The Whisper Man

The next morning, Tom runs into Karen again, and after seeing how terrible he still looks, she invites him for a coffee. They go to a nearby café, and he decides to tell her almost everything: the attempted kidnapping of Jake, confronting Mrs. Shearing and what he learned from her, the discovery of the body, and Pete being his father. Karen listens closely, but she’s reserved and holding something back (which Tom later learns is that she’s a local reporter). They discuss Collins’s arrest and agree that they hope he’s Neil Spencer’s killer, if only because the alternative would mean that the killer was still loose.

Tom talks about the trouble that he has had with Jake, which leads him to think about his own father. He considers that, aside from the final night, he doesn’t remember his father being physically violent, though he remembers the threat of it. As they leave, Karen admits that she looked him up and that she’s “good at finding things out” (198), and Tom reflects on how much he likes her attention.

At a nearby table, Francis Carter (whom the narrative still doesn’t name) is listening in on Tom and Karen’s conversation.