Whispers of a Killer Read online

  “Until then.”

  Placing the phone in its charger, I turn to face Ben.

  “Be where in an hour?”

  “The precinct.”

  Ben stares me down.

  “There’s… They want me to consult on a case.”

  “Did you happen to mention to them that you’re retired?”

  “It’s one of my old cases. They just want my opinion on…new evidence.” I brush past him into the hall, but he grabs my arm.

  “Which case?”

  I swallow hard. I’ve already skirted the truth enough to have gotten his dander up. “Rachel Chester.”

  Ben’s grip on my arm slackens. “Mother fucker.”

  I move past him and head to the bedroom. “No, that was a different case.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  I want to tell him it would’ve had the whole homicide department rolling, but he never understood the desperate need for dark humor when dealing with the worst of humanity and the horrors that follow in their wake. “Sorry.”

  As I’m pulling black slacks, a white blouse, and a black blazer I never thought I’d have to wear again from the closet, Ben appears in the bedroom doorway. “She’s not going to get off, is she? You said there’s new evidence?”

  “Chester’s going to rot in jail for the rest of her life. This is just… I’ll be home in a few hours.” I head for the bathroom, but Ben blocks the door.

  “Sylvia—”

  “Look, Ben, I can’t just turn off being a cop. I can’t just say screw you to all of those victims’ families and tell them I’m sorry, but I’m too busy packing to tie up any loose ends with my old cases. You know I have to go.”

  His eyes go soft. “But it’s Chester.”

  I move him out of my way with a gentle hand on his shoulder. “I know.”

  ***

  Ben says little more until he’s kissing me goodbye at the door. “Text me when you’re heading home.”

  “I will.”

  Then I’m driving to the precinct, focusing on the road in front of me as best I can while, in my mind, the gruesome crime scenes of Chester’s case play back on fast forward. If this is a copycat killer, it will be my first, but it isn’t terribly surprising. The case made national news not only because of the brutal nature of the crimes or the fact she was a female serial killer, but because Chester has a WHISP. The overcharged media exploded when she was arrested. While the pro-WHISP lobby debated the ethics of punishing a WHISP for its human’s crimes, the anti-WHISP lobby used the case as proof of the inherent evil of WHISPs. You had to be living under a rock or in a tech-free cabin in the wilds of Montana not to have heard about Rachel Chester.

  So, in retrospect, a copycat seemed inevitable. But why the hell did NYPD need my input to deal with one? I’d kept painstaking notes on Chester throughout the investigation. Those notes should’ve contained more than enough details to deal with a copycat. There had to be more to the story, but as I fought through traffic, I couldn’t figure out what. Whoever this Chester-wannabe was, I damned him or her for not waiting just another couple of months to start their killing spree. By then Ben and I would have been on the road with no turning back, not ten minutes away where some jackass detective on a power trip felt like he could order me to come down to my old precinct. I pull into a visitor spot, turn off the car and stare up at the rearview mirror. “Yeah, but you’re the idiot who can’t let it go.”

  Sighing, I get out of the car and stride up to the front door. A young, blond officer exiting the precinct holds the door for me before a spark of recognition fires in his eyes and a wide smile spreads across his face like a sunrise. “Lieutenant Harbinger! Nice to see you, Ma’am. I take it you haven’t headed west yet?”

  “Not quite yet, Schmitty. How’s the works?”

  “Can’t complain. But what brings you down here? Forget your favorite stapler?”

  I smile. “Give you three guesses and the first two don’t count.”

  His blue eyes narrow and his smile sags. “It’s that 187 they’re all talking about, yeah? They get you to come back to work?”

  “Naw, just consulting.”

  “Heh, like Sherlock Holmes.”

  “Exactly, except for the cocaine. Now Schmitty, you won’t tell anyone I’ve been by, right? Wouldn’t want folks to get jealous that I didn’t visit.”

