Late Night Caller

Late Night Caller

by Scott Speck

“Allen, do you still love me?”

The whiskey glass leaps from my hand and explodes on the floor, but I barely notice. The phone is tight against my ear.

“Lucy? Wait… How...”

I stop myself, embarrassed at my own stupidity. Allen, you’re a goddamn defense attorney. Act like one!

“Why did you leave me out here? Here, Allen, where it’s so… cold…”

Over the phone, wind is blowing through trees. I know how bitterly cold it is out there. Hours after getting home, my swollen red toes are still itching and tingling.

Every muscle aches from dragging her through snow for what seemed like an hour, until I spotted a dense copse of trees. I was alone out there, in no man’s land, amidst a thousand square miles of empty forest land. By then, her skin was ice cold, her cheeks hard to the touch. I positioned her beneath a dense cluster of bushes that scratched me up. Then I stood over her to catch my breath, regain my composure. Goddammit, I’m sure she was dead!

“Wh-who is this?” I stammer, then swallow hard. I sound so lame.

“They’ll figure this out. They’ll find you,” she continues, and I hear the liquid, suctioning movements of her lips, her tongue – like she’s inside the phone, her mouth an inch from my ear, her lipstick-stained teeth nearly nipping my earlobe.

Last week, her intimate eyes, her hot outbreath, her clever tongue aroused me for hours. Now her seductions stab me with dread. I feel sick. A wave of dizziness hits, and things start going black. I drop ass-first to the floor to avoid splitting my head on the hardwood. Partway down, the cord tenses and jerks my phone from the end table. It crashes to the floor beside me, its metal bell ringing into silence.

“What’s this about? I think you called the wrong Allen, ma’am.” I don’t sound very convincing.

I press the phone harder to my ear, until it hurts. Why does this chunk of Bakelite suddenly feel so heavy? My hand trembles, and I struggle to keep my grip. Despite my flannel robe and slippers and the roaring fireplace, I feel colder than when I got home. And is this really Lucy? Or maybe… Yes – Betty, her roommate Betty! Relief floods through me. I have to call her bluff.

“Betty, do you know what time it is? I have closing arguments in just four hours! I’m not happy!”

“Silly boy,” she says, “Betty went to bed hours ago.” I try to recall the tone of her flat mate’s voice. She was shy and hardly said a word.

Our flats are two miles apart, both leased before Lucy and I met. She’d been living there with Betty for five years, to be close to work. I rented mine near the courthouse, and I lived here Monday to Friday. I only spent weekends at my official home, with Emily, at Chasebourne Manor.

“Tell me something only Lucy knows,” I demand, “or I’m hanging up. Did you do something to her? Harm her? What – are you jealous of her?” I’m feeling more confident now. Lucy’s out there, stiff as a board, but I have to play this angle. Then I wonder – is Betty trying to blackmail me? I can’t bear thinking of how to deal with that.

“Ohhh, I can tell you a lot of things that are just between you and me, Lover.”

I can tell she’s smiling, and my anger flares.

“Hmmmm,” she says, her tone playful. “Where to start?”

There’s wind again over the phone, and then some kind of low-pitched animal noise. It sounds like a large owl hooting. There aren’t any owls within miles of Lucy’s flat. No, this call is coming from… out there…

“Here’s one,” she says. “You felt sooooo guilty about bludgeoning me to death that you tucked my red scarf snugly around my neck to keep me warm. And you called me a fucking bitch when that sharp thistle scratched your cheek, as you dragged my corpse into the trees. Ring any bells?”

I reach up to my face and trace my fingertip along the narrow, lightly scabbed scratch on my cheek. She’s still smiling, I can tell, and then she chuckles.

Did Betty follow me? Could she have been hiding in the back seat of my car? It was dusk by then, so I mightn’t have noticed her. Could she have followed me in a taxi with the lights off, because she suspected something?

“Go to bed, Betty, and leave me alone. Like always, you’re delusional!”

I slam the phone down, my heart racing. Then I clamber to my feet, being careful to avoid the broken glass. I have to call out sick tomorrow. It’ll piss everyone off, especially Judge Meyers, but there’s no way I can face court. From my liquor cabinet, I remove an unopened fifth of Old Forrester, along with a clean tumbler. A minute later, I’m sitting on my velvet wingback and slugging back shots.

