Stones Unturned (34 page)

"There's more," Kovalik said.

"Go on."

He listened as the FBI agent gave him the rest of the details his forensics specialists had discovered. Clay put a hand to his head and massaged his temples. Twice he told Kovalik to repeat himself. Finally, he thanked the man and said he would get back to him. The last thing he wanted to do was have a conversation with Graves while Kovalik was still on the line.

"What?" the ghost said, shifting anxiously through the air.

A crackling voice came over the intercom announcing final boarding for a flight to Athens. The little girl who had been so entertaining to Clay raced by, passing right through the ghost of Dr. Graves. The child stopped running, glanced around a bit frightfully, and went to sit down.

"Katherine?" her mother said, the worry plain in her voice. She went to sit beside her daughter and also passed through Dr. Graves. She shivered, and the flirtatious smile she'd begun to turn toward Clay vanished from her lips.

The presence of ghosts could be disconcerting. To Clay, they were most disconcerting when they were staring at him from inches away.

"Joe, what did he say?" Graves asked.

Clay had closed his phone. Now, even as the ghost prodded him urgently, he flipped the phone open again and pretended to dial. Then he held the phone against his ear so that anyone watching would think he was talking to someone on the other end of the line instead of to himself.

"According to Kovalik's people, your . . ." he glanced around and lowered his voice. "The skull shows signs of surgery. It was opened up at some point prior to death."

The ghost flickered like a candle flame and faded quickly, so that even Clay could not see him. Slowly the specter manifested again, and the expression on Graves's face said it all.

"That's impossible. How could that have happened, and I be unaware?" the ghost said, barely looking at Clay. "It can't be. They must have the wrong body."

Clay shook his head, still pretending to talk into his cell phone. "DNA comparison is a match."

Graves shook his head in confusion, eyes searching for something, though Clay could not tell if he was looking now into the shadows of the solid world, or the mists of the spirit realm.

"What else?"

"Something very odd," Clay went on. "There's discoloration on the inside of the skull consistent with exposure to certain chemicals, and residue of mercury . . ."

He let his words trail off. The sudden dawning awareness in the ghost's eyes told him all he needed to know. Graves stared at him, then began to shake his head again.

"No," he said. "That never happened. Not to me. He never —"

"What, Leonard? What aren't you telling me? This is all familiar to you, isn't it?"
Slowly, Graves nodded. The ghost drifted away, not bothering to mimic the walk of the living. Clay watched him, there amid a throng of people moving to and from their destinations, going about their lives in this beehive of activity, all of them full of life and excitement and purpose.

And then there was Graves, alone and isolated and invisible to them all, just a trace. A memory.

"The Whisper," Graves said, turning back toward Clay.

"What are you —"

The ghost slid his hands into his pockets and leaned as though against a wall or post. "The Whisper."

Votive candles burn and flicker in the darkness of St. Patrick's Cathedral. Dr. Graves stands in the shadows of the transept near the entrance from 51st Street, watching the nave. An enormous man moves through the pews, raising the kneelers and picking missals up from the seats, slipping them into the holders on the back of each pew.

The sheer size of the man is unsettling. Hank Reinhardt stands a hair below seven feet tall and has shoulders so broad that he must turn sideways to pass through certain doorways. He spent years as a bone-breaker for a loan shark in Hell's Kitchen before he learned that there was more money in being the shark himself. When Hank became his own boss, and people didn't pay on time, he turned to murder.

He never killed his clients. Then he would have never gotten his money. Instead he murdered their wives or mothers, girlfriends or little brothers.

And now he cleans up after Mass at St. Pat's.

Graves watches as Reinhardt goes to the mop and metal, wheeled bucket he'd rolled out moments earlier. Once the man had been cruel and cunning, and now he is a slow-witted giant, going through the motions he has been taught. He crosses himself and kneels before the altar, then begins to mop the floor in long, powerful swipes.