  “You can count on me, Lieutenant. You take care and have a good trip if I don’t see ya again before you leave.”

  “I will.”

  I watch Schmitty skip down the last few steps and I wave to him when he reaches the bottom. He’s a good kid, and I’m glad I won’t be here when he takes a bullet or a bribe or when the stress of the job breaks his spirit. As the familiar scents of the precinct fill my nostrils, mostly stale coffee and pungent floor cleaner, I feel a bittersweet comfort, but it’s my home away from home no more. Resisting the urge to walk right to the back, I glide up to the front desk and an unfamiliar redhead looks up from her computer. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m Sylvia Harbinger. I’m here to see Lieutenant Crone. He’s expecting me.”

  She picks up the phone, consults a phone list, and taps three digits. During the pause that follows, she gives me a perfunctory smile. “A Ms. Harbringer here to see Lieutenant Crone.”

  Not very observant, this one. I want to tap my wedding ring and correct her pronunciation, but I restrain myself. My being edgy has nothing to do with her and I don’t want to take out crap on the poor girl.

  “Uh huh. Thanks.” She hangs up the phone. “Lieutenant Crone said to go right back to the briefing room. Said you’d know the way?”

  “I do, thank you.”

  Here we go again.

  Chapter Three

  “Many have blamed the Department of Energy for their lack of regulations with regards to magnetic fields, but the truth is, technology is neither a fad nor something that Americans are willing to live without. I think if you asked most people whether they’d give up their computers and cell phones in order to avoid developing a WHISP, they would think you were insane.”

  Eric Dugan, Journalist for Technology Magazine

  Lieutenant Crone is a lot like I pictured him: a big pain-in-the-ass in a discount suit. His stubble is impressive, as are his bright white teeth and the mustard stain on his already hideous tie. His hand is a big hunk of clammy meat swallowing my relatively normal sized one and crushing it for good measure. Years of dealing with inflated male egos exactly like his keep me from wincing during the introductions.

  “Lieutenant Harbinger, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

  “Lieutenant Crone.”

  “Please sit down.”

  I park in one of the comfortable black rollers at the large oval conference desk but keep a straight back. It’s just the two of us and the room feels too big. “Where’s the chief?”

  “Trying to put a cap on the press.”

  “Ah, right. Okay. Hit me. Why did I need to come all the way down here?”

  Crone smirks. “They told me you were the no-nonsense type.” He flips open a folder and drops it in front of me before plunking down in the seat next to mine. “This happened three days ago in SoHo. Her name was Alice. Alice Petrie.”

  A woman? I’m struggling to think about what a woman’s murder has to do with Chester’s six-man killing spree when glossy photos of a familiar scene assault my eyes. Even knowing what I was probably going to see doesn’t change the awfulness of it. I examine each photo in turn, suppressing emotion. It’s all so similar to Chester’s MO, but the fact that it’s a female victim is throwing me.

  “I’m sure that you can see why we called you ‘all the way down here.’ This is too carbon copy. Either someone on the force made a pretty penny selling your crime scene notes or Chester had an accomplice who’s taken it upon himself to continue that psycho’s good work.”

  I don’t look up from the pictures or correct Crone’s misassumption or misuse of pronouns. If Chester ha
d an accomplice, it wouldn’t have been a man. “There was never any evidence of an accomplice.”

  “So your file says. But then, how do you explain that?” Crone points a bulky finger at the photo in my hand. It’s a close-up of a cell phone lodged in a woman’s throat. A detail of the original murders held very quiet and need-to-know.

  “Chester could have said something to someone, written a letter; hell, she could’ve tweeted it.”

  “Survey says no, and I know you see more little odds and ends that no one’s supposed to know about.”

  I set down the photo and rub my temples. “That still doesn’t mean there’s an accomplice. I know that this may come as a shock to you, Crone, but there are such things as dirty cops. It’s like you said before, probably an inside leak.” Even as I speak, I’m wracking my brain trying to remember what details I’d actually put in my reports and which were in my personal notes that no one but me had access to.

