by Hart, Callie
“Well, hi, Corey. So, you said your big brother isn’t moving? That’s pretty weird, huh? Did he just go to sleep? Did he say he felt sick?”
“No. A man came. He was shouting at my brother. He was…very angry. Jamie told me to go to my room.”
“And did you go to your room, sweetheart?”
“Yes.”
“And then what happened?”
“And…and then, I heard them fighting. And Jamie was shouting. And I was scared.”
I listen, a river of horror coursing through my veins, but the moment I hear Corey tell me he is scared, something inside me snaps. Tightening my grip on the handset, I grind my teeth together and hiss into the mouth piece. “Where is he? Where did you take him, you sick fuck?”
There isn’t a doubt in my mind. Whoever’s playing this to me now, tormenting me with it, has to have taken Corey. This seems like the twisted action of a madman who craves attention. Is this recording being played for Corey’s parents, too? Is Corey’s kidnapper playing it down the phone to the cops, taunting them with Corey’s small and frightened voice?
No one answers. The recording continues on without pause.
“How long ago were they fighting, Corey honey?”
“Um…I don’t know. I was scared, so I was hiding. And when I came out of…from under the bed, Jamie won’t wake up.”
“Is there any blood on him?”
Corey hesitates, and I picture the little boy turning around to look at his dead brother, checking for any visible blood.
“No.”
“Can you tell if he’s hurt anywhere?”
“No. But his eyes are open.”
“Is the man still there with you, honey? The one who was fighting with Jamie?”
I can hear the clear edge of worry in my voice now. To Corey, I probably sounded like someone he could trust and who would keep him safe, but I can still hear the timorous lilt when I speak.
“No. He went away. It’s just me and Jamie.”
“Okay, baby. Someone’s coming to help you. They’re gonna be there real soon. Can you open the door when they knock?”
“I… No. I can’t reach the handle.”
“Okay, baby. That’s okay. You don’t need to worry about that. Corey, can you tell me how old you are?”
“Yes. I think I’m four years old. But… maybe…I am five now. I’m not sure.”
“Wow. Five! You’re a big boy, then. You’re being very brave.”
“Mmm. Thank you.”
He sniffs. Sounds like he is trying to hold back tears. Leaning against the payphone, focusing every ounce of my attention on the crackling line, I find myself trying to do the same. He was braver than he should ever have needed to be at five years old. I’ve never been hit by the maternal urge that drives lots of women baby crazy, but I’ve always been driven to protect those who can’t protect themselves. Corey had no one to protect him when I took his call. He was alone and terrified, and listening to the recording play back now is a unique and cruel form of torture. I can’t say anything further to comfort him now. I can’t tell him to go and hide in a closet. I can’t wrap my arms around him and hold him to me and keep him safe.
“Hey! Who are you? Where’s Corey? What the fuck have you done with him?” My entire being is vibrating with fury, but I sound like I’m about to cry. My mother told me from an early age that I was a true Celt. Her mother immigrated from Ireland in the sixties, my father’s parents from Wales earlier, in the twenties. Thanks to their combined DNA, I have pure Celtic fire for blood, and my temper is legendary. I can go from calm to apocalyptic in five seconds flat, but people often make the mistake of misjudging me: when I’m angry, beyond angry, I usually burst into tears. That is where I’m at right now.
“I swear to god, if he’s hurt… Just do the right thing. Take him back home,” I hiss. “You’ve no idea the damage you’re doing.”
“Can you look out of the window for me, sweetheart?” I hear myself ask. “Can you see if there’s a big white ambulance pulling up outside your house?”
“Um...I’ll see.” There’s a rustling. A banging. A clattering. I remember there being some sort of commotion when I spoke to Corey, but it seems louder now. Closer somehow. I hold the phone with two hands, frustration leaving the bitterest of tastes on my tongue. I want to scream and shout. I want to tell him to get the hell out of there, but it won’t help. It’s too late. The time for warnings has passed.
