Chick

Their words are like music to his ears.
But not in a good way.
The doctors call it Harmonic Dissociative Aphasia. Chick calls it hell. To him, everyone, everywhere sounds, as if they’’re talk-singing every word.
It’’s enough to drive a guy insane, but it explains the headphones. Chick always wears the headphones, blocking out the noise of the world. They play nothing but silence, keeping the music out, not in.
Seven years ago, Chick’’s wife, Beth, vanished. Gone. Some say she left him, moved to Seattle, to manage grunge bands, but Chick knows she was the last victim of the Wild Side Killer, one of half-a-dozen women killedd, up and down the I-5 corridor in the late 80’sEighties. But the Wild Side case has gone cold. The killer stopped in his rampage as suddenly as he began, leaving no clues behind. That’’s why Chick took the job at the county morgue. Forever vigilant. It doesn’’t hurt that his coworkers aren’’t too chatty. Dead silent, even.
When the body of a young nurse is brought in, strangled, Chick is the first to realize she’’s a new, fresh victim of the Wild Side Killer. But the police have long since stopped listening to Chick’’s wild theories. Everyone has.
Everyone except the young, college dropout, working at the local computer store. She’’s the first person to listen to Chick’’s wild theories in a long time.