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Then, Friday at lunch, Lynn said, “Your boyfriend’ll be back in town tonight. I bet you’re thrilled and delighted.”

Sheri stared at her.

“Darrin,” Lynn explained. “They sent him to Chicago for the RFC, didn’t you know? And I was kidding about the ‘boyfriend,’ girlfriend. Don’t look so stricken.”

“When—” Her throat was constricted, and she started again — “When did he leave?”

Lynn dipped a McNugget thoughtfully in sweet-and-sour sauce. “Day before yesterday, I think. Why?”

Sheri stood up and put on her parka and scarf and gloves and went away, her food scarely touched.

He called her four times that evening, and there were more roses on the porch when she went out to get the paper Saturday morning. She called the operator and asked about getting her phone number changed and unlisted, but there was nothing anyone could do about it until Monday morning. She switched off the ringer and turned the speaker volume down to zero. By 11 P.M., eight messages had accumulated; one was a hangup, and the other seven were all him, all singing that damn song.

She turned the machine off altogether when she went to bed, and kept Bull beneath her pillow, and still slept badly. When she did sleep, she dreamed of a beautiful witch with a twitching nose, imprisoned in a dark dungeon.

Well, duh, she thought when she awoke, sweating, her blankets hopelessly twisted.

He was listed in the book. She waited until eight Sunday morning, and then she called him.

“Sheri?” he said blearily.

“No,” she spat, “it’s Laura Bush. Now, you listen to me, you bastard. I don’t want you calling me, I don’t want your stupid flowers, I don’t want your notes.”

“Why don’t you just go out with me?” he said, awake now. “If you got to know me, you’d really like me.”

“I went out with you, Darrin. I got to know you. I really don’t like you.”

“But I—”

“Shut up!” Her voice was tighter than she could ever remember it. “I don’t know what your problem is, Darrin, and I don’t care. But it’s your problem, not mine. I’ll tell you what: I’ve been very patient with you, but my patience is gone. It’s time for you to leave me alone.”

She slammed down the phone.

Ten seconds later, it rang. She gripped the receiver, but stopped herself from lifting it. Instead, she pushed the button to reactivate the machine. It picked up on the third ring.

“Sheri?” Darrin said after the beep. “I know you’re there, Sheri.”

There was a pause, and then he began to sing.

“Has the caller made physical threats against your person, ma’am?”

“No, he—”

“Has the caller used obscene or abusive language?”

“No, Sergeant, he just keeps asking me out.

“Well, I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do, unless he’s threatened you or been obscene or abusive, ma’am. Your best bet is to call the telephone company’s business office and report the—”

“There’s nobody there until tomorrow morning, Sergeant, that’s why I’m—”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m afraid there’s nothing we can—”

“—do,” she said. “Can you believe it? This little cretin can do whatever he wants, and the police can’t do a thing to stop him?”

“Did you try talking to Uncle Bob?” Lynn said. “Maybe he—”

“Uncle Bobby,” Sheri corrected. “Can you just see the Honorable Robert Brownlee, Esquire, answering to ‘Uncle Bobby’? I tried to get in to see him the other day, but Doris just gave me that I-pity-you look of hers and wouldn’t even let me make an appointment.”

“What about writing him an e-mail?”

“And say what? ‘I’m sorry to bother you, Mr. Brownlee, but your sister’s little Darrin has been sending me flowers and I want you to make him stop’?”

“Well, you have to — oh gosh, Sheri, there’s Donald, I gotta go. You hang in there, girlfriend. See you tomorrow morning.”

Sheri set down the receiver, and the phone rang immediately, burning her fingers.

Finally, a few minutes before midnight, she unplugged it and crawled into bed, pulled the covers over her head, and tried to sleep.

The doorbell rang at 1:22 A.M., and she plugged in the phone and called the police and reported a prowler. By the time the black-and-white pulled up before her bungalow, though, Darrin was long gone. The officers looked suspiciously at her wild hair and red eyes, made only the sketchiest of notes, and drove off with vague promises.

At 3:41, the doorbell rang again. This time, it took forty-five minutes for the patrol car to arrive, and the same two bored officers stayed less than a quarter of an hour and didn’t even bother to take out their notebooks.

At 4:45, only moments after the police had gone and Sheri had returned to her bedroom, the doorbell rang again. She didn’t bother to dial 911, just crushed her pillow tightly against her ears and hummed into her percale top sheet in a hollow attempt to drown out the chime.

When she noticed what song she was humming, she bit her lower lip hard enough to draw blood.

At 7:00, she was sitting on the edge of the couch, waiting for him. When the doorbell rang at 7:16, she jumped up, grabbed Bull from the end table, and strode to the front door. “Leave me the hell alone!” she screamed.

The recoil when she pulled the trigger was enormous, vastly more powerful than she would have believed possible. The revolver bucked in her hand as she fired again and again and again through the panels of the closed door.

At last the six chambers were empty. She stood there in the foyer, shaking with rage, with hatred, with fear.

The telephone rang.

She turned to stare across the room at it, then swiveled slowly back to the door, released the chain, touched the cool brass knob, swung the door wide.

Crumpled on her porch was the body of a man.

Behind her, her own voice said, “I’m sorry, but I can’t come to the phone right now. Please leave a message when you hear the tone, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

The man held a plain white envelope in his hand. The letters S-W-A were visible between his splayed fingers. His overcoat was tattered and patched and covered with blood. He had wild gray hair and a rough beard.

She had no idea who he was.

“Sheh-heh-heh-eh-eh-eh-ree-ee, bay-ay-bee,” Darrin Stephens sang from her answering machine’s speaker. “Sheh-heh-ree, won’t you come out tonight?”

Road Bomb

by James H. Cobb

James H. Cobb is the author of the Amanda Garrett techno-thriller series published by G.P. Putnam, which includes the novels Choosers of the Slain, Sea Strike, Sea Fighter, and Target Lock. The series to which this story belongs stars Kevin Pulaski, anything but a classic noir detective. “Instead,” his creator explains, “he’s a member of the 1950s California car culture whose day job happens to be with the L.A. sheriff’s department.”

* * *

We buried Joe Summervale on a warm fall day in 1957, and man, it was something to see.

Joe was a hot rodder and a damn nice guy and the brotherhood gathered to wish him farewell. Three blocks’ worth of rods and street customs followed the hearse and the family limousines down Pasadena’s Colorado Boulevard. Black streamers trailed from radio antennas and spotlight brackets, contrasting with painted flames and glittering chrome, and fifty souped-up V-8’s sounded a rumbling dirge through gutted mufflers.