Whisper in the Dark

41

In the dream, she was with him.

They were walking together through the darkness, careful to stay close, her hands tightly clutching his arm. She was frightened — they both were — but in a good way. The kind of fright you feel on a roller coaster or watching a scary movie.

They came to a stop in front of the old hospital, its looming malevolence making them press a little closer together. The open front doors were missing, and the black hole that stood in their place was like an invitation to some dark hell.

After a moment, Abby held up her camera — the Canon Digital SLR she carried with her everywhere she went — and said, “I’m going in.”

This surprised Tolan, but he nodded. “I’ll go with you.”

“No, Michael, you have to stay here.”

“Why?”

“Too dangerous,” she said. “You have to wait your turn.”

Tolan stared at that black doorway. The “good” fright he’d felt only a moment ago didn’t seem so good anymore.

“I don’t want to wait,” he said. “I want to be with you.”

“You’ll be with me soon enough. You have to break away for now. You have to let go.”

“I don’t want to.”

She smiled at him then, leaned up and kissed him. “I don’t want to either, darling. But it isn’t about us. It isn’t our choice.”

“I don’t understand.”

“There’s nothing to understand. It’s the way. The Rhythm. The heartbeat.”

“The heartbeat?” Tolan said. “What does that mean?”

She let go of him then, started toward the doorway. He tried to grab her arm, but his hand went right through her, as if she were made of vapor.

“Abby, wait.”

“I’ll see you again, Michael. I’m closer than you think. Much closer. Just ask the old man. He knows.”

“Old man? What old man?”

She stood at the doorway now, a step away from the darkness. “This is where it happens, Michael. Where it all comes together and balance is restored.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Listen… ” she said. “Don’t you hear it? Someone’s calling you.”

At first he wasn’t sure what she was talking about. Then a distant buzzing filled his ears, coming in short, steady spurts. He turned, looking for the source of it. Saw nothing but the night. The trees. The mountains.

“I’ll see you soon, Michael.”

He turned back to her and her camera was raised to her eye, pointed at him. Then the flash went off, momentarily blinding him.

When it finally cleared she was gone.

“Abby?”

He stared at that darkened doorway, wondering if she’d ever really been there at all.

He awoke to the buzzing sound.

His phone, vibrating.

He was lying on a floor, but he wasn’t sure whose floor until he sat upright and the world spinning around him began to slow and come into focus.

Then he recognized the place immediately. The oriental rugs. The off-white sofa and chairs. The abstract painting on the wall above the fireplace. The carpeted stairs leading to the bedroom. The steady sound of waves rolling in.

The beach house. Lisa’s beach house.

He was sitting on her living-room floor.

But how had he gotten here?

His body ached, as if every one of his muscles had been hammered with a baseball bat. His jaw was on fire. Even his toes ached.

Realizing it was almost dark outside, he checked his watch: 5:30 P.M.

Jesus.

The last thing he remembered was sitting in his car in the hospital parking lot, trying to recover from a sudden panic attack.

Mama got trouble

Mama got sin

Mama got bills to pay again.

But that had been close to noon, which meant he’d somehow lost over five hours.

Five full hours.

Every one of them a blank.

His phone was still buzzing. He turned, looking around until he saw it on the floor near the sofa. He was about to reach for it when it stopped, kicking over to voice mail.

He looked around the room again. “Lisa?”

He waited a moment, but got no answer.

Climbing to his feet, he swayed slightly, then checked the table near her front door. There was a small basket there, where she usually left her keys, but it was empty.

“Lisa?”

No response. Was she even here?

Maybe she’d taken her keys upstairs with her. She did that sometimes, then spent half an hour trying to remember where she’d left them.

But the place seemed empty. Except for the sound of the waves, it was as silent as a new morning. Deciding to check anyway, he moved to the stairway, about to take the first step, when his phone buzzed again, stirring up images of a dream he’d had.

The old hospital. A dark doorway.

Abby?

He turned, watching it vibrate, knowing instinctively who the caller was, wondering if he should let it ring. But a moment later, he was standing over it, then snatching it up, flipping it open.

“Hello?”

“You’re finally awake,” the voice said. “I hope you enjoyed your sleep, Doctor. You’ve needed it for so long.”

Heat blossomed in the pit of Tolan’s stomach, an image flashing through his mind. Darkness. A narrow beam of light shining in his eyes.

And pain. Indescribable pain.

His muscles tightened involuntarily. “What did you do to me?”

“Nothing special. Just had a little fun.” A pause. “Now I’m about to give you the credit you’ve been so anxious to receive. Han van Meegeren will look like a rank amateur by the time this night is over.”

Tolan said nothing. Didn’t know what to say. More images were hurtling through his mind now. Moving so quickly that he couldn’t decipher them.

“You still there, Doctor?”

“Yes.”

“I take it you haven’t been upstairs yet.”

Tolan’s heart skipped. He turned abruptly, looking toward the stairway. He glanced toward the top of the steps, where darkness waited.

“Dr. Tolan?”

“What?”

“If we’re going to have a conversation, you’ll have to respond to my questions. Have you been upstairs?”

“No,” Tolan said, his dread deepening. “What have you done?”

“There’s a little anniversary present waiting for you there. A friend of yours. We had a lot of fun with her this afternoon.”

Another image flashed through Tolan’s mind: a blade piercing flesh. Then, as if he was only now becoming fully aware of his surroundings — of himself—he glanced down at the front of his shirt.

It was covered with blood. Drying blood.

Oh, Jesus, no.

Lisa?

“You sonofabitch.”

“Me? This is all about you now, remember?”

“No,” Tolan said. “You did this. You. Not me. And I swear to God if you hurt her, I’ll hunt you down and kill you, you fucking animal.”

“That’s the spirit. Keep it up, Doctor. You’re making this easier and easier. Why don’t you get upstairs now? Assess the damage you’ve done.”

Tolan looked again at his bloody shirt, then toward the top of the stairs, wondering what waited for him up there.

“You’re on your own now, Doctor. I have to admit, I’m quite anxious to see how you’ll wiggle out of this one.”

“Fuck you,” Tolan said, then hurled the phone at the nearest wall with every bit of strength he had. It broke into three pieces and dropped to the floor, leaving an indentation in the wall.

Moving to the stairway, Tolan stared up at the darkness, hesitating only a moment before he started upward, his dread deepening with each step he took.

As he reached the second-floor landing, he heard water running. Lisa’s shower.

He looked down the short hallway at her closed bedroom door. But he didn’t hesitate this time. Crossing to it, he put his hand on the knob, then, mustering up his courage, turned it and pushed inside.

The sound of the shower was much louder in here and he could see that her bathroom door was hanging open.

Moving past the bed, he stepped through the doorway and looked toward the shower, at its pebbled glass enclosure.

The image was distorted, but he could see someone — a woman — sitting on the tile inside, water cascading down on her head.

No. Please, no.

“Lisa?”

No answer. Tolan slowly moved to the shower door and pulled it open, nausea bubbling up in his chest as he stared down at a face frozen in death, eyes wide open, mouth agape, as if she’d been caught by surprise.

But it wasn’t Lisa.

The woman who sat there, her blouse ripped open, her abdomen a gaping crimson hole, her intestines snaking toward the drain, floating in a swirl of bloodied water—

— was Sue Carmody.

Detective Sue Carmody.

Tolan’s legs went numb. He stared at her, trying to keep the nausea at bay.

And as awful as this tableau was, it was rendered even more horrifying by the simple fact that Carmody was missing her left ear.

Tolan backed away from her.

Why? he thought. Why is this happening?

“Michael?”

He jerked around to find Lisa standing in her bedroom doorway, a look of concern on her face.

She moved toward him. “I just got your text message. Thank God you’re here, I…”

The words caught in her throat as her attention was abruptly drawn to the blood on his shirt, then past him to the running water, the shower stall, the carnage that waited there.

She said nothing for a long moment, her expression a mix of revulsion and disbelief as her brain caught up to what her eyes were seeing.

Then, in a voice that was barely a croak, she said, “Oh, my God, Michael. Oh, my God.”

42

Dr. Ned Soren wasn’t an easy guy to pin down.

A typical day, Blackburn discovered, was spent bouncing between his office on Terrington Avenue, the psych ward at County General, and the Bayside Country Club, where he played golf three afternoons a week.

