Whispers of a Killer

by Jen Haeger

  “Hines here.”

  “Harbinger. Listen, I need you to track down previous leases for Alice Petrie’s apartment.”

  “How far back?”

  “Go five years if you have to.”

  “Am I looking for something in particular?”

  “Yeah, Rachel Chester.”

  ***

  Most of the other tenants haven’t lived there as long as Mrs. Long and don’t remember Chester ever living there. It’s closing in on six when we finish up and Crone waits until we’re back in the car to grill me.

  “How’d you know we’d find a connection to Chester?”

  “I didn’t really, but I had a hunch there could be one.”

  “Is it because of Pamela Cistern?”

  I’m trying to rub the weariness out of my eyes. “Huh?”

  “Chester’s original victims were random, but the copycat is killing people with connections to her.”

  “Maybe. Kinda looks that way.”

  Scratching his stubble, Crone’s face scrunches up. “Seems odd though. How would the copycat know about places where Chester used to live? Seems like a weird thing to mention to someone. I mean, you might tell someone you once lived in Soho, but you wouldn’t give them the exact address.”

  “Could just be someone who knew Chester a few years ago and went to her house. She could have, or, at least, had friends we don’t know about.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” By the way Crone says it, he knows I’m still not telling him everything.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “The suit against the town of Blevins, Arkansas, is now headed to the supreme court. Several WHISPers are suing the town which is a self-proclaimed WHISP-free zone.”

  Arkansas Daily Online

  What is obvious to me now is the victims aren’t the connection, the places are. It makes sense Chester’s WHISP couldn’t randomly wander around without the particles just dispersing. Ray would have to be drawn to something and being drawn to a location which had some of Chester’s residual energy or something seemed likely. We hadn’t bothered to look into other places Chester had lived before since her DNA didn’t match any unsolved crimes and no unsolved crimes outside of New York had her MO. It didn’t seem relevant to the case, but now it is.

  Crone and I are both digging into all of her residences when I’m once again summoned by Agent Coppola. This time as I stroll over to his office in records, I’m much calmer, but when I reach the door and raise my fist to knock, the door swings open before I can. The chief is leaving Coppola’s office and when his gaze meets mine, I know I’m in deep shit. Without a word, the chief ushers me into the office and shuts the door behind me. Swallowing hard, I sit and prepare for what I thought was coming last time I was in the office, because this time Coppola’s cheeks are flushed and his jaw is set. I search my brain for answers to how I screwed the pooch and how I can justify it.

  “Detective Harbinger, I’ve heard you’ve been doing a little research project.”

  “Well, yeah, Crone and I just got back from interviewing Alice Petrie’s neighbors again. I felt we needed to—”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about.”

  “Oh?” Oh shit.

  “I’m talking about a solo side project you’ve been undertaking. Does the acronym C-A-W mean anything to you?”

  A part of me wants to lie very badly because not only should I have not, under any circumstances, gone to speak to anyone at CAW without authorization, I certainly shouldn’t have done it without any backup. Also, there is a strong probability Coppola will think I’m nuts when I tell him I think a WHISP is murdering people. Unfortunately, it’s one thing to hold back the whole truth from Crone but another thing entirely to lie to the face of the FBI agent in charge of your case. I’m stuck between a rock and an avalanche of rocks. Fuck.

  “Sir, I can explain.”

  “That’s nice. I don’t want to hear it. Clearly, you have WHISP issues and have chosen the middle of a very sensitive and highly public case to explore them. So, I’m sorry, Detective Harbinger, but the FBI and the NYPD thank you for your assistance on this case, but your consulting services are no longer needed.”

  “But I—”

  “Do you really want me to have you escorted from the building?”

  I open my mouth again, then close it. Screaming at an FBI agent is an even worse plan then lying to one. I stand, then turn and leave the office with as much dignity as being subtly called a lunatic and tossed off a case can afford. When I’ve collected my briefcase and cleared the borrowed desk of my belongings, I pay Crone a visit. He doesn’t seem to notice anything amiss although I hold my coat and briefcase.

