The Phone Company

by David Jacob Knight

  Meth.

  Bath salts.

  PCP.

  Abusers of any one of these stimulants might as well have been mainlining hallucinogenic rage.

  Keeping his pistol trained on Clive, center mass, Bill inched out from behind the cruiser. He stopped when Clive started pacing.

  “No, I don’t need insurance for my headset either. I’ve already told you that how many times now? Are you even listening? N! O! Do I have to spell it out?”

  Bill scooted closer.

  And closer.

  Taking steps whenever Clive paced the other way.

  Whenever his back was turned.

  At this range, he wished he’d grabbed his shotgun.

  “No!” Clive screamed. “Where are you? Where’s your office? Why? Because! I’m coming down there to strangle you to death with your own phone cord, that’s why!”

  Bill, close enough to smell the sweat soaking through Clive’s flannel, knew it was going to happen a second before it did. Clive whirled around on his heel, gun swiveling around . . .

  . . . and then Bill was tackling him, wrenching Clive’s arms up behind his back to cuff him and confiscate his gun. Even during the arrest, Clive kept screaming at the salesman.

  Must be important, Bill thought, putting Clive’s earwig to his own ear. “It’s not even on.” And yet Clive was still screaming, spittle flying everywhere.

  “You know what, you can take your insurance and shove it up The Provider’s ass, you hear that? N! O!”

  * * *

  “Weird,” Aaron said, and Bill said right? He was headed back out on patrol and had told her everything.

  “Some of the other guys were dealing with stuff like that all day today, too,” Aaron said. “Weird phone stuff. Like, you know that Jay guy? I guess he drove his truck right into the quarry. He was just following his GPS, and—kersplash!”

  “What. An. Idiot,” Bill said.

  “Yeah. And then apparently Chad somehow was using his phone to shock people, I guess? He was stun-gunning protestors over at the courthouse, I guess with about the same amount of volts as a stun gun.”

  “Protestors?”

  “Oh, crap,” Aaron said.

  Bill felt the bottom of his stomach drop out like a rotten floor. “What?”

  “Crap, Bill, I’m so sorry. I’ve been so busy. Marvin posted bail.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’m so sorry, I really meant to tell you.”

  “No, it’s fine. It’s not your fault. How?”

  “Rat.”

  “McCurdy?”

  “The only Rat we know,” Aaron said. “It was weird, he brought in, like, over a thousand dollars of bail money—entirely in change.”

  “Like, quarters?”

  “Half dollars and dollar coins. I guess he brought in the first load on a hand truck. They made him go dump it in that machine over at Walmart.”

  “Where’d he get that kind of coinage?”

  “No idea,” Aaron said.

  Bill frowned. As kids they’d heard stories about the Martian’s lost treasure in the dump, coins upon coins he and his old man had collected off sidewalks and out of gutters and people’s cars and couches over the decades. But those were just silly stories.

  “So where is the Martian now? Does anyone know?”

  “Home, I think.”

  “Damn it,” Bill said, “all right.”

  He found a turnaround and headed back to that side of Burnt Valley. “I’ll be on the mountainside, okay?”

  “Yeah,” Aaron said.

  “I just hope he hasn’t moved it yet.”

  “You think he’s going to move the van?”

  “I know it.”

  It was the first thing Marvin would do. And Bill had been planning to record it all from his perch out in BLM.

  Whipping around a corner—the final turn before the long stretch of woods and country road into town—a car cut into Bill’s lane.

  A station wagon.

  “Shit!”

  Brakes squealed, and the wagon, veering sharply, careened right off the bank. It must have been traveling seventy miles an hour, but when it crashed headfirst into the pine, it simply stopped, about five feet shorter all of a sudden.

  “Crap, crap, crap,” Bill said, nosing his car into a dirt road before jumping out. He threw a flare out into the oncoming lane and then approached the car.

  Antifreeze and probably even oil sizzled on the engine block. The front end had crumpled like an accordion, buckling the doors and crowding the front seat. Something wet sizzled in there, too, behind the wheel. Something with tangled hair.