According to his secretary, a cute little Angelina Jolie wannabe (who was definitely more “be” than “wanna”), today was a golf day. But by the time Blackburn reached the country club it was already dark outside, and he had a sneaking suspicion that any golf-related activities were over and done with.

The closest Blackburn had ever come to playing the game was the hour he’d spent hacking at balls on the municipal driving range while surveilling a suspected pedophile. But he had enough sense to know that once the scorecards were tallied and the clubs were back in the bag, the players usually drove their little electric go-carts straight to the nearest bar.

Blackburn was able to zero in on his target the moment he pulled into the country club parking lot. There were a dozen or so of the aforementioned go-carts parked atop a small embankment, surrounding a structure that sported the name The 19th Hole.

Originality was obviously not the goal here.

On the drive over, Blackburn had considered the information he now had. There were two possible connections between Hastert, Janovic, and Tolan — the first being Soren, and the second being Jane Doe herself. She’d worked for Abby Tolan as a model and, in turn, may have known her husband. Was it possible they were having an affair? Was that why Tolan had reacted the way he did when he saw her?

Unless Blackburn could get either Soren or Jane to admit to the connection, his chances of proving anything against Tolan were slim. And considering Jane’s condition, it was doubtful he’d get anything from her anytime soon.

So Soren was his man.

Blackburn didn’t bother with the formality of checking in at the country club guest desk. Instead, he trudged up the embankment and went straight into the bar.

The tables were packed, mostly with men sporting deep tans and dressed in the standard-issue golfer uniform: polo shirts and slacks of various nauseating colors. A good 80 percent of them were already half in the bag, while the other 20 were borderline comatose. Blackburn didn’t even want to think about what the parking lot would look like in a couple hours.

Although he had managed to change into a new suit shortly after leaving the Hastert crime scene, his lack of appropriately casual attire and the lovely bandage adorning his forehead got him quite a few drunken stares as he approached the bartender.

The noise level was just a few decibels below deafening. Leaning in close, Blackburn showed the guy his badge and said, “Dr. Ned Soren.”

The bartender’s gaze zeroed in on Blackburn’s forehead, then quickly shifted, scanning the room. He pointed. “Table six. The one with the black stripe.”

Blackburn turned in the direction of the finger. Across the room, four boisterous men sat hammering back what looked like Scotch ale, the one on the farthest side of the table wearing a badly sunburned nose and a tasteful gray knit polo with a fat black stripe across the chest.

Blackburn nodded thanks and headed over, showing his badge again when he reached the table. “Dr. Soren?”

Soren looked up in surprise, his gaze shifting from the badge to Blackburn’s forehead, Blackburn beginning to understand how it might feel to be a top-heavy female.

“Yes?” Soren said.

“I need to talk to you about a patient of yours.”

“A patient? Is something wrong?”

“You mind if we step outside?”

Soren frowned now. He was fairly well lit, but still had enough presence of mind to be protective of his clientele. “If you’re here to ask me questions about a patient, Officer, I’m not sure I can be of much help. Patient-doctor privilege and all that.”

The other guys around the table started nodding. Apparently they were doctors as well.

“Does that extend to the dead ones?”

There was a momentary trace of alarm on Soren’s face, but it quickly passed. “Yes, I’m afraid it does.”

“I’ll tell you what,” Blackburn said. “Why don’t we step outside and if my questions get too invasive you can slap me down. But at least give me the courtesy of letting me ask them first.”

Soren looked around the table at his buddies. One of them, an old geezer with a bright pink bald spot, said, “Careful, Ned, he sounds like a tricky bastard.”

This must have been funny in the world of the marginally sober, because they all laughed. Blackburn was still trying to figure out where the joke was when Soren scraped back his chair and got to his feet. “I’m all yours, Officer. I need a smoke anyway.”

Blackburn gestured toward the door. “After you.”

43

Once she had assessed the situation, Lisa immediately went into mop-up mode.

Tolan had seen it a million times in the years they’d known each other, whenever she was faced with any kind of crisis. At home. At the hospital. There’d be that initial moment of shock, then she’d put on her game face and go to work, her focus so narrow that it seemed as if everything else around her had ceased to exist.

He’d once asked her about it and she’d said that she’d always had the ability to remove herself from the emotion of a situation. To concentrate solely on the task that needed to be done and save the nervous breakdowns for later.

But what lay before her this time wasn’t a simple task.

There was a dead woman in her shower. A dead woman with her guts ripped open. A dead woman missing her left ear.

The full weight of that fact had not completely hit Tolan. He knew he was in shock himself and it would take awhile for the numbness now creeping through his entire body to wear off. He figured it was the same for Lisa. And his only concern at that moment was convincing her he wasn’t a killer.

“I didn’t do this,” he said. “This wasn’t me.”

Lisa ignored the comment and stepped past him into the bathroom. Reaching into the shower, she shut off the spigot, then turned to Tolan, her expression fixed and emotionless.

“Get the comforter off the bed,” she said.

Tolan hesitated. “We need to call the police. Call Blackburn.”

She glanced at his shirt. “If we call the police, you’ll spend the rest of your life in jail.”

“I didn’t do this.”

“I hate to break it to you, Michael, but that’s not how it looks. Now get the comforter.”

Tolan didn’t argue. As he moved to the bed and stripped off its lavender cover, he heard Lisa banging around in the medicine cabinet. When he got back to the bathroom, she was wearing a pair of latex gloves. She took the comforter from him and handed him a pair.

“Put these on.”

As he did, she lay the comforter on the bathroom tile and spread it out. Then, reaching into the shower again, she carefully retrieved Sue Carmody’s lower intestine from the drain and did her best to pack it back into the abdominal cavity.

Tolan felt a wave of nausea wash over him again. He had a medical degree, yes, and had seen some pretty horrific things in his time, but something about the matter-of-fact way in which Lisa handled those intestines made him want to puke.

He looked into Sue Carmody’s lifeless eyes, and couldn’t help thinking about how excited she’d been only hours before, after he’d told them about Vincent’s phone calls. An intense sadness overcame him and he struggled to contain it.

Lisa, however, was all business.

“Grab her legs,” she said.

“Lisa, we can’t do this.”

“We don’t have a choice.”

“Why would you want to risk your life, your career—”

“For godsakes, Michael, we’ve known each other for fifteen years and you still haven’t figured me out? This is what I do. I take care of things. I take care of you. I always have and I always will. Now shut up and grab her legs.”

“This is the road to hell,” he said.

“Better than the road to prison.”

Despite his protests, Tolan knew she was right. Nobody would believe this wasn’t his doing. He had a feeling even Lisa didn’t believe it.

He bent down and grabbed hold of Sue Carmody’s ankles, which were wet with shower water.

Trying not to stare at the gaping wound in her abdomen, he waited while Lisa grabbed her wrists, then helped her hoist the body onto the blanket.

“I need you to know this, Lisa. I need you to understand I didn’t kill her.”

“That isn’t how it’ll look to the police.”

“Maybe not, but this wasn’t me. It was Vincent. The body, the blood on my shirt. He’s setting me up.”

She dropped Sue Carmody’s arms and looked at him. “Vincent? What are you talking about?”

“Those crank phone calls I got this morning? The ones I was so evasive about? They weren’t just a prank. They were real.”

Lisa’s brow furrowed. “From Vincent? The Vincent?”

Tolan nodded. “He says he didn’t kill Abby. And he thinks I did. Thinks I’m some kind of psychotic plagiarist.”

“And you told this to the police.”

Tolan nodded.

“Which explains why they were all over the hospital this morning.”

“Right,” Tolan said. “But now Vincent is looking for revenge. First he kills some guy on The Avenue, now this.”

Lisa’s frown momentarily deepened, then her face went blank. “Help me roll her up.”

Tolan looked down at Sue Carmody’s body again, his instinct for survival overruling any hesitation he felt.

“God forgive us.”

“God gave up on us a long time ago,” Lisa said.

Then the doorbell rang.

44

The moment Soren lit up, Blackburn wished he had a cigarette of his own. But he’d never made it through an entire day without succumbing to temptation and was determined to make this one an exception.

So rather than bum a smoke, he said, “I think you know a friend of mine.”

“Oh?”

“Michael Tolan. We’ve worked together on a couple cases. He used to be your partner, right?”

“Yes,” Soren said, exhaling a plume of smoke. Then the alarm returned to his face. “This isn’t about Michael, is it? The dead patient?”

