From a Whisper to a Scream

by Charles de Lint

  “So this isn’t something you do a lot of?”

  “I have never summoned an errant spirit, nor attempted to banish it from this world.”

  “But—”

  “Yet I have seen it done,” she went on, before he could interrupt. “In Haiti. The houngan who first sponsored me into the Society had a patient who was possessed by such a baka. She was a little girt—about ten or eleven.”

  “What happened?”

  “The spirit was successfully banished, but the little girl died.”

  Oh, wasn’t that just great, Jim thought.

  They couldn’t find a parking spot near her building and had to leave the car almost a block away. The inconvenience proved fortuitous, for as they began the walk back to her building, they were stopped by a young black woman carrying a skateboard.

  “Police be looking for you, missy,” she told Ti Beau in a thick Caribbean accent. “They do leave a man to watch your door.”

  “Thank you, Rosa,” Ti Beau said.

  The girl gave Jim a questioning look, then smiled at the mambo. Dropping her board to the pavement, she put a foot on it and pushed herself off with the other leg. Once she had some momentum, she slalomed on down the sidewalk, both feet on the board, body swaying like a skier’s.

  Jim watched her go, then turned back to his companion.

  “Why would the police be looking for you?” he asked.

  “Because of what happened to Papa Jo-el last night, I would suppose. They would question everyone he knows.”

  “good, this’ll take forever,” Jim said.

  He was thinking of Cindy and Niki, waiting for them in the Tombs.

  “Unless I do not speak to them,” Ti Beau said.

  Before Jim could ask how she was going to manage that, she led him back to an alleyway. that they’d passed a moment ago. Garbage crunched underfoot, and something made a noise in the alley’s depths as they entered. A rat or some old tom, Jim thought. Halfway down the alley they came to a door set in the wall on their right. Opening it, Ti Beau stepped through the doorway.

  “This isn’t your building,” Jim said as he followed her inside.

  “The basements connect—all up and down the block.”

  It was like another world, Jim thought. Not quite the Tombs, but the rundown tenements weren’t that far from being condemned en masse.

  They didn’t meet a soul as they stepped from one basement to another through makeshift doorways that seemed to owe their existence to some enterprising individual armed with a sledgehammer. The halls were empty in Ti Beau’s building as well, though Jim could hear conversations and televisions as they passed by various doors.

  In her apartment Ti Beau took just a few moments to gather what she needed, filling two backpacks They each carried one back to where they’d left the car. Three quarters of an hour from when they’d first reached Ti Beau’s street, they were heading for their rendezvous with Cindy and Niki in the Tombs.

  Except for the straitjacket binding his arms to his torso and the wild light that came and went in his eyes, Billy Ryan seemed far calmer than either Frank and the lieutenant had been led to believe. He sat slumped in one of the four chairs around the table that took up the center of the interrogation room. A patrolman stood by the door, arms folded across his chest.

  A one-way mirror separated the two detectives from the room. Joining them in the observation room were Andy Steel and Joe Walker, the detectives from the 14th in charge of the case, and Sarah Taylor from the DA’s office.

  “So,” Brewer asked. “Did somebody read him his rights?”

  “The arresting officer did when he was picked up,” Walker said.

  “Did he call his lawyer?”

  Steel shook his head. “All he talks about is this monster he says he’s got in his head.”

  “So what is he on?” Brewer asked. “PCP?”

  “We ran some tests on him,” Steel said. “Preliminary reports say he’s clean.”

  “Any ID on the body yet?”

  “What body?” Walker said. “All we’ve got is pieces.”

  “Wilkes from the ME’s office found a finger pretty much in one piece,” Steel added. “She managed to get a print from it and it’s being run through the computer.”

  Brewer nodded thoughtfully, then turned to the assistant DA.

  “Okay if we talk to him?” he asked.

  Taylor nodded. “Evans said you have carte blanche, but I don’t see the connection to your case.”

  Brewer had called Jim Evans, the DA, on their way to the 14th, to cancel their meeting and get the required permission.

