The Request

by David Bell

  The sound of his voice struck a strange chord in me. I almost missed the jerk. It was like hearing the voice of or seeing a photograph of someone long dead. It reminded me of the years we’d spent together as friends. And now . . .

  I tried again, and the line rang a few times before it sounded like someone had answered the call. But they didn’t speak. The ringing stopped, and I heard the sound of dead air.

  I waited, then said, “Hello? Blake? Hello?”

  I thought I heard breathing. A few huffs and puffs of air. Someone was there, but they weren’t speaking. Or they weren’t able to. Was I hearing the sound of an injured or dying person?

  “Blake?”

  The call clicked off.

  I immediately tried again, but the call went straight to voice mail.

  I left a message, but it felt a lot like throwing a rock down a deep well and never hearing the splash. He hadn’t called me back all day. Why did I expect him to now?

  And why had he picked up and said nothing?

  Had he seen my name on the caller ID screen and felt the same wave of nostalgia I felt when hearing his voice? Had he considered speaking to me, but then decided not to because of whatever trouble he was in?

  I tried again, but it just rang and rang.

  “Ryan?” Amanda called from the top of the stairs.

  “What?”

  “Were you talking to someone?”

  “I tried . . . It’s nothing. Just a wrong number.”

  “Can you come up here when you get the chance?” she asked.

  I slid the phone into my pocket, trying not to think about the electromagnetic waves radiating next to my balls. I trudged up the stairs and found her in our bedroom. Henry sat on the floor in his carrier, a pacifier in his mouth. He looked content, like a little red-faced king on his throne. I let him take my finger in his little hand, loved the feel of him squeezing.

  “I’m about ready,” Amanda said.

  “I can drive you over there. We can spend a little more time together.”

  “That’s sweet. Sure. What did you think of all that? The police and everything?”

  I could tell by the way she asked—her tone casual but only superficially so. She was trying too hard to be casual. Some thought or series of thoughts was coursing through her mind, and she wanted to see if I was on the same page without being prompted.

  I extricated myself from Henry’s grip and sat on the bed. Amanda stood in the closet door, sliding clothes around on the rod, the hangers making a scraping sound.

  “This Kyle Dornan guy is bad news,” I said. “He got into Blake’s house. He came over here. He’s jealous. Very jealous of Jennifer and Blake. Maybe he found out that Jennifer had sent those messages to me somehow. Maybe that’s why he came over here. I don’t know. It’s scary.”

  “Sure, right. I agree with you about all of that,” she said. She took a dress off the rod and stared at it. Why did she need to look at a dress when she was rushing off to her parents’ house with a six-month-old in tow? I couldn’t answer that. But I’d learned to never question her packing strategies. “I mean, I really agree. I stood here face-to-face with the guy. He didn’t seem right.”

  I thought back to my own encounter with Kyle. And she was right. The broken bottle waved in my face. “Obsessed” seemed like far too mild a word.

  “But I’m talking about Sam,” she said.

  “What about her?”

  “What did you think about how she handled everything?”

  Henry spit his pacifier out onto the floor as if he couldn’t stand to hear his mother question Sam. I went over and picked it up, wiping it on my pants leg. Seven months ago, I would have run from baby spit. I no longer even noticed it. I stuck the plug back in his mouth.

  “She’s scared too. If Blake . . . if he did this, her life is over. Or, I guess, the life she thought she was about to have is over. Imagine if I had gotten arrested right before our wedding. Arrested for murder, Amanda. Blake could still be facing that. Even if he’s innocent, he’s a suspect. A lot of mud is going to stick to him.”

  “That’s true.” She put the dress back and nodded to herself about something. Then she turned and leaned against the jamb of the closet door, facing me. She rested one foot on top of the other and tilted her head. “You’re probably right.”

  “What else are you talking about?” I asked. “You seem to have something in mind.”

  She took her time answering. “Sam just looked scared. That’s all. And you gave a plausible reason why. She’s getting taken away by the police because her fiancé might have been involved in a serious crime.”

  “Let’s get you out of here,” I said.

  But Amanda remained in place. Her face wore a distant, thoughtful look. I knew she was working something out. She was always one step ahead of people, and it was one of the things I loved most about her. “She was afraid—that’s for sure. But it was a different kind of fear. Something more . . . visceral.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. When that guy was at the door, that Kyle guy, I felt that way. Like a caged animal fighting for its life. Everything just hung in the balance for a moment. I swear that’s what Sam looked like when that cop led her out of our kitchen.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Amanda finally finished packing, and I carried her bag downstairs while she made sure Henry was ready. Amanda checked Henry’s diaper and saw that he’d chosen that moment to pee, forcing a delay. She called for me, and I went back up and grabbed him, and placed him on the changing table in his room to deal with the minor mess.

  Amanda wandered off to the bathroom, and when she came back, I had Henry ready to go. But Amanda stood in the doorway, her forehead creased.

  “What?” I asked. “Are you cooking up another theory about Sam?”

