Owen returned to the booth with his confidence restored. Sam was sitting in his swivel chair, finishing the last piece of pizza. “Feeling okay? I figured you didn’t want any of this, so I saved you the trouble of throwing it out.”
“I’m all right now. For a minute I felt sick at my stomach.”
The engineer got up and brushed the crumbs from his lap. “None of your customers gave up hope.” He pointed to the bank of red lights, all blinking in happy unison. “Sure must be a lot of washed-up marriages out there. Glad I never got the urge.”
Owen sat down and hit the mike switch. “Sorry for the slight delay. This is Dr. Owen Stanford, back to speak with you about your marriage problems.” He pressed button number one. “And how might I help you, my dear?”
For the next hour everything ran smoothly. There was the usual assortment of infidelities, desertions, boring partners — typical complaints that Owen had come to expect over the last two years. For every agonized question, he reached into his bottomless box of glib answers. Sometimes he wondered why all those dimwitted housewives never caught on. Two hundred bucks to a prestigious-sounding diploma mill, a smooth way with words, and you were in business.
Just before dawn it happened again. He had finally gotten rid of a woman whose husband had gambled away their life savings when the same voice came back on number three. The question was also the same: “What do you think of a man who does violence to his wife?”
This time Owen was ready. “I don’t think there is any place in a sound marriage for that sort of thing. Have you considered, however, that it is not you he is striking, but someone or something else that has been bothering him? Perhaps your failure to recognize his difficulties has aggravated the situation.” He relished turning the tables on them with half-baked psychology. Pretty soon he would have her apologizing for having been beaten.
He also knew the collective ear of his audience was waiting for the lurid details. “You said he does violence to you. What sort of violence do you mean exactly?”
For a few seconds the static drowned out everything, and Owen was just about to cut over to another call when the voice returned. It was crisp and clear and there was no mistaking her words. “My husband had me killed.”
In a split second Owen had cut her off. Cold sweat trickled down his neck. He tried to regain control, but his voice shook like a highwire act in a stiff breeze. “Sorry, folks. Must be a full moon out tonight. Let’s see who’s on the next line.”
Amazingly, the creepy, hoarse voice crackled through his earphones again. “What do you think of a man who would have his own wife killed?”
He stabbed his finger at number five and the eerie voice came back asking the same question. In a desperate frenzy, Owen ran through the whole row of buttons, but Marcia’s voice followed him relentlessly: “What do you think of a man who would have his own wife killed?”
Finally he could stand it no longer. When the goading question whined through the last line, he screamed into the mike. “Sure, I had you killed, you useless old woman. I paid a fortune to have you dumped over Indian Point just to get rid of that voice, and I’d do it again...”
He felt Sam’s beefy arms drag him away from the console. “Doc, please!” The engineer managed to get him into the lobby and onto one of the leather couches. “You lie here,” he said. “Let me get something to help you relax.”
In a minute he was back with some pills and a glass of water. “I knew getting locked up with all those crazy phone calls would get to you sooner or later. You lie back and get some sleep. I’ll take care of everything.”
Owen closed his eyes. The pills did their work quickly. In a few moments he felt himself tumbling into a soft velvet darkness. But Marcia’s voice still echoed in his brain: “...a man who would have his wife killed.”
When Owen opened his eyes it was broad daylight. He could see the morning DJ in the booth across from where he lay. A stout man in dire need of a shave was leaning over him.
“Let me shake your hand, Dr. Stanford,” he said.
Owen sat up and took his hand limply.
“My wife and I have listened to your show for a long time. You certainly helped us over some rough going with your advice.”
“Thank you very much,” Owen mumbled, brushing the hair out of his eyes. “Nice to know there’s somebody listening out there.”
“Oh, they’re listening all right. It’s a pity I have to arrest one of the few good people on radio today.” He showed Owen his detective’s badge.
All the events of the last few hours flashed in on him. “Listen, if it’s about that little joke about my wife...”
The detective laughed. “I know you radio guys are a bunch of kooks.”
Owen joined in with his own nervous laughter. “That’s us — a bunch of kooks. You can’t take us seriously at all.”
“That’s what I thought at first,” said the detective, his expression turning somber. “I had just turned on my car radio when that little announcement about dumping your wife came over the air. I was pretty close to Indian Point, so I guess my instincts as a cop led me over there.”
“...And you looked around the highway, but you didn’t find her,” finished Owen.
“That’s right, Dr. Stanford. I couldn’t find her anywhere on the highway.”
The pieces of the puzzle were coming together in Owen’s mind. Somehow Marcia had survived, and now she was getting her revenge by making his life a living hell. Still, there was no reason this dumb flat-foot had to know all that. “As I was saying,” he said in his most convincing manner, “it was just an on-air joke.”
The detective was fumbling through his pockets for something. “No, I wouldn’t say it was a joke when we have your wife’s corpse.”
“I thought you said you couldn’t find her?”
“On the highway. I was just getting into my car when I happened to look up.”
“And?”
“Most people don’t realize the resiliency of the human body, Dr. Stanford. Apparently, she bounced quite a bit on the way down. Couldn’t believe it myself, but there she was, dangling up there among the telephone wires like a boy’s lost kite.”
“Dangling in the telephone wires?” Owen’s jaw hung slack and his eyes had a dazed expression.
“Yessir,” said the detective. “I had to get the phone people out to retrieve the body. Strangest thing I’ve ever seen.” He looked down at the card he had finally found. “Oh, before I forget: You have the right to remain silent...”
Who’s Killing the Class of 1479?
by David Braly
Dogs and rats were the only ones dining in the banquet hall when Carlo Vossi left. A few men were still seated at the table, a few more standing in the room, talking about business or the latest outrage of the Asinno family’s partisans, but no human was eating. Carlo considered the cessation thereof and the departure of most guests an indication that the banquet was over and that he could leave. When he bade goodbye to his grandfather, Leon Vossi did not indicate by word or sign that Carlo was leaving too early. He had, in other words, done an adequate job of representing his father, Leon’s eldest son and principal heir, who was absent on business in Venice.
Carlo walked through the main hall and down the stairs that led to the palazzo’s stables where his two attendants waited with the other guests’ attendants and bodyguards. Being only twenty-three years old, Carlo had no enemies other than the Asinno, and the presence of two attendants would be enough to deter most thieves from attacking him when he rode through the streets to his parents’ palazzo on the Via della Scala. Never did he or anyone else anticipate that he would be attacked in Palazzo Vossi itself. At the foot of the stairs, a side hall led to a big carved door with two windows on each side of it, each window twice the height of a grown man and covered with velvet drapes so long that they formed folds on the floor. Carlo was approaching this door when a man appeared from behind the left drape.