The Caller

by Dan Krzyzkowski

  There had been a crash on Route 7. A Greyhound bus had been involved. Details were uncertain at this time, but it was known that at least three passengers were seriously injured. Lines were down in several locations, and scattered power outages were being reported. Households without fireplaces or wood-burning stoves were facing a no-heat situation on a night in which the outside air temperature was twenty-six degrees—eleven above if you factored in the windchill. Utility crews were being scrambled to the affected regions, but some of the roads leading to those areas were impassable. Two house fires were being reported—one on Traveler’s Hollow Road, the other on Treasure Grove. Kerosene-heater mishaps were the suspected causes.

  Block: “We’re being told the system has stalled over our area, creating worse-than-expected conditions. Previous forecasts of snowfall amounts in the six-to-seven-inch range have been upgraded to ten-to-twelve. Dangerous windchills are on tap for the tristate area. You are asked to remain in your homes unless absolutely necessary. We have also received word”—static … crackle … more static—“without heat are urged to refrain from reporting those outages via telephone, as power crews are already currently assessing damaged areas, and resources are limited. Again—”

  I reached for my car phone and began dialing my home number. Halfway through, I stopped … I pressed the End button. The urge to call Tammy was overwhelming, maddening, but I fought it off. If the power in my house went out, Tammy would call me herself. She sat for Patrick three nights a week, she knew my private number, and she knew the drill. She knew she could spend the night at my place if the roads got too bad. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d spent the night in the spare bedroom.

  I had to remain focused on the situation at hand. Justin was still on the phone with me, silent and terrified and curled in a ball behind a sofa somewhere in the state amid one whale of a storm. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to force out David Block’s rock-filled voice, trying to ignore the concerned look on Sam’s face (Patty’s phone had rung, and she’d since gone back to her desk to answer it), trying to squelch my anxiety over Patrick and Tammy.

  And trying not to think about Richard. Trying not to think about what happened. At a time like this, how could my thoughts possibly stray toward my husband’s misgivings? What cruel divining rod was leading my memory down that dark path?

  You must focus, Leslie. Put the past and the future out of your mind. The present is of vital importance right now. Why and how this was the case I could not fully understand. But here’s the truth: I was at a crossroads, and a god-awful important one. It had something to do with Justin, something to do with my beloved Patrick … something to do with Richard. I sat in the crosshairs of it all, both wanting and not wanting to know why. All I’d ever really wanted was to have done the right thing. You do the best you can, I guess. You do the best you can. And sometimes you still fail. You still hear the screams in the daylight … as if she’ll never hit bottom. As if she’ll never die. As if the sadness will never go out of her eyes. As if—

  I dialed 911 on my car phone. It was time to put an end to this madness. As the line rang, I pressed my desktop phone against my chest to muffle the mouthpiece. I didn’t want Justin to hear my exchange with the dispatcher.

  A female voice this time: “Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”

  “This is the fourth time I’ve called! Do not hang up on me!”

  “How can I assist you, ma’am?”

  “I’m a volunteer at the latchkey helpline on Main and Fifth. I have a young boy on the line. He’s home alone, and there are two intruders—I repeat, two intruders—in the house with him.”

  “Where are the boy’s parents, ma’am?”

  “He doesn’t know. He’s only seven.”

  “Do the parents carry a mobile phone at which they—”

  “Oh Christ, lady, don’t you think I would’ve thought of that?” My impatience was beginning to ebb out my ears. “Trust me—I’ve already covered this territory.”

  “Okay, give me the address.”

  “He either doesn’t know his address or he’s too scared to remember it. But he was able to provide his phone number. Can you make an acquisition?”

  “What’s the phone number, ma’am?”

  “It’s 724-8159. Area code 618.”

  I heard the click-clack of computer keys. Felt the bump-thump of my pulse in my neck. I was getting close now. We were getting so close …

  “Okay, ma’am, it’ll take several minutes to make an acquisition. I have a unit on standby. He’ll proceed to the address the moment we have one.”

  “The house is sure to be locked,” I added quickly. “The officer may be able to gain access through the basement. Otherwise, he’ll have to force his way in. Make sure you tell him that.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I’ll be sure to tell him.”

  “Thank you.” I hit the End button on my car phone. I deposited the phone into my purse.

  Into my desktop phone I spoke, “Justin? Justin, are you there? Answer me if you can, Justin, please.”

  At best I was hoping for a tap, so I was surprised when he replied verbally.

  “Yeah. I’m okay, I think.”

  I swelled with relief at the sound of his voice. My Lotensin read 8:39 p.m. We’d been on the phone for nearly an hour.

  “Okay, Justin, the police are on their way to your house now. It may take them a few minutes to get there because of the snow. But they’re coming, okay? Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Stay where you are until they get there. You’re still in the den, I take it?”

  “No.” He sounded cramped and constricted. “I moved to the laundry room. I’m in the dryer now.”

  “The dryer? You’re inside the dryer?”