  “So, I think I tracked down another room Chester rented, but there’s a gap where she listed her address as a P.O. Box, and it’s no longer registered to her.”

  “That’s great, Crone, I’ll e-mail you what I have so far.”

  Finally, he takes a good look at me. “What’s going on?”

  “Coppola kicked me off the case. Call me when you finish up tonight and we’ll have a beer.” I turn to head to the elevator, but Crone jumps up and grabs my shoulder.

  “What the hell? We just had two huge breaks in the case. Is this some kind of sick joke?”

  “Do I look like I’m laughing?”

  “Screw this, I’m gonna go tell Agent Coppola to go fuck himself.”

  I’m touched by his anger, but I can’t let Crone blindly defend me to Coppola. “Hey, I appreciate it, really I do, but just don’t, at least not until we have that beer. You, ah, you might think differently afterwards.”

  He sets his jaw. “I’ve never seen you do anything but work your ass off to solve this case, and after Chester, I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d’ve told NYPD to go fuck themselves. What the fuck could you have possibly done?”

  Crone isn’t whispering, so roughly half the department is now watching us. “Not here. Meet me at Dead Rabbit Lucky’s, ten o’ clock. I’ll…I’ll tell you everything.”

  Looking like someone kicked his puppy, he relents. “Fine. You better.”

  I nod and head toward the elevator, deliberately avoiding eye contact with anyone else and wondering if this is the last time I’ll be walking out of the precinct.

  ***

  When I get home, Ben’s on the couch watching television, but turns it off and bolts to the door. “What happened?”

  At first, I think he’s already heard something about my getting kicked off the case, but then I realize I’m home a lot earlier than usual. I open my mouth to speak, but my eyes prickle and my voice gets snagged in my throat. Ben throws his arms around me.

  “They didn’t make you go interview Chester again after what happened, did they?”

  “No. Actually, they threw me off the case.”

  Ben lets me go. “What?”

  “Can we sit down?”

  “’Course.”

  Ben pours me a glass of water and waits on the couch while I get out of my coat and shoes. When I eventually sit beside him, his face is carefully neutral, but his eyes give away his relief. I take a sip of water. This man is my husband, my soulmate, if I believed in that stuff, and he’s been through a lot of shit husbands not married to cops don’t have to go through. I love him like mad, yet I don’t know if I can tell him about this, about the real reason I’ve been kicked off the case.

  Ben’s a physicist, everything in his world is neat and explainable with math. He took the WHISP phenomenon almost without blinking once he thought he understood the physics of it all. I’ve told him about what happened the night my parents were murdered and how WHISPs remind me of that night. He knows the stuff of my nightmares, and he’s willing to move away from this city with me even if it means leaving Lincoln to finish his last two years of school alone. Still, I’m afraid. I’m afraid he’s tired of walking on eggshells for me and that he’s disappointed, even with therapy, I can’t be rational about WHISPs.

  What if I’m wrong about wha
t’s going on? Kristina didn’t think I was crazy to think a WHISP could kill someone, but not thinking I was insane and thinking I was right are two different things. Also, she’s not a scientist like Ben, with a rigid mind ruled by logic. He’ll want proof I don’t have and don’t know how to get. And if he doesn’t believe me and thinks I’m falling deeper into my neurosis, if he thinks I’m starting to convince myself all people with WHISPs must be evil, then what will he think I believe about our own son when he already imagines I’m running away from Lincoln and his WHISP? But I can’t lie to Ben, either. He’d know, and he’d resent it even if I was lying to not push him and Lincoln further away. But how to begin?

  “I’ve been doing some investigation on the case on my own without authorization or back-up.”

  He frowns, not because he thinks I should’ve been following procedure, but probably because he’s pissed I didn’t tell him what I was doing. “What kind of investigation?”

  “A WHISP investigation.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “The appearance of a WHISP does not indicate and should not be construed as a sign of an underlying medical condition.”