  “Not that. Do you think it’s okay to go to my parents’ this way? What if this Kyle Dornan guy tracks me down there? Am I putting them in jeopardy?”

  I shifted Henry to my left arm and balanced him against my hip. His dry diaper gave him renewed energy, and he squirmed, trying to escape. Then he started holding his arms out, reaching for Amanda, confirming my suspicion that he liked her better.

  “This guy isn’t looking for you,” I said. “He’s looking for me. Or, really, for Blake. He’s not going to go track you down. Not over there. And he doesn’t know your name, does he? Or their names?”

  “No, I guess not.”

  “Look, you’ve got to be somewhere, and it shouldn’t be here. Do you want to go to a hotel?”

  “No. I’d feel more trapped.”

  “I think your parents’ house is good. I know how protective your mother is. I think she’d be a pretty formidable opponent if Kyle tried to get in the door of her house to try to hurt her daughter or grandson.”

  She smiled. “That’s true.”

  “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. You fended him off on your own.”

  “Sometimes you just have to battle it out with people.”

  I expected her to laugh. Or smile. But her face looked serious. A little distant.

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  She averted her eyes and looked at the floor as she spoke. Henry stopped moving, perhaps because Amanda wasn’t rushing to take him. But he seemed to be listening too.

  “I remembered something, something from my soccer days in high school. I haven’t thought of it in a long time. Maybe I blocked it out to some extent. Senior year we went to state. We played a really good team from eastern Kentucky. These girls were good. And they were big and tough. They played to win. Really played to win. I went for the ball against one of them, and I tackled her pretty hard. A slide tackle. But I clipped her leg and knocked her down.”

  I wasn’t sure where all of this was going. Or where it was coming from. I knew Amanda
had played soccer and softball in high school and was pretty good at both. Good enough to get some scholarship offers from small colleges in both sports, although she passed and went to Indiana University for her degree. I’d seen the photos of her in her various sports uniforms in the basement of her parents’ house.

  But I’d never heard this story before.

  “Was she hurt?” I asked.

  “Not really. More pissed than anything else. She popped right back up and glared at me. Then about fifteen minutes later, I had the ball, and she tackled me. And I mean hard. Harder than I took her down. And it was clearly intentional. It knocked the wind out of me. But she stood over me, taunting me. Calling me every name she could think of.”

  “Nice sportsmanlike behavior.”

  “It’s competitive during playoff time.”

  “Sure.”

  “I said Sam looked trapped, and I felt the same when that guy was at the door trying to get in. It took me back to that soccer match. I jumped up when that girl taunted me. I got right in her face and shoved her. Hard. I’d have done more, except my teammates got in the middle. And her teammates held her back. But her tackling me was so unfair, so unwarranted, I just had to do something about it. You know?”

  “You were defending yourself. I get it.”

  “I figured you would.”

  I shifted Henry to my other arm and hip. He kept growing every day, and sometimes he felt like a pile of bricks in my hands. “I don’t blame you for standing up for yourself on the soccer field in high school.”

  “And I’m trying not to blame you for Jennifer messaging you that way.”

  I almost laughed. Out of confusion. “I didn’t do anything. It just happened.”

  “I know. Things just happen sometimes. Things beyond our control to some extent. That’s what I’m saying. I understand that very well.”

  “Okay. I get the feeling you’re hinting at something deeper. Are you worried I’m hanging on to bad feelings from when that guy hit on you at work? Is that what you’re wondering?”

  “No, I wasn’t really thinking about that. Not directly anyway.”

  My face must have looked like I felt, jumbled and confused. “So what is it? And answer quickly before our boy decides to pee again.”

  She shook her head. “I’m just thinking of everything that’s going on right now. Blake. Sam. Even Jennifer. There are a lot of complicated and bruised feelings there. People trying to stand up for what they think is right. People trying hard to protect what’s theirs. I’d protect Henry if he were in danger. My mom would. You would. Sam’s fighting to keep Blake. Makes sense?”

  “People fight to hang on to the things that matter to them. Their loved ones. Their pride. Their sense of honor on a soccer field. I get it.”

  “And sometimes that gets out of control,” Amanda said.

  “Are you talking about soccer? Or what?”

  “We should go,” she said. “It’s not important.”

  “Amanda?”

  “Seriously. Let’s just go.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  It took fifteen minutes to drive to my in-laws’ house.

  We rode mostly in silence. Car trips lulled Henry into peaceful oblivion, so he remained quiet, strapped into his car seat. Amanda had tuned the radio to a local rock station, something that played classics from the seventies. I didn’t mind the station, but it tended to rotate through the same songs over and over again, ad nauseam. I could only handle so many versions of “Free Bird” in one day.

  Amanda liked it though. The station played “Fool for the City,” and Amanda absently looked out the passenger-side window, her body swaying slightly to the music. But her mind seemed to be on other, more important things. No doubt she was reliving Kyle Dornan’s appearance at our back door, his aggressive push to break inside. It might take a long time for her to feel safe in the house again. I had to accept she might never feel completely at ease.

