by Jen Haeger
Chapter Fourteen
“They’re just creepy and unnatural. I’d never date a guy with a WHISP. Can you imagine it during sex? Ewww!”
The Return of Real Sex, MTV
I had to stick around Rikers for an hour filling out prison incidence reports. Then the real fun began. I had to face the wrath of the FBI. I’m at my borrowed desk for less than thirty seconds when I’m summoned by an officer I don’t recognize.
“Detective Harbinger, Agent Coppola would like to have a word with you in his office.”
“He has an office already?”
She nods. If she knows I’m about to get my ass handed to me, she’s a competent actress. “They set him up in records, in that room—”
“I know what you mean.”
No sense in putting it off. I get up and head toward records. I crack my neck and roll my shoulders as I walk. On the scale of men who intimidate me, Coppola by himself doesn’t rank; however, having the full force of the FBI behind him does make a difference. For a screw up this big they could toss me off the case. I do take a weird comfort knowing no matter how they punish me it won’t compare to how I will punish myself.
The looks start about halfway there. A few are of the sympathetic “we’ve all been there” variety, but most are sidelong glances and whispers. Bad news travels fast. When I reach the door to the odd side room of the records department, it’s closed. On the frosted glass is taped a sheet of paper with FBI letterhead and Agent Coppola’s name. I take in a deep, slow breath and let it out again, then knock.
“Enter.”
I open the door, step through and close it behind me. “You wanted to see me.”
“Sit.”
The desk they’ve set up for him has seen better days, but he doesn’t seem to mind the cramped room or banged up desk. I sit in the one folding chair in front of the desk. It’s even less comfortable then advertised and creaks as I perch on the edge. Coppola is typing on his laptop, completely focused on the screen in front of him. It may be he’s attempting to make me uncomfortable or it may just be he wants to finish what he’s working on. I can wait. I take the time to replay the interview from start to finish in my mind. Clearly, I should have taken it slower, maybe asked how she was doing. At the very least, I could’ve been less antagonistic about the mark on her eye.
But she’d only been wound up like that a few times before. I’d expected a reaction, but not so intense. She was pissed about the mark, no, not pissed, ashamed? No, Chester didn’t really possess shame. Embarrassed then. She’d been embarrassed about the mark. For her own protection she didn’t have any interaction with other inmates due to Ray. There were only three other inmates with WHISPs and all of them were in solitary confinement. So, if it wasn’t fighting with another inmate that got her the mark, it meant either it was a guard or she’d done it to herself. Because all interactions between guards and solitary confinement prisoners were now digitally recorded, and because she’d laughed her ass off at the suggestion, I doubted very much it was a guard, so that left her injuring herself. Since Chester wasn’t the type to injure herself on purpose, it only left her tripping and poking herself in the eye somehow. I would be embarrassed by something like that, but I doubt Chester would. Just another frustrating element that didn’t make any sense.
“Okay.” Coppola snaps his laptop shut. “What happened?”
“I pushed her too hard too fast. I didn’t think she’d snap. I was wrong.”
“No, take it from the beginning, from the moment she entered the room to the moment one of you left it.”
Surprise makes me stumble over my first few words, but then I get into a rhythm. Coppola interrupts only to ask clarifying questions. He’s not angry, he’s genuinely curious. I finish my description of the literal manhandling I received as guards escorted me out of the interview room. “I’m sorry I didn’t get more out of her.”
Coppola rubs the underside of his chin. “Tell me, Detective, do you have a PhD in criminal psychology?”
After such a massive screw-up, I can’t tell if he’s calling me stupid. “No, but in addition to my over ten years as a detective, I’ve undergone yearly criminal behavior and criminal psychology continuing education courses—”
Coppola raises a hand for me to stop talking. “I know you’re a detective lieutenant SDS, which means you’re more than just a competent detective. But it doesn’t make you a criminal psychologist. You got what you could. You chose a tack and went with it. Might’ve been the wrong tack, but you can’t know that. She might’ve given us even less if you’d gone at her soft.”
I’m not buying into everything he’s saying. Just because he’s letting me off the hook doesn’t mean I can let myself off, not yet, but I nod.
“Now, something’s going on in your head besides you thinking you messed this up. What is it?”
Maybe I should be shocked at his insight, but it doesn’t really phase me. I’m beyond exhausted and after letting down my “Chester” guard, I’m probably an open book. “Two things. First, I mentioned the mark and redness in her eye. It wasn’t some infection. It was an injury and she was sensitive about it.”
“You think the guards roughed her up?”
I shake my head. “Possible, but not likely.”
“Because of the prisoner monitoring systems at Rikers.”
“Right. So, if it wasn’t a guard, she didn’t have any other visitors, and she has no interaction with other inmates, where’d she get it?”
“I take it you don’t think she injured herself.”
“Not like her.”
Coppola shrugs. “Could’ve been an accident.”
“I get embarrassed over poking myself in the eye.”
“Psychopaths like Rachel Chester don’t.”
I nod. “Exactly.”
“Okay, what’s the second thing?”
