Blake Crouch
*69
At nine-thirty on a Thursday evening, as he lounged in bed grading the pop quizzes he’d sprung on his 11th grade honors English class, Tim West heard footsteps ascend the staircase and pad down the hallway toward the bedroom.
His wife, Laura, appeared in the open doorway.
“Tim, come here.”
He set the papers aside and climbed out of bed.
Following her down the squeaky stairs into the living room, he found immense pleasure in the architecture of her long legs and the grace with which she carried herself. Coupled with that yellow satin teddy he loved and the floral tang of skin lotion, Tim foresaw a night of marital bliss. Historically, Thursdays were their night.
Laura sat him down in the oversize leather chair across from the fireplace, and as she took a seat on its matching ottoman, it struck him-this fleeting premonition that she was on the verge of revealing she was pregnant with their first child, a project they’d been working on since last Christmas. Instead, she reached over to the end table beside the chair and pressed the blinking play button on the answering machine:
Ten seconds of the static hiss of wind.
A woman’s voice breaks through, severely muffled, and mostly unintelligible except for, “…didn’t mean anything!”
A man’s voice, louder and distorted by static: “…making me do this.”
“ I can explain!”
“… late for that.”
A thud, a sucking sound.
“… in my eyes.” The man’s voice. “Look in them!..you can’t speak… but…listen the last minute…whore-life…be disrespected. You lie there and think about that while…”
Thirty seconds of that horrible sucking sound, occasionally cut by the wind.
The man weeps deeply and from his core.
An electronic voice ended the message with, “Thursday, nine-sixteen, p.m.”
Tim looked at his wife. Laura shrugged. He reached over, played it again.
When it finished, Laura said, “There’s no way that’s what it sounds like, right?”
“There any way to know for certain?”
“Let’s just call nine-one-”
“And tell them what? What information do we have?”
Laura rubbed her bare arms. Tim went to the hearth and turned up the gas logs. She came over, sat beside him on the cool brick.
“Maybe it’s just some stupid joke,” she said.
“Maybe.”
“What? You don’t think so?”
“Remember Gene Malack? Phys ed teacher?”
“Tall, geeky-looking guy. Sure.”
“We hung out some last year while he was going through his divorce. Grabbed beers, went bowling. Nice guy, but a little quirky. There was this one time when our phone rang, and I picked it up, said, ‘Hello?’, but no one answered. The strange thing was that I could hear someone talking, only it was muffled, just like that message. But I recognized Gene’s voice. I should’ve hung up, but human nature, I stayed on, listened to him order a meal from the Wendy’s drive-through. Apparently, he’d had our number on speed-dial in his cell. It had gotten joggled, accidentally called our house.”
One of the straps had fallen down on Laura’s teddy.
As Tim fixed it, she said, “You just trying to scare me? Let’s call your brother-”
“No, not yet-”
“No, you’re saying that a man, who we know well enough to be on his speed-dial list, was killing some poor woman tonight, and he accidentally…what was the word?”
“Joggled.”
“Thank you. Joggled his phone, inadvertently calling us during the murder. That where you’re going with this?”
“Look, maybe we’re getting a little overly-”
“Overly, shit. I’m getting freaked out here, Tim.”
“All right. Let’s listen once more, see if we recognize the voice.”
Tim went over to the end table, played the message a third time.
“There’s just too much wind and static,” he said as it ended.
Laura got up and walked into the kitchen, came back a moment later with a small notepad she used for grocery lists.
She returned to her spot on the hearth, pen poised over the paper, said, “Okay, who are we close enough friends with to be on their speed-dial?”
“Including family?”
“Anyone we know.”
“My parents, your parents, my brother, your brother and sister.”
“Jen.” She scribbled on the pad.
“Chris.”
“Shanna and David.”
“Jan and Walter.”
“Dave and Anne.”
“Paul and Mo.”
“Hans and Lanette.”
“Kyle and Jason.”
“Corey and Sarah.”
This progressed for several minutes until Laura finally looked up from the pad, said, “There’s thirty names here.”
“So, I’ve got an unpleasant question.”
“What?”
“If we’re going on the assumption that what’s on that answering machine is a man we know murdering a woman, we have to ask ourselves, ‘which of our friends is capable of doing something like that?’”
“God.”
“I know.”
For a moment, their living room stood so quiet Tim could hear the second hand of his grandmother’s antique clock above the mantle and the Bose CD player spinning Bach up in their bedroom.
“I’ve got a name,” he said.
“Me, too.”
“You first.”
“Corey Mustin.”
“Oh, come on, you’re just saying that ‘cause he took me to that titty bar in Vegas, and you’ve hated him ever-”
“I hate most of your college friends, but he in particular gives me the creeps. I could see him turning psychotic if he got jealous enough. Woman’s intuition, Tim. Don’t doubt it. Your turn.”
“Your friend Anne’s husband.”
“Dave? No, he’s so sweet.”
“I’ve never liked the guy. We played ball in church league a couple years ago, and he was a maniac on the court. Major temper problem. Hard fouler. We almost came to blows a few times.”
“So what should I do? Put a check by their names?”
“Yeah…wait. God, we’re so stupid.” Tim jumped up from the hearth, rushed over to the phone.
“What are you doing?” Laura asked.
“Star sixty-nine. Calls back the last number that called you.”
As he reached for the phone, it rang.
He flinched, looked over at Laura, her eyes covered in the bend of her arm.
“That scared the shit out of me,” she said.
“Should I answer it?”
“I don’t know.”
He picked up the phone mid-ring.
“Hello?”
“Tiiiiiimmmmm.”
“Hi, Mom.”
“How’s my baby boy?”
“I’m fine, but-”
“You know, I talked to your brother today and I’m worried-”
“Look, Mom, I’m so sorry, but this is a really bad time. Can I call you back tomorrow?”
“Well, all right. Love you. Kisses and hugs to that pretty wife of yours.”
“You, too. Bye, Mom.” Tim hung up the phone.
Laura said, “Does that mean we can’t star sixty-nine whoever left the message?”
“I don’t know.”
“You think there’s some number you push to like, double star-sixty-”
“I don’t work for the phone company, Laura.”
“Remember, I suggested we buy the package with caller ID, but you were all, ‘No, that’s an extra five bucks a month.’ I think it’s time to call the police.”
“No, I’ll call Martin. He’ll be off his shift in an hour.”
A few minutes shy of eleven o’clock, the doorbell rang.
Tim unlocked the deadbolt, found his brother, Martin, standing on the stoop, half-squinting in the glare of the porchlight, his uniform wrinkled, deep bags under his eyes.
“You look rough, big bro,” Tim said.
“Can I come in or you wanna chat out here in the cold?”
Tim peered around him, saw the squad car parked in the driveway, the engine ticking as it cooled.
Fog enveloped the streets and homes of Quail Ridge, one of the new subdivisions built on what had been a farmer’s treeless pasture, the houses all new and homogenous, close enough to the interstate to always bask in its distant roar.