Whispers by J. Herman Kleiger

PART ONE

Comes the Whisperer

In the quiet of the night,
Silence prickles the skin and murmuring voices speak,
Telling stories in hushed tones of private lives and
Secrets buried so deeply that no one can hear,
Comes the Whisperer.
Tell me your secrets,
Speak to me of sin and shame,
And trust me with your soul.

—Anonymous

Chapter 1

They’re Killing All the Shrinks

The sirens were deafening, drowning out the heart-wrenching screams of frightened women and children. Around her lay the dead bodies of men from her platoon. Suddenly she was holding the limp body of her little brother Blue. The blaring sirens became the sound of her own scream. She awoke in a panic to the shrieking of her work phone.

Quickly orienting herself, she answered, “This is Kitts.”

“Wakey, wakey Kitts. Rise and shine. Hope you’re up. Doesn’t matter because we’ve got another dead shrink. It’s time to bring you in on this.”

Special Agent Nicola Kitts immediately recognized the brassy voice of her boss, Executive Assistant Director Giancarlo Bozzio Baldazzar. Boz headed the FBI’s Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Service Branch. Among his countless other jobs, he liked mentoring new agents. As a former Marine Captain, Boz had taken a shine to ex-gunnery sergeant Kitts. At 5’3,” he chewed out anyone who looked down when talking to him. Although he downplayed their Marine Corps connection, Kitts felt the strength of their invisible Semper Fi bond.

She glanced at her clock: 4:30 a.m. With a rush of adrenalin, she sat up straight and said, “Yes, Sir. Copy that.”

“Kitts, enough with the military, cop-speak bullshit. I’ve told you, we don’t talk like that around here. But listen . . . we’ve got another one. This makes three––Tamerlane, Fortunato, and now this guy in his Georgetown office. Same MO and signature as the others. Also left another calling card––the same wacky quote and a bunch of those crazy equations, like before. Looks like we have a serial killer who loves math as much as he does butchering shrinks. Anyway, this will be your first rodeo, kid. BAU-4 is staffing this in two days, so you have time to get up to speed. They’re a bunch of eggheaded profilers with egos to match, except for Sidd. He’s good people. So, Kitts, you’ll be there primarily to listen and learn. Their job is to profile. Yours is to keep a low profile.”

“You said this is just like the other two? Same MO?”

“Yeah, Kitts, that’s what I said. This last one was in DC. No suspects yet, but the local PD is working on this as a single homicide. They apparently don’t know about the others. The vic’s name is Linus Prokop. Maybe you’ve heard of him?”

“Yes, Sir. Isn’t he the guy on the cable news? I remember that name. Didn’t he do some kind of study on male adolescents?”

“That’s right. He’s a doozy. Been on the talk show circuit hawking his book about teenage boys and their hard-ons.”

Kitts smiled at his raw and uncensored expressions. Suddenly, she felt as if she were back in bootcamp with Boz as her drill sergeant.

“DC Metro is still working the crime scene. Probably won’t be too happy when we show up, but nothing new with that. So, get your rear in gear pronto and look at the files so you won’t seem like Doby the village idiot when you meet with BAU Number 4. Got it?”

“Copy––I mean yes, Boz Sir. I’ll be there by 7:00.”

“Make it 6:30. Oh, and Kitts, leave your damn bird at home this time. Now fuck off.”

She blushed as she remembered bringing Langston, her hyacinth macaw, to her office. He was not a hit since he wandered around, marked his territory, and chewed phone cords. Langston had been her sidekick for more than 15 years. If it hadn’t been for Langston, her old boss, Sheriff Oliver Burwinkle, would have killed her too after he shot an agent point blank in her living room.

Nicola microwaved a cup of day-old coffee while scarfing down a banana. She pulled Langston’s breakfast bowl out of the fridge, mixed in fresh fruit and vegetables, and topped it with large-shelled nuts.

The bird began to chatter and squawk to get her attention.

“Damn, cool it. Not in the mood this morning.” She noticed he was picking at the feathers on his chest again. “Stop picking at yourself. I ain’t got time for this shit now.” She reached for the spray the vet had given her and gave him a couple of squirts.

Kitts rummaged through a pile of clothes on her chair and grabbed a wrinkled jacket from the floor. Life had been this way since moving to DC two years ago.

“Alexa, play some . . . Tracie Chapman music. No, cancel that. Play––”

Alexa cut her off and said, “Here is some music by Tracie Chapman on Amazon Music.”

“Dammit, girl. Alexa, cancel that. Play music by Libba Cotton and turn up the volume by two.” She felt there was something enchanting about Cotton, an obscure left-handed folk and blues musician who taught herself to play upside down on a right-handed guitar. That Cotton didn’t begin recording until her 60s and won a Grammy at age 90 gave Kitts hope that people could successfully reinvent themselves in midlife.

She turned on the shower as Libba sang Ain’t Got No Honey Baby Now. The water was cold, but she didn’t have time for it to warm up. The chill jolted her senses. She threw on her clothes and hurried past Langston––still picking his chest feathers. “Langs! Stop that shit! I gotta cruise now. Won’t be back until dark ’cause this is a big one. You got plenty to eat, so be cool and STOP doing that to yourself.”

The thought of another dead therapist put her on full alert, especially with this last one being so close to home. On the way out the door, she stopped and reached out to Langston. “Damn boy, it looks like they’re killing all the shrinks…. Betcha, you’re glad I left shrink school, huh?”

***

It was still dark when she exited onto South Washington St. She opened the window, welcoming the chill of cool air on her face. She tried to focus on the killing of yet another psychiatrist, but the hangover from her nightmare was still taunting her. Her VA counselor told her that dreams about the war would never disappear entirely. He said she could learn to reprocess them to make them less frequent, vivid, and painful, but they would never disappear. Fucking nightmares.

