by Jen Haeger
For the moment, I only have crime scene descriptions and photos to go with, but I’m expecting the medical examiner’s reports any minute. In fact, after a few blurry-eyed minutes, I decide to screw waiting for the ME’s report and go down and talk to Claire Buckingham. She’s been with the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for almost as long as I’ve been a detective, and I know she’s an early riser.
Beating most of the rush hour traffic, it isn’t long before I’m tapping at her morgue office door. She has another office upstairs that smells a lot less like formaldehyde, but I’ve never seen her in it. She glances up and, seeing me in the window, unleashes a warm smile. She waves me in.
“Couldn’t wait another half-hour for them, huh?”
We hug and then she turns back to her computer to finish off a sentence.
“Maybe I just wanted to see you.”
“You could’ve asked me out to lunch.” She emphasizes the statement by jabbing the period key on the keyboard.
“You never take lunch.”
“Neither do you.” She sighs. “And you definitely won’t today. I found something. Well actually, a few somethings, but the long and short of it is, it is my professional opinion Pamela Sistern and William Rocks were not killed by the same person or persons.”
I blink.
“If it were something earth-shattering, I would’ve called you already.”
“Well, I guess knowing for sure is something. It speaks to coordination of the killers down to at least the hour of death.”
Claire frowns. “I wasn’t finished.”
“Sorry. What else?”
“Well, it took doing the autopsies back to back, but there are definitely some inconsistencies between Pamela Sistern and William Rocks. Pamela’s mutilation was very close to Alice’s who was very close to the original murders. William’s is similar but sloppier. Also, there is some evidence to suggest he was butchered by a right-handed person while all previous murders have suggested a left-handed killer. I can show you exactly what I mean.” She gestures to the autopsy room down the hall.
“You took pictures?”
Claire nods.
“I trust you.”
***
I return to the precinct with the preliminary autopsy reports. Answers in my hands, but still a head full of questions. How do you coordinate random killings? Or one random and one non-random killing? People, New Yorkers, at least, are not just sheep standing around waiting for death. Some people have strong regimens they follow day in and day out, but most don’t, and even if they do, something could come up at the last minute to change their plans, like a phone call or missing a subway train. Chester didn’t stalk her victims, but she was just one killer on her own, killing when the mood struck her. She didn’t have a schedule to keep or a deadline.
I dig back into the case files and statements from friends and relatives. William Rocks generally kept to a schedule of home to work, but sometimes worked late and sometimes went out for drinks after work with coworkers. However, he did live alone in a first-floor apartment in a complex with a history of break-ins, which meant it might have just been the apartment complex which was targeted instead of the victim per se. More of a crime of opportunity, but still, did the killer wait around until they were sure they had a victim or until just after they’d killed him and then given Pamela Cistern’s killer the green light? It was possible, but a stretch, and it rubbed me the wrong way. The how not adding up, I focus on the possible who.
I open my laptop and find a response from Dr. Silverman. He can see me today at eight-thirty. It’s almost eight already and traffic will be a bitch, so I’ve got to leave right away. Still, I swing by Crone’s disaster of a desk and leave him a note along with copies of the autopsy reports. I’m a little glad he isn’t in yet because I don’t know how much of my meeting will be investigation and how much will be therapy. Heading to the front door, I pass Agent Coppola on his way in.
“Detective Harbinger, is there something I should know about?”
“No. Preliminary autopsy reports are in, but I’m following up on the anonymous tip about Alice Petrie’s killer having a WHISP.”
“Did you track down the caller?”
“No. I…it’s just some general WHISP research to verify what he might have seen.”
“Fine.” He continues past me. “I’ll expect a summary on my desk later today.”
Of course, you will.
Chapter Seventeen
“A spokesperson for the Vatican announced yesterday, Pope Francis will hold a special mass baptism for WHISPs on December 8th, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Those not able to attend in person may attend via Skype at designated churches around the globe.”
CNN
There’s no big sign outside of the Center for WHISP Wellness and Research. It’s a suite in a nondescript white building at the end of the drive of an industrial park on Long Island. Once inside the building, there’s a stunted vestibule with three doors. The door on my right has a small placard that matches the suite number for the center, but no name. I try the handle and the door opens inwards to what could be the waiting room of a small dentist’s office minus the usual fish tank. I spy a man sitting behind a clear partition. When I enter, he smiles. I’m the only one in the waiting room. I step up to a break in the partition.
“Do you have an appointment?”
“Yes, I’m Dete—”
“Just sign the log please and I’ll call you when someone’s ready for you.”
I fill out my name, appointment time, and Dr. Silverman’s name on a form attached to a clipboard. When I finish, I catch the man’s eye and I can tell he’s been watching me. He seems confused. I choose a chair along the wall, so I can see him out of the corner of my eye. After picking up one of the center’s pamphlets from an end table, it quickly becomes apparent why the man is confused. Most people who come to the center are here to learn about their own WHISPs, not about WHISPs in general. It’s my lack of WHISP that’s confusing him.
After a few minutes, the phone on the counter in front of the man buzzes. He answers it with a “yes” instead of a hello, then picks up the clipboard, presumably checking my name. Hanging up the phone, he clears his throat.
