The whispers call

Previously

…It was gone as quickly as it came, a trick of the mind, he told himself, a consequence of too little sleep and too much dark coffee. But the seed of doubt had been firmly planted. And in the quiet, isolated town of Valle Gris, doubt was a dangerous thing to cultivate. It was the fertile ground where fear took root, and fear, he was beginning to suspect, was precisely what the whispers fed on. He opened the door, stepping out into the cool night air, the silence of the empty streets suddenly more oppressive than the drone of the precinct. The whispers, he realized with a shiver, might not be confined to the victims. They might be all around him, waiting.