The Caller

by Dan Krzyzkowski

  Also by Dan Krzyzkowski

  One-Lane Bridge

  THE CALLER

  Copyright © 2015 Dan Krzyzkowski

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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  Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

  Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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  ISBN: 978-1-4917-6323-0 (sc)

  ISBN: 978-1-4917-6324-7 (e)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2015904075

  iUniverse rev. date: 05/05/2015

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  For Bernice Horvath and Karen Hessel,

  two names of my past that have

  helped shape my future.

  Silence has a sound.

  —Leslie Calloway

  PROLOGUE

  July 23, 1994

  IT’S DIFFICULT TO KNOW where things begin sometimes. Difficult because you can’t predict which way the ball is going to bounce off the events that have a way of popping up in your life. This is something I’ve always known, I think, but wasn’t made aware of until late this afternoon, when I found the letter in my mailbox.

  I’m holding the letter right now, thumbing the unopened envelope with one hand. The paper feels crisp and firm beneath my fingers. It whispers of untold secrets. The return address is some little Iowa town I’ve never heard of—Shellicksville.

  I’m leaning back in an extendible deck chair on my back porch outside of Rocky Mount, North Carolina. Twilight is nearing, and the martins are swooping, and July surrounds me. I am cognizant of these things, in perfect tune with the present for the first time in more than six years. My right hand is clasped around a tall glass of Lipton iced tea, and I feel that too—the cold hardness of the glass and the dew that has condensed around it. Within arm’s reach is a half-eaten bag of Mr. Festrada’s peanuts, and I can smell the homemade aroma from that as well.

  I haven’t procrastinated opening the letter, nor am I apprehensive of what I may find. I’ve saved it for now because it’s one of those things that demand a sequential, orderly mind-set, I guess. It seems heavy and potent compared to its weight in my hand, and I’d like to first be aware of where things began before taking the next step into what’s yet to happen. It’s tough sometimes, tracing your steps back to the starting line—it’s tough knowing where things began.

  But this is a major point in my life, a time in which I feel like I can belong again, and I don’t wish to impose any jeopardy upon that comforting notion. Not now, after all these days and months and years. What I can do is take a time-out. Mr. Festrada’s peanuts and the tea and the martins and the moment will wait for me, here by my chair.

  As a twenty-nine-year-old single-parent mother, I don’t often feel challenged to retrospect the events that have bounced the ball to where it is now, but this envelope is compelling me to do that. It seems to have gravity, seems to say things in words you don’t read or hear but see in front of you.

  I’m beginning to see the words now and the events they comprise. Slowly I can see more of them as the peanuts and tea and martins begin to fade. I’m aware of the peanuts and tea and martins fading, but that’s okay because I’m allowing them to slip slowly into a suspended existence. My mellow mood is conducive to this sort of reflection, as is the evening around me.

  The evening is perfect, in fact. It’s one of those summer nights in which the air is pungent with deep thought.

  CHAPTER 1

  January 11, 1994

  I REMEMBER STEALING A sip of Mary’s coffee and smiling when the call came through. The call. It’s a rare instance, two of us free in one moment, for others are always waiting to get through—especially on the 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. pull, when only six of us field the calls. Several of us, Mary and I included, had recently petitioned for an upgrade to ten—the winter season is always bad—but the installation funds weren’t available.

  My phone clattered at 7:42 p.m., according to my Lotensin digital desk clock, and I relished the quickening of my blood. Mary winked at me in that good-luck, good-natured way of hers from across the desk joint, and I winked back, unaware that more than seventy minutes would elapse before I next spoke to her.

  My phone rang demandingly.

  Music to my ears, I thought, and I picked it up.

  “Hello. If you need a friend, you’ve called the right place,” I said in my smoothest, warmest introductory voice. The answering part is critical because many have sudden second thoughts and hang up. Your greeting needs to sound welcoming and sincere. “My name is Leslie. What’s your name?”

  “I think there’s a man in my house,” a small voice replied out in the state somewhere, causing a cold feeling to pass through me.

  “Did you see someone?” I asked softly. “Someone in your house?”

  “No, I heard something. Down in the basement.”

  The voice was quivering, apparently terrified. I could tell immediately it belonged to a boy.

  “Well, you can tell me what you heard if you like,” I told him. It was best to avoid speaking swiftly or loudly in such situations. Best to keep the child calm, relaxed, and at ease.

  “I was down … in the kitchen getting some … juice,” the boy told me. He was keeping his voice low. “I was standing on a chair to get up for a glass, the one with the polkas on it ’cause it’s my favorite.”