I run a hand over my forehead and through my hair. “The last thing I asked her was how many disciples she had.”
“You said she didn’t answer you before the guard stunned her.”
“She didn’t…”
“But…”
“But I swear she was genuinely confused.”
Coppola scratches an eyebrow. “She might not know she has a cult following. They might really be acting on their own.”
“Except, at the first interview with Crone, when Alice Petrie’s murder hadn’t been publicized as a copycat murder, Chester knew what we were talking about. She knew there’d been a murder and it was the reason we were there to talk to her.”
He flips through some notes on his desk then examines a legal pad. “You said in your report of the first interview, Crone practically told her there had been a murder.”
“Okay, let’s say she didn’t know up until he told her. Why would she then seem confused when I asked her about people following in her footsteps today? If we told her there was one copycat, she shouldn’t be all that shocked there are more, right? Flattered maybe, but not totally confused.”
“So, what are you saying? Chester has no idea what’s going on with this copycat or cult or whatever?”
“What I think is something changed between the Alice Petrie murder and the latest two murders.”
Coppola pinches the bridge of his nose. “If she was in control of the other killers at one point then she must have information on them and must, at one time, have been in communication with them. Maybe that communication stopped?”
I’m feeling the tingles of a headache in my frontal lobe. “But that’s where this whole thing falls apart. We never found any evidence she wasn’t acting alone. No evidence to suggest she was communicating or coordinating with other people prior to or after her arrest. And like I said, high int but zero charisma.”
“High int?”
“Intelligence. It’s a reference to…a game my husband played in high school…never mind.”
“All right, maybe she doesn’t have charisma, but she’s smart and there’s one thing she does have w
hich might draw people to her.”
“What’s that?”
Coppola stares right into my eyes. “A WHISP.”
Chapter Fifteen
“What reason would the government have to give people WHISPs?”
“It’s just another phase of Big Brother. How long before that shadow starts zapping you when you commit a crime?”
CNBC Interview with Unidentified CAW Spokesperson
It’s only on Agent Coppola’s open threats to dismiss me from the case if I don’t, that I pack up and go home. To his credit, with the adrenaline rush from the interview gone, I’m all but asleep on my feet. When I arrive at the apartment, Ben is up off the couch in an instant.
“What happened?”
Ben can’t possibly know the interview went spectacularly south, so I play dumb. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, Rachel Chester was transferred into the prison infirmary earlier today. Riker’s isn’t releasing details, but rumor has it there was some kind of altercation.” He’s looking me over, possibly for proof that Chester attacked me.
High profile case like this; someone at Riker’s just made a hefty deposit into their leaking information, Swiss bank account. Goddamn press. “I’m fine.” I plunk down at the kitchen table.
Ben’s chewing his lower lip. I know he wants to know everything right now, but also doesn’t want to push me.
“I made spaghetti; do you want me to heat some up?”
At the word spaghetti, my stomach lurches to life and roars. “That’d be wonderful.”
As I devour the delectable, meaty pasta with just enough garlic, I tell Ben everything. I have to. If he hears details I left out from someone else or, God forbid, the press, he will be even more hurt and angry than he is now. He lets me get everything out before he says anything, and then he doesn’t say “I told you not to go alone” even though I know he’s thinking it.
“Lincoln called earlier.”
“Why? Is he okay?” I find myself on the receiving end of Ben’s “duh” look.
“No, of course, he isn’t. He’s worried about his mom. I told him you’d call him when you got home.”
My heartstrings twang. My baby boy, almost all grown up and in his sophomore year at NYU, prepared to follow in his father’s footsteps with a physics major. Things are strained between us. He’s mad at me for wanting to leave New York, and hurt Ben and I would move so far away from him before he graduated. Ben was willing to stay a few more years, but after the Chester case, I just needed to get away. My eyes sting when Ben hands me the phone. Standing, I dial Lincoln’s cell and walk toward the office. On the fourth ring, he answers.
“Hello?”
“Hey Lincoln, it’s Mom.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, honey. How are you?”
“You lied to me! You said you were consulting on a case. You didn’t tell me it was the Chester copycat case! Jesus, Mom!” Lincoln’s words are biting.
Of course, Ben told him the truth. “I couldn’t tell you. It was an active investigation and we were trying to keep it out of the press—”
“Don’t give me that! Do you really think that I’d go blabbing about it to someone? And don’t say that you were just trying to protect me. I’m really sick of you saying that.”
“I didn’t want you to worry, and you were already so mad at me about us moving, I didn’t want things between us to get worse.”
“Yeah, because they’re so much better now Dad told me you were going to interview Chester and then the next thing I know it’s all over the news that Chester’s in the infirmary after some altercation. They said everyone else was fine, but I thought…I thought she’d hurt you, Mom.”
“Okay. I’m sorry I wasn’t more open about what was going on. Now it’s all out in the open, I promise I’ll keep you in the loop. I’m doing my best, kiddo. I know it’s not great, but it’s all I can do right now.”
The silence stretches out long enough I think Lincoln might have hung up on me.
