Free Whisper in the Dark (A Thriller) by Robert Gregory Browne

buzz by attacking the minibar, knowing full well that he’d pay for this tomorrow, would likely show up at Paramount hungover and smelling of booze.
    But he didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything at that moment. He just sat there, watching lame comedians make lamer jokes on late-night television, feeling more and more sorry for himself with each new bottle he consumed.
    Despite her denials, he was almost certain that Abby had cheated on him. With whom, he wasn’t sure, but he had found the proof in her purse. Proof that was pretty hard to deny.
    So Tolan sat there, drinking his umpteenth bottle from the minibar, the numbers on the clock above the TV swimming before him: 2:48 A.M.
    Then there was a knock at the door.
    It took him a moment to navigate his way over. He opened it to find his new number-one fan standing there in a hotel bathrobe. A very short hotel bathrobe.
    And the legs below it were smooth and tan and finely muscled.
    “My shower’s broken,” she said. “Mind if I use yours?”
     
    S ITTING IN HIS office now, Tolan remembered the white noise of that shower, remembered standing near the bed, listening to his cell phone ring not ten minutes after the woman had come to his door. He had finally picked it up, guilt washing over him in sustained, repeated waves, and he had felt like a child caught masturbating in the tub.
    Not one of his finer moments.
    The caller, a homicide detective named Rossbach, had broken the bad news.
    Now, plagued by his memories and the growing sense that he might be losing it, Tolan took a key from his pants pocket, reached down to the bottom desk drawer, and unlocked it. Sliding it open, he pulled out a manila envelope, unfastened it, and poured its contents out onto the desktop.
    Abby had been the photographer in the family, had made a living at it, but he had taken a few snapshots of his own, most of them lying in front of him now, waiting to be mounted in a photo album he knew he’d never buy.
    After Lisa got into the habit of sleeping over at his house several nights a week, he had brought the photos here to the office. Didn’t see any point in contributing to the pain he knew she carried, no matter how hard she tried to hide it. She had been patient with him, suffering in silence as he grieved, but he could see it behind her eyes sometimes, that fear that she was playing second fiddle to a phantom. A memory. The wondering if it would ever change.
    He obviously couldn’t yet make that promise. But he didn’t need to rub her nose in it, either.
    Carefully spreading the snapshots out, he stared down at the face of his dead wife and felt his chest tighten.
    This was the real Abby, not a hallucination.
    And she had been so beautiful.
    So fucking beautiful.
    The coffee-and-cream skin. The dark, curly hair. The spark in those hazel eyes. That sardonic, half-smile she’d use on Tolan whenever he pointed a camera in her direction. The soft, compact body that she gave to him so completely, so willingly, so free of inhibition.
    Had she given it to someone else? It was a question that would never be answered.
    She’d had a faint Southern lilt to her voice and a goofy humor that had always made him laugh and amplified her beauty tenfold.
    Why had he allowed himself to get so angry with her that night? Why hadn’t he believed her?
    And why couldn’t he let her go?
    That, he knew, was what the encounter with Jane Doe had been about. He had allowed his guilt over Abby to get so bad that now—on this anniversary of her death—he was seeing her in the face of his own patient. Instead of getting better, as Lisa had promised, he was worse. Much worse.
    In the back of his mind he could hear Abby’s voice:
    Sleep, Michael.
    Sleep will make it all go away.
    Staring at the photos a moment longer, he sighed, then gathered them up and put them back in the envelope, returning it to the drawer.
    Leaning back, he closed his eyes. Twenty minutes was all he needed. Twenty blissful