“Detective?”
“Yes?”
“Dr. Silverman will see you now. His is the third office on your left just through the door.”
Now it feels even more like a doctor’s office, and I suppose it kind of is. “Thank you.”
The hallway beyond the door is long, narrow, and brightly lit with fluorescent lights. The carpet is a checkered pattern in red, blue, and green, but the walls are off-white and the doors are white. I stop before the door with a plastic sign with Dr. Silverman’s name and knock. When he answers, he is almost exactly as I pictured him, tall and thin with grey hair. He’s wearing a brown suit and a white lab coat.
“Detective Harbinger, a pleasure to meet you.”
I shake his warm, outstretched hand and he sidesteps to allow me into his office.
“Won’t you come in and have a seat?”
The two chairs in front of his desk are the plush and comfortable chairs of a psychiatrist’s office and I choose the one closest to the door. Dr. Silverman seats himself behind the desk and tents his fingers.
“Now, how can I help you, Detective?”
Glancing around, the office is a bit disorienting because all of the walls have large mirrors on them. The effect is a bit like a funhouse.
“Well, I had some questions about WHISPs, but I guess my first question is, why the mirrors?”
“Ah yes, the mirrors. We find it helpful if people are able to view their WHISPs from every angle. It gives them a better sense of them. Even for very faint WHISPs, I can dim the lights and use a special filter to help their sources see them.”
“Oh, how…interesting.” I try not to stare at the reflection of my reflection behind Dr. Silverman. “Well, another question I had was about distances betw
een people and their WHISPs. Is it always the same or are there variations?”
His eyes light up. “That’s something we’ve just recently been looking into, and we’ve found significant variation in patients, as much as six inches. We’re trying to determine now if the distance is related to the density of a person’s WHISP.”
“Could it be possible for the distance between person and WHISP to be even farther?”
“How far are you suggesting?”
“Several feet?”
“Hmm, I guess it might be possible.” The doctor scratches his head just above his right ear.
“Do you have any idea what causes the difference in distance?”
“Well, theoretically speaking, it all has to do with the tether.”
“Tether?”
Dr. Silverman nods. “The tether is the connection between the WHISP and the human source. Some WHISPs are more closely tied to their sources than others, so I’d postulate the strength of the bond would have some bearing on the length of the tether.”
“What do you mean when you say some WHISPs are ‘more closely tied’ to their humans?”
His eyes don’t quite meet mine. “Well, there’s some, very preliminary, evidence to suggest some WHISPs may be able to communicate with their human sources.”
A chill skitters up my spine and comes to rest in the back of my throat. Thoughts are coalescing in my brain. Bad thoughts I don’t want to acknowledge. “Communicate?”
“Well,” Dr. Silverman shifts in his seat, his demeanor abruptly uncomfortable, “like I said, much more rigorous testing is needed, but preliminary findings do suggest communication between a WHISP and human is possible.”
“But…but Doctor, surely you’re not suggesting WHISPs are…sentient.”
“Oh no, no, no. Well, not really, but…” He straightens in his chair. “So, the dominant theory is WHISPs are created by consistent waves of energy like radio waves and the magnetic fields given off by electronics passing through a human body and being affected by the electrical impulses inside the human body. As such they concentrate and get caught up in the magnetic field of the human and become a WHISP.”
I nod.
“Well, there is another theory which takes into account the large amount of electrical impulses which go on inside the human brain. All of our thoughts have an electrical origin, so it isn’t much of a stretch to say the waves which make up a WHISP are affected in some way by the impulses in a human brain. In simpler terms, the WHISP’s particulate waves respond to human thought. So, it isn’t a true sentience, just the matter that makes up the WHISP responding to the electrical nature of the human brain.”
I nod again, but only because I cannot speak. The office is suddenly airless and the mirrors shimmer with a liquid quality. No matter how much Dr. Silverman is downplaying WHISPs being able to think, making it sound all plausible and scientific, I’m in one of my nightmares. WHISPs respond to human thought. What if a human is thinking about murder? Dr. Silverman continues speaking as if nothing he says is terrifying and wrong.
“Experiments have mostly been done using computers as a sort of interpreter between human and WHISP, but when people think they are communicating with their WHISPs they are really talking to themselves. Perhaps it’s a matter of conscious versus subconscious, but all the input is coming from the human.”
All the input is coming from the human, I repeat in my head, and something occurs to me. I have to swallow a few times to resurrect my voice. “Why don’t animals have WHISPs, Doctor?”
“Ah, yes, good question. In addition to less direct exposure to the inciting waves, animals don’t watch television, use computers, or talk on cell phones for instance, animals don’t have the constant, higher level thought processes going on in their brains the way humans do.”
“Oh.”
While attempting not to betray a cool exterior, I’m desperately wrangling my wild and dangerous thoughts. Dr. Silverman’s eyes glance up to a clock behind me, reflected in the mirror behind him. I feel the pressure of time, my opportunity to get more answers slipping away, but the more answers I get from the doctor, the more my world is crumbling out from under my feet. My investigative nature snags a question from the air and somewhat distantly I hear myself go on with the interview.