The question surprised Blackburn. “Is Tolan a patient too?”

Soren shook his head, looking a bit befuddled. “No — I mean, that’s privileged. He’s okay, isn’t he?”

“As far as I know, he’s fine.”

“Then who are we talking about?”

“A guy by the name of Hastert,” Blackburn said. “Todd Hastert.”

Soren took a moment to search the memory banks, but seemed to draw a blank.

“You prescribed Paxil to him a little over a year ago. He filled it at the County General Pharmacy, so I’m assuming he might’ve been a pro bono patient.”

Still no sign of recognition. And it seemed unforced. Genuine. “And he’s dead?”

“I’m afraid so. Somebody carved him up pretty good last night.” Blackburn reached into his coat pocket and brought out Hastert’s mug shot. “Maybe this will refresh your memory.”

Soren took a long drag off his cigarette and squinted at the photo. Nodding now, he exhaled and said, “Right. I saw him a few times at the hospital clinic. But that’s about all I’m willing to say.”

“The man was murdered, Doc.”

“That doesn’t change the law. Or my duty to my patients.”

“Did he ever express any concerns to you? That someone might be threatening him?”

“I haven’t seen him in over a year. So I highly doubt anything he may have said would have much bearing on the here and now.”

“What about Dr. Tolan? Did he ever treat the patient?”

Soren was about to put the cigarette between his lips again, when he paused. “Why don’t you ask him?”

“I would, if I could find him.”

“What does that mean?”

“He’s MIA,” Blackburn said. “And I have reason to believe he may be in danger.”

This wasn’t strictly a lie, of course. Tolan was certainly in danger of being arrested. But Soren didn’t need to know that.

“Danger? What kind of danger? Does this have something to do with Hastert?”

“I’m afraid it does,” Blackburn said. “I think there may be a connection between the two, but I’m not sure what it is, at this point. Which is why I asked if Tolan ever treated him.”

Soren thought about this a moment, the new information seeming to compound both his alarm and his befuddlement. “As far as I can remember, Michael never even met the man. He didn’t do much pro bono work. Didn’t have time.”

This wasn’t what Blackburn wanted to hear. “So you don’t know of any threats Hastert may have made against him?”

“No,” Soren said. “None whatsoever.”

“What about the other way around?”

“What?”

“You were his partner, I assume you knew his wife?”

“Yes, of course. But what—”

“How would you characterize their relationship?”

“They were in love,” Soren said. “Probably more than any two people I’ve ever known. They had their share of problems, but—”

“What kind of problems?”

“They fought sometimes, just like anyone else.”

“So is Tolan capable of violence?”

Soren said nothing for a moment, his inebriated brain trying to process the turn in the conversation about four questions too late. “What’s going on here, Officer? Is Michael in danger — or is he in trouble?”

Blackburn shrugged. “Six of one, half a dozen the other.”

Soren’s face hardened. “You fucking asshole.”

“Just doing my job, Doc.”

“You think Michael killed Hastert? Is that what this is all about?”

“Among other things.”

Soren shook his head. “That’s completely preposterous. I’ve known him for years and I’ve never seen him lift a finger against anyone. He doesn’t have it in him.”

“What about his wife? You said they fought.”

“Yes, but…” Soren paused, starting to put it together now. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “This isn’t about Hastert at all. It’s about Abby. You think Michael killed Abby.”

“I’m more interested in what you think. Is it possible Tolan was having an affair? Screwing around on her?”

Soren flicked the cigarette at him. “Fuck you.”

“You don’t want to be assaulting a police officer, Doc.”

“So arrest me.”

“If it comes to that, trust me, I will. But I’d rather hear what you have to say about Tolan. What are you treating him for?”

Soren turned. “This conversation is over.”

Blackburn grabbed his arm. “Did he ever confess to you, Doc?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Let go of me.”

But Blackburn didn’t let go. “What about Todd Hastert? Did he ever brag about his job? Maybe mention something about the Vincent murders? Pass along a little inside information that you turned around and gave to Tolan?”

“I said let go of me.” Soren wrenched his arm free. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. If Hastert was guarding some kind of state secret, then I suggest you go to County General and start slinging your accusations there. That’s where he spent most of his time.” He paused. “As for Michael, there’s nothing you could ever say to convince me he hurt Abby. Not one thing. So do me a favor and fuck off.”

Soren turned again and headed back inside.

This time Blackburn let him go.

45

Kat Pendergast waited what seemed an eternity before the door opened.

She wasn’t quite sure why they were here. After an extended shift this morning, and all the drama on the fourth floor, she had gone home and crawled into bed without even bothering to shower. She’d gone straight to sleep and stayed that way until her alarm clock kicked her awake again.

She was halfway through dinner when her phone rang, the watch commander telling her he was short-handed and needed her and Hogan to start their shift early.

Which meant another long night.

The minute they reported in, they were told about the alert out on Dr. Michael Tolan and were instructed to check out the girlfriend’s place, a two-story beach house in Baycliff.

Kat didn’t know much about Tolan, but she knew the alert had been initiated by Frank Blackburn and that was good enough for her.

Unlike most of her fellow officers — hell, most of the squad, for that matter — Kat liked Frank. She knew that every time she walked away from him he was ogling her ass, but that didn’t bother her. She’d put a lot of time into making it a view worth ogling, so if people weren’t going to appreciate it, what was the point?

Besides, Frank’s backside wasn’t so bad either. And while she might not admit it out loud, she’d thought more than once about what it would be like to grab a couple handfuls while he did whatever he wanted with those nice big hands of his.

They’d been circling each other for over a month now, the circle getting smaller with each pass. Sooner or later, there’d be a head-on collision and Kat was looking forward to it.

But back to reality. While Hogan shone his flashlight into the girlfriend’s car, a sparkling new silver BMW parked in the drive, Kat leaned on the doorbell again.

They knew the girlfriend was inside. Had seen her turn in from down the block, where they’d been waiting for the last half hour. So Kat couldn’t quite understand what was taking so long.

She was about to ring the bell again when the door finally opened a crack and an attractive woman in her early thirties peeked out. Her hair was wet. Looked like she was wearing a bathrobe. She’d obviously been in the shower.

Which reminded Kat that she’d never taken one herself. She suddenly felt sticky and gross.

“Lisa Paymer?”

“Yes?”

“Sorry to bother you, ma’am, but we’re here about a Dr. Michael Tolan.”

Paymer’s face fell and she opened the door wider. “My God, is he hurt?”

Kat realized she should have phrased that differently. “No, ma’am, it isn’t that. We’re looking for him, is all. We were hoping he might be here.”

“Here?” Paymer said. “I haven’t seen him since this morning.”

“At the hospital?”

“Yes, I’ve tried calling him, but he doesn’t answer, and I’ve been worried sick. Why are you looking for him? Is he in some kind of trouble?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know the answer to that. Would you mind if we came in and took a look around?”

“I told you, he’s not here.”

“It’s just a formality,” Kat said. “Part of the job. And it’s entirely up to you.”

Paymer hesitated a moment, then gestured them inside. “Be my guest.”

Kat nodded to Hogan and he moved around the BMW and joined her, the two of them stepping into a nicely appointed living room with oriental rugs and off-white furniture. It looked like a photo out of House Beautiful. The kind Kat usually found herself drooling over while she waited her turn at the dental clinic.

She and Hogan took a perfunctory look around, Hogan sticking his head through a doorway that led into the kitchen, then moving down a short hallway to what looked to be an extra bedroom.

Kat glanced toward a set of carpeted steps that led to the second floor, but decided not to bother going upstairs. Paymer had seemed genuinely surprised that they were looking for Tolan, and her willingness to let them search the place was a fair indication that she wasn’t hiding anything.

A moment later, Hogan returned, and Kat knew from his expression that he thought this was as much of a waste of time as she did.

They exchanged a look, then moved back to the front doorway. “Sorry to bother you, ma’am.”

“You don’t want to go upstairs?”

“I think we’re okay,” Kat said. “Sorry for the intrusion.”

As they were about to step outside, Paymer said, “Wait.”

Kat turned to see her digging through her purse on the coffee table. She brought out a business card and handed it to Kat.

“If you do find him, please call me right away. Both my home and cell are on there.”

Kat glanced at the card, nodded, then unsnapped her shirt pocket and slipped it in.

“You have a good evening,” she said, then went outside.