  Bill didn’t even need to look at the plates. He recognized the station wagon.

  “Aaron, I’ve got a car crash out here on Old Indian Pass. I’ve got at least one fatality, and, oh my God,” Bill said, spotting the shade suctioned to the back window. The visor had been in Pam McCurdy’s station wagon ever since her daughter, Candy, had turned three.

  BABY ON BOARD!

  Bill got a peek at the booster seat in back, saw the little spray of dishwater hair in a pink clip, decorated with a daisy. “Oh Jesus, Aaron, oh my God.”

  Later, during the investigation, when that whole lane of Old Indian Pass was coned off and they’d stationed a flagger on either end and Bill just wanted to go home—or to the Speakeasy where nobody knew his name—he found Pam McCurdy’s purple Tether lodged between little Candy and the arm of her booster seat. The girl had been playing something on it, a driving game. The screen still shimmered with oily smears and tiny prints sticky from treats.

  The car depicted onscreen looked exactly like the McCurdys’ station wagon. Same make, same model, same stickers on the dash.

  Bill saw one fingerprint smear in particular, just a swipe on the top layer of oil, crossing the entire screen. He compared it to the skid marks in the road. They were the same.

  Frowning, he swiped the controls . . . and jumped when the wheels of the station wagon shifted in response.

  * * *

  Bill pulled into MC Estates, but stopped at the loop and shut his eyes.

  There were two parts to this job he hated most. One of them was paperwork, and it wasn’t nearly as bad as this second part.

  Bill used to recite what he would say whenever he had to go knock on a door or make a call. At a certain point, though, he had developed a script so he didn’t have to think. He suspected doctors did the same thing. In fact, he knew they did. When his parents died, when Janice died, he’d heard it in their voices. He understood it more than ever now. If you didn’t have a script, if you made each death unique, you’d retire but it’d be into an early grave.

  Bill opened his eyes when the piece of candy he was holding crinkled in his hand. He’d picked it up from the back floorboard of Pam McCurdy’s station wagon. The wrapper depicted a little strawberry, and next to it a little flower, which he’d initially mistaken for a daisy.

  Tucking the candy into the breast pocket of his uniform, Bill sighed and pulled down the loop toward Rat’s. At their driveway, he tried not to dwell too long on the little pink trike, tried not to look to the corner of the trailer when he walked up the steps and knocked.

  His fist pushed the door open.

  “Hello?” Bill said, peeking inside.

  Rat sat in his recliner. “Come on in,” he said without looking up from his Tether.

  Bill hesitated. He didn’t want to go inside. He really didn’t. He found things went better when he left the news on the stoop and made a clean break, giving the family their space.

  He took off his hat anyway, held it against his chest and ventured inside.

  “Hey, Rat, I, uh, I’m afraid I’ve got some terrible news.”

  “I know,” Rat said, tapping away at his screen.

  Bill frowned at something on the other side of the living room. Pam’s stuff, all her pictures and pig figurines, had been taken off the shelves, windowsills, and tables and had been packed in boxes, stacked i
n one corner. Some of the boxes were marked with Candy’s name as well.

  “Haven’t seen you at church,” Rat said.

  “Rat, I don’t go to church.” Bill didn’t think Rat went either, but maybe that had changed.

  Someone call him? Bill thought, looking again at the boxes. Why had Rat done all this?

  “Pastor said it’s okay. It’ll all be restored. We’ll all be restored in the end.”

  Bill’s stomach gurgled with hot acid. Something about the way Rat was talking, that flat voice. Something about how it was Rat who’d ended up sounding like the apathetic doctor and not him.

  “All will be restored,” Rat repeated, nodding glassy-eyed at his Tether. “Except, you know, Candy. She didn’t have her own phone, but . . .”

  Clearing his throat, Bill looked down at the shag carpet. Rat clearly wasn’t processing things normally. Bill probably wasn’t, either. An app that could control a steering wheel? A whole car? Impossible.