  Robert, one of the partners in the Juniper Pig, had had his house broken into once when he wasn’t home. The thieves came in through a bedroom window and ransacked the place, taking little of substance. But they clearly enjoyed destroying Robert’s possessions and disrupting all of his order. Robert told me he slept with the lights on in his house for two weeks. And it took another month before he slept through the night without freaking out over the usual noises and clicks that any house made.

  I reached over and placed my hand on Amanda’s knee. She jumped a little.

  I smiled, and she smiled back in a somewhat forced manner. I kept my hand on her knee, squeezing through the soft denim. She placed her hand on mine but looked out the window again.

  “All that stuff you were saying before we left the house,” I said, “about fighting and standing up for things. Is there more to that?”

  “Shhh.”

  I hadn’t noticed that the music wasn’t playing. Foghat’s paean to city life over the country had stopped, and the DJ, who normally screamed into the microphone in a rich baritone voice, was quickly telling everyone listening that they were switching over to their sister station for a breaking news update.

  The man’s words registered with Amanda. She sat forward, her eyes wide and her lips pressed tight, and turned the volume up.

  I leaned forward as well, waiting to hear what they had to report.

  We heard the breathless voice of a reporter who told us she was standing at police headquarters downtown, where breaking news in the Jennifer Bates murder case was coming in. The reporter’s voice went quiet for a moment. Muffled voices sounded in the background. A siren squealed. It all seemed so old-fashioned, like a blast from the past, waiting for a reporter to deliver news live on the radio instead of gathering it from Twitter.

  Then the reporter came back on. She spoke quickly and urgently.

  “I’ve been able to confirm with a source inside the police department that a suspect, actually a person of interest in the murder of Jennifer Bates—she’s the local woman who was found dead in her home late last night, the victim of an apparent homicide—that police have located that person of interest, and that individual, who was wanted for questioning, has been killed by police as he resisted their attempts to speak to him.”

  The car drifted to the right into the next lane. A car over there honked.

  “Ryan. Watch it.”

  I jerked back, trying to keep my hands steady on the wheel. I remembered Henry strapped into his car seat, Amanda next to me. No more accidents, I said in my head. No more.

  But I felt hollow inside. Shaky and empty.

  A man had been killed. A person of interest. I kept my eyes on the road, stayed in my lane. But I knew Amanda thought what I thought.

  Blake?

  “Police are not releasing the man’s name at this time, but he has been a target of their investigation ever since Jennifer Bates’s body was found in her home late last night. Details about how this shooting came about are sketchy right now, but apparently the man was located by the police not far from downtown. In fact, not far from the police station. And when they tried to apprehend him, he resisted. It’s not clear if the man had a weapon and that led to police firing on him and using deadly force in this way. We’re trying to get word from someone inside. . . . We’re expecting a press conference any moment. . . .”

  A horrible thought occurred to me. I said it out loud.

  “Sam.”

  “What?”

  “Sam’s already down there. At the police station. That’s where Rountree took her, to talk to her.”

  “We don’t know that it’s Blake,” Amanda said. “We don’t know who it is.”

  “But someone died. Someone else is dead because of this.”

  I arrived at the entrance of my in-laws’ subdivision, an upper-middle-class enclave with redbrick homes and tidy lawns. My father-in-law, Bill,
had worked as a regional manager for a medical supply company. He and his wife were pretty tight-lipped about their financial situation, but judging from the cars they drove, the trips they took, and the size of the house, he’d done well for himself. Amanda had already had to tell them to ease up on the gifts they showered Henry with. He was six months old. New clothes meant little to him. A set of keys or the ribbon from a package occupied him as well as any toy.

  I also knew, from Amanda, that her parents had received a nice insurance settlement from the accident that killed her sister, Mallory. Amanda never knew the exact amount, but a fair portion of it had been set aside for her and then for Henry’s education when he was born. Mallory was something of a specter that hung over their house. She was seen—photos on the wall, the occasional old home video—but rarely spoken of. My in-laws tended to be overprotective and worrying, and I always tried to remind myself that parents could easily become that way when they’d lost one of their children.

  I couldn’t imagine the private pain both of them carried inside.

  And I knew it must have been the same way in the Steiner house.

  “I’d call Sam, but how can I reach her if she’s with the police?” Amanda said.

  “Text her. Maybe she can get it.”

  “But what if . . .”

  “Look on Twitter. Is there any news there yet?”

  “I’ll check.”

  I wound through the subdivision, turning right and then left onto my in-laws’ street.

  “Anything?” I asked.

  “Not really,” Amanda said.

  “Did you tell your parents why you were coming?” I asked.

  “Not yet,” she said. “I didn’t need to be bombarded with all their questions. I just said I wanted to visit. I said you were about to get wrapped up in a work project, so I wanted to spend the night. I was hoping things would be resolved before we got there or shortly after. Then I wouldn’t have to tell them the truth. They’ll freak. Any threat, any problem, and they lose it.”

  “They’re going to know something’s wrong now,” I said. “They’ll read it on our faces.”