He remembered stepping down onto the next stair tread, then hearing and feeling the startling snap of it giving way under his foot. The beam of his flashlight had swung in a wild arc as his hands flew out reflexively in front of his face. He knew he was falling, knew he couldn’t stop it, knew it would be bad. Half a second later, his arms, right shoulder, chest, and the side of his head collided brutally with the basement floor.

There was a scream from the top of the stairs. First a pure scream, then two screamed questions: “Are you all right? What happened?”

For a moment he was dazed, unable to answer. Then, somewhere, he couldn’t tell in what direction, he heard what sounded like the scramble of feet running, maybe bumping into a wall, maybe tripping, running again.

He had tried to move. But the whisper, so close by, had stopped him.

It was a feverish sound, more animal than human, the words hissing out under pressure, like steam escaping through clenched teeth.

He’d reached for his ankle holster, pulled out the Beretta, lay there in the silent darkness, listening. The situation was so deeply unnerving that he had little recollection of the time interval that elapsed—thirty seconds, a minute, two minutes or more—before Kim returned with her Mini Maglite, the beam much brighter than it had been when they’d used it to examine the chest at the end of the bloodstain trail.

She’d started down the stairs just as he was getting shakily to his feet, hot pain shooting from his wrist to his elbow, legs unsteady. He told her not to come any further, simply shine the light on the stairs. Then he climbed up to her as quickly as he was able to, almost losing his balance twice from dizziness. He took the flashlight from her, turned around, and covered as much of the basement floor as he could see from that position.

He’d moved down two more steps, gun in one hand, flashlight in the other, and repeated the back-and-forth searching movement with the narrow beam. Another two steps … and then he was able to sweep the beam around the entire basement space—floors, walls, steel support columns, ceiling beams. Still no sign of the whisperer. Nothing was upset, nothing in disarray, no movement other than the eerie shadows of the support columns moving across the cinder-block walls as he angled the little Maglite.

When he reached the basement floor, steadily sweeping the beam around him, he’d concluded—with as much bafflement as relief—that there were no nooks, no hiding places, no dark corners where a man could hide from the light. With the possible exception of the chest, the basement offered no apparent opportunities for concealment.

He’d asked Kim, hovering in nervous silence at the top of the stairs, if she’d heard anything after he fell.

“Like what?”