I notice the phonograph, perched on the middle shelf in the bookcase, so I stand awkwardly and walk over to it, my legs wobbly.That big band record is still on the platter. I switch it on and cue up the needle, the volume knob set on low. I stand back and wait for Glenn Miller to distract me.

“It’s so cozy here tonight,” says a voice from the record player.

Lucy?

I pull the needle from the record with a ripping sound, then lower it again at the outer edge. After some cracks and pops, she says “You’ll wear out the needle. Just let it play, while the two of us enjoy each other’s company. And thanks for building up the fireplace. It feels so toasty in here.”

I’m speechless. This is the same goddamn record I played earlier today. As she continues her prattling, the volume begins to swell without me ever touching the controls. I twist the volume knob back and forth, to no effect. I don’t want to wake the neighbors. Dear God, I cannot let them hear this! That’s when I see my own breath condensing in small puffs, like it did outside.

“I should call Betty to let her know I won’t be home tonight. I hate her worrying for no reason. She’s lovely, you know – such a mother hen. Oh, and I’ll call Emily, too. The woman whose fortune vaulted you into the ranks of the elite. The woman you promised you’d leave for the last three years.I’ve always felt jealous of her, but fair is fair, and she’ll need to get her ducks in a row for your trial.She must look out for her own best interests.”

Then I shatter, my resolve scattering like so many bits of crystal on the floor. I look to my kitchen. I remember Lucy making us breakfast, how she opened each egg with the dull edge of a knife.That’s what she was doing, making us French toast, this morning when we fought, when she gave me her ultimatum – leave Emily or she’d ruin me.

I’m shivering now. I feel myself slipping off the edge of a very tall cliff, beyond which there is no purchase, nothing to slow my fall. I wish this were a nightmare, a hallucination.

“Good God, Allen, you’re the sanest man I know!This is all very real, I assure you."

Now her voice is booming, so loud it rattles an ash tray on the table. Fighting with my numb, stiff limbs, I struggle over to the wall outlet and yank out the record player’s cord, but Lucy continues. Defeated, I stare hypnotized at the spinning record label as she drones on and on, my ears ringing.

Then, despite all the booze in my blood, my veins turn to ice.

And the lights go out…

Epilogue

Clouds stream through a cold, gunmetal sky. Below, a snowy landscape dotted with clumps of trees extends to the horizon. A single-lane road, recently plowed, meanders across the vast expanse. Along its shoulder sits a black Mercedes coupe, show drifted halfway up the headlights, the driver’s door and trunk hanging open.

Two detectives in trench coats inspect the scene. They appear patient, methodical despite the morning’s numbing cold. Three police cars sit behind the Mercedes, their engineidling to keep them from freezing in minus-thirty degrees.

A chaotic set of footprints, positioned at all angles and spacings, extends from the car and out across the landscape. They’re sprinkled like pepper along the edges of a wide, deep gouge in the snow. A hundred feet along the tracks, two uniformed officers stand over a frozen body, of a man wearing a light jacket. One of them stoops and points to a deep set of scratches on the man’s face, visible on his upturned cheek.

There’s a shout from the distance, and both men look up as two more officers rush toward them.

“There’s a body, a woman, almost a mile out,” one of them says while struggling to catch his breath. “Her head’s bashed in. We need more guys out here. Smith is guardin’ the scene for now, but he’s gonna freeze in an hour.”

Soon, all four officers are standing around the corpse. The man’s skin looks pale and hard. Frozen solid.

“The bastard sure was in a hurry,” one of them says. “Didn’t even think to bring a heavier coat. Still, after a mile out there and back, he was only a hundred feet short!”

One of the officers remains with the body while the others join the detectives. Soon, one of them is on the radio in his cruiser. He requests more assistance, including the coroner, as he reads off the information on the dead man’s driver’s license. Allen Poe, age 45.

“Just checked his ID,” a deep voice says over the radio’s bursts of static.“The newspaper’s gonna have a field day with this one. High profile case. We’ll send someone over to notify the wealthy widow.”

Outside the cruiser, a mile away in a dense stand of trees, a young woman lies frozen on her side. Despite her twisted limbs, her bloody forehead, a bright red scarf is tucked close around her neck. To keep her warm…