When the door closed behind them, Hogan whistled. “Wish they grew ’em like that at my hospital.”

“Keep your voice down, dumbass. She might hear you.”

Hogan waved her off as they headed down the drive to their cruiser. “I’m sure she’s used to it. But I’ll lay odds she didn’t buy that house with the money she earned cleaning up after crazies.”

Kat nodded. “I’m guessing she’s daddy’s little rich girl. She’s got that pampered look.”

“You gotta give her credit for taking a job at Baycliff.”

Kat was about to agree with him when her cell phone bleeped. She dug it out and clicked it on. “Pendergast.”

“Hey, hot stuff, you on duty yet?”

Frank Blackburn.

Kat stifled a smile. “Unfortunately, yes. They called us in early. What’s up?”

“I’ve got a favor to ask you and your partner. Strictly off the books.”

Kat glanced at Hogan. “What do you need?”

“A lookout.”

“For what?”

“What else?” Blackburn said. “A little B and E.”

46

When the front door closed, Tolan let out a breath.

He was pretty sure he’d been holding it ever since the doorbell rang. He hadn’t been able to hear much of what was going on downstairs, but it was enough to let him know that the police were looking for him.

The question was, why?

Did they know about Carmody?

A moment later, Lisa was back upstairs, pulling open the closet door. It was a big walk-in adjacent to her bedroom that provided plenty of room for both Tolan—

— and the body.

Lisa had taken her bathrobe off and was standing there in her bra and panties. As the light spilled inside, illuminating the rolled-up comforter that lay at Tolan’s feet, the absurdity of the situation suddenly hit him.

What the hell were they doing?

Instead of hiding from the police he should have called out to them. Instead of helping to get rid of a body, a cop’s body, no less — a cop he knew—he should have reported the death immediately.

But he hadn’t. Because Lisa was right. They would assume that he, not Vincent, had killed Sue Carmody. And before he had a chance to explain, his arms would be yanked behind him, his wrists cuffed, and he’d be spending the rest of his life in a jail cell.

And how, exactly, would he explain this?

Because, despite his protests, something Vincent had said kept running through his mind:

We had a lot of fun with her this afternoon.

It was the we that got to him. The we, accompanied by his bloodied shirt and his jacked-up memory. He’d had another blackout. Another gap in time. This one bigger than ever.

The image of a blade piercing flesh once again flitted through his mind.

Who, he wondered, was holding that blade?

Lisa stepped into a pair of blue jeans. “We need to get her downstairs.”

“Why are the police looking for me?”

“They wouldn’t elaborate.” She fastened the jeans and grabbed a T-shirt from a hook on the door. “But I guess I could have invited them to dinner. Maybe they would’ve told me all about it.”

It was a pointed jab, and he knew he deserved it.

“Look, I’m sorry. I thought I was protecting you.”

“That’s my job, remember?”

She pulled the T-shirt over her head, the words BEST IN SHOW plastered across her chest.

“What happened at the hospital?” Tolan asked. “After I left?”

She gestured to Carmody’s body. “Apparently this did. Now help me get her downstairs.”

Tolan said nothing, reluctantly doing what he was told, grabbing one end of the blanket as Lisa grabbed the other.

But he could barely concentrate on the task. There was another part of Vincent’s we that concerned him. Another possibility that had been floating on the distant horizon ever since the night Abby was murdered. Ever since that first blackout.

He thought about his mother and those tumultuous days up in their Arrowhead Springs cabin. She was a nasty woman, prone to vicious mood swings, who took her un-happiness out on Tolan and his father. He could remember hiding in the closet as they fought, his mother using his dad as a verbal punching bag, telling him what a loser he was, bragging about the lovers she’d had, men who were so much better at satisfying her than he ever was.

Tolan had later learned that she’d been in the throes of a classic dissociative episode, as clear a case of multiple personalities that anyone had ever seen. Many years later she had described the feeling to him — the loss of time, the conversations she’d had with the “others.”

“Like phone calls from the dead,” she’d told him.

“Phone calls from the dead?”

“That’s right. Talking to me over an invisible telephone line. A line running all through my brain, cutting it into sections, you know? And in each one of those sections, I’ve got a nice little friend just waiting to—”

“Michael? Are you still with me?”

They were halfway down the stairs now, awkwardly carrying the blanket-wrapped body between them, trying not to leak blood on the carpet or bump it against the wall. And though he’d heard Lisa’s question, he said nothing to her, still thinking about Vincent’s phone calls and wondering. Wondering if it was possible — if he should even entertain the notion that the calls he’d gotten…

He could barely bring himself to think it.

That the calls he’d gotten were not real.

What if they were nothing more than a troubled mind’s way of filtering out the truth?

Phone calls in his head.

Phone calls from the dead.

How much of this day, this anniversary of death, was a product of his imagination? Jane Doe saying his name, looking so uncannily like Abby, those haunted hazel eyes, the shifting, undulating facial bones — some of which he knew to be, at least in part, a delusion. So why not the rest of it?

Maybe beneath it all, down in the part of his mind where darkness dwelled, where the animal crouched, watching, waiting… maybe down there he knew the truth, the real explanation.

That he had killed Sue Carmody.

That he had killed Abby.

And, who knows, all those years ago in college, after he’d been spurned by Anna Marie Colson, rejected in favor of a law student — a law student, for godsakes — maybe he’d killed her, too. Shot her and her new boyfriend dead in the street.

Tolan frowned.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d thought about Anna Marie, so why was she suddenly making an appearance now?

Another image flitted through his mind. Not a knife this time, but the penlight, shining in his eyes. Something being shoved into his mouth.

A bite bar?

Then he remembered how much his jaw had ached when he awoke. What the hell was going on here?

“Careful,” Lisa said. “You almost hit her head.”

Her voice brought him back to the here and now, as they cleared the last step. Tolan almost said, “What difference does it make?” but cursed himself the moment he thought it. No matter how Carmody had wound up in this state, she still deserved his respect.

“We’ll take her out the side door,” Lisa said.

They carried her through the living room into the kitchen and laid her on the linoleum.

“Where’s her car?” Lisa asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Did you bring her here? I saw yours parked in the garage.”

“I don’t know,” Tolan said. “I don’t remember anything since I left the hospital.”

“We’d better leave yours inside. The police will be looking for it.” She turned then, heading back toward the living room. “Go change your clothes and meet me back here in five minutes.”

Tolan looked down at the blood on his shirt, then shifted his gaze to Carmody’s body, wishing he could teleport to some distant planet.

Beam me up, Scotty.

The side door led from the kitchen to a small, sheltered courtyard. Beyond that was an alleyway that separated Lisa’s house from her neighbor’s. A seasonal resident, the neighbor was rarely here this time of year, leaving the alleyway secluded and quiet, even this early in the night. The only illumination was a distant string of streetlights that didn’t come on until cars passed.

The chances of anyone seeing them were slim. If they were careful, if they timed it right, nobody would ever know that Sue Carmody had been here.

Nobody but Tolan. And Lisa.

And Vincent?

No, Tolan thought. Not even Vincent.

47

Blackburn was waiting in his sedan when the squad car pulled up behind him. A moment later, Kat Pendergast and her partner, Dave Hogan, got out, Kat frowning as she approached his window.

“What happened to your head?”

Blackburn caught himself touching the butterfly bandage. He’d almost forgotten about it.

“A lesson on how not to subdue an armed suspect,” he said. “I’ll have to tell you about it sometime.”

She nodded, then gestured to the row of houses lining the street. It was a cul-de-sac in the middle of Bryant Park, an unassuming, upper-middle-class neighborhood. “So which one is Tolan’s?”

Blackburn pointed to a small three bedroom/two bath in the center of the curve. According to De Mello, Tolan had lived here for six years, four of them with his wife.

There was no car in the drive.

No lights on inside.

“You sure he isn’t hiding in there somewhere?” Kat asked.

“You sure he wasn’t at the girlfriend’s place?”

She shrugged. “Like I said when you called, I don’t think so. But I could be wrong.”

“So could I,” Blackburn said as he popped open his door and climbed out, “but I’ve got a feeling he’s still in the wind.”

“And you just want us to wait here, right? Give you the heads-up in case he decides to show?”

“That’s the general idea.”

“What about the neighbors? Won’t they be curious? Wonder why we’re hanging around?”

