by Lisa Jackson
“—and you didn’t help me,” the breathy voice accused, hardly missing a beat. “What happened then, Dr. Sam, you remember, don’t you?”
Sam’s head was pounding, her hands slick with sweat. “I asked for your name, Annie—your full name.”
Click. The line went dead. Sam sat frozen.
Annie Seger.
No! Her stomach clenched.
It had been so long ago and yet, now, sitting in the booth as she had been then, it all came rushing back, like a tidal wave, crashing through her brain, leaving her numb and cold. The girl had died. Because of her. Because she couldn’t help. Oh, God, please not again.
“Samantha! Samantha! Snap out of it!” Melanie’s voice permeated her brain, but still she could barely move. “Jesus Christ, pull yourself together!” As if from a distance, Sam felt Melanie’s hands on her arms, yanking her out of her chair, thrusting her across the small space, toward Tiny, pushing her away from the desk and the microphone. Still in shock, Sam stumbled, her ankle twisting. She snapped out of it. Realized she was here, in New Orleans and on the air. “Don’t you know there’s all this dead airtime going on? For God’s sake, pull yourself together.” Melanie was saying as she slipped on the headphones and reached for the mike. “Get her out of here,” she ordered Tiny.
“Wait a minute. I’m okay.” Sam wasn’t about to budge.
“Prove it.” Melanie glared at her and waved her into the hallway. Tiny pulled Sam out of the room as Melanie leaned into the microphone and, as she flipped it on, her voice became smooth as warm silk on a hot Louisiana night. “Please excuse the interruption, we’ve experienced some technical difficulties down here at WSLJ. Thank you for your patience. Midnight Confessions with Dr. Samantha Leeds will be back in a few minutes, after our local weather update.” Expertly Melanie pressed the buttons for the automated recording that would play the weather forecast and a couple of pretaped advertising spots.
“What went on in there?” Tiny asked, then realizing his fingers surrounded Sam’s upper arms, he let go and put a little distance between them. The hallway seemed eerie and darker than usual, the glass case holding old records giving off an odd, ethereal glow. But of course that was crazy. It was just Sam’s nerves. The corridor and record case hadn’t changed.
Drawing in several deep breaths, Sam pulled herself together. She couldn’t allow another prank to rattle her so.
“Who was that girl on the line?”
“I don’t know,” Sam admitted, leaning against the wall. She wiped a hand over her forehead and forced some starch into her spine. Think, Sam, think. Don’t let some crank caller get the better of you. “I—I don’t know who it was. Can’t imagine who would do anything so sick, but whoever it was she wanted me to think she was Annie Seger.” Oh, God, not Annie. What was happening? The girl had been dead nine years. Dead. Because Sam hadn’t read the situation correctly, hadn’t heeded the girl’s cries for help. Sam’s head pounded, and the coffee she’d drunk earlier curdled in her stomach.
Don’t let it get to you, Sam. Don’t!
“She said she was Annie and then you freaked out,” Tiny accused. “You acted like you knew her.”
“I know…but I don’t…er, didn’t…it’s all so unbelievable.”
“What is?” He seemed about to touch her again, but, thinking better of it, shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his oversize jeans.
“Annie Seger was a girl who called into my program a long time ago when I was working in Houston.” It seemed like it was just yesterday. Sam remembered pushing the button, answering the call and listening as a teenager hesitantly explained that she was pregnant and scared to death. “Annie phoned in several nights in a row, asking for advice.” Inside Sam cringed when she remembered the girl’s calls. At first Annie had seemed scared, but no matter what Sam offered as advice, she rejected it, claimed she had no one to talk to, no one to confide in, not her parents, not her pastor and not even the father of her baby. “I tried to help her, but she ended up committing suicide.” Sam pushed the hair off her face and saw the pale shimmer of her reflection in the window of the booth. Beyond the glass Melanie sat at her desk, talking into the microphone, controlling the show. It all seemed surreal, being here late at night in the dim hallway, remembering a time she’d tried so hard to forget.
“You think it was your fault she killed herself?” Tiny asked.