  “That’s what we’re going to find out,” he said. He started for the door, pausing to look back and add, “Shall we?”

  Frank and Sarah Taylor followed the lieutenant into the interrogation room, leaving the two detectives from the 14th to observe from the other side of the one-way mirror. Once the three had joined Ryan, they pulled up chairs around the table, on which Frank set a tape recorder. He gave it a quick test to make sure it was working, then set it on Record. He gave the date and who was present in the room, then pushed Pause.

  “Anytime, Loot,” he said.

  Ryan had showed absolutely no interest in either their presence or the tape machine.

  Brewer nodded. He’d turned his chair around so that he could fold his forearms on its backrest. He leaned forward and gave Ryan a prod with a stiff finger.

  “Anybody home?” he asked.

  Ryan jerked at the touch, his eyes going wide, then narrowing when they focused on the lieutenant. Brewer nodded to Frank, who turned on the tape player and then read Ryan his rights again.

  “Do you understand your rights as they’ve been read to you?” Brewer asked.

  Ryan nodded.

  “Do you want your lawyer present?”

  Ryan shook his head.

  “Are you willing to answer questions without having an attorney present?” Brewer asked.

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  “That’s good, Billy. Why don’t we start with what you were doing last night?”

  Ryan suddenly lurched forward until his face was only inches from the lieutenant’s. His eyes held a kind of frenzied light that made Frank shiver.

  “You don’t understand,” Ryan said. He spoke too quickly, like a junkie still peaking. “There’s not a fucking thing you can do to me. You can’t touch me.”

  “Why’s that, Billy?” Brewer asked, his voice mild.

  “’Cause if you get in my way, I’ll cut you into pieces—just like I did Mickey.”

  They all knew that “Mickey” could only mean Mickey Flynn, Ryan’s boss.

  Brewer never moved, but Frank glanced quickly to the mirror. If the detectives were any good at all, they’d be on the horn right now to have somebody pull Mickey Flynn’s prints to match them against the one that Wilkes had found in the garbage bags.

  “Are you saying you killed Mickey Flynn?” Brewer asked.

  “He wouldn’t listen to me.”

  “Well, I’m listening, Billy. What wouldn’t he let you tell him?”

  “Oh, I told him all right, but the stupid fuck just laughed at me. Nobody laughs at me.”

  “I’m not laughing, Billy. You can tell me.”

  For a long moment there was only the sound of the tape turning in its spools.

  “What was it you wanted to tell Mickey?” Brewer prompted.

  “I got this thing in my head,” Ryan said. The wild light in his eyes seemed to grow even more frenzied as he spoke, but his voice was calm, almost expressionless. “I saw it last night in the Tombs, killing those three jigs. It was a fucking monster. It just stepped out of the night and cut ’em, and then it was gone.”

  Frank saw Brewer’s gaze shift slightly to Taylor, as though to say, Now do you see the connection? But Taylor didn’t see him. She seemed entranced by Ryan’s madness. Frank found it hard to look away from the man himself.

  “So you saw a murder committed last night,
” Brewer said, his attention back on Ryan. “Three murders. Could you identify the killer for us?”

  Right, Frank thought. Like Ryan was suddenly going to turn stoolie, though the way things were going in this case, he didn’t think he’d be surprised at anything that happened now.

  Ryan was shaking his head. “You don’t understand,” he told Brewer. “You’re just like Mickey.”

  “Am I laughing, Billy?”

  “No. It’s just …”

  Ryan’s voice trailed off and he lapsed back into silence. The tape continued to hiss through the spools.

  “I want to understand,” Brewer said, “but you’ve got to talk to me, Billy. What was it that made Mickey laugh?”

  Fires flashed in Ryan’s eyes. “Nobody laughs at me—you get that?”

  Jesus, Frank thought. It was like talking to a toddler—a homicidal toddler, mind you.

  “Nobody’s laughing, Billy. Talk to me.”