Blackburn looked at the surrounding houses, saw lights in the kitchen and living-room windows, families going about their business, living their lives.

“Let ’em wonder,” he said.

“You do realize we’ll be breaking about a hundred different laws.”

“Just one, actually. Maybe two. But we’re on a fact-finding mission, remember?”

“What about a search warrant?”

After his conversation with Soren, Blackburn had pretty much convinced himself that Soren wasn’t Tolan’s connection to Hastert and Janovic. Soren didn’t strike Blackburn as the kind of guy who would let himself get caught in the middle of a blackmail scheme. Especially one that involved multiple murders.

But with Psycho Bitch currently incapacitated, Blackburn needed to find some other connection, some concrete piece of evidence that linked Tolan to the two victims. If for no other reason than to confirm that he was on the right track with this thing.

But he knew a judge would never allow him to go on a hunting expedition. Not without probable cause.

So he’d go in anyway, see what he could find, and worry about the search warrant later.

“Look,” he told Kat, “if you don’t feel comfortable about this, feel free to—”

“I want to go in with you,” she said.

Blackburn saw the excitement on her face, but shook his head. “No way.”

“Come on, Frank. Hogan can handle lookout. And you could use another pair of eyes.”

“Not gonna happen.”

“Why?”

“This isn’t a date, Kat. We aren’t talking about a movie and a milkshake.”

“Yeah?” She leaned in close to him then, whispering in his ear. “If you ever want that milkshake, you’d better reconsider.”

Blackburn stared at her, not doubting for a moment what she meant by that. A bold move, to be sure. An ultimatum. Appealing to his baser instincts.

And he liked that. Hell, he loved it — especially the reward being offered.

But the moment he thought about the visual she had so generously supplied him, an image of Carmody intruded. Carmody, lying across her bed, pulling him toward her. Carmody, who still hadn’t bothered to return his last phone call.

He had no reason to feel loyal to the woman. Had every reason not to be. But sitting in that hospital cafeteria today, he’d felt a renewed vibe between them. That old spark. An intangible link that a loner like Blackburn didn’t often find.

And for all his sexual bravado, he hadn’t slept with another woman since that night of drunken bliss.

But he also knew that Carmody was a dead end. Treated him with about the same amount of dignity she’d afford a piece of used toilet paper. More interested in advancing her career than getting involved with an overbearing jerk like him.

So why the sudden conflict?

Why was he wasting his time fretting over a cold fish when he had a potential sure thing standing right here in front of him? All he had to say was yes.

Maybe having a second set of eyes in there wasn’t a bad idea after all.

“Well?” Kat said.

Blackburn stared at her. God, she was cute. He didn’t need much more convincing.

“What are you doing for dinner Saturday night?”

48

“Turn left,” Lisa said.

She had lined her trunk with black Hefty bags before they put the body inside. The trunk was small, but they managed to get Carmody to fit with a minimum of fuss.

A minimum of fuss, Tolan thought. How callous is that?

They were driving now, Tolan behind the wheel of Lisa’s BMW. He was still in shock, letting her take the lead, continually amazed by her calm under fire, and continually grateful that she was willing to take this risk for him.

But how could she?

How could she remain so loyal to a monster?

Because if he’d done this, if he had butchered Carmody, that’s exactly what he was.

Something stirred at the periphery of his brain, like an image from a dream. Abby standing near a dark doorway.

“Where are we taking her?” he asked.

“The old hospital.”

“The old hospital? We can’t just dump her there.”

“We don’t have much choice.”

“But—”

“Nobody goes up there anymore, Michael. And there are plenty of places to hide a body.”

He glanced at her and saw the set look on her face, her expression unreadable. This was beyond the usual focused concentration now. Something deeper. Colder.

“Why are you doing this, Lisa? How can you even be in the same car with me?”

“I already told you why.”

“No, this is above and beyond. You think I killed her. You probably think I killed Abby, too.”

They pulled onto Baycliff Drive now, winding up the mountain.

She looked at him. “It doesn’t matter, Michael. Don’t you know that by now? I love you. I’ve always loved you. You’re my lost soul.”

“Your what?”

She shook her head. “If you don’t get it by now, there’s no point in trying to explain it to you.”

“No,” Tolan insisted. “Tell me. What do you mean?”

“It’s something the old man said. That I looked like a woman in search of a lost soul. I think it’s fitting. Don’t you?”

Another image from the dream assaulted Tolan. Abby pointing her camera. A flash of light.

Ask the old man, Michael. He knows.

“Who are you talking about? What old man?”

“The police brought him in today. He had some interesting things to say about your new girlfriend.”

“My what?”

Lisa sighed. “Jane Doe, Michael, Jane Doe. But according to him, that’s not who she really is. Not now, at least. And I think you already know that.”

Tolan tried to find a suitable response to this, but couldn’t. His mind was reeling.

Lisa pointed. “Take the access road.”

“Lisa—”

“Turn.”

He did as he was told, pulling onto a narrow road that snaked through the mountains toward the old hospital. He waited as Lisa gathered herself to tell him whatever it was she was trying to tell him.

After a moment, she spoke. “You remember when Abby used to say, ‘Careful, now, the rhythm is gonna get you’?”

Tolan nodded. “What about it?”

“I always figured she got it from that song. I mean, she did, but she didn’t really use it in the same way. For her it was a warning.”

“It’s just something she said. I never really gave it much thought.”

“Neither did I, until today, when the old man started talking about it.”

“About what? The song?”

“No, Michael, pay attention. The Rhythm. The way of The Rhythm.” A pause. “Abby was from Louisiana, just like him.”

It’s the way, Michael. The Rhythm. The heartbeat.

“Maybe you should back up and tell me who the hell this old man is.”

“First, I need you to tell me something.”

He said nothing. Waited.

“Why did you leave the hospital today? Why did you take off without saying anything?”

Tolan hesitated, thinking about what he’d seen and heard in that seclusion room. Early this morning, he had chastised Blackburn for his insensitive use of labels, but there was no better way to describe what he’d been through.

“You’ll think I’m nuts.”

“I doubt it,” she said. “Just answer the question. Tell me why you left.”

He hesitated again, wondering how much he should say.

But what exactly did he have to lose? Things couldn’t be much worse than they were right now.

So he told her. Told his story from the beginning. About the blackout the night Abby died, and again today, just before finding Carmody in her shower. About the details of Vincent’s phone calls and his fear that they might not be real. About Jane’s changing eyes, the disappearing needle tracks. About the song that only he and Abby knew, the shifting facial bones, the words she spoke. Saying his name.

It was an unburdening. A confession.

The confession of a madman.

Because he now knew that’s what he was.

Lisa said nothing as he spoke, staring out her window into the night.

“The missing ear was the kicker,” he said. “I had a panic attack, ran to my car, then… nothing. Until I woke up on your living-room floor.”

They were silent as he rounded a curve, threading his way through the tangle of pepper trees, then into a clearing where the old hospital stood, illuminated only by the moon.

The place was a throwback to a more primitive time. A time when the mentally ill needed to be hidden from the world. Shunned.

As he pulled into the front drive, Tolan couldn’t help feeling the heat of a thousand eyes on him. The ghosts of the many patients who had come and gone over the years.

Watching him.

Judging him.

When he finally brought the car to a stop, Lisa turned to him. “I knew this was coming, you know. I guess it’s pretty ironic it happens today of all days.”

Tolan was puzzled. “You knew what was coming?”

“This moment. The moment you finally realize what you’re capable of. What you did to Abby.” She paused. “Sooner or later it had to catch up to you.”

What he did to Abby.

“You knew? You’ve known about her all along?”

“Yes,” she said.

Tolan was at a loss. “… How?”

“The same way I know about Detective Carmody. And Anna Marie Colson.”

He just looked at her. “What?”

“Come on, Michael. Do you really think this is the first time I’ve helped you?”

49

Like the lowlifes who had broken into Hastert’s apartment, Blackburn always kept a ring of bump keys handy. Such keys were once a well-kept secret in the locksmith’s arsenal, an essential tool for quick and easy entry. But it didn’t take long for the home-invasion crowd to catch on.

The keys were of various makes, each with its grooves filed down to the lowest cut, allowing it to be used in just about any lock that accepted that particular make of key. Once the key was inserted, the locksmith or thief — or, in this case, cop — would lightly “bump” the back of it with a screwdriver, or some other blunt instrument, until the key turned and the lock opened.