“Annie’s family blamed me.”
“Heavy.”
“Very.” Sam rubbed her arms and tried to grab hold of her composure. She had a show to do; a job to finish. She saw Melanie tear off the headset and roll back the chair. Within seconds she flew out of the room. “You’ve got sixty seconds before you’re back on the air,” she said to Sam. “Are you okay?”
“No,” Sam admitted. Dear God, I’ll never be okay again. She started for the booth. “But I’ll wing it.”
“Eleanor’s on line two. She wants to talk to you.”
“I don’t have time.”
“She’s furious,” Melanie said.
“I imagine. Tell her I’ll talk to her after the show.” Sam couldn’t deal with the program manager now; not until she was off the air.
“What was the deal with that girl who called in?” Melanie asked, as Sam slid into her chair and automatically checked the controls.
“You tell me,” Sam snapped. “You’re supposed to be screening the calls.”
“I have been! And I recorded her request. She didn’t talk in that stupid falsetto voice, either, she just said that she had a problem with her ex-mother-in-law and wanted your advice.” Melanie glowered at her boss. “So are you going to pull yourself together and take charge or what? Otherwise, I’ll take over.” Her voice softened slightly and her defensive attitude slipped away. “I can do it, you know. Easy as pie. Tiny can run the call-in booth. Just like when you were in Mexico.”
“I can handle it, really. But thanks.”
Melanie flashed a smile that seemed to hide some other emotion. “I’m a shirttail relation to Jefferson Davis, you know.”
“I’ve heard.”
“I can step up to the plate if I have to. It’s in my genes.”
“Well, thank God for your genes, but I’m okay.” Sam wasn’t going to let another crank call spook her out of her job. “I’ll handle it. You two”—she motioned to Tiny and Melanie—“just screen the calls and tape “em. We’ve only got another fifteen minutes. Tell Eleanor to sit tight.” She adjusted her headphones and pulled the microphone close to her mouth, adjusting the angle as the advertisement for a local dot com company faded.
“Okay, this is Dr. Sam, I’m back in the saddle. Sorry for the interruption. As you probably already heard, the station’s experiencing some technical difficulties tonight.” It was a bald-faced lie, and she probably lost a few credibility points with her listeners, but she couldn’t deal with the issue of Annie Seger right now. “Okay, so let’s pick up where we left off a few minutes ago. We were talking about our parents interfering in our lives, or needing us, or telling us what to do. My dad is the greatest, but he can’t seem to accept it that I’m a grown woman. I’m sure you’ve had similar experiences.”
The phones lines were already blinking like mad. If nothing else the crank calls were drawing interest. The first caller, on line one, was identified as Ty.
A lightning quick image of a tall man with a killer smile and flinty, unreadable eyes seared through her brain. Her stomach tightened, though she told herself the caller wasn’t necessarily her new neighbor. “Hello,” she said, “this is Dr. Sam, who’s this?”
“Ty,” he said, and she felt a mixture of relief and wariness as she recognized his voice. She wondered why he’d been listening to her program, how he’d managed to be the first caller after the woman who had claimed she had been Annie had been on the line.
“What can I do for you, Ty?” she asked, and tried not to notice that her palms were suddenly damp. “Are you having trouble with your parents? Your kids?”<
br />
“Well, now, this is a little off tonight’s subject. I was hopin’ you could help me out with a relationship problem.” “I’ll try,” she said, silently questioning where this was leading. Was he telling her that he wasn’t available, that there was already a woman in his life? Then why the flirting just the other afternoon? “What’s the problem, Ty?”
“Well, I just moved into a neighborhood and I’ve met this woman that I’m interested in,” he said in his soft drawl, and some of her apprehension fled.
“Is the feeling mutual?” Sam couldn’t help but smile.
“Oh, yeah, I think so, but she’s playing it pretty cool.”
“Then how do you know she wants to get to know you better? Maybe her being cool isn’t an act.”
“That’s what she wants me to believe, but I can see it in her eyes. She’s interested, all right. More than interested. Just too proud to admit it.”
