mentioned me being the lead detective on Chester’s case. Now everybody and their brother’s son’s soccer coach knew I didn’t
like WHISPs.

  “Okay, Mike, just slow down. Start from the beginning. What time did you see something?”

  “It was around three in the morning and I got up to go to the bathroom, and I just happened to look out the hallway window, I don’t know why, but then I saw this like flash in Alice’s window and then I saw the WHISP, all by itself. I know it was alone because the window’s pretty big and it walked in front of the window but no one was walking in front of it. Anyways, then I couldn’t see anything anymore, and I couldn’t remember if she had a WHISP, and then I thought maybe I was kinda still dreaming, ‘cause I ate some bad sushi and that’s why I was getting up in the first place. But then I saw the police cars later that morning and I knew something bad had happened to her…well, I didn’t know, know, I couldn’t know, but I had a feeling, and then I wanted to tell someone about the WHISP, but then I got scared and…”

  Probably the poor guy was just having severe food poisoning dehydration visions. WHISPs weren’t living things, they were like shadows, shadows made of magnetic waves and crap instead of light, but shadows nonetheless. They couldn’t walk around by themselves, let alone kill someone. Yet, just because the guy didn’t see a person through the window didn’t mean there wasn’t one, so the lead could still be good. It was just a matter of getting him talking and not spooking him.

  “What did it look like?”

  “What do you mean? It was a WHISP.”

  “I mean, was it tall or short? Male or female? Fat or thin? Did it have any distinctive characteristics, perhaps from the clothing of its person?”

  “Oh, I…uh…maybe it was more woman-shaped, not real tall. It wasn’t all that skinny…but not fat either…I can’t think of anything that stood out too much.”

  “Mike, are you sure that you don’t want to come down and give an official statement? Maybe work with a sketch artist? I promise we will take everything you say seriously.”

  “Nah…I…there isn’t really anything else. I’m not sure about exactly what it looked like because I was too freaked out by it being all by itself. At least it really looked… Anyways, I was too tired to notice much, but I know what I saw, and I just thought you needed to know.”

  “You might remember more details if you meet with one of our sketch artists. They’re really good at getting people to remember little details. Maybe she’ll even help you remember seeing a person, too.”

  “Wait, a person? You believe me, don’t you Detective? I mean, you know WHISPs are bad, right?”

  For a detective, I’m not the world’s greatest liar. I had a little rapport with this guy, but I wasn’t willing to go all in with him and find out he was with some damn WHISPs rights group and recording our whole conversation. It was about the last thing I needed right now.

  “I know you saw something, Mike, and I really would like for you to tell me more about it. Please, just come in and we can get everything straight.”

  “Oh my God, you don’t believe me. I thought you, of all people. I… Fuck…”

  The line clicked and went dead.

  Fuck.

  Chapter Eleven

  Status?

  Five anomalies observed and two collected for observation, one lost.

  Risk assessment?

  Unknown.

  Prediction of repetition of anomaly?

  100%

  Recommendation?

  Containment and study.

  Outcome of loss?

  Eradication of anomaly.

  Department of Energy WHISP report hacked and publicized by Anonymous

  “So, how reliable do you think this Mike lead is? He sounds like a whack job.” Crone picked through the doughnut box on the breakroom table and selected a big fat bear claw.

  “Well, obviously he didn’t see a WHISP walking around by itself, but if he saw a WHISP, then it means the killer has a WHISP. Narrows down our suspect pool.” I choose a French crueler.

  Swallowing a massive bite he barely chewed, Crone frowns. “Yeah, maybe, but he might not of seen anything but his own reflection for all we know, or the victim’s WHISP. She had one right?”

  I nod.

  “So, we could be barking up the wrong tree entirely going after WHISPers.”

  “Hey Detective.” A clean-cut officer with dark brown hair is making his way across the sea of desks toward the breakroom. His name is Gary Waller and he’s a damn fine cop. He’d been a first responder to my cases before and I trusted him to clear a building without contaminating a crime scene. There’s just one problem; his daughter has a WHISP and he thinks I’m a prejudiced asshole. We exchanged words at a WHISP sensitivity training two years ago. I have no idea what he’s doing here.

  “Hello, Officer Waller. I thought you’d switched to working graveyard.”

  Waller smiles but it’s a hard smile and devoid of friendliness. “I heard you were back to work in the precinct and I changed my mind.”

  I raise an eyebrow. Did he really just say that he switched shifts to check up on me?

  “Or, I just swapped shifts with a buddy this week.”