The process was so simple, a kid could do it. And Blackburn had no doubt that more than a few had.

After he and Kat took a quick look around the perimeter of the house, they decided to go in through the rear door. There were two locks, the knob and a deadbolt, but Blackburn had no trouble bumping them both.

“I knew those hands were good for something,” Kat said.

The moment they were inside they flicked on their Mag-Lites, illuminating a basic, upscale tract home: kitchen attached to a sunken living room. Hallway leading to a bathroom and three bedrooms.

“Where do you want to start?” Kat asked.

Blackburn handed her a pair of crime scene gloves, then shone his light toward the bedroom doors. “Most people keep their secrets in their closets. You take the first one, I’ll take the last, and we’ll meet in the middle.”

“A head-on collision.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing. Just thinking out loud. What exactly are we looking for?”

“Bank statements, check stubs. The most recent ones you can find. Patient files would be nice.”

“Janovic?”

“Or the new victim — Hastert.”

“Good luck.”

“I can dream, can’t I?” He gestured for her to get started. “Make sure you put everything back where you got it. We don’t want to leave any footprints.”

“Roger.”

As Kat pulled her gloves on and headed for the first bedroom, Blackburn navigated the narrow hallway until he reached the last door. Resting a hand on the butt of his holstered Glock, he pushed inside, shone the light around.

The master bedroom.

King-size bed, double-wide dresser, closet to the left, bathroom to the right. Nothing special. The wall above the bed featured a stark black-and-white photograph of Tolan, awash in sunlight, standing in a large, open room with high windows.

Taken by the wife, no doubt.

On closer inspection, Blackburn realized it was shot at the old Baycliff Hospital. A gathering spot. A Day Room. He remembered seeing this and several more like it in The New Times magazine, shortly after Abby’s murder.

He took a quick look through the dresser drawers, making sure that every sock, every pair of boxers remained in place, but found nothing of interest.

Moving to the closet, he slid open the door, shone his light inside, and found the usual assortment of clothes and shoes. A set of pristine golf clubs were buried in a corner, looking as if they’d been sitting there since the day they were purchased.

Undoubtedly the product of peer pressure.

The shelf above held a few boxes, their handwritten labels chronicling several years’ worth of tax returns. Blackburn pulled the most recent year down and quickly rifled through it, found a couple of check registers. A scan of their contents, however, yielded nothing of use.

Replacing the box, he closed the closet and turned, sweeping the flashlight beam around the room again.

He decided to move on.

The center bedroom was a home office. Functional and unpretentious. Bookcases holding a mix of hardcover and paperback books, both fiction and nonfiction.

Another reader, like Hastert.

The closet was a bust. A couple of coats hanging inside, more books piled on the shelf above them.

Shutting the closet door, he moved to a desk that was pushed up against the far wall, its blotter littered with various pieces of paperwork and mail. Blackburn quickly looked through them, but again found nothing of interest.

Sliding open the bottom drawer, he was hoping to see a row of hanging file folders, but instead found even more books, most of them snooze-inducing tomes covering a variety of mental health issues.

One of them had Tolan’s byline and the title What Color Is Your Anger? Blackburn pulled it out and leafed through it, vaguely remembering that it had been a bestseller a couple years back. The book that put Tolan on the map.

As far as Blackburn could tell, there was nothing special about it. Just a retread of every other self-help book out there, this one assigning colors to our various moods, followed by an armchair analysis of what triggers them.

It was all gobbledygook to Blackburn and seemed out of character for Tolan. As if he’d been slumming in the world of pop psychology. Why the public and the press latched on to this kind of nonsense was anybody’s guess. One of the many mysteries of our culture.

He was returning this masterpiece to its designated spot when he realized he’d missed something in the back of the drawer, wedged behind the rest of the books. Quickly moving them out of the way, he reached in and pulled out a box. A rectangular metal box with a padlock attached.

Blackburn felt a tiny surge of adrenaline that was immediately offset by puzzlement.

It was a tackle box.

The kind fishermen use.

But if this connected in the way he thought it might, that didn’t make sense. It didn’t make sense at all.

Still, he had to wonder, if you’re using a box like this to store your fishing tackle, why not keep it in the garage with the rest of your gear? Assuming Tolan had any. Why stick it in the back of a desk drawer, hidden by a bunch of books?

Setting it on the desktop, Blackburn rattled the padlock, but it was securely fastened. Bump keys wouldn’t be any help with this, but a properly bent paper clip would.

He had just found one in the top desk drawer when Kat’s voice rang out from the adjoining bedroom.

“Hey, Frank, I think I’ve got something here.”

Snatching up the tackle box and carrying it with him, he moved down the hallway to the next room, which had been set up as a den.

Sofa. Armchairs. TV.

Kat stood near the closet, a box of her own at her feet. This one made of battered cardboard.

“The shelf in there is full of these,” she said. “All labeled. Old mementos and stuff.” She held out a newspaper clipping. “Take a look at this.”

Blackburn set the tackle box on the floor, then took the clipping from her and shone his light on it. It was a fifteen-year-old article taken from the LA Times, yellowed with age, its headline reading:

The story that followed told of a young UCLA student named Anna Marie Colson, who had been gunned down one night while she and her boyfriend were returning from a walk to Westwood Village. Several of Colson’s roommates had been questioned, including one Michael Edward Tolan, a pre-med student whom police said was Colson’s former boyfriend.

While Tolan was initially a “person of interest,” no charges were ever brought, and the official conclusion was that the murders were the result of a random mugging.

A photo accompanied the article. The coed and several of her roommates. Six in all.

One of them was clearly Tolan. Much younger. Happier than Blackburn had ever seen him. And sitting on his lap was a cute brunette with a cheerleader’s smile.

Anna Marie Colson.

“The wife wasn’t his first,” Blackburn said. “The sonofabitch did it before.”

“Exactly what I was thinking.”

Blackburn continued to stare at the photo, looking at all those fresh young faces, none of them knowing that they had a killer among them.

But how could they? How can you look in someone’s eyes and really know what’s behind them?

Tolan had certainly fooled Blackburn. And Blackburn was a professional.

“What’s that?”

He looked up to see Kat gesturing toward his feet.

The tackle box. He’d forgotten about it.

“I’m not sure,” he said, “but we’re about to find out.” Folding the article, he stuck it in his shirt pocket.

“Shouldn’t I return that? I thought you said no footprints.”

“What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

Picking up the tackle box, Blackburn carried it to an armchair and sat, pulling it into his lap. Then he took the paper clip from his coat pocket, bent it straight, and went to work on the padlock.

Unfortunately, it was tougher than he’d expected.

“Let me try,” Kat said, crouching next to him.

Taking the paper clip, she attacked the lock, working it like a seasoned pro. Less than half a minute later, it was open.

She saw Blackburn’s look and grinned. “Gym class, senior year. I pulled a lot of locker room pranks.”

“What I would’ve given to be a fly on that wall.”

Her grin widened as he pulled the lock free and set it aside. Flipping up the latch, he carefully swung the lid of the tackle box open and shone his light on it.

There was a tray full of fishing lures on top. Weights. A spool of line. A couple of cork floats. Everything quite innocent and unremarkable.

Blackburn hooked the tray’s handle with a finger and pulled it out, setting it on the floor.

Then he froze.

Holy shit.

“What? What’ve you got?”

“What don’t I have is the question.”

Reaching into the bottom of the box, he pulled out a fat, pen-shaped object, the words PowerBlast 2000 printed on the side.

The cauterizing tool.

Beneath it lay a small hacksaw and a razor-sharp kitchen knife. And next to that was a stack of photographs.

Blackburn pulled them out and stared at them. The same photos he’d seen on the printed web page Tolan had given him. Dismembered bodies arranged in several different configurations. The last of the photos were shots of Abby Tolan. Her eyes cut out.

Kat eyed the contents of the box. “Is this what I think it is?”

Blackburn nodded. “The whole goddamn enchilada.”

“The murder kit, right? Vincent’s murder kit.”

Blackburn nodded again, knowing this didn’t quite fit — that something was off — but was unable to refute the evidence in front of him. There was no other conclusion he could reach.

Dr. Michael Tolan wasn’t a simple wife killer.

Dr. Michael Tolan was Vincent Van Gogh.