  He wanted to deliver the news and get the hell out of there, go take a drink and crash at home. “Well, Rat, I just wanted to tell you, Candy and Pam are with the funeral director now, so if you’d like to go down there and make arrangements . . .”

  “Already called him,” Rat said. “Already handled it.”

  “Well,” Bill said, grimacing. That heartburn again. “I truly am sorry, Ray.”

  Rat finally looked up. Instead of the blank face Bill would have expected, Rat beamed as if the sun were shining on him. “The Provider will bring ’em back—bring Pam back, you hear?”

  “All right. Don’t be a stranger, Rat.”

  He didn’t realize it until after he left: Usually Bill felt a sense of closure afterward. He’d do his part and feel terrible but resolved.

  Tonight, though, as he left Rat McCurdy to his phone, Bill totally expected to see Candy playing outside in the yard or standing there around the corner of the trailer, waiting for someone to tell her she wouldn’t be going to jail, she wasn’t a bad guy after all.

  CHAPTER 18

  Sarah’s Tether dinged and rang and vibrated all day long with texts and notifications of all kinds. One time it actually vibrated right off the girls’ room counter.

  “That’s because you downloaded, like, a billion apps,” Anastasia said. She was helping Sarah set up her phone at one of the round tables in the library.

  Sarah watched over Anastasia’s shoulder the whole time. “Is that why I keep getting creepy calls for some guy named John? Or he had the number first, maybe?”

  “Probably,” Anastasia said. “Oh, wow, look at this app. I don’t even have this app. Why don’t I have this?”

  “What?”

  “NV Me.”

  Sarah tried not to smile. “Oh, the popularity app?”

  “So, what, it ranks us?”

  “Yep,” Sarah said. Her own rank had increased simply because she’d bought a Tether. “Everything you do is worth points. Or negative points if you do something stupid.”

  Anastasia’s lips pursed. “Why is Erica Tracy ranked higher than me?”

  Sarah reached over and pressed Erica’s name in the leaderboard for the girls of Burnt Valley High. “You can see what they earned points for, what kind of achievements they’ve unlocked. Everything. There’s even one for volleyball. Or, like, for the guys, there’s football.”

  “OMG,” Anastasia said. “That’s why.”

  “What?”

  “Erica Tracy. She’s been giving handies to Gary Pervier in the darkroom.” Anastasia scrolled down a few more achievements and said, “Oh my God, what a slut.”

  She and Sarah laughed. Sarah didn’t say anything, but Anastasia wasn’t one to talk. She had done way worse with Gary Pervier, back when they were dating. With other boys, too.

  Sarah was the only one in their group who hadn’t done anything with a boy, not below the waist. She’d barely done much above it.

  “Look,” Anastasia said, “your stupid app’s calling Erica the most likely to be Homecoming Queen. What a bunch of crap.”

  “Maybe you should start giving handies in the darkroom,” Sarah said.

  “Funny.” Anastasia scrolled through the leaderboard, examining the record of every girl ranked higher than her. “No, I took photography last year.”

  “Well, you’re fifth,” Sarah said, pointing out Anastasia’s standing below Erica Tracy’s. “The app gives you tips on how to be more popular. I don’t think it’d be hard to beat her.”

  Anastasia picked up her pink Tether and compared it with Sarah’s side by side. “I don’t have the same app. All I can find is the NV Me scoreboard, that’s it. No full app.”

  “Well, then, I can help you,” Sarah said.

  Her phone vibrated.

  “Wow,” Anastasia said, “you just earned points.”

  “I did?”

  Anastasia sneered. “So all you have to do is be nice to people?”

  “Just people who count,” Sarah said, smiling.

  Anastasia beamed. Whenever you flattered her, even her hair tended to blush. “Look,” she said, “you earned points even for that. You’re in the top ten!”

  “Really?” Sarah leaned over her friend’s shoulder, enjoying the smell of Anastasia’s girly perfume. “Oh my God, I can’t believe it.” She never believed she’d make it into the top twenty of anything, let alone the top ten.

  “It says here if you and I kiss . . .”

  The girls met eyes, then giggled and looked away. But it left Sarah wondering. What else could she do to become more popular?