“I can’t see anything,” Corey says softly. “I don’t think anyone is coming to help.”
My heart shatters.
“They are, sweetheart, I promise. You just need to hang tight, okay?”
“Wait. I think…there might be someone coming now. I think there’s a car coming.”
“Does it have lights on it, Corey? Is it big, like a van? You’ve seen an ambulance before, haven’t you?”
“Yes. I’ve seen one. The men came to help Momma when she broke her arm.”
“That’s great, sweetie. And does it look the same? The car?”
“Mmm. Yes, I think so. It’s white. I see a man now.”
“You’re sure you can’t open the door for him, Corey?”
“No, it’s…I can’t reach the handle. It’s too high up. And I think you need…to press some buttons.”
“Okay, baby. Don’t worry. The men are there to help you now. They’ll be able to get in. They’re going to help you and your brother, okay? You can trust them.”
“Okay. I’ll wait in the hallway. I can see the man through the glass.”
“That’s great, sweetheart. Just be careful, though. They might need to smash the glass to get in. We don’t want you getting hurt, okay?”
“Okay.”
More banging. More scuffling, and then loud, abrasive thumping. At the time, I’d thought it was the EMTs arriving on the scene, but Detective Holmes said the door was wide open when the ambulance crew arrived. Now, with every unbearably loud crashing sound, I feel like I’m about to jump straight out of my skin.
“Are they inside now, sweetheart?” the recorded version of me asks.
“Nearly. There’s a hole in the door.”
“Okay, won’t be long, Corey. Just keep being brave, okay? You’re doing so well.”
“I’m…I’m a bit scared.” He’d whispered the words as if he were confiding in me.
“That’s okay. You’re allowed to be a bit scared. This is a bit of a scary situation, but I’m so impressed, Corey. You’re being very strong. I bet your mom and dad are going to be so proud of you.”
“Really?” Hope colors his voice, as if pride isn’t something he’s used to inspiring in his parents.
“I sure do.”
An ear-splitting crash echoes on the other end of the line: the door is giving way. I slowly close my eyes, knowing what’s coming next. I’m dreading the moment, but there’s no stopping it.
“He’s inside,” Corey says quietly.
My response makes me shiver violently; my insides are made of ice.
“Good, sweetheart. Okay, now go with the men. They know what to do. You can hang up the phone now. It’s okay, they’re gonna take really good care of you. You can trust them.”
Those last four words.
God.
You can trust them.
Someone broke into Corey’s house, and they took the little boy. I did the unthinkable. Instead of protecting Corey and taking care of him, I did the exact opposite. I told him to hang up the phone. I told him he could trust the man who had just broken into his house.
“Okay, then. Bye bye,” Corey whispers. The line goes dead on the recording, just as it went dead in real life, and my stomach drops through the floor. I am responsible for this missing child. I’m the one who told him to hang up and not to worry anymore. I told him he could trust the man at the door; god only knows what happened to him after that. I press my hand to the base of my throat, my fingers digging into my skin. None of this makes sense.
The payph
one should never have rung.
The recording of Corey’s 911 call should never have gone missing. It certainly shouldn’t have just played down the line for me now.
There’s no way anyone should have even known it was me who answered Corey’s call the other night. And no way anyone should have been able to find out where I live. Who would go to the trouble of finding out? If someone broke into the Petrov house to steal a child, then the crime was against the Petrovs. But to bother finding me, to track me down and constantly call the payphone? That gives the crime a different meaning altogether. That connects it to me, makes it personal to me. And why would anyone kidnap a child just to fuck with a twenty-six-year-old woman, who lives a small, normal, quiet life and doesn’t have even the slightest bearing on the rest of the world?
A swarm of questions light up in my mind and fade like dying lightning bugs. I can’t catch hold of them quick enough to process them, and my voice has fled my throat anyway. I’m a statue, standing in front of a payphone—a woman bathed in flickering street light, constructed of marble, and fear, filled with the desperate need to run back up to her apartment and hide. My legs are rooted to the sidewalk through my feet, though, and my heart is skittering behind my ribcage, and it’s all I can do to remember to breathe.