“I just wish you didn’t have to do this again. You know, it’s hard on Dad, too.”
A laugh born of bone weariness and frustration bubbles up in my throat, but I swallow it down. “I wish I didn’t have to either. I wish the world was a better place, that there weren’t people like Chester, but if wishes were horses…”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, beggars would ride.”
“I’m just trying to do my part. I’m trying to make the world safer, save lives.” The weight of my current failure at my job presses in on me.
“I know you are. I just wi— I just want you to remember Dad and I are here, and…and we need you, too. Don’t forget about us while you’re off crusading for justice.”
“I won’t. I love you.”
“I love you too, Mom.”
“Goodnight.”
Lincoln’s voice is strained, “Bye.”
Ben knocks softly on the door.
“Come in.”
He opens the door but doesn’t come in. “How’d it go?”
“Did you have to tell him I was going to interview Chester? All it did was make him worry. I could’ve told him afterwards.”
Ben looks like he might be a little sorry. “He called and said he’d heard about the Chester copycat murders and he specifically asked if it was the case you were consulting on. I wasn’t going to lie about it. He’s a smart kid.”
“But telling him about the interview?”
Crossing to me, Ben takes the phone and draws me into a hug. “Maybe I shouldn’t have told him, but I didn’t want to keep him in the dark. You can’t protect him from the world, Sylvy, he’s not a child anymore.”
“There’s just so much bad shit out there, especially now that…especially now.”
“I know.” He lets me go but kisses my forehead. “And we both agreed you had put in your time fighting it. We had a deal, you, Lincoln, and me. You take early retirement and we get away from the city. You can’t blame him for being mad you changed the deal.”
“Not changed it, just…revised it. And I don’t blame him for being pissed at me. I’m pissed at me for not being able to deal anymore, for leaving my son behind in New York, for this case dragging me back in. But it is what it is.”
Wrapping his arms around me again, Ben sighs. “I know. You know what it also is?” He scoops me up in his arms. “It’s time for you to get some sleep, detective lady.”
An emotionally wrung-out, punch drunk giggle escapes my lips. “Yeah, I know, you’re right. Maybe a little past my bedtime, actually.”
He carries me to the office door and then we both decide it would be best for me to walk through on my own. I plod down to our bedroom, slip out of my rumpled clothes and into some comfy pajamas, and then head into the bathroom. I brush my teeth and then shut the door and open the medicine cabinet. Three different brands of sleeping pills line the top shelf, one of them available only by prescription. I stare at the bottles. I need to rest, but if I take a sleep aid, it makes it hard to wake up from my nightmares, and that’s a scary thought right now. My drooping eyelids decide for me. As I close the cabinet, I decide I won’t need aid with sleep tonight.
Chapter Sixteen
“The reason WHISP research isn’t progressing as quickly as some would prefer is that the ethics of WHISP research are unclear. We are currently looking for volunteers, but since it is uncertain whether testing a WHISP will have an effect on the human, active studies are currently on hold.”
Jamison Edwards, microphysicist, Harvard University
After waking up at around five a.m. and not being able to go back to sleep, I’m at the precinct by six forty-five sipping coffee that I brought with me from home instead of the stinking dregs from the pot that’s been going all night. There is a lot more hustle and bustle than usual for this time of the morning, but I’m guessing Agent Coppola organized shifts in case anything with the case popped in the wee hours of the morning. Still, I flinch when people pass from behind
me, or come into the room unexpectedly. Last night’s crop of nightmares had me back in the interrogation room with Chester, only Ray had her silhouetted hand jammed inside the back of Chester’s skull and was using her as a puppet.
It was a terrifying dream, but it did give me an idea. I was thinking about what witness Mike said about seeing a WHISP at Alice Petrie’s apartment the night of her murder and the possibility her killer had a WHISP. He said he hadn’t seen the person the WHISP belonged to, and if I could get some solid information on whether WHISP distances could vary, then we might be able to narrow down our suspect pool and give credence to his account. Pulling a slip of paper from my satchel, I place it on the desk. It reads ‘Dr. Daniel Silverman at the Center for WHISP Wellness and Research,’ and has a phone number and an e-mail address. My therapist had suggested that learning more about WHISPs might help me to deal with my fear of them, but, for personal reasons, I’d never gotten the time to call the center. Now I just figured it was two birds, one visit.
It’s still too early to call the center, but I set up my laptop and shoot off an e-mail to Dr. Silverman explaining who I am and why I need to meet with him ASAP. Then I get out the rest of my files and go back to trying to find differences between the two crime scenes that I think are important. Obviously, each of Chester’s crime scenes couldn’t be one-hundred percent cookie cutter, there were differences in the layout of the victim’s residences and not all of them were killed in the same room. Also, the third victim, Jacob Beene, had been murdered in a coffee shop that he worked at and was locking up for the night. It was the cause of death and mutilation of the body that was nearly exact, so generally I’m looking for differences between Chester’s original crimes and the copycat crimes, but this morning, specifically, I’m comparing the nearly simultaneous murders of around thirty-six hours ago.
