The Caller Read online

  Eight minutes after the local dispatcher received Joan Baskely’s call, a second call came in from the other end of town, south of Forest Glen Road. The difference was that this fire was real. The Tiny Tots Nursery School was in flames. Forest Glen Road is nine miles cross-town from the false address provided by the pranksters. As a result, the tankers were delayed an estimated four minutes. It was during this time that a four-year-old girl named Natalie Harris came close to losing her life. She spent five days in County Hospital due to severe smoke inhalation.

  It was the two teens who had cried wolf, but it was the helpline that took the fall. Our funds plateau at six thousand dollars a year—all from public donations. When word of what had happened got out, we came close to losing half of them. Teri Wainwright, our acting chair, had to wage a PR war with the local press to preserve our image. Soon afterward, in a closed-doors meeting with all twenty-one volunteers, Teri announced that absolutely no 911 calls were to be placed out of our office … at least until things cooled down.

  Two months passed without further incident … until a Wednesday evening in mid-December, a week before Christmas. It was I who received a call from a little girl—crying hysterically and borderline incomprehensible—who told me that her mom and dad were having a really bad fight. I heard, in the background, a high-strung male voice screaming at a quailing female voice. I also heard household items being knocked around, possibly being broken. “Do you know what your address is?” I asked the girl. “Can you tell me where you live?”

  She lived at 6 Cider House Lane. “Please do something, lady. Please help before my dad does something really bad to my mom.”

  I told her to run into the bedroom and hide in the closet. Help was coming. Then I broke the connection and dialed 911. I became the first volunteer at our small outfit to break the 10-93 lockdown.

  When I returned to the church two nights later for my ensuing shift, Teri Wainwright caught me by the elbow and led me into her office. I went willingly, expecting to receive some form of verbal praise for having had the guts to do what I’d done.

  Instead, Teri began pacing back and forth behind her desk, one hand pressed to the side of her head, massaging her temple.

  “I heard about what happened the other night,” she said. “I listened to the playback.”

  I said nothing. I stood in front of the oatmeal-colored sofa, watching Teri carefully.

  “The parents of the girl who called … the ones having the argument?” She stopped walking and looked at me. “Do you know who they were?”

  “It’s none of my business who—”

  “The husband’s name is Donald Underwood. Does that ring a bell?”

  “I’ve never heard of him.”

  Teri resumed her pacing. She sighed. Finally, she palmed one hand against the front of her face and then muttered through her splayed fingers, “He’s a top executive for Raymond and Brian Achulsen.”

  I suddenly felt my legs going weak in the knees. I sank slowly onto the oatmeal-colored sofa.

  The Achulsen Bros., Inc. was a bioengineering and biotechnology research facility, privately owned and funded, built on a four-hundred-acre estate here in Sheldon. They were also our number-one donor each year.

  “I understand, Leslie,” Teri said, “that you had no way of knowing who the girl’s parents were. But for God’s sake, we were under a 911 lockdown. Did I not make it clear—”

  “That was two months ago. I think things have cooled down sufficiently—”

  “I’ll be the judge of that!” she cried. “Christ, Leslie, we’re a low-budget outfit here—our money doesn’t fall from the sky. Need I remind you what happens on April first of every year? Brian Achulsen, accompanied by a small media entourage, drives over here himself to hand-deliver a check in the amount of three thousand dollars—50 percent of our annual lifeline. We lose it, Leslie, and we are under.”

  I held out both arms, palms up. “What you’re saying, Teri, is that we’re a lame duck social service. We’re like a fire department with all the bells and sirens but no water to pump through the hoses.”

  She pointed at me with a menacing stare. “You know how rare it is for us to get calls of high emergency. Most of our callers are just lonely kids who—”

  “Easy for you to say, Teri—you’re not over there manning the lines.” I stood and moved toward the door. “It’s easy to wear glass slippers when you aren’t the one who has to run across granite flagstones.”

  As I reached for the knob to pull the door open, Teri stepped forward and grabbed my arm.

  “I’m sorry, Leslie. I’m sorry it has to be this way. I know …” She bit her lip. “I know how dedicated you are, considering all that you’ve been through, but …”

  “But?”

  She lowered her gaze to the floor, sighed, and then met my eyes. “Look, there’s only a slim chance that Underwood will learn that the 911 call originated from our office. But I’m not taking any chances. And for now, I’m keeping this little discussion between the two of us. All right?”

  “All right. And next time, maybe their argument will escalate, and he’ll take her head off with his hunting rifle. I just hope it’s not me, Teri, who has the misfortune of doing nothing to prevent it.”

  As I started to pull the door open, Teri tightened her grip on my arm and said, “I admire your determination, Leslie. I always have. But I cannot afford to have loose cannons in here that might jeopardize our purpose. There are boys and girls out there who depend on us every day.” Teri paused. Speaking slowly, she added, “If you get into trouble again, Leslie, I’m going to have to dismiss you. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sorry too, Teri.” I walked out of her office.

  And now you know the predicament in which I found myself when, three weeks later, a terrified, little boy dialed in during one of the worst winter storms in this town’s recent memory, claiming that a dangerous man had broken into his house … and my hands were tied behind my back.

  And that was only the start of it.

  CHAPTER 3

  WE TALKED FOR A while. It was nice to slip into the shelter of conversation.