  The Implications of Disease in Patients with a WHISP by Dr. Naomi Glaskov

  By his expression, Ben’s trying to understand, but I see exasperation there. “Why would you be doing that now?”

  “I was following a lead.”

  “What lead?”

  Unable to hold his gaze, I look past him to the window. “We got a call from an anonymous eyewitness who said he’d seen a WHISP in the victim’s apartment the night she died.”

  “So what? All the victims had WHISPs right?”

  “It wasn’t her WHISP.”

  Ben opens his mouth, then closes it again, swallowing down a look of frustration. “Okay.”

  “It got me thinking the killer could also have a WHISP, so I did some research.”

  “That was just following the evidence of the case, I don’t see why you wouldn’t be authorized to do it.”

  “Well”—I clear a hitch in my throat—“it wasn’t just that.”

  “All right, what was it then?”

  “I spoke to this WHISP researcher, Dr. Silverman, and there were things he said that got me to thinking…about other things, about how much we don’t know about WHISPs. I needed more information, so I…went to talk to someone less reputable about WHISPs.”

  Ben’s fist clenches. “Who?”

  “CAW.”

  “Jesus, Sylvy. Why would you talk to people like that? Especially without backup? Those people are zealots, not to mention kidnappers and murderers.”

  “I told you, I needed more information.”

  “What kind of information?”

  This is it, and I can’t sit still. I stand and walk to the window. Outside, the city is going on as if the world isn’t a new and terrifying place, as if everything is normal. Down on the street, none of the passersby have WHISPs, and I can almost convince myself the past few years haven’t happened. “I needed to know what WHISPs are really capable of.”

  Ben is silent for several beats. “What do you mean by that? WHISPs aren’t capable of anything, Sylvy, they’re just some electromagnetic waves which got caught up around a person. You know that.”

  “What I know, is they’re made of particles, and those particles respond to electromagnetic impulses. People already know they mess with cell phones sometimes, that’s being capable of something. Why couldn’t they be capable of more?”

  “What are you saying?”

  Steeling myself, I turn to face him. “I’m not saying WHISPs are alive with their own thoughts and feelings, but I am saying they interact with the world, more than we think they do, or maybe it’s a matter of them strengthening over time and being able to do more. It usually only takes them a few weeks or months to develop, so it makes sense they wouldn’t stay the same over time. The point is, I think Chester is using hers as a weapon.”

  Shaking his head, Ben is up and in front of me in seconds. I despise the pitying twist of his mouth, the fear in his eyes. He brushes a hair from my forehead and then cradles my cheek in his hand.

  “Babe, that’s not possible. Chester’s in prison. She can’t hurt anyone anymore. How could she?”

  “WHISPs can separate from their source humans.” Or rather, what I’d been told is they could be separated from a human, but I want what I’m saying to sound as plausible as possible to Ben.

  “Who told you that? CAW? They’d say anything to make people afraid of WHISPs. The fact is, if a WHISP could separate from a person it would just dissipate. It’s a human’s…well, kind-of like a human’s gravity which keeps all those wave-particles together.”

  It’s clear nothing I say will make him believe me, he has science and my phobia on his side. His words are my fears manifested, and I’m struck speechless. After a few moments, Ben must at least sense he’s playing with fire because he tries to steer away from directly opposing me.

  “Well, maybe this is for the best. We agreed taking on the case was a bad idea and now maybe you don’t have to feel guilty. You gave them everything you could to help with this case and if they won’t let you help anymore, then what can you do?”

  Now I’m mad. I’m mad at Ben for thinking this is a good thing, I’m mad at Coppola for not even giving me a chance to explain myself, but most of all, I’m mad at myself for being too afraid to commit to what I believe and bring forward my thoughts to Crone or Coppola before. Now I’m stuck on the outside looking in, knowing in my gut I’m right, but hoping I’m wrong and waiting for more people to die, and Ben not believing me is something I can’t deal with right now. I push past him and head into the bedroom to change. “I’m going out.”