  “Uh-huh,” I followed smoothly. “I’m listening. What happened next?”

  “And I opened the door, and I was reaching up for my glass to be able to get some juice when I heard this noise downstairs.”

  “You heard something in your cellar, you mean?”

  “Yeah. I got scared.”

  “What did you hear?” I asked slowly. “Or better yet, what did it sound like?”

  “I don’t know,” he mumbled, that innocent tremor still glistening in his voice. “Like something scraping, then this bump. Like a bumping noise.”

  I paused for a moment—just a moment, mind you—to quickly ponder my options. Calls of this nature were the worst because you were working in an extremely gray area. Most difficult to remember is that you’re here in a warm, well-lit office surrounded by a group of consenting adults, whereas the child is someplace else—a world away,
for that matter. All you know is what you perceive over the phone, and that’s what you have to work with. The goal is always to calm the child. More often than not, the sound is merely imagined. It’s amazing, some of the noises kids claim to hear when they’re alone in a big house. Every noise known to man is threatening to a latchkey child. It’s simply a matter of ensuring the caller that the house was most definitely creaking with age or shifting on a gust of wind.

  But as a volunteer, it is always your duty to field the calls objectively. Bad things do happen on occasion. Thus belies the gray area. Heck, some hear nothing at all but use it as an excuse to call and talk with someone. That’s how lonely some of these children are—believe me. A girl named Samantha rang in one night to report some disturbing sounds coming from the attic above her bedroom. “It sounds like someone is playing hopscotch up there,” were the words she used if my memory serves. We spoke for more than thirty minutes. Near the end of our talk, she confessed to there being nothing at all—she was lonely and wanted someone to talk to. Her parents had gone to the movies and left her alone. She was six years old.

  But the coin always has two sides, something we volunteers mustn’t forget. Samuel Evans, the burly man in the far corner right now, received a call several months ago from a nine-year-old boy who insisted his house was being robbed. The boy had locked himself in his sister’s bedroom, terrified. He was in tears and on the verge of hysteria when he called. Sam was incredible that night. In all my twenty-eight years, I don’t believe I’ve known a man who possesses as deep-rooted a compassion for others, children in particular. And that includes my late husband. Anyway, Sam instructed the boy to stay put and talked him through it until his parents returned home an hour later. The prowler was gone by then, as was $24,000 worth of jewelry from the master bedroom, two doors down from the sister’s room where the boy had endured the scare.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Justin,” he replied weakly.

  “Justin, are you home by yourself tonight?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Of course he was alone. He wouldn’t have called otherwise. But I needed to know for certain.

  Mary smiled at me from across our desk, gesturing to her empty mug. I shook my head.

  “Where are your parents, Justin? Do you know where they went?”

  “No. They said they were going out, be back later.”

  “When did they leave?” I asked.

  “Don’t know. An hour ago, maybe.”

  “Did they say when they would return?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  Did they say anything at all? Did they give you a hug before they left? Did they tell you to behave?

  Well, that closed the door on one thing. Contacting the parents was out of the question. Most parents at least left their children with a name and number, a place to call in the event of an emergency.

  By policy, we were forbidden to dial the police. There were various reasons for this, none more controversial than Provision 10-93, which I’ll address in time. The best we could do was exhort the child into breaking the connection and dialing 911 him- or herself, something many shied away from out of fear of their parents’ reaction. “My mom’ll get mad at me if I do that,” one girl explained, calling for her younger brother, who had somehow gotten his arm caught in the kitchen-sink garbage compactor. I coaxed her into at least calling a neighbor, who dialed 911. Paramedics and police arrived within minutes. They spent three hours extricating the boy’s right hand from the jaws of the kitchen sink. The boy lost the top tri-portion of his middle finger in the bargain.

  “How old are you, Justin?”

  “Seven.”

  “Whoa, you’re getting up there, aren’t you? Before you know it, you’ll be man of the house.”

  An impish moan was the only reply, replete with implications that being man of the house wasn’t the least bit appetizing at the time.

  “Any brothers or sisters, Justin?”

  “Uh-uh. Just me. I’m scared. There’s a man in my house—I know it.”

  “Okay, Justin, I believe you. And I’m on your side. But you have to listen to me, okay?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Where in the house are you right now? Are you in a safe place?”

  At the very least, I hoped Justin had gotten out of the kitchen. Most doors leading down into basements were located either in the kitchen or in an adjacent hall.