Corey’s timid voice is gone now, but another voice follows. It’s neither female nor male, the timbre of its words distorted and crackling too much to provide any kind of indication as to who it might belong to. It says only a few words.
“Rochester Park. The end of the line.”
I know Rochester Park, of course. I’ve lived in Spokane long enough to have heard the name, but I’ve never been there myself. When I find my voice, it’s ragged and harsh. “Is…that where he is? Is that where you took Corey? Is the boy still alive?”
But there’s no response. I’m too late. The line has gone dead.
6
PASHA
PROXY
Another fight. Another twenty grand. Another night filled with the most intense sex dreams I’ve ever experienced. Even more intense than the ones I used to have when I was twelve years old and I was jizzing in my shorts every other second of the live-long day.
It’s Thursday. I’m not fighting tonight, which is a relief. I don’t normally open the shop on Wednesdays or Thursdays, but a guy booked in for a full back piece, over a grand’s worth of work, and he could only do today, so I’m making an exception.
I spend a full thirty minutes in the shower, doing my best not to touch my dick. Unlike my pre-pubescent self, I haven’t come all over my bedsheets as a result of the crazy dreams that have been pervading my sleep, and…there’s something to be said for carrying around the sexual tension that now plagues me, coiled like a riled cobra in the pit of my stomach. It clears my head, somehow. Makes me mentally sharper in a way that feels weirdly good.
My dick is still pulsing like a goddamn beacon in my pants as I drive across town to the studio. I try not to think about the woman from my dreams, which is both easy to accomplish and difficult at the same time. Easy, because, no matter how hard I try, I can’t recall her face, or what she looks like. I see her so clearly in my dreams that it feels as though every aspect of her should be deeply engrained and burning in my memory, but no more than thirty seconds after I wake up, she vanishes from my subconscious and fades away, until only the mere shape and sense of her remains.
She is like a ghost, hovering in the peripherals of my vision from morning to night, watching over everything I do in silence; the moment I turn my head, trying to catch sight of her one more time, she disappears in a puff of smoke. It’s a futile exercise, trying to close the fingers of my mind around her, and so I do my best to let her go altogether.
I need to focus. As I go through the motions of driving, I force myself to do each action purposefully and with intent. Brake. Clutch. Shift. Signal. Turn. Change lanes. Turn. Signal. Brake. Clutch. Wait at each set of lights, my eyes burning into the red light, willing it to change color until it does, then hitting the gas, changing lanes, braking, shifting. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat. By the time I kill the engine in the parking space reserved for the shop, I’m comfortably numb and detached from my body, even though I can still feel the restlessness tugging at my limbs, trying to pull me in four different directions.
I walk slowly across the parking lot, despite the fact that it’s fucking freezing and any sane person would jog across the stretch of blacktop to get inside quicker. The cold’s good for you, you stupid prick, I tell myself. It’ll stop your mind from wandering.
Inside the shop, the place is as cold as a meat locker. I don’t have much choice now: the frigid temperatures might be good for my mental state, but they’re hardly conducive to expert tattooing skills. This guy’s back piece will end up looking like a fucking four-year-old’s kindergarten scrawl if I can’t feel my fucking hands properly.
It’s not long before the studio’s a comfortable seventy-five degrees. I down a coffee as I get the place prepped for my client, and then I down another as I sit at my desk and sketch out a mockup of the tattoo I’ll be doing today, as per my client’s instructions.
An ouroboros—a vivid, bright green snake, twisted around on itself, eating its own tail. The symbol for eternity in many cultures, including my own. In the background, I draw long, thick bands of fire, the flames leaping high over the serpent’s head, and in the sky, an owl in flight. I develop a facial tic as I draw the owl. I pretend I’m unaffected by the bird the guy has chosen, but I’m not very good at lying to myself.