  Ryan nodded slowly. His gaze was fixed on Brewer’s face, but he seemed to be looking through the lieutenant.

  “It’s just … this thing,” he said. “It wasn’t real.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying, Billy. I’m not laughing, but I just don’t understand.”

  “It, like, it just appeared out of nowhere and killed those jigs and then it was gone again. Vanished.”

  A cold chill went through Frank. The words of their witness to Leslie Wilson’s killing returned to him, how the Slasher had stepped from a doorway when there was no door nearby and then as good as vanished.

  “This happened at night, didn’t it, Billy?”

  “I’m telling you, he vanished!”

  Veins popped out at Ryan’s temples as he shouted the last word. Brewer held up a placating hand.

  “Okay, okay. But isn’t it possible that he could have just moved out of the firelight?”

  “You’re laughing at me.”

  “Look at my face, Billy. Do you see even a smile?”

  Veins continued to throb at Ryan’s temples, but a confused look moved across his features.

  “No … ,” he said, his voice soft.

  “Okay. So is it possible?”

  “No!”

  As Brewer calmed Ryan down again and began to lead him step by step through how he’d killed Mickey Flynn, Frank found it harder and harder to concentrate on what was being said. He kept returning to their witness. Fisher’s testimony about the Slasher and what Ryan had just said concerning the death of Papa Jo-el and the Etienne brothers.

  His thoughts were taking him straight into a Twilight Zone—a place he’d fought hard to ignore, every time the case started pushing him in that direction—but this time he let himself go, because for all that it went against everything he believed to be true, he was beginning to think that something was going on that just couldn’t be rationally explained. He wished his partner were here, Tom with his intuitive leaps and—

  The realization of what Tom was up to came to him like a fist in his gut. It all made a crazy kind of sense: Tom’s brother John with his Indian medicine man ways, what Papa Jo-el had been up to in the Tombs last night … . Tom and his brother were going to try to duplicate what Papa Jo-el had attempted.

  “Jesus,” he said softly.

  “You’ve got something you want to add?” Brewer asked.

  Frank felt disoriented, and it took a moment for the lieutenant’s words to register. Then he realized where he was, that the tape machine was still running.

  “No, sir,” he said.

  Brewer gave him an odd look, then turned to the assistant DA.

  “I guess we can wrap this up, then, Ms. Taylor—at least for the time being. We’ll have to check into a few of the things that Mr. Ryan’s told us and then—”

  Ryan lunged at him suddenly. Trapped in the straitjacket; he couldn’t keep his balance, and his attack degenerated into a stumbling fall.

  “You said you’d believe me!” he shouted as he went down.

  Frank and the patrolman by the door helped Ryan back onto his chair.

  “I didn’t say I’d believe you,” Brewer said. “I told you I wouldn’t laugh. Do you see me laughing?”

  “You’re waiting until I’m back in my cell. You’re just going to—”

  “That’s a great idea,” Brewer said. He directed his attention to the patrolman. “Put him back in his cell.”

  “You lying fuck!” Ryan cried.

  Brewer ignored him. “And see that he undergoes psychiatric evaluation, ASAP.”

  Frank waited while Ryan was taken from the room, fiddling with the tape machine as he tried to figure out how to approach Brewer with what he had to tell him. The lieutenant and Taylor talked for a few moments longer, but since everything was going to hinge on the psychiatric evaluation, they didn’t take long to wrap things up.

  “Loot?” Frank said when Taylor finally left, catching Brewer before he stepped out of the room as well.

  Brewer paused to look back. “What is it, Frank?”

  “I’ve got something that needs looking into … .” Frank cleared his throat. “It’s about Tom.”

  “What about him, Frank? I said we’d cover for him.”

  “I think I know what he’s up to.”

  Brewer waited a long heartbeat, but Frank didn’t say anything else. How could he? It sounded crazy to him. If he told the Loot, Brewer’d have men all over the Tombs looking for Tom. Somehow, Frank didn’t think that was going to be such a good idea. He wasn’t saying he actually believed there was some kind of real-life boogeyman running around the Tombs, but right now he wasn’t willing to take the chance that he was wrong. Not without talking to his partner first.