  Waller is blocking Crone in the breakroom, sizing him up. Though I’m sorely tempted not to introduce the two, I try to be the better person.

  “Officer Gary Waller, this is Detective Lieutenant Crone.” It occurs to me then that I’ve been working with Crone for two weeks now and don’t even know his first name. Huh.

  The two men trade grips with a fair amount of thinly veiled male posturing.

  “Officer.”

  “Lieutenant.”

  Clearing my throat, I attempt to cut through the tension. “So, what brings you up here?”

  “Thought I’d save you a trip.” Waller hands me a file.

  I flick it open and see that it’s the report on Alice Petrie’s cell phone with all recent activity for the past few weeks. I’d had some junior detectives cross-reference her records with the records of Chester’s victims and few known associates on the off chance we’d find a connection. The report hadn’t found a connection, but it did note the cell phone company had mentioned an irregularity with her cell phone signal the night of her murder.

  “Anything helpful?” Waller is peeking over the top of the folder. He’s too strait-laced to have read the report before handing it over to me, but it doesn’t mean he trusts how I’m handling the case.

  I close it. “Sorry, not really, but thanks for the effort and stopping by to say ‘howdy.’”

  “Well, sorry it didn’t break the case. I’m sure I’ll see you around.”

  Translation: I’m watching you.

  “Thanks for the report.”

  Waller gives one last long look, probably meant to intimidate me, then stalks off.

  “Are you gonna let me see that?” Crone, either oblivious or ignoring Waller, sets down his jelly doughnut.

  “Sure.” I hand the folder over to his sticky fingers. “They didn’t find any connections, but the cell company said something weird was going on with her phone the night of her murder. Something about a power surge and service interruption. That can be caused by being in close proximity to a WHISP right? I guess Mr. Mike really did see a WHISP.”

  Crone licks red jelly off his index finger as he reads through the report. “Guess so, but again, could’ve just been due to her own WHISP.” He gives me a sidelong glance. I’m sure he’s heard more than a few rumors racing around the precinct regarding me and WHISPs. “This isn’t going to turn into another WHISP issue media circus shitstorm, is it?”

  My jaw tightens. “I don’t control the media.”

  “Well, maybe try not to give them as much to sink their teeth into this time.”

  I turn on my heel and leave the breakroom before I punch him in the face.

  ***

  It isn’t clear to me just how tight I am stretched until we get a call later that day and I snap. There’d been another copycat murder. The shock I feel is ridiculous. I’d known this was coming, yet the news still crashes down on me and makes i
t hard to breathe. My insides are burning with anger and shame. I want to cry, I want to throw things, I want to run away and hide, I want to hit someone; what I don’t want to do is go to another Chester-inspired crime scene. Keep it together. Breathing in and then out slowly, counting in my head, I reconstruct my wall.

  I have to go to the crime scene. Seeing it with my own eyes is the only way I can be sure I don’t see something no one else does. I can’t leave the task to others and risk missing something. Plus, going to the crime scene is a form of psychological punishment, according to my therapist, for not catching the killer before they struck again. A punishment my gut is telling me is fair while my brain is telling me I did everything I could to prevent another murder. One of them is a liar.

  The victim is an eighty-six-year-old woman and before I even find out the victim’s name, I know something is different. Previous victims have all been under the age of fifty. Then we get an ID and I feel the room spinning around me. I have to grip the desk to keep steady. Pamela Sistern is a name I recognize. She was Rachel Chester’s landlady for a brief period several years ago. I interviewed her just before we arrested Chester. The interview is very clear in my mind because the woman had a WHISP. Though extremely rare for people over sixty to have them, Ms. Sistern was a technophile and even claimed to be one of the first people to have a WHISP. She hadn’t named hers like Chester had, but fondly referred to it as her “shadow.”

  Sistern wasn’t the kindly old grandmother type. She was hard and sharp as old peanut brittle, though softened when she spoke of Chester. She said in the interview, Rachel seemed lonely, but at least had “Ray” to keep her company, like her “shadow” did for her. When I asked her to comment on whether she thought Chester capable of murdering those six men, Sistern replied that every human on earth was capable of murder. The interview hadn’t really gone anywhere useful, but at one point I’d stepped out to take a breather and was chatting with the chief behind the two-way mirror of the interrogation room when Sistern did something creepy. Looking over her shoulder at her WHISP, she had spoken to it. Not just spoken to it, she’d had a whole whispered conversation with it. Just recalling the moment makes my spine stiffen and stomach knot.