  Later in class, she got her answer when her Tether rang. Mrs. Droullard stopped writing the complex number form (a + bi) on the board and looked over at Sarah. The whole class turned, too. Sarah scrambled for her purse to mute her phone.

  “Wait,” said Mrs. Droullard, listening to the ringtone. “Is that The Cure?”

  Sarah shrugged. She had no clue where the ringtone had come from. She certainly hadn’t set it. Just any time anyone called for that guy, John, this was the song that played.

  “Well,” Mrs. Droullard said. “Aren’t you going to answer?”

  Sarah, blushing, picked up. “Hello?”

  “Hi,” a man began, “I’m—” He stopped talking as someone in the background, a young child, interrupted him. “Owen, please, I’m on the phone.”

  “Who is this?” Sarah said.

  All eyes were on her. This was how she’d felt in spelling bees as a kid, her face practically spotlighted by the audience, her opponents’ eyes drilling knives into her back.

  “Sorry,” said Sarah’s mystery caller, “I’m calling for John Gunner. Do you know where I can find him?”

  “No. I just got this number, like, last week,” she exaggerated. “Why do people keep calling me?”

  “Oh, sorry,” the man said.

  “God!” Sarah punched END CALL.

  “ ‘Wrong Number’?” Mrs. Droullard asked.

  “Yeah, for like the hundredth time. Sorry.”

  “No, that’s the song.” Mrs. Droullard hummed a bit of it. “Pretty sure that’s The Cure.”

  “I wish there was a cure,” Sarah said, and even though it wasn’t funny, even though she thought it was actually kind of lame, the entire class erupted. Sarah, dazed and looking around, snickered too.

  They weren’t laughing at her. Probably for the first time she’d amused them. And according to NV Me and her vibrating phone, Sarah had just earned ten points for

  * * *

  “So, JJ, I hear you’ve been having trouble with bullying,” Mrs. Keeler said, looking down at her phone. “This says there’s been a dip in your academic performance, especially in Computer Science. Is there anything you’d like to talk about?”

  “Oh, you got your earwig,” JJ said, tapping his own headset. He’d heard Bill call them earwigs over The Enormous Television and he’d stolen it, he liked it so much.

  Mrs. Keeler looked up from the report on her Tether. “JJ. While I would
love to talk accessories with you, I’m concerned. Maybe if we talked about the source of the bullying, we could address that at least?”

  “No, I’m good,” JJ said. “No, really.”

  “JJ—”

  “Besides, who cares about those nut jobs? I skinned one of their cats, who gives a crap?”

  Mrs. Keeler’s earwig blinked green. She, on the other hand, never blinked. “JJ, are you saying you’ve hurt someone’s pet?”

  He met her eyes for a second. He knew that she knew, because they’d talked about it before, one of the first signs of a serial killer in children was the killing of small pets. Mrs. Keeler fixed him with her keen green eyes, much like a cat’s.

  “I’m kidding,” JJ said, shutting off his Tether when she looked; he’d found a cool new app and had been researching school security and looking up Richard Clement’s class schedule. “I didn’t really skin it, it was a stupid game.”

  JJ didn’t break eye contact with her, but he could tell Mrs. Keeler was trying to make him break. He wondered if she knew the truth.

  The truth was that Meg Disney hadn’t come to school Tuesday or today, and JJ, along with probably the entire school, had seen what she’d posted on Follow:

  JJ had nearly thrown up when he’d seen the picture attached to Meg’s post. Her cat still looked grumpy, even without its lips.

  At times, JJ felt vindicated for hurting Meg back. Yet other times he couldn’t tell the difference between what was real and what was something in a game.

  Some of JJ’s other friends had been into animal cruelty. He’d seen the Dick shoot dogs with a BB gun more than once. The Dick had even tried to shoot Barksdale, but JJ had kicked the gun.

  The Dick, he thought. The Dick was the one he should have hurt, not Meg. He knew the Dick and Meg shared a class, which was why he’d been looking up the Dick’s schedule. He could make this up to her, he knew he could.