  “Okay,” Brewer said finally. “So tell me.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Frank …”

  “I just can’t, Loot. You’ve got to trust me on this.”

  Brewer shook his head. “I’ve already got my neck out on a limb for your partner, Frank. Don’t ask me to—”

  “I’m walking out of here,” Frank said.

  Brewer shook his head. “Don’t do this. I’ve already got one of my main investigators out running around without a leash. There’s no way I’m letting both of you hotdog it.”

  “I’m sorry, Lieutenant, but this is something I’ve got to do. I owe it to my partner.”

  “I can’t cover for you.”

  Frank understood what that meant. He and Brewer were due at the DA’s office for the meeting they’d missed earlier. It was bad enough with Tom gone. The DA’d be all over Brewer’s ass unless he showed up with at least one of them. Frank knew he was looking at a suspension, maybe worse, but he didn’t think he had a choice.

  “I’m sorry, Loot,” he said, “but he’s my partner.” The simple response said everything.

  Then he walked. Out of the interrogation room and the precinct, to where he and Brewer had left the car. He drove back to the 12th, all the while trying not to think about what he’d just done. When he got there, he found that Tom’s car was still parked in the lot behind the building.

  All right, he thought. So they went in John’s pickup. Only where? The city was so goddamn big, they could be anywhere, maybe even back on the reserve.

  He could put out an APB on John’s vehicle, but he didn’t want to involve the department. He and Tom were already skating on ice so thin he didn’t know what was keeping them from going through.

  Think, he told himself. Where would they go?

  Okay. If he went with the premise that Tom and his brother were going to try to duplicate Papa Jo-el’s little ceremony—and he had to go with that, since he was betting all his cards on the one hand and he didn’t think he’d get more than this one shot—then the answer was simple.

  They’d go to the Tombs.

  There’d be no sense in trying anything until nightfall, so they were probably holed up at the moment, somewhere around that intersection where Papa Jo-el and his bodyguards had bought it last night.
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br />   He thought it through for a few moments longer, then backed out of the parking lot and headed north to where the abandoned buildings and empty lots of the Tombs sat like the blight they were. It was the armpit of the city, a place to go when you got to the end of your rope, a place where hope died and there was nothing left to do but just let go.

  His partner was somewhere in there. Frank thought. He couldn’t have told anyone how he could be so sure. He just knew it.

  Niki hadn’t thought it could get any worse, but the closer she and Cindy got to the Tombs, the louder and more insistent her father’s midnight voice became. It pounded in her head until all she wanted to do was just bang her forehead against a wall to make it go away.

  Niki, Niki, Niki … .

  It wouldn’t ease, wouldn’t give her a moment’s respite.

  NIKI.

  She envied Jim for the little charm that the voodoo woman had given him. She’d have given anything to get that cold and awful sound out of her head.

  By the time they got to the building where she’d been squatting, it was all she could do to shuffle one foot in front of the other. Cindy put an arm around her shoulder, partly for support, more for comfort.

  “Are you going to be okay?” Cindy asked.

  No, Niki thought. I’m never going to be okay again.

  But she nodded dully.

  “Well, ladies,” Bobby Brown greeted them as they entered the building’s foyer.

  He had the place to himself, although the marble floor was still littered with little islands of blankets, clothing, and other possessions too threadbare or cheap to be worth stealing, which the other squatters had left behind for the day.

  “Into a little heavy shit, are we?” Bobby went on, as he took in Niki’s condition. He stepped closer, in front of her and Cindy. “Like I told your friend,” he said to Niki, “I don’t much appreciate your trying to move in on my turf, see? The problem is, there’s only so much to go around and—”

  “Get the fuck out of my face,” Niki told him.

  Here was something she could take out her anger on. She shook herself free of Cindy’s arm and took a step forward. Something in her eyes made Bobby back up quickly.