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

them. But I ask you again: Do you know what’s missing?”
    “I have no earthly idea,” Tolan told him, but the moment he said it, it hit him like a brick to the side of the head, and he wondered why he hadn’t put it together the instant he’d seen these photos.
    Vincent.
    He was talking to Vincent.
    A wave of nausea swept over him with such ferocity that he immediately leaned toward his waste basket, struggling to keep from throwing up. He hovered over it, not realizing that he’d put the phone down again until he heard the tinny voice on the line.
    “Doctor?” A pause. “Dr. Tolan?”
    Tolan waited for the nausea to ease up, then righted himself and picked up the phone. “You fucking monster.”
    “I take it you now understand what I’m talking about. But for the sake of clarity, I’ll spell it out for you.”
    “Shut up,” Tolan said.
    “If you click the link at the bottom of the page—”
    “Shut the fuck up.”
    “—you’ll see it for yourself. What I consider one of the most egregious cases of forgery I’ve ever encountered.”
    “If you don’t shut up, I’ll—”
    “What?” the caller said. “What will you do, Doctor? Turn me into the police? Call my mother and have her spank me? Just click the link. You know you want to.”
    What he wanted to do was throw his phone against the wall, but for some unfathomable reason he didn’t. The caller was right.
    Despite his rage, and the nausea continuing to crawl through his stomach, he grabbed the mouse, scrolled down to the bottom of the page and saw the underlined blue link waiting for him:
    Abby Tolan
    “I went to a lot of trouble to procure the photos behind that link, Doctor. Had to hack straight into the OCPD crime scene database to get them. But whether or not you click it is unimportant to me. The work is substandard. Crude.” He paused as if taking a moment to calm his own anger. “Your dear departed wife isn’t in the collection above for one simple reason: She was never part of it.”
    Tolan just stared at the link, unable to respond, his finger frozen above the mouse.
    “She’s a forgery. A fake. A vile pornographer’s talentless approximation of my work. And I don’t like that, Doctor. I don’t appreciate being credited for such obvious hackery—if you’ll excuse the pun.”
    “What are you trying to tell me, you sick son of a bitch?”
    “The police got it wrong. The police, the papers, everyone. I didn’t kill your wife. But I think you know that, don’t you? You and Han van Meegeren have something in common.” Another pause. Tolan could almost feel the rage transmitted through the line. “And when I get you alone,” the caller finally said, “you’ll find out what true artistry is.”
    Then the line clicked.
     

14
     
    I F SOLOMON HAD a flaw—and he’d be the first to admit he had more than a few—it was his inability to let something go.
    All through breakfast he sat across from a grizzled old Vietnam vet named Red, only half listening to the old fool, his mind rolling back over the morning’s events.
    “So there I am,” Red was saying, “sitting in the middle of a bathhouse in Patpong, this sexy thing standing buck naked in front of me, soaping herself up for one of them special Thai massages?”
    “Uh-huh,” Solomon murmured.
    “And get this: I’m just getting my clothes off, Mr. Johnson standing at full attention, and this cute little Betty frowns, shakes her head, says, ‘No go. Too big.’ You believe that? Like riding my dick is the most heinous crime anybody ever asked her to contemplate.”
    This, of course, was only an approximation of what Red had really said, a story Solomon had heard at least a dozen times since he met the man, Red usually half in the bag when he told it. Solomon wasn’t sure if Red was expecting some kind of response, but he just nodded and threw him another “uh-huh” as if he was actually listening.
    What he was really doing was thinking about Myra. Beginning to