  “Yeah. The man went back to the other side of the house, so I came in and crawled in here.”

  I was hesitant, unsure how to react to Justin’s new sanction. “Can you fit okay? Does it … hurt at all?”

  “I think I’m okay,” he said in a whispering tone. I sensed he was directing half of his attention toward me, the other half toward noises in his home.

  “Is the door open?” I asked. “The dryer door, I mean?”

  “Just a little,” he said. “So I can hear if anyone comes close.”

  “You know to use tap if anyone does, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  I felt I had a fairly accurate mental representation of the inside of Justin’s house now. He had previously been hiding in the den, which was directly beneath his bedroom. Adjacent to his bedroom was the master bedroom. I sensed the laundry room was located beneath that master bedroom—in the back corner of the first floor, most likely. Flanking one side of the den was the front foyer, which featured the front door with all the locks, and it seemed doubtful that Justin would have moved anywhere in that direction. An entrance into the laundry room henceforth had to be on the opposite side of the den somewhere.

  All things considered, Justin was still in the wrong end of the house. The front door was in the foyer, while the garage door and rear sliding door were both in the living room at the other end of the house, all a long distance away. I gathered that the kitchen was a central area and a hub to many rooms. The kitchen very likely branched into the living room on the far side, the front foyer on the front side, and, ultimately, the laundry room on our side.

  So it was the kitchen that stood between the majority of the escape routes. With two intruders to be wary of, it wasn’t a safe place through which to travel. There were too many openings, doors, and corridors to be concerned with. The boy would need eyes on all sides of his head.

  None of this mattered much anyway. The police were coming. Help was on the way. All we had to do was kneel on the football and run out the clock.

  “Justin, I want you to stay where you are.
You’ll be safe in the dryer until the police arrive, okay?”

  “Yeah,” he mumbled in a low tone, which brought several thoughts to bear. I wondered how long he’d be able to endure such an uncomfortable enclosure. Before long, his neck would surely stiffen. And his cordless phone—how much longer would it last? Had the batteries been well charged? What would happen to him if his phone went dead?

  Then another thought occurred to me.

  “Justin? Justin, why did you move? What happened back there that made you decide to move to the laundry room?”

  This suddenly seemed important. Given the circumstances, I saw little reason for a child to run the risks implied in changing hiding spots.

  “I got scared they would find me back there,” he said.

  “But that man who was in the den left, didn’t he? You said he went to the other side of the house.”

  “Yeah, but I started to hear things crashing upstairs, like the furniture and stuff. Upstairs in all the rooms.”

  “The other man in the upstairs, you mean? He was throwing furniture around?”

  “Uh-huh,” he replied. “And then the one down here started doing it too. I started to hear things crashing, like over near the living room where he went. Over there somewhere.”

  “So, while they were busy making all that noise, you chose that moment to change spots again,” I realized aloud. I was recognizing the early tendrils of surprise creeping over me—surprise at the boy’s courage and intelligence. I was about to commend him on this when suddenly the truth struck me.

  “You mean you were worried they would come into the den and start tossing furniture around in there too. And maybe move the couch?”

  “Uh-huh,” he said. “They’re looking for the safe.”

  I went stock-still in my swivel chair. A slow chill worked its way quietly through me. “Where is the safe, Justin?”

  “I don’t know. Mom wouldn’t tell me.”

  “What’s in it?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “She wouldn’t tell me that either. All she told me is that we have a safe somewhere in the house.”

  How much more might the perps know? In addition to knowing of the engagement Justin’s parents were attending, they had also known of a safe embedded in the house somewhere. And it was close to quarter of nine, I noticed. What dumb thief spends an hour burglarizing someone’s home unless he knows when the homeowners are coming back?

  A second, colder shiver rippled slowly up my spine, forcing me to lean back in my squeaky seat and reconsider things. There was much to reconsider.

  “Can you still hear them, Justin? Moving the furniture?”

  “Yeah. I think the guy down here is in Mom’s good room.”

  “Don’t worry about him, Justin. Stay where you are.”

  I doubted either of the intruders would feel compelled to look in the dryer. Anything was possible, though. If Justin were to accidentally bang his elbow or foot against the dryer wall, he could easily call attention to his whereabouts.

  “The first man,” I mentioned. “He’s still upstairs, right?”

  Justin paused. “Yeah, I think. Sounds like it.”

  “Any idea what room he might be in up there?”

  “Uh-uh, over near the other side somewhere. Down by the study, maybe. I can hear his footsteps but not good.”

  “And the second man is still in the downstairs, you said?”

  “Yeah.”

  There was little purpose behind these questions, I knew, other than me thinking out loud. Our best option—again—was to wait it out. Kneel on the ball. Wait for help to arrive.

  But if those men are searching for a safe and don’t find one, they may come to the laundry room. You know that, Leslie.

  The perp would see the dryer. He’d see the door ajar and the narrow crescent of darkness revealed in that opening. He might not care. He might dismiss it and walk past. He probably wouldn’t notice.

