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

the caller said, “good old Han was quite the faker. If you get a chance to explore further, you’ll find that the Dutch authorities once arrested him for collaborating with the Nazis. They traced a painting in Hermann Göring’s collection to him and threatened to charge him with treason.”
    “How unfortunate,” Tolan said, thinking again of the sleep he needed. “What does this have to do with me?”
    “Patience,” the caller said. “Your bedside manner is severely lacking.”
    “It’s been a bad morning. Get to the point, if you have one.”
    “Oh, I have one. One I’m sure you’ll find quite interesting. But back to van Meegeren for a moment. The painting in question was a work supposedly done by Johannes Vermeer in the 1600s, but it turned out that van Meegeren himself had painted it. He was a forger, not a traitor.”
    “That seems to be the general theme here, but again— what does it have to do with me?”
    “I think you already know, Doctor, but let’s move on to another website, shall we?”
    This was getting ridiculous. He’d let it go on far too long.
    As if sensing his hesitation, the caller said: “Don’t worry, we’re almost done. Just indulge me this one last time. If this next website doesn’t satisfy your curiosity, feel free to hang up on me again.”
    He was toying with Tolan, but the hook was securely in place now. Tolan waited for him to give him the website address, then typed it in.
    “Keep in mind,” the caller said, “that this is a one-time-only URL. I’m running it on an anonymous server that can’t be traced back to me.”
    This gave Tolan pause. “Where are you sending me?”
    “The simple press of a key will tell you.”
    True enough, he thought, and hit the enter key. A moment later, what filled the page made him rise out of his chair involuntarily and back away from the computer. He dropped his phone to the desk as if it were contaminated.
    “Dr. Tolan?”
    He stared at the screen.
    Photographs. A dozen or more. But nothing like the photos of Abby he had just been looking through.
    Each one featured a brutally dismembered body. A killer’s knife had carved its way through flesh and bone, severing limbs, mutilating them, leaving pools of coagulating blood. The parts had then been rearranged in a kind of sick mosaic. A cubist nightmare.
    Tolan wondered if these were crime scene photos that the caller had somehow managed to pilfer from an evidence locker. Such a find might trigger a fantasy and fuel the building of this website. Yet, despite the subject matter, there was an artistic quality to the photographs, a sense of form and composition that no crime scene photographer was likely to bother with. Or care about.
    “Dr. Tolan?”
    Choking back a wad of bile, he picked up the phone. His hand was shaking. “Who the fuck are you?”
    “This is my abstract collection. Quite remarkable, don’t you think? Notice the way I used texture to enhance the line, and the subtle contrast of bone against flesh.”
    Tolan glanced at his land line. Was there a way to conference this call and somehow get Blackburn involved? He didn’t think so.
    Staring at the computer screen, he sat down again, then quickly jabbed Ctrl+P, sending the pages to his printer. When he did contact Blackburn, he wanted evidence to show him.
    “Dr. Tolan?”
    The printer whirred behind him and he felt his whole body tighten, as if he’d been caught doing something unseemly. He swallowed, nearly choking on his response. “What?”
    “One last question: Do you know what’s missing from this collection?”
    “Other than your sanity?”
    Another soft laugh. “Nice. I’ll have to remember that one.” The caller paused. “I worked very hard to achieve this level of perfection, Doctor. Many artists simply rely on luck and instinct to create their work, but this collection took careful planning and execution. Gacy, Gein, BTK, Dahmer—they were all amateurs. Paint-by-number wannabes, every one of