But before Blackburn could fully process the magnitude of this sudden revelation, he noticed something else in the box. Reaching a hand under the hacksaw, he pulled out a large plastic Ziplock bag and held it up, shining his flashlight beam at it.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Kat said, her face going pale.

Inside the bag, strung on a piece of nylon fishing line, was a necklace of severed ears, all but one of them as cracked and withered as old orange peels.

That one, however, stood out like a teenager in an octogenarian chorus line.

It was a new addition to the collection. A fresh souvenir.

Pink and raw and bloody.

And it was the sight of that ear — or more precisely, the earlobe — that sent the skittering of tiny feet along Blackburn’s spine.

“No,” he said quietly. “Not this.”

“What?” Kat asked. “What’s wrong?”

Blackburn suddenly felt sick to his stomach, the slop he’d eaten for lunch defying gravity and doing a barrel roll up his esophagus.

His whole body began to shake.

This can’t be true. Please tell me it isn’t true.

But it was. He knew it was. Knew it with unwavering certainty.

Because fastened to that fresh pink earlobe—

— was a tiny red ruby.

A tiny red ruby he’d seen just a few short hours ago.

A gift from a loving father. A birthstone.

Sue Carmody’s birthstone.

50

Tolan was in a daze.

“I was there, Michael. I saw it all.”

It was one thing to believe you might be a monster and another thing altogether to have it confirmed so matter-of-factly. Yet here Lisa sat, telling him what he’d dreaded hearing for a year now.

“You remember those photos Abby took of me on my birthday?”

“Yes,” he said.

“She called me a couple weeks later, told me to come by the gallery and pick them up. I showed up after work, but when I went inside, I heard you two in back, arguing. I should’ve left right there and then, but I didn’t. I couldn’t help myself. I peeked around the corner and saw you waving that box at her.”

“The condoms…”

She nodded.

“What was I saying?”

Lisa paused a moment. Swallowed. This was obviously difficult for her. “You called her a whore… Then she slapped you.”

Tolan thought about that slap, but was unable to penetrate the darkness that stretched beyond it.

“Keep going,” he said.

“You just stood there, as if you couldn’t believe she’d done that, your face a blank. Then you seemed to disappear into yourself, while someone else took over.”

“Someone else,” Tolan repeated.

Just like his mother.

She’d called it the changing of the guard. And it was usually followed by an attack on his father. A flurry of fists against his chest.

She’d be screaming at him and Tolan would run to the closet and hide, finding comfort in the darkness. But no matter how hard he pressed his hands against his ears, he couldn’t shut out the sound of his mother’s voice. Just as he couldn’t now shut out the truth.

“What happened next?” he asked, not sure he wanted to hear this.

Lisa’s gaze shifted to a spot outside her window, unable to look at him as she summoned up the memory.

“There was a knife on Abby’s work table. She’d been eating apples or something. One minute you were standing there and… and the next you suddenly grabbed it and started stabbing her. She didn’t even see it coming.”

The coldness that had enveloped Lisa earlier was long gone. A tear rolled down her cheek.

“When you were done, you just dropped into a chair and stared at the wall. At one of her photographs. The one you have hanging over your bed now.”

“And you saw the whole thing?”

She nodded. “I was in shock. It happened so fast, and I just stood there, frozen. There you were, covered in blood, Abby dead at your feet.” More tears filled her eyes. “It was Anna Marie all over again.”

Anna Marie?

So it was true. He was responsible for her death too.

Jesus, he thought. Will it ever end?

“You don’t remember that night, do you? The night Anna Marie died.”

He didn’t know what he remembered at this point.

“Clive and Kruger and the others were all out partying, but I stayed back because I wasn’t feeling well, and you said you needed to go to the library.”

No, Tolan thought. He hadn’t gone to the library. He’d stayed home to study. He was almost sure of it.

“Then about eleven o’clock, you came home in a panic, babbling on about calling the police. You had a gun wrapped up in your sweater.”

Jesus. Had he had another blackout? How often had he lost time and never even known it?

“The thing is,” Lisa continued, “you didn’t even have to do it. Anna told me the night before that she was planning to dump the law student and come back to you.”

“I don’t believe this. I don’t believe any of it.”

“Believe it, Michael. I helped you clean up. Helped you get rid of the gun. And when the police questioned all of us, I lied and said you’d been with me all night.”

“Why would you do that?”

“I told you. Because I love you. I’ve always loved you.”

“And the night Abby died?”

“The same thing. There was a lot of blood, but I put you in the shower, helped you clean up, got you into your car and on the road. I don’t think you said three words to me the whole time.”

“And what about my alibi?”

“You didn’t need one, thanks to Vincent.”

It took Tolan a moment to realize what she was saying, the weight of that realization nearly flooring him. He stared at Lisa with new eyes.

“You? You did that to her?”

“I had to, Michael. Don’t you see? I had to protect you. Vincent was in the papers every day for weeks. It only seemed natural to blame it all on him. To keep the police from suspecting you.”

Tolan squeezed his eyes shut now and buried his head in his hands. He was no longer interested in the truth. He just wanted to curl up like Jane Doe and die.

He’d spent his entire professional life and a good portion of his childhood dealing with people who suffered from the mildest phobias to the most severe psychosis. But until this moment, he had never fully understood or appreciated their pain.

To realize that he was one of them was like being told he had only a week to live. And Lisa, out of some misplaced sense of loyalty or twisted love, had done the unthinkable. Had done it for him.

She may have kept him from going to jail, but this moment, this pain, this realization was worse than the most hellish day in prison. Bile stung the back of his throat and he swallowed hard, trying to keep from throwing up.

“There’s something else you need to know,” she said.

Tolan opened his eyes and looked up at her, unable to even imagine what that something might be.

“What?”

“You won’t believe me, but I swear to God it’s true.”

“Tell me.”

“All those things you saw in seclusion room three? Abby’s eyes? Her face? You didn’t imagine them. They weren’t a delusion. They were real.”

She was talking crazy now. “Real?”

She nodded, then said words Tolan never thought he’d hear. Impossible words. Damaging words.

Words that inexplicably filled him with hope.

“She’s back, Michael. Abby’s back. And she’s alive.”

51

Blackburn’s hands shook as he took out the new phone he’d picked up at the station house and quickly punched in Carmody’s number. After several rings the line switched over to voice mail.

The nausea that had been crowding his stomach intensified. He felt like he was about to do a Linda Blair all over Kat’s crisp black uniform.

Clicking off, he immediately dialed again. A different number this time.

De Mello answered on the third ring.

“Fred, are you still at the squad?”

“Yeah, I was just packing up. I’ve got a few things on the fire, but I figured I could follow them up at—”

“Drop all that and sit your ass down,” Blackburn said.

“Why? What’s up?”

“I need you to do a GPS trace on Carmody’s cell phone.”

“Carmody? But—”

“Just do it, Fred. Now.” He gave him his new number. “Call me back as soon as you locate her.”

“Is Carmody okay?”

“That’s what I want to find out.” He clicked off and turned to Kat. “Here’s what I need you to do.”

“Shoot.”

“Clean this place up, get everything back where it belongs, but leave the tackle box open on Tolan’s desktop and break one of the windows. Then I want you and Hogan to drive to the nearest pay phone and call 911.”

“Why?”

“You’re gonna report a break-in, anonymously. Give them Tolan’s address. And the minute the call comes out over the radio, you respond.”

Kat nodded, immediately understanding. This would give them probable cause to enter the premises and “discover” the evidence laying out in plain sight.

It was an old tried-and-true ruse, and Blackburn had never lost any sleep over using it.

“Where will you be?” Kat asked.

“Wherever De Mello sends me.”

Five minutes later, he was on the road and traveling, heading in the only direction he knew to go. Toward where he’d last left Carmody.

Toward Baycliff Hospital.

As he waited for De Mello’s call, he ran the evidence through his head, still thinking that something didn’t quite fit right. What he’d found in that desk drawer was like pure gold to an investigator, but it seemed too convenient somehow. Too staged.

If Tolan was Vincent, then Blackburn’s extortion theory went right out the window. Why would Tolan need to buy Hastert’s and Janovic’s silence? Why would he need them at all?

Because if Tolan was Vincent he’d already know about the burn marks. He’d be the originator of the burn marks.

It was the same damn stumbling block as before, only from the opposite direction this time.

Someone had surely butchered Hastert and Janovic. Someone using Vincent’s mark. And every instinct Blackburn had said that the two victims were involved in a blackmail scheme. The reason for their murders.