To my people, an owl is prikaza. If a Roma hears an owl hooting just after dawn, it’s believed that someone is going to die. My mother would wash her hands repeatedly if she saw what I was etching right now—not a part of Roma culture, per se. Just something she does whenever she feels like she needs to rid herself of bad luck.
I shove all thoughts of bad luck and my mother out of my head, leaning over my desk as I finish up the sketch, and before I know it an hour has passed. I’ve just completed the finishing touches to the tattoo design when the door chimes and a gust of arctic wind blasts through the toasty warm space.
“Be right there.” Unclipping the tracing paper from the white pad it was tacked to, I brush it off, checking the ink lines to make sure they’re perfect, and then I head through into the front of the shop…
…where I find Patrin perusing the gallery of tattoos, flicking through each of the displays, frowning at the work.
“People don’t really choose these, do they?” He scowls, distaste all over his face. “Love hearts? Mermaids? Cartoon dogs? Seems a little fucking stupid if you ask me.”
I place the tracing paper down onto the counter and walk around to the other side, clenching down on my jaw. “Now’s not a good time. I have an appointment in five minutes. Whatever you’ve come for is gonna have to wait.” Until hell freezes over. Or pigs fucking fly.
Patrin’s head stays still, but his eyes swivel to look at me. He winks. “Ah, yeah. Your one o’clock. I’m afraid I have a confession to make. I may have made that appointment.”
No. Fucking. Way.
I’m gonna need a crowbar to prise my jaw apart, I’m clenching it that hard. A loud humming sound fills my ear: the high, monotonous pitch of rising fury.
I…am…going…to…kill…him.
Patrin offers me the same boyish smile he always used to use on his mother when she caught him doing something he shouldn’t have been. “Now, before you go shitting all over yourself, here’s your money.” He already has it in his hand. He slaps a wedge of bound notes against my chest. There’s no need to count it. There will be exactly one thousand dollars in there, probably in twenty-dollar bills. A Roma never stiffs another Roma, after all. “You said the first session for that back piece was gonna take five hours. I could technically claim that time from you, brother, but I don’t want to waste your day or mine. So how about you spare me one hour instead, and we can call it quits.”
I take the money and I mimic his action, slapping it back into his chest. “If you don’t want ink, I don’t want your money. Now get out of my shop.”
“Calm the fuck down, Pasha. I don’t know why everything always has to be all out war with you. Can’t you just take a breath and—”
I’m not listening to him. I’m already at the door to the studio. I’m tugging on the handle, yanking on it so hard the damn door near comes flying off its hinges. “Goodbye, Patrin.”
“Pssshh.” He shakes his head. “These last three years really have sent you squirly in the brain, haven’t they?”
“These past three years have been a breath of fresh air,” I counter.
“Fine.” He slides his hands into his pockets, grimacing as the wind floods the studio again. “Shut the damn door, Pash. It’s fucking freezing, and you’ve made your point. I’ll get a stupid fucking tattoo if you’ll agree to listen to me while you’re doing it.”
Well.
I let the door fall closed. Patrin’s hardly covered in tattoos like I am, but he must have at least nine or ten separate pieces, over various areas of his body. He must really need to talk if he’s willing to take some ink in exchange for an audience. “All right. You’ve got one hour.” I storm passed him, into the back of the shop, collecting the mockup with the owl and the ouroboros from the counter. The design goes directly into the trash can by my station. I sit myself down on my stool, and I point at the black leather chair in front of me. “Sit,” I growl. “And lose the jacket and shirt.”
He obeys me, shucking off his coat and dropping onto another chair before pulling his t-shirt up over his head. He’s a big dude. Almost as big as me, and in fighting shape, too. When we were kids, we were always scrapping, trying to assert dominance over the other. One week, Patrin would have it. The next week, I would. Now, I reckon I have the upper hand on him. But only just.