“Before, when you were talking about the tether, I wanted to ask what happens when the tether is broken.”
“Well, when a person dies, the WHISP dissipates. It makes sense because the person’s magnetic field is responsible for the tether.”
“What happens when the person is still alive?”
His eyebrows knit. “I don’t follow.”
“What if the tether is severed while a person is still alive?”
“That couldn’t…” Dr. Silverman’s eyes take on the cloudy sheen of someone deep in thought about something they’d once known the answer to, but now realize they’d never truly considered the question properly. “Since it’s the human’s magnetic field which is helping to concentrate and condense the particles, I would say it would probably dissipate.”
“Probably?”
“Well, this is all just speculation. No one has found a way to severe the tether.”
Chapter Eighteen
“In the land where I was to find hope and freedom, the place where I had longed to go for so long, I found not opportunity, but a hell full of sin and shadowy demons.”
Letter from Samira Jawara of New York City to her mother in Burkina Faso
The drive back to the precinct from the center is a blur. Pieces that make sense of the Chester copycat murders are falling into place in my head, something that should have been a good thing, yet I’m feeling much worse than I did before I’d gone to see Dr. Silverman. What’s starting to make perfect sense in my harried mind is, put succinctly, crazy. I have to stop thinking it and get a grip on reality. WHISPs aren’t sentient. Their tethers can’t be broken. Focus.
“How’d it go?”
Twitching at Crone’s voice, I glance up at him and rearrange my face into something I hope is neutral. “Well, the doctor there said a WHISP could possibly have a longer tether than normal, making it seem like it wasn’t attached to a human. So, it’s possible our witness Mike did see a WHISP in Alice’s apartment.”
“Tether?”
“Um”—I swallow with a dry tongue—“the connection between a human and a WHISP.”
“Right. Okay, the doctor say anything else useful?” Crone picks up the center’s flyer off my desk. He unfolds it and reads aloud in a mocking, instructional voice, “What is a WHISP? The acronym WHISP or Wave Hybridized Ionizing Source Particle was first coined by Dr. Harold Lieber, a professor of particle physics at King’s College in London, England, and originally referred to the individual particles which make up what we now call WHISPs…blah, blah, blah.” He refolds the pamphlet and drops it back on the desk, eyes expectant.
Resisting the urge to blurt out what my brain is screaming in my head, I regurgitate Dr. Silverman’s words, “Well, he said the tether of a living person’s WHISP hasn’t ever been known to break and once a person dies, their WHISP dies…er…dissipates. He also talked about WHISPs communicating with their owners and said it was just a response of the particles to the electrical impulses in the human’s brain.”
Crone’s stare is blank.
“People think WHISPs are alive and can communicate with their humans, but they can’t, not really.”
“No shit.”
This response makes me sure I should shut my mouth now about the whole thing, but I need to say more. “It’s just kinda weird though.”
“What’s weird? I mean besides freaking WHISPs in general?”
“Well, I always thought the WHISP moved because the person moved physically, but Dr. Silverman said the WHISP particles are affected by the impulses in the brain. When a person with a WHISP thinks something, it does something to their WHISP.”
“So?”
“So, what if a person wit
h a WHISP thinks violent, murderous thoughts? Wouldn’t it make the WHISP…the particles…agitated or something?”
Crone’s eyes narrow. “What difference does it make? A WHISP is like a shadow, you can walk right through one. Even if it is all riled up, it can’t do anything, and even if it could, it’s hitched to a person with its tether thingy.”
He’s right. Time to backpedal out of Sylvia-Harbinger-is-a-crazy-person territory. “No, I know that. It’s just…doesn’t it give you the creeps?”
“Meh, they’re just like any other stupid, weird thing, like fish or frogs raining from the sky or something.”
I wish I could feel the same way about them, but I don’t, so I backpedal further. “So, anyways, there’s a good chance we’re looking for a killer with a WHISP with a longer tether. That’s about what I got. What did you think about the autopsy reports?”
Grabbing a chair from a vacant desk, Crone rolls it over and plops down into it. “Not much. Points to more than one killer, we were expecting that. One’s better at killing than the other one. Not too surprising.”
“How do you think they coordinated the killings so well?”
Crone shrugs. “Just lucky, I guess. But you never know, they might’ve been trying to coordinate something ever since Alice Petrie’s murder and just weren’t able to pull anything off until now. In fact, her murder might’ve even been an attempt at a coordinated murder but the other person couldn’t find a victim or chickened out or something.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“You gotta better theory?”
Different theory? Yes. Better? Maybe not. “Not exactly. Just all seems so messy and far-fetched. First, there’s a cult of people who worship Chester despite the fact she doesn’t have any charisma or charm or cause she’s killing for. Second, this cult somehow gets undisclosed details which allow them to recreate Chester’s murders, only they decide to also mix things up and kill women as well as men. Third, the members are actually psychopaths and carry out their plans for copycat murders, and manage to coordinate the killings…why? So we know it’s a cult? If they aren’t leaving messages scrawled in blood, why let us know it’s multiple killers? Wouldn’t they want to hide the fact to make themselves harder to catch?”