But if Tolan wasn’t the target of that scheme, who was?

Blackburn let the events of the day tumble through his head and kept coming back to the phone calls Tolan had attributed to Vincent.

Was it possible that they weren’t phony after all? That they hadn’t been the product of a guilty conscience? Had Tolan been telling the truth about them all along?

Blackburn dialed his phone again, hoping to catch the squad’s resident computer tech, Billy Warren, still in his office.

No such luck.

Dialing dispatch, he asked for Billy’s home phone number, then got him on the line in three rings.

“Billy, this is Frank Blackburn.”

A pause. “Hey, Frank, what’s up?”

“Got a question for you.”

“I’m in the middle of Jeopardy here, man. Can it wait?”

Blackburn ignored him. “I need to know if it’s possible for somebody from the outside, some hacker, to go in and change official cell phone records.”

Billy seemed distracted. “Like how?”

“Like wiping away any trace of a specific call. Making it look like that call never happened.”

“What’s a cattle prod?”

“What?”

“Sorry, man. Jeopardy question.”

“Do me a fucking favor and focus,” Blackburn said.

“Yeah, yeah. You want to know if it’s possible to sanitize a cell phone record, right?”

Blackburn sighed. “Yes.”

“As long as the company’s network is accessible, then yeah, it’s possible. They try to wire in all kinds of security protections, firewalls and such, but an enterprising hacker can worm his way through all that bullshit and do just about anything he wants. How do you think we ended up with our last president?”

“And he could erase just one or two entries?”

“Sure,” Billy said. “He could add some too. Hell, he could throw in the latest Bruins-Trojans score if he wanted to.” Another pause, then, “So does that answer your question, man? I’ve got a game to get back to.”

Blackburn told him it did and hung up, thinking again about the events of the day. Tolan had said that Vincent threatened him, believing he’d been used as a scapegoat for the wife’s murder.

So was it possible that Vincent had erased those threats from the record? The use of an untraceable server for the website photos indicated at least some skill with computers.

Could Vincent be pulling a reverse whammy on Tolan?

If you looked at it that way, it all started to hang together.

Something like this:

Tolan somehow comes across the secret of the emoticon. If not through Soren or Jane Doe, then directly from Hastert, whom he may have treated at County General. Soren had said Tolan didn’t do much pro bono work, but that didn’t negate the possibility.

A few months after Abby Tolan is murdered — reportedly Vincent’s eighth victim — Hastert and his buddy Janovic put it all together and finger Tolan, threatening to expose him. Tolan gets tired of draining his bank account and does what has to be done. He kills them both, again making it look like a serial perp at work.

Vincent, in the meantime — the real Vincent — uses the anniversary of the wife’s death to get even with Tolan for stealing his thunder. Instead of simply giving credit where credit is due, why not let Tolan take the fall for all of the murders? Why not frame a guilty man?

The question was, how did Carmody fit in?

Was she part of the frame?

One last victim to help seal the deal?

Blackburn felt sick. He didn’t want to believe it, didn’t want to believe that the ear in that bag was Carmody’s, yet there was no denying that ruby birthstone.

But maybe he was wrong.

Please, God, let him be wrong.

Popping open the glove compartment, he sent up a small prayer that whoever drove this car last had been a smoker and had left behind his stash.

Miracle of miracles, he found a crumpled pack of Winstons inside, one lonely, battered cigarette still in the pack. Shaking it out, he stuck it in his mouth, pressed the in-dash lighter, waited for it to pop out, then fired up the Winston.

The smoke in his lungs felt wonderful.

52

“Alive? Why would you say something like that?”

“Because it’s true,” Lisa said. “Abby’s alive. What you saw in that room today was real. Every bit of it. Just like the old man said.”

“What is your obsession with this old man?”

Then it hit him. Something Blackburn had mentioned early this morning about an old homeless coot claiming he knew Jane Doe. Could this be the old man she was talking about?

“You have to believe me, Michael. I saw it with my own eyes. I knew it was all true the minute Cassie showed me the tattoo.”

“What tattoo?”

“The Hello Kitty tattoo.”

“On Jane’s shoulder?”

“The one that used to be there. Cassie showed me the observation tapes. It was like a special effect from a movie. We saw it fade right before our eyes. I think Cassie was ready for a nice tall drink after that.”

Tolan felt the flesh on his head prickle.

“Let me get this straight,” he said. “You’re telling me the Hello Kitty tattoo is gone? Completely gone?”

Lisa nodded. “Just like the needle marks, the eyes, and everything else you saw.”

No, Tolan thought. It couldn’t be right. This kind of nonsense went against everything he believed in.

But hadn’t Clay reported a case of heterochromia? Hadn’t Cassie confirmed the change in Jane’s eyes? Hadn’t Blackburn claimed he’d seen the needle marks? Hadn’t Jane sung that goddamn song?

Mama got trouble

Mama got sin

Mama got bills to pay again

Tolan had thought he was losing his mind, but if Cassie and Blackburn and Lisa and Clay had also seen these things, was it possible that Lisa was right? That his delusion was not a delusion at all?

“It’s her, Michael. It’s Abby. She’s a borrower. Un emprenteuse.”

“A what?”

“It’s what the old man called her. She’s come back from the dead, and borrowed a friend’s body to do it.”

Tolan tried to grasp this idea, but couldn’t get past the absurdity of it. He’d spent his life looking for rational answers to people’s problems, looking for ways to explain away their delusions and their superstitions. Yet despite this resistance, part of him wanted to believe. Could it really be Abby lying on that hospital bed?

“Why?” he said. “Why would she want to come back?”

“Why do you think? She’s not here for a glorious reunion. You killed her, Michael. You butchered her.”

“No,” he said. “I don’t believe it, I—”

“Stop it. You know it’s true.”

“Then why can’t I remember? Why can’t I remember any of them? Abby. Anna. Carmody.”

“Because you’ve blocked it. Just like your…” She paused, looking up sharply. “What was that? Did you hear that?”

He had no idea what she was talking about.

“It sounded like a cell phone ringing. I thought I heard it before.”

She popped open her door and climbed out, moving around the front of the car. Tolan opened his own door and joined her.

She pointed toward the forest of pepper trees. “It came from in there.”

Tolan stared into the darkness, but his mind was somewhere else. All he could think about was Abby. His Abby. Lying on that hospital bed.

“I don’t hear it now. Maybe I’m just being paranoid.” Lisa turned, looking toward the trunk of the car. “We’d better get that body inside. There’s an old incinerator in the basement. We can hide her in there.”

But Tolan wasn’t listening. He started for the pepper trees. “I have to go to Abby. I have to make it right.”

As if in response to this, the wind kicked up, rustling the leaves, whistling in the black windows and doorways of the old hospital.

Lisa grabbed his arm. “What are you doing?”

“I have to go to her. She came here for me.”

“What you have to do is help me with this body or neither of us is going anywhere.”

“No,” he said, wrenching free. “She needs me.”

“She doesn’t need you, Michael. She wants to kill you.”

“I don’t care,” he said, starting for the trees again. “I have to see her. I have to make it right.”

“Stop, Michael! It’s too late.”

He stopped dead then and turned, dread once again filling his gut. “What do you mean it’s too late? What did you do?”

“It’s already in motion. She’ll be dead by the time you get there.”

He advanced on her, overtaken by a sudden rage. “What did you do?”

Lisa brought her hands up and backed against the car. “I did what I had to. I went back to the old man, set it up with him. I would’ve done it myself, but I got your text message and—”

“To do what?”

“To keep her from hurting you. From hurting us! She’s evil, Michael. Don’t you understand that?”

“You sent him after her?”

“Yes,” she said, then quickly shook her head. “No. He’s only helping. Because he knows how dangerous she is. He knows what kind of damage she can do.”

Tolan felt his rage build, accompanied by the growing roar of the wind through the trees. It was as if that wind was swirling inside of him.

Was this how it had been with Abby?

With Anna Marie?

“Who else?” he shouted, forcing Lisa to raise her hands even higher, to ward him off. “Who else did you send after her?”

Lisa said nothing for a moment, her eyes again filling with tears. “I did it for you, Michael. For us.”

“Who?” he shouted.

She lowered her hands, her lips trembling as she finally answered his question.

“Bobby Fremont.”

Then, in the distance beyond the trees, a fire alarm began to ring.