The Whisper Man

Pete meets with Amanda, who briefly considers allowing Carter to see his family. Amanda notices how drained Pete looks, and she sees the similarity between them: She’s letting her case get to her too. She asks Pete to talk her through the theory that Carter had an accomplice, and he does. She’s skeptical but admits that the simplest answer isn’t always the correct one.

They talk about the visit, thinking through what hints Carter may have dropped and trying to puzzle out how he could have known about the whispers, worried that they might have a copycat killer on their hands. Amanda thinks that they should figure out who is friends with Carter in the prison and cross-check their visitors. Pete agrees to do this, and as he’s leaving, he worries that perhaps Carter agreed to talk to him now only because Carter knows that a break in the case is imminent.

During lunch break at school, Jake thinks about how the day is going. He’s not making friends, but things are going okay until a soccer ball crashes into the bush he’s sitting by. A boy named Owen comes to retrieve it and is hostile toward Jake.

Jake’s imaginary friend appears and tells Jake not to acknowledge her. She asks him how he’s doing before asking him to repeat the rhyme she taught him, and Jake recites the full rhyme for the first time: “If you leave a door half open, soon you’ll hear the whispers spoken […] If you play outside alone, soon you won’t be going home […] If your window’s left unlatched, you’ll hear him tapping at your glass […] If you’re lonely, sad, and blue, the Whisper Man will come for you” (91).

After lunch, Owen asks Jake who he was talking to and then accuses Jake of sitting in Neil’s chair. Jake says that Neil wouldn’t have a chair in this classroom, since he disappeared last year. Owen keeps antagonizing Jake, saying that he’ll be taken next. Jake turns the tables on him, saying that Owen is next, which gets Jake in trouble at school.

At home, Tom has been writing a letter to Rebecca that goes into the difficulty he’s had since she died and dwells on his feeling of blame toward her. He goes to pick up Jake and runs into Karen again. They talk about his incident in the garage and she asks if he lives in “the scary house” (96); the house they’ve moved into has a local reputation among the neighborhood children.

Jake’s teacher talks to Tom about the incident in class with Owen, and she mentions that Jake was talking to himself at lunch. Tom agrees to speak with his son, but Jake won’t open up. Back at the house, Jake says that he messes everything up and that he hates himself, which Tom scolds him for.

Later, Tom hears Jake talking to himself again while he’s drawing in the next room, but it’s different this time: The imaginary friend is sinister sounding and wants to scare Jake. Tom pressures Jake to reveal whom he’s talking to, and he says it’s “the boy in the floor” (100). He leaves the room, and Tom looks at what he’s been drawing—it’s the same type of butterfly that Tom saw in the garage.

Jake reenters, sobbing. He has seen the letter that Tom was writing to Rebecca, and he flees to his bedroom after telling Tom that he hates him.

Pete is at home contemplating the photograph of Sally. He’s filled with self-hatred for losing her through his drinking, and he sustains his sobriety by thinking of her out there somewhere living a life she deserves. His thoughts are interrupted by a phone call: Neil Spencer’s body has been found back at the waste ground.

He meets Amanda at the crime scene, and they commiserate over their shared guilt. They then discuss how Carter could have known the body would be found, still unsure of any connection. The body is arranged similarly to how Carter’s victims were found, with the shirt pulled up over the head—a detail that was never made public. The boy looks as though he was cared for up until his death, which wasn’t the case with Carter’s victims, who were emaciated. Pete’s inner voice sets aside the struggle with drinking, saying that he’ll be allowed to drink tonight. Before he leaves, he tells Amanda that he’ll help her solve the case.

This chapter details Francis Carter’s thoughts after killing Neil, though it still addresses him as “the man” (109). He’s torn between his desire to care for young boys and the fact that Neil misbehaved and deserved to be killed. The thrill of murder, however, is alluring to him despite his desire to help troubled boys. He decides that the next little boy should be perfect.

Tom is troubled that night by his fight with Jake and by Jake’s new imaginary friend. He drifts off, still thinking about these things, and is woken by his familiar nightmare of his parents fighting. When he wakes, he thinks he sees a figure at the end of the bed that isn’t Jake but resembles the imaginary girl Jake has been talking to. He also hears whispering, but it’s coming from somewhere else.

He gets up and looks for the sound of the quiet talking, which takes him to the top of the stairs. At the bottom, Jake is speaking to someone through the mail slot, and Tom can see that it’s being pushed open by someone. The person outside is trying to convince Jake to open the door, and as Jake rises to do so, Tom shouts.

The person outside flees, and Tom opens the door after him. He can see a vague shape down the block, but it’s too far to follow, and he can’t leave Jake alone. Terrified, he closes the door and calls the police.