  “Chief thinks there’s enough doubt, and this case is sufficiently ugly that he wants this thing put to bed quickly and quietly. He wants you to come back. Help solve this thing before it’s one big shitstorm again.”

  “And just why does he think I’d do that?”

  “Said he’d consider it a personal favor, and also that Sylvia Harbinger didn’t leave shit just hanging.”

  What Crone doesn’t say is that no one knows Chester like I do, and with the threat of another serial, the chief probably had no choice in calling me back in. I snort. “Bastard. Don’t suppose I can get copies of all this to compare with my personal notes.”

  “But of course, Lieutenant.”

  I gather up the photos in the file and pass it over to Crone.

  “Does this mean you’re putting yourself on the case?”

  “It means that I need to compare stuff with my personal notes.”

  “Uh huh.” Crone takes the file and walks out leaving me alone in the briefing room.

  It might be the first time I’ve ever really been alone in here. Sitting back in the chair, I close my eyes, but the images from the photos are still there as if they’ve been photocopied onto the backs of my eyelids. I don’t try to kid myself that there’s going to be a fast arrest here. If Crone and company had any leads at all, I wouldn’t be here. There’s also no sense telling myself I can just let this go and have someone else deal with it. That isn’t going to happen. Now I just have to find a way of doing it without wrecking my marriage. I can hear Ben’s every argument already in my ears: “They can’t ask you to do this, you’re retired. You promised, Sylvy. How can you even think about doing this after all that this case put you through the first time?”

  His yet-to-be-spoken points aren’t invalid, and how am I going to go through this all again? This case, my last case, sent me into therapy and came damn close to ending my marriage. Only my agreeing to early retirement and Ben agreeing to move out of the city kept us together. What was the saying about compromise? A conclusion where both participants walk away unhappy? But seriously, I have to figure out how I’m going to convince Ben that finishing this case, really finishing this case, is the only option for me. Dammit.

  I am hating Chester all over again. Hating a world where someone like her is even allowed to exist. But also hating myself for allowing her to get to me. “You’re tougher than this, Sylvia, ol’ girl. You’ll take down this worthless excuse for a human, just like you took down the original. Then it’s a cozy cabin and serene mountains and a proper retirement.”

  “Gosh, I miss these little conversations we used to have without me.”

  Maybe if I’d gotten a decent night sleep, I’d have bolted out of my chair at the chief sneaking up on me whilst I was talking to myself, but today I can’t manage it. I do spin the chair to face him and stand up. “Chief. Are we fighting the good fight today?”

  His mocha lips thin. “You mean the one against the press? I suppose.”

  “I mean the one against monsters like Chester.”

  “We could be.”

  Chapter Four

  “The WHISP phenomenon is real. But it is not a reason to fear. It is not a reason to panic. Nor is it the next stage in human evolution. WHISPs are merely a byproduct of technology. Soon we will discover under what circumstances they are produced, and how to prevent and eventually eradicate them. This is a global occurrence, but should in no way be construed as a global crisis.”

  President Hannah Truefall, excerpt Presidential Address, May 2nd, 2030

  Chief Lowman isn’t my pop and he didn’t say he’d be disappointed in me if I didn’t come back on board until this copycat was put away, but he’s still a father-figure to me, despite my age, and I know he would be. But it isn’t a reason Ben will understand. I’m not sure there is a reason he will understand, but I have to try. He’s still in the living room packing when I get back from the precinct, a folder of photocopied pages from the copycat murder under my arm.

  Hearing me come in, he meets me in the hallway to give my lips a peck. “So, how’d it go?”

  “Not great. Let’s, ah, sit down, okay?”

  Ben eyes the folder under my arm. “What’s that?”

  “Case file.”

  “On Chester?”

  “Not exactly.” I brush past Ben and head to the living room. I weave around boxes, sit on the couch and set the file on the coffee table.