  “Upstairs,” he answered softly. In my head, I saw him peering around anxiously. I felt the childlike dread pounding through his veins. I sensed the iciness in his belly. “I’m in my parents’ room, under the bed.”

  “Good,” I said, commending him on his thoughtfulness. A child’s typical response to hearing strange noises is to freeze. Justin had conjured the will to act. He’d climbed down from his chair and crept up the stairs to his parents’ room, where he knew he could both hide and phone simultaneously.

  “I’m on the cordless phone,” he told me.

  “It was very smart of you, Justin, to think of calling us. That was very good. Now tell me—can you see out from under the bed?”

  “Yeah. The bedroom door is open, and I can see down the hallway,” he said. “The steps are down at the end. That’s where I came up.”

  “Okay, good. Very good. That hallway is empty now, right?”

  “Uh-huh,” he replied, but not without the fright implicit in the notion that he’d be able to see the intruder enter the hall via the staircase if the scenario presented itself.

  “Can you hear anything, Justin? Anything at all?”

  “No. It’s all quiet now.”

  It must be terrifying, an empty house like that. Everything’s a threat now. Every little tweak in the floor will send a shudder up that boy’s spine.

  “You can’t hear anything? Not even those noises from the basement?”

  “Nope.”

  Though only several minutes old, we’d reached a critical point in the conversation. As the volunteer, the one being relied upon, I had to decide how to approach the problem and what action to suggest. We were still in the gray area. All I knew was what I heard. Sure, I could assume Justin had heard the house shifting on its foundation … but it was he who’d heard the sound, not me.

  You don’t know anything yet, my inner voice asserted. For now, you need to play along with him. The boy is scared, and that’s why he called. It’s your job to make him feel safe. You’ve done this before, Leslie.

  “All right, Justin, this is what I want you to do,” I said, speaking slowly and clearly. “What I want is for you to actually do nothing at all. I want you to stay right where you are. Can you do that for me?”

  “Uh-huh,” he replied, with a nervousness that suggested he had no intentions of moving to begin with.

  “I want you to stay where you are ’cause it sounds like you’re safe there. I’ll stay on the phone with you. If you hear anything more from downstairs, let me know, okay?”

  “Yeah. There isn’t anything now, but I know he’s there ’cause I heard him. I know I did.” His voice shook.

  It wasn’t my place to dial the police—Teri Wainwright would have my body on a skewer—but sooner or later, something was going to have to give. Don’t even think about it, Leslie. Don’t you dare.

  I asked, “Do you have a good next-door neighbor you can call, Justin? Someone you know?” I was aware, of course, that Justin would need to know the neighbor’s phone number by heart—sneaking out to locate a phone book was surely not an option.

  “I tried already,” he said, “before I called you. They’re not home.”

  “There wasn’t any answer?”

  “Uh-uh. No one was home.”

  “Are there any other neighbors you can call, then?”

  “No, they’re the closest ones.”

  “You don’t know anyone
else close by?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  Well, so much for that idea. Even had Justin known some of the other neighbors around him, I doubted the likelihood of his having those numbers memorized as well.

  Another thought occurred to me, and I wondered what his address might be. It was another policy, to preserve our anonymity as well as that of our callers, not to ask for addresses. But what if something happened during our conversation? What if the intruder was real? What if Justin was discovered, and the line was to suddenly go dead?

  For the first time that evening, I reached down into my purse, feeling around for my car phone. My fingers found it easily enough. I wouldn’t use it, of course—couldn’t use it—but knowing it was there did impart a small measure of comfort.

  CHAPTER 2

  SOME WORDS ABOUT 10-93.

  That’s what we called it, anyway—those of us who know the difference between a social service and a social suction cup. It refers to an inauspicious series of events that occurred in October of ’93, a little more than three months ago.

  It happened during an afternoon shift. One of our most experienced volunteers, an older woman named Joan Baskely, fielded a call around two o’clock from a young boy who had accidentally set his house on fire. The boy had been in his backyard burning leaves. Things had gotten out of control. In a matter of minutes, a sizeable portion of his yard was in flames. By the time he dashed inside to pick up the phone, flames were creeping up the wood siding along the back of the house.

  Joan scribbled the boy’s address onto a slip of paper, advised him to leave the house immediately, and then hung up and dialed 911. Sheldon’s finest were dispatched without a moment’s waste.

  The only problem was that the call was bogus. A pair of teens who had decided to cut school that day had made the prank call from a pay phone not five blocks from the church in which our help center is located. It very nearly turned out to be the worst mistake of their lives.