Samantha’s grin widened, and heat washed up the back of her neck. “She’s that transparent, is she?”
“Sure is, only she doesn’t know it.”
Great. “Maybe you should tell her.”
“I’m givin’ it some serious thought,” he said slowly, and Sam’s heartbeat accelerated into overdrive. She wondered how much of the undercurrents in the conversation Melanie and Tiny were hearing…or for that matter, if everyone tuned into WSLJ caught the subtleties.
“But prepare yourself, Ty, this woman might not be as captivated with you as you’d like to think.”
“I guess I’ll just have to find out now, won’t I? I’ll have to make a move.”
Oh, God. Her lungs tightened. “That would be the logical next step.”
“But you and I both know that sometimes logic doesn’t have a whole lot to do with what happens between a man and a woman.”
Touché. “So what are you going to do, Ty?”
There was just a half a beat of hesitation.
“I’m going to find out just what the lady likes,” he drawled, and Sam’s mouth went dry.
“And how’re you going to do that?” Rapid, sensual images of Ty Wheeler with his broad shoulders, dark hair and intense eyes flitted through her mind. She wondered what it would be like to kiss him, to touch him, to make love to him.
His laugh was deep. “I think I can figure it out.”
“So you’re going to try and take your relationship to the next level?” she asked, her throat tight.
“Definitely.”
“When?”
“When it’s least expected.”
“Then you’d better not tip your hand.” She was having trouble breathing.
“I won’t.”
“Good luck, Ty,” she said.
“Same to you, Dr. Sam. Same to you.”
Her heart was pounding so hard she could barely hear herself think and as she saw other phone lines blink to life she wondered if any of her listeners had caught the undercurrents of the conversation.
“Thanks for calling in, Ty.” She forced herself to check the display board and saw that the calls were stacking up like jets over O’Hare.
“Anytime, and, oh, Dr. Sam?”
“Yes?”
“Sweet dreams.”
Chapter Twelve
Ty’s voice had been as low and sexy as a Delta night.
Samantha’s mouth was suddenly desert-dry and she was tongue-tied for the first time in all her years of radio. Heat rushed up her neck, and she tried to get her bearings. “The same to you, Ty,” she finally managed, her voice sounding throatier than usual. “Sweet dreams.” Quickly, before she lost her train of thought completely, she pressed a button, read the computer screen and said, “Hello, this is Dr. Sam, you’re on the air.”
“Hi, this is Terry…hey, who was that guy you were talking to? Do you know him?”
Sam sent a scalding glance toward Melanie. Wasn’t she screening the calls, for God’s sake. “Did you have a question about a relationship?”
“And that Annie, earlier. What was that all about?”
Melanie was shaking her head.
“I don’t know. Now, did you have a reason to call?”
“Well I was gonna ask about how to handle my teenage son.”
“What about him?”
Terry turned her attention back to her boy, but as soon as the next call came in, it was back to questions about Annie. The phone lines never quit blinking. The questions about who the breathy girl on the phone kept coming. Finally, the show was over. As the first stains of “Midnight Confession” played, Sam finished the show with her signature sign off, “…there is always tomorrow. Sweet dreams.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she clicked off her microphone, ripped off her headset, and stormed out of the studio to the glassed-in room where Tiny and Melanie were gathering up the paperwork and resetting the equipment for the Lights Out program.
“I thought you were screening the calls,” she charged.
“I was. You should have heard what came in here.” Melanie threw her headset onto the desk. “It was a nightmare.” The tech room was dark except for a desk lamp, the colored lights of the equipment and recessed bulbs over a bank of computers and recorders.
“She’s right,” Tiny said, rushing to Melanie’s defense. “No one wanted to discuss anything but Annie.”
“Or Ty. There were a couple callers who asked about him.” Melanie tossed her blond curls from her face. Sweat sheened on her face. “I tried, Sam. It’s not easy sometimes.”
Sam cooled off. It wasn’t Melanie’s fault that the woman pretending to be Annie called in. “Did you keep track of all the calls?” Sam demanded.