  But he would arrive, providing the safe wasn’t found. I couldn’t discount the terrible danger, the opportunity for disaster. If either of the intruders chose to pass through the laundry room, Justin would be a precious arm’s length from discovery.

  I bit my lip, deciding that staying put was still our best option. It was surely safer than being behind the couch. One thing was sure: the intruder was smart enough to know that a safe wouldn’t be hidden inside a dryer. He most definitely wouldn’t think about opening the dryer door.

  But what if he does, Leslie? What if the intruder wanders near and happens to see Justin peering out at him?

  Stop it. You’re being silly. The police are en route. We’re minutes away from being out of this mess.

  “Leslie?”

  “Justin, you need to remain silent until the police get there. Are we clear on that?”

  “Leslie, the lights just went out.”

  CHAPTER 8

  MOST OF THE EVENTS that highlighted Richard’s descent are nebulous to me now. Although I’m able to recall an accurate sequence of his downfalls, I can no longer depict exactly when those individual turnabouts took place with any degree of confidence. I am twenty-eight now. Four years have passed since his death, and even though I’ve done my best to try to cope with his loss, I’ve worked equally hard to put the entire mess behind me. I feel I’ve neared the point where the past no longer interferes with what’s ahead, whatever that may be.

  Somewhere along the line, Richard began using alcohol. It was near the time he was moved into finance, give or take several promotional rungs. In reflection, I don’t believe the booze really worsened his disease. It merely accelerated the process. The problem was within Richard himself. Alcohol or none, he’d have hit bottom at one time or another. Though I failed to accept the predicament at the time, Richard was little more than a time bomb waiting to detonate. His drinking simply brought ground zero a little closer.

  He established a small liquor cabinet for himself in his study, several feet from his desk. It was convenient, he said, because whenever he needed a drink, he could slide over to the bar on his wheel-mounted work chair and fix himself a number. That’s what he began calling his drinks—numbers.

  He’d throw a number together to relax; he’d have a couple of numbers and call it a night; one more number for good luck. I imagine he absorbed the lingo from some downtown bar, an assertion I’d have shamed myself for conceiving back then. But I’m a little older and a little wiser now, and I’ve come to realize that my failure to recognize the truth probably added as much fuel to the spreading fire as did his drunken ambition.

  Which also leaves room for speculation concerning some of Richard’s late arrivals from work. It’s only logical to assume that he spent a lot of that “overtime” on a stool before a polished oak counter that I never knew about, downing some numbers with the guys. Shootin’ the breeze.

  Richard was learning the ropes of marriage and fatherhood from the score of omniscient patrons who took pride in the knowledge that they were tavern regulars. In truth, half of Richard’s bar buddies probably weren’t married, and the other half probably weren’t fathers. And they most certainly didn’t give a rat’s ass about Richard himself or the crumbling life behind him or what he did with the bullshit advice they fed to him. All I know is that before long, my husband had a bar in his study and a sudden knowledge of how to mix drinks, and that he’d been one of the rare nondrinkers in college. But let’s be honest. It’s not the bar’s fault or the daily clientele that infests it. Richard was the man who walked in there on his own two feet.

  His use of the word number was likely a ploy to conceal what he was drinking. He never finished with a scotch and soda or a seven-and-seven or a dry martini. It was always a number. Perhaps it falsely boosted his ego, made him feel like one of the guys, one of the regulars. If so, I can only attribute this as another of Richard’s failures. I’ll never kno
w how much time he blew off at that downtown oak counter, but I’m certain that he chose the wrong circle of friends in doing so. He looked up to the wrong people, struggled for inclusion in a group that only inserted more stones into the pool of concrete already swishing about in his head. Even today, I wonder how he fizzled off like he did, why he searched for acquaintances in a direction such as that one. He’d been one of the most self-reliant, self-confident, self-governing persons I had known back in school. Where things went wrong for him remains a mystery to me to this day.

  Despite the addition of alcohol to his life, Richard never became a drunk, so far as I know. Perhaps things would have turned around for him if he had. Perhaps he’d have flirted with death with a soaring blood alcohol content one night and later undergone detox, forcing him to look himself in the mirror. Perhaps he’d have begun the AA program and turned his life around.

  But those things never happened. Richard rarely drank to excess. He drank during the evenings, in his study, during long hours of paperwork. He drank slowly, to calm his nerves, to relax. Soon his numbers became his crutch for anxiety and tension, which simply shoved me farther away. And that was the problem, really. He came to me less and less for advice or company or solace. Instead, it was the glass by his blotter, with the elaborate stars and diamonds carved into the sides. He never quite became addicted to alcohol. He grew addicted to that glass, with what it did for him, with what it meant. The glass was like another woman to him, an adulterous intrusion that forged a space between us, one that grew wider with time. When the man I married needed comfort from the daily throes of the office, he chose his glass over his wife.

  He’d come to bed later and later and would drop into sleep the moment his head hit the pillow. In the last six months of his life, I don’t think we made love once.