For several years, the Whisper has operated in New York as a vigilante, tracking and capturing criminals the police cannot seem to locate, or to hold. Yet when the Whisper turns them over to the police, these killers and thieves are docile, even helpful, wishing to make amends. The Whisper has sent many letters to
The New York Times
explaining that these men could now be useful members of society, that he had mesmerized them and they will never hurt another soul. Upon much research and testing, his claims had been confirmed. Prominent attorneys argued that these men should not serve prison time, but rather be allowed to pay society back in other ways, since they could no longer harm anyone else.

At least two dozen hardened criminals were irrevocably altered by the Whisper before Dr. Graves discovered the truth and revealed it to the world.

Reinhardt is the last of them. The only survivor among the Whisper's triumphs. All of the others have been murdered.

So when a shape rises in the vestibule, a silhouette in the wan golden illumination of the candles and the few lights still burning in the cathedral, Graves is not at all surprised. This is what he has been waiting for. He does not even shift, hidden deep in his own pocket of shadows, for he dares not give his presence away yet.

The figure moves silently along the central aisle, ominous in the heavy black coat that hangs on his thin, powerful frame like a cloak. A wide-brimmed hat and black scarf hide his features, but his eyes gleam in the candlelight as he seems to glide toward Reinhardt.

The massive killer, now a simple servant of the church, senses his presence and turns. A smile blossoms on the ugly, brutal face as he recognizes his benefactor.

"Hullo, Mister Whisper," Reinhardt says in his guttural, accented voice.

Perhaps the Whisper replies, but all Graves can hear is a low murmur, like the wind in the eaves.

He steps out from the shadows of the transept, drawing his two pistols from the holsters under his arms. Graves cocks both weapons, and the sound freezes the Whisper in place. Soft laughter fills the cathedral as though it comes from everywhere and nowhere at once.

"Well, Doctor Graves," the Whisper says, without turning, "it appears you will hound me 'till death."

"You have brought it upon yourself, Broderick."

"I was a hero, and now the city thinks of me as no better than the criminals I removed from the streets."

Graves takes several steps toward the Whisper. Beneath his wide-brimmed hat, the man did not so much as twitch.

"You are no better than they are, Broderick. In fact, you're far worse. You held yourself up to a higher standard, let the people think you were decent and noble, when you were nothing but another lunatic. You made them think you were a hero, and instead you were the worst kind of fraud."

The giant, Reinhardt, frowns and glares at Graves. "This fella bothering you, Mister Whisper?"

"I served society, Graves!" the Whisper says, and now, slowly, he turns.

"You cut into their brains," Dr. Graves says through gritted teeth. "You soaked their minds in chemicals, burned their brain cells, performed surgery."

"For the betterment of those men and for the world," the Whisper says, but his voice is dull and emotionless. He sounds tired.

"Mister Whisper?" Reinhardt asks, and comes to stand beside the dark figure whose features are hidden beneath the brim of his hat, even from the candlelight.

"You're a barbarian and a lunatic, sir. I thought exposing you would end with you in a prison cell. Instead, it's made you a murderer."

The Whisper laughs. "There's just no pleasing you, is there? You humiliated me in front of the world, Graves. Mayor Bennett excoriated me in every newspaper in the city, holding you up as a hero, and me as a fraud. I've been forced to admit that you and Bennett are right. Men like Reinhardt can't be helped."

Graves aims his pistols at the Whisper, trying to focus on the man's chest, though his eyes gleam in the shadow of his hat-brim.

"So you killed them all. Strangled every last one of them."

"Merely correcting my error," the Whisper says, the words dry and cold, as though they come not from his lips but from the shadows of the cathedral itself.

"You're coming with me, Broderick," Dr. Graves says, pausing in the aisle now, careful not to get too close.

"So you can humiliate me further? I'd rather not."

"Mister Whisper?" Reinhardt asks, glancing quizzically from one man to the other. "What should I do?"

The Whisper tilts his head slightly back to glance up at the giant. In the candlelight, his features are grizzled, gray stubble grows on his chin, and there are dark circles under his mad eyes.