  Ben follows, but his face is already a blank mask behind which anger bubbles. He doesn’t sit with me on the couch but chooses an armchair instead. “Tell me.”

  I do. I tell him everything that Crone told me, everything the chief said, and everything I could glean from the file in the short time I’d studied it. Ben sits in silence, his expression unchanged and his posture rigid. He doesn’t nod or give any indication that he’s listening at all save his brown eyes locked on me in steady regard. I finish. The silence stretches. I try to stay still and neutral. If I don’t give Ben a chance to give me his opinion first, without resistance, then he may bottle it up and never tell me what he truly thinks. I must be patient.

  Finally, after swallowing several times, he says, “You didn’t tell them ‘no,’ did you?”

  I choose my words carefully, “I didn’t tell them ‘yes,’ either.”

  “So, what did you say?”

  “I told them that I’d have to consider, but that I would compare this case with my personal notes to see if anything sticks out.”

  Ben stands and turns to the window. “I know that look. You already think there’s a connection. That you might’ve missed something.”

  “Rachel Chester is a loner, and there was never any evidence of an accomplice…but there are similarities, details that Chester or someone else in the know must have shared with someone.”

  Ben doesn’t look at me. “You already know I don’t think you should do this, and I don’t want you to, so I don’t feel like this is much of a discussion. We almost didn’t make it through this case once already, and to be honest with you, I don’t think we’re out of the woods yet. And now you’re asking me to let you get dragged back into it. What do you want me to say?”

  He isn’t wrong. Not in one thing he’s saying. In this moment, I might be choosing between saving my marriage and catching a killer. I love Ben, so much it hurts sometimes, and there could be no one else in the world willing to put up with my own special brand of bullshit, but people had died, and more people were going to die, and if I’d missed something in the initial investigation, then their deaths would all be on me. Could I live with a failed marriage? With Ben as just a friend, splitting holidays with Lincoln? My heart feels crushed even thinking about it, but maybe. What I couldn’t live with was willfully letting a mistake of mine get people killed. I only hope Ben will understand. I stand and join him at the window without touching him.

  “You’re right. This isn’t much of a discussion, and I’m sorry for that. I will understand if…if you can’t do this with me. But, Ben, if I missed something, if I screwed up this case somehow
, people have died because of it, and more people are going to die because of it. Because of my fuck up.”

  He turns to me, eyes blazing. “You don’t know that. Sylvy, they can catch this bastard without you.”

  “Maybe. But what if they don’t? How many lives is that chance worth? One? Two?”

  His gaze returns to the cityscape outside the window. “You realize the position I’m in, right? I let you do this and go through hell again or I say no and I’m the asshole for leaving you at a time like this. You might forgive me, but what about Lincoln?”

  “Don’t do that. Lincoln’s a grown man now. He’s got your brains and my moxie. He’d understand.” I swallow and take his hand. “I know I’m asking for a lot. And I know I don’t really deserve this from you. But I’d also like to think that because of the shit we’ve gone through in the past, we’re going to be able to handle this shit better. We already know what to expect, at least the general flavor of shit if not the specific dish.”

  Ben cracks a smile but quashes it quickly. His hand returns my grip as he looks into my eyes. “One month. I know you have to fix this, but, at some point, you also have to let it go.”

  I can’t suppress the flare of anger that goes off in me. It’s just so Ben to think the case could be resolved so quickly and easily, but then I pause and ask myself what exactly I was hoping for. What did I think he was going to say? “Sure, sweetie pie, take all the time you need.” Yeah right. And I think I can vaguely see his point through the haze of my emotions. Eventually, maybe I will have to let it go. Maybe not in one month, but someday.

  “A month.”

  We seal Ben’s ultimatum with a kiss.

  Chapter Five

  Population of the United States with WHISP: 16.5 million or approximately 5%

  U.S. Census Bureau 2027