  “Sylvia, come on, don’t leave. We don’t have to talk about it anymore tonight, just don’t go.” He follows me into the bedroom. “Listen, I should’ve said this before. I’m sorry they kicked you off the case because I know how much it meant to you.”

  Ignoring him, I change into jeans and a sweatshirt.

  “Will you at least let me apologize? You threw a lot at me. I’m sorry I’m not handling it well, but this is…a lot, and we’re both very emotional right now.”

  I run a brush through my hair and check my appearance in the mirror.

  “I’m sorry I’m happy I get my wife back, and we get to continue on with our life together. What do you want from me?”

  “Right now, I just want some space.”

  I don’t mean to sound so hard. Even though his not trusting me cuts into my heart, deep down I know he thinks he’s doing the right thing. I love him and I don’t want to throw away our marriage, which is why I need to cool off and think before we talk about it more. A drink won’t hurt either. After putting on my shoes, I step out into the hallway.

  “I’ll be at Dead Rabbit Lucky’s and I’ll leave my cell on for emergencies, but please don’t call or text unless you have to.”

  Right before the door shuts behind me, Ben stops it from closing. “I love you.”

  I want to say the words, really I do. It isn’t fair to blame Ben for reacting exactly the way I thought he would, but still, I’m not ready to forgive him. “I know.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “A new trend has surfaced on Facebook: the WHISP profile. The social media giant now allows WHISPers to set up a profile specifically for their WHISP, and thousands have taken advantage of the new feature.”

  “Latest from Facebook,” Mashable.com

  I hail a cab, unsure whether I’ll be sober enough on the back end to drive myself home. Fortunately, the cabbie is too busy rocking out to some early 90s punk to engage in conversation. Staring out the window, rain begins to blur the passing city. Not for the first time, I think about how much I’m going to miss it, how lonely it’ll be at the cabin. I’m hoping I will grow to love the solitude, but who am I kidding? I’ll fucking hate it.

  Dead Rabbit Lucky’s is a decent bar in a seedy part of Hell
’s Kitchen. Ben and I used to frequent it after I’d solved a frustrating or upsetting case, back when a typical case could bother me. After around year ten as a detective, I’d thickened my skin and we’d stopped going, but I knew it was still there. As we pull up, I can make out the darkly humorous neon sign of a magician pulling a dead white rabbit, complete with x’s for eyes, out of a black top hat, his expression transforming from smarmy confidence to horror.

  After paying the driver, I hoof it to the door and only receive a mild soaking for my trouble. It’s about an hour and a half shy of when I’m supposed to meet Crone, but the bar has free pretzels and popcorn, and I’m in the mood to drink alone for a while. Taking an empty seat at the almost filled bar, I make eye contact with the young, black, nose-ringed, spiky-haired bartender who gives me a nod and finishes up with a couple before heading over to me.

  “What can I getcha?”

  “A shot of tequila and a Fat Tire.”

  She nods. “That bad of a day, huh?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Do you want to start a tab?”

  “Yep.”

  I hand her my credit card and she takes it with a sympathetic smile.

  “I’ll grab you more pretzels too.”

  “That’d be great.”

  She returns shortly with the pretzels and beer, and then pours the tequila. I don’t let the shot glass touch the bar.

  “Salud.”

  I down the shot and hand her back the glass. Her lips part, but then a man a few patrons down waves at her enthusiastically and points to his empty glass in what I’m sure he thinks is a charming way. The bartender rolls her eyes at me and then floats over to him. It’s for the best. I couldn’t pour out my heart to her like in some feel-good movie of the week. I have to work out my own shit right now.

  Sipping at the beer, I shove a couple of pretzels into my mouth and think while I chew. What I need is to figure out Chester’s next victim before she gets out of the infirmary and isn’t monitored twenty-four seven. The trouble is, even tracking down all of the places Chester ever lived, and possibly staking them out, doesn’t guarantee anything. We might not be able to see Ray going in and, if we did, I have no idea how we’d stop her from killing. Well, that’s not exactly true, something like an EMP or powerful electromagnet might do the trick, but they aren’t things I have access to right now.