“Every last one of “em,” Tiny assured her as he tapped two fingers on a lined sheet of paper on the desk he was sharing with Melanie. “Right here on the log. I wrote down the telephone number and the name, if it was available. Some of the calls came in anonymously, of course. If they’re initiated from a company with a private phone system, then caller ID can’t identify them.”
“Then what good is caller ID?” Disgusted, Sam leaned over the desk, her eyes scanning Tiny’s log.
“It’s a start. And we’ve got most of “em. Here.” Tiny spun the lined paper around, then rolled his chair over to the bank of recording equipment and computers to finish arranging the presets for the next three hours. Sam’s gaze raked over the sheet covered with Tiny’s cryptic scrawl. As he’d said, every telephone call was listed. Beside the names were numbers and in some cases notations. Samantha ran her finger down the list, came to the name Annie, where there was a number and an identification name of a pay phone.
Of course. Whoever had phoned in was too clever to call from a private residence. “I’ll need a copy of this ledger.”
“For the police?” Melanie zipped her briefcase.
“And myself.”
“What was that all about in there?” Melanie asked, hitching a thumb at the darkened studio. Through the window, faint light shimmered from the streetlamps three floors below, throwing in relief the equipment in the booth, microphones on long, skeletal arms bent at odd angles, and the desk surrounded by banks of levers and dials. It seemed sinister somehow. Evil. But that was ludicrous.
Melanie broke into her thoughts. “Come on, Sam, who was that Annie girl who called? She acted like she knew you, and you freaked out.”
“Play back her request. When she called in. Before you connected her to me. You said you taped it.”
“Yes, but—”
“I’ve got it,” Tiny interjected. “Just give me a minute…. Here we go—”
A woman’s voice came on after Melanie answered. “This is Annie. I would like to talk to Dr. Sam about my mother-in-law. She’s interfering in my marriage.”
“Hold on. It’ll just be a minute,” Melanie had assured her, and then the breathy, accusatory call.
Sam’s skin crawled.
Tiny stopped the playback, but cast a look over his shoulder, checking Sam’s reaction. “Who is she?”
&
nbsp; “I don’t know who the caller really was, but she wasn’t Annie Seger.” Who would call in and pretend to be Annie Seger and why would anyone dredge that entire tragedy up again? “But—I know this sounds weird, but I think I’ve heard her voice, but it’s not quite right…I can’t place it.” She closed her eyes. Who, Sam, who would do this to you? What kind of cruel joke is it? Aware that Melanie and Tiny were staring at her, she shrugged and shook her head. “I can’t place it. Not now. But I will.” Her skin felt cold as death, and she rubbed her arms. “It was a prank.”
“Another one. Like the calls from that John guy,” Tiny surmised.
“Oh, this is different,” she said, thinking back to those horrid, lonely nights when Annie Seger had called in to the station in Houston, when the show’s ratings had skyrocketed, when Dr. Sam’s name had become a household word, when a young, pregnant girl had taken her life. Had it been neglect on her part? Had she read the situation wrong? Had there been any clues that Annie had been suicidal? How many times had she asked herself those same questions? How many nights had she lain awake, replaying the desperate phone calls in her mind, feeling guilt settle over her like a shroud, wondering if there was anything she could have done to help the girl.
“Of course it’s different. The caller was a woman this time.” Melanie looked from Sam to Tiny, who was frowning as he adjusted the volume of a prerecorded track. Then Sam realized Melanie didn’t know the story, had been in the booth when she’d told Tiny about Annie Seger.
“Samantha said the woman was pretending to be a girl who had called in while she was in Houston and the kid ended up dead,” Tiny said, as if making sure he’d gotten all the details straight.
“What?” Melanie drew back, appalled. “Dead? But…oh God, that’s sick.”
“Beyond sick.” Tiny folded his arms over his chest.
“My speciality,” Sam pointed out, finally recovering a bit of her composure. “Remember, I’m a shrink.”
The phone jangled, and they all jumped. Line two flashed impatiently. “I’ll get it. It’s probably Eleanor.” Sam punched the button for the speaker phone. “Hi, this is Samantha.”