"Protect me, Reinhardt. The black man wants to hurt me."

"Don't listen, Hank —" Graves begins.

But he sees it is already too late. Hate lights up Reinhardt's eyes as the giant starts toward him.

He lumbers in between Graves and the Whisper. The very moment he blocks Graves's aim, Reinhardt cries out in pain and confusion and staggers forward. He drops to his knees and tumbles toward Dr. Graves, who is forced to catch him.

"No!" Graves shouts.

Reinhardt is so huge that he cannot hold the man up. Twitching, gape-mouthed and wide-eyed with shock, he slips to the ground. The black handle of a hunting knife juts from his back. The copper stink of blood fills St. Patrick's cathedral from door to altar.

Graves extricates himself from the dying man and looks up, both guns ready. A shadow disappears behind the altar, into that intimate place meant only for priests and other servants of God. But, of course, Leonard Graves has not believed in God for many years. He believes in science, and he believes in justice. The world needs nothing more.

Pistols gripped firmly in his hands, he races past the altar and slips through an open door beside a heavy tapestry. It is all darkness in the rear of the church, shadow upon shadow. He pauses, listening to the dark for any sign of footsteps. Up ahead he can hear the Whisper moving, hear him breathing. For all of his vaunted stealth, he is making no attempt to disguise his exit route.

Gunshots echo through the cathedral, and Graves drops into a crouch, peering into the corridor ahead for the flash of a muzzle. But the shots come from around a corner. It makes no sense. What is the Whisper firing at if not at him? There comes the cracking of wood and the slam of a door crashing open.

Again, Graves pursues the savage, hating the twist that things have taken. For several years it seemed a kind of golden age of heroism was growing in New York, and in America. The courage of the soldiers going off to war, the valiant efforts of the United States to stop the march of Hitler's killers across Europe, and in Manhattan, Graves had fought injustice with the grudging approval of the authorities and the blessing of the people. The Whisper had joined the fight, and then Joe Falcon. Only recently, several new adventurers have appeared, including a mysterious masked woman the papers were calling the Siren.

But if there ever had been a golden age, to Dr. Graves, it is over now. The Whisper has tainted it forever.

Windows along the corridor allow just enough light from the street and the moon so that he can see the door hanging open as he rounds the corner. Graves throws himself against the wall and slides quickly along, guns at the ready. He expects some attack. In his black coat, hat, and scarf, the Whisper could hide well enough in those shadows, but there is no sign of him.

Graves lunges through the door, pistols out ahead of him, fingers twitching on the triggers.

The only thing behind the door is a staircase leading upward. He hears only the faintest footfall above, but that is enough. The Whisper is running for the roof. It makes no sense. There is no escape up there. But Graves reminds himself that the Whisper is no ordinary man. He might well have rigged up some way to glide down.

He follows.

Stairs lead to a metal-runged ladder, and the ladder leads to a hatch, which yawns open above, moonlight streaming in. No silhouette appears above, ready to put a bullet through him while he climbs, but still he holsters one pistol and points the other upward, climbing one-handed.

His heart hammers as he emerges onto the steeply canted roof. Small spires rise all along each side, and at the front, above the vestibule, two enormous towers stab at the night sky. The lights of the city surround him, but it is the glow of the moon that makes the roof of the cathedral seem to glow a ghostly gray.

The Whisper is there. He walks swiftly but carefully along the peak of the roof toward the front of the church on Fifth Avenue. The wind blows his coat back behind him and for a moment it seems he will be blown right off the roof, and perhaps this is how he will glide away to make his escape across the night sky.

But that is pure fancy, and unlike Graves. Not even the Whisper can fly.

Graves sights along the top of his pistol, but he is too far away. It would be hard to make the shot from here. Instead he crouches low and scrambles up the slanted roof to the peak. For a moment he stands exposed and vulnerable atop this Gothic masterpiece, catching his breath, surrounded by the echo of the medieval and the lights of Manhattan.