In the darkness, surrounded by the hum of the tires, Kitts thought about the regular cast of characters who haunted her sleep. Her dreams were typically set in Afghanistan where her brother Blue, Burwinkle, or Pei would suddenly appear, always trying to speak to her in muffled voices. Desperate, she couldn’t move. Her counselors told her she’d be dealing with the long reach of PTSD for the rest of her life. She should expect early and subsequent losses to merge with nightmares of her final bloody firefight in the Musa Qala District.

At times, she dreamed only of Blue and his death when they were kids. No matter how much Nicola tried to come to terms with what happened, the guilt never wore off. Paradoxically, there was something oddly comforting about her nighttime visits from Blue, as if he were trying to tell her something.

She hated how the traitorous bastard Oliver Burwinkle forced himself into her dreams. Her former boss and mentor back in Colorado continued to stalk her in her sleep after his final deceit. Now, Professor Omar Pei had become the latest cast member to appear uninvited in her dreams, whispering lustfully to her about their forbidden affair at Smith College.

Kitts checked her speed as a highway patrolman passed her on the right. Cops. The cruiser reminded her of the Ford Interceptor she used to drive when she was the only deputy of color in the sheriff’s department in Colorado. She left law enforcement in 2014 after Burwinkle tried to kill her. Nicola’s stomach churned when she thought of the impostor. Burwinkle turned out to be a serious bad guy. Fortunately, thanks to Langston’s attacking him, Burwinkle dropped dead of a heart attack before pulling the trigger of the gun he had aimed at her head. Fucking Burwinkle.

Though she had long thought about leaving police work, the catastrophic events of 2014 and her subsequent treatment at the VA convinced her it was time to make a clean break and try something new, like becoming a social worker. Her decision to leave law enforcement always made her think of her quirky friend Carmine or “Books” as she called him. Nicola still felt embarrassed by his generous financial gift, which made it possible for her to go to Smith College of Social Work. She recalled their awkward conversation five years ago when she received a check from an anonymous donor that covered her tuition at Smith.

“I know it was you, Books. You’re always up to something sneaky like this. I will pay you back. Got that? Been saving up my money.”

But she hadn’t paid him back.

She had been a rising star at Smith, earning her MSW in just under two years. Nicola had begun working on a PhD when she suddenly became the headliner in the campus rumor mill. She mistakenly thought her involvement with one of her professors was a private affair.

Thoughts about Pei always reminded Kitts of her misplaced trust in Burwinkle whose words she couldn’t forget.

“Goddammit, Cole. You were like a daughter to me, girl.”

Then he tried to kill her.

The relationship with Professor Omar Pei began innocently enough. He was struck by her intelligence, fascinating resume, dogged curiosity, and innate insight, and mentioned in passing her striking good looks.

Looking her up and down, he’d intoned, “You’re special Nicola Kitts. I’ve had my eye on you. You have the intellectual gifts and instincts that most students can only dream of. I’ve taken a special interest in your academic development. Dine with me tonight so we can discuss your thesis.”

And she did.

Kitts’s internal signals told her she was straying into dangerous territory, but she ignored the warning lights. It felt good to be special.

Man, gotta figure out this shit with mentors, girl.

Their affair lasted less than three months but unleashed the hungry tabloid hounds within the small college community. Ultimately, the professor was dismissed, and his student branded with a scarlet letter. It didn’t matter that no one formally blamed Nicola for her mammoth lapse in judgment. She heard the whispers and saw the looks wherever she went. It became too much to bear. One morning, she decided she’d had enough. She packed everything that would fit into her car and left with Langston.

Nicola knew that even before the Pei affair, she’d been questioning whether social work was her true calling. Maybe her embarrassment at Smith was just an excuse to leave social work. Part of her wanted to be done with policing but it wasn’t done with her. Law enforcement was in her DNA. Her father and gramps had been Marines and then cops in the Wichita PD. Having no desire to return to the sheriff’s department in Colorado, Kitts applied and was accepted to the FBI Academy.

The traffic was light. Can’t keep Boz waiting. The final stretch of Richmond Highway reminded her of how she felt the first time she drove to Quantico. She had been filled with hopes about combining law enforcement with her curiosity about the workings of the mind. Even then, she aspired to someday become a profiler.

After completing the FBI Academy, Kitts worked as a junior agent before snagging an appointment to the BAU (Behavioral Assessment Unit). Only a year into her role as a special agent, Kitts felt she’d found a home where she could pursue criminals and discover the deep-seated pathologies that had turned them into killers and predators. She knew about the storied BAU-4 and its predecessor, the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit, popularized in one of her favorite books, Mindhunter. That someone at Boz’s level would select her to shadow this celebrated team of profilers and analysts was a pulse-quickening honor. She thought of his words several months back.

“Kitts, I’ve been watching you. I think you got what it takes to work with the BAU. When the time is right, I’m going to bring you in. I got faith in you. Just don’t try to act too much like a cop.”

Kitts checked her watch as she flashed her ID to the Marine at the gate. Six twenty-seven––three minutes to spare. She sprinted to the building; Boz would be watching the clock. Kitts wanted to impress him but knew he would quickly pick up her efforts to curry favor. Boz had apparently seen something in her that she was not aware of. But hadn’t Burwinkle and Pei? She was grateful that Boz was giving her a chance but determined not to make the same mistakes as before. All she needed to do was trust his judgment and not lose sight of hers. Just be yourself, whoever that is, and steer clear of whatever’s going on with mentors. She speed-walked into his office and reminded herself not to speak like a cop and never look down at the top of his head.

***

Excerpt from Whispers by J. Herman Kleiger. Copyright 2025 by J. Herman Kleiger. Reproduced with permission from J. Herman Kleiger. All rights reserved.