  I asked Justin what he liked to do. Make models, he said—which was wonderful, I told him. My cousin had always loved to build warplanes with my father when I was a kid. Justin also enjoyed video games on Nintendo. Blades of Steel and Mega Man Three were his favorites. He liked to draw pictures of dogs and horses. I asked if he had a dog. He said he didn’t. I detected a sad tone in his voice, which conveyed, I thought, a pervasive loneliness. This was typical of our daily callers. Our Call-A-Friend station was based in Sheldon, Connecticut. Although our radius of call-ins extend as far north as Danbury and as far east as Milford, most come directly from the town of Sheldon and its outlying districts. Additional help centers are based out of other cities across the state—Waterbury, Hartford, and New Haven, to name a few—but nowhere is a helpline for latchkey kids more needed than it is here. Sheldon is a bustling hive of middle- and upper-middle-class households, many of which include two working parents. It’s a town of professionals, scientists, entrepreneurs, and PhDs, many of whom travel and work long hours. Some employ babysitters or nannies to look after their children. Some implore their children to look after themselves.

  Being a latchkey child poses many problems. Eighty percent of our callers cite loneliness as their worst adversary. They stream home from school every day to be confronted by an empty house—no mom to greet them at the door or hug them or ask them how their day went. Many will tune out their listlessness with video games or television. I received a call from a boy not long ago who had no real friends in whom to confide after school other than his dog, Mickey. Both parents worked until six o’clock every night. Mickey had been the lad’s best friend, pulling and jumping against his chain as the boy stepped off the school bus each day. They played keep-away with a tennis ball in the backyar
d. The boy was sobbing miserably when I answered the phone that afternoon. He was calling to tell someone that he’d found Mickey lying dead in the grass behind the doghouse. He was upset and needed someone to talk to. I spent nearly twenty minutes on the phone with him. I told him Mickey was in a better place, free of pain and suffering. I reminded him of the happiness he had brought into Mickey’s life, and vice versa. I told him that all living things must one day stop living, including those closest to us. I may have added that grief, in the end, is often the price to be paid for love.

  ***

  “So, what happened in school today?” I asked, remembering the importance of conversation. You can’t just raise your hand and land a seat in this place. You’re required to undergo two weeks of basic training—how to assuage frightened callers, entertain the bored ones, and how best to speak to the lonely. Each of us has at arm’s length a copy of Ten Thousand and One Ribrackers for Kids. My copy was nestled into the far corner of my desk, forgotten.

  Silence on Justin’s end. I heard static but nothing else.

  “Justin? Justin, are you there?”

  “I heard him,” he whispered. “He’s downstairs. I heard him, he’s down—”

  “Okay, Justin, okay—”

  “He’s there, I know it, I know—”

  “Justin, calm down. I believe you.” I tried to keep my voice at a minimum. “Just relax, all right? Can you relax for me?”

  “I think so, yeah.”

  “You’re in a safe place, remember. Just keep your voice low and stay where you are. I’m right here, okay? I’m right here with you.”

  “Okay.”

  “Now tell me what you heard. What did it sound like?”

  “It was a door opening. It was the basement door. I know it.”

  That rattled me. Houses did creak and moan but not in a manner resembling the sound of a door opening. It took a person to open a door.

  “Where is the basement door, Justin? Is it in the kitchen?”

  “Yeah, across from the counter. I heard it open.” He was still whispering, which seemed instinctive.

  “Do you hear anything now?” I asked him. “Do you hear someone moving around down in the kitchen?”

  “No. But I know I heard the door open down there. I know I heard it.”

  “It’s okay, Justin, I believe you. Just do what I say, all right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  My quickening pulse was enough to tell me we were leaving the gray area and entering the black. Justin, left home alone by his parents, was caught in the middle of a home invasion.

  “Stay put and keep your voice as low as you can. If you hear anything else—and I mean anything at all—you tell me. Are we clear?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  On a whim, I asked him, “Was it snowing before, Justin? When you last looked out the window, had the snow started?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Was it snowing hard?”

  “Uh-huh. Real hard.”

  “Well, it’s a good bet you won’t have school tomorrow.” This elicited an indifferent moan, and I realized that school was probably a salvation for Justin, a place to be around other kids. A cancellation, on the other hand, would translate into an entire day alone in the house.

  I can’t see outside from where I am now. Our windowless office is embedded in the basement of the Reformed Church at the intersection of Main and Fifth. Every winter, we get hit with one or two nor’easters. One of these had been forecast to sweep through tonight and into tomorrow. Six to seven inches were expected, with gusting winds. The storm’s preface had greeted me upon my arrival here tonight as the first minute flakes had begun spiraling down from the hard, slate sky.

  Apparently, the snow had picked up since then. Had this been a business, we’d have called it a day and closed early. But we weren’t here to make a presentation or close a deal. We were here voluntarily. An inch of snow or six feet of it, there were kids out there who needed us.

  That half-a-foot forecast swam through my head again, however, and I considered my chances of making it home that night. Patrick wasn’t alone. Tammy—my sitter—was with him, but she was only sixteen, and likely mulling over the same predicament.

  That’s for later, I knew. You have other business at hand here. Keep your head in the game, Leslie.

  “Tell me, Justin: are there any outside doors that go into your basement? Like a garage door?”

  “Yeah. The storm doors.”

  I knew what he was speaking of. Bilco doors, which opened at a diagonal alongside the house.

  The evidence I had was enough to suggest that everything Justin had said was true. I thought about inquiring whether or not the Bilco doors had been locked, but this seemed irrelevant and an invitation to panic. What I really needed was to assume a stand on the situation. I needed to establish some form of order and structure … but the snowstorm came back and bit me, giving rise to a new quandary: “Justin, didn’t your parents know it was going to snow tonight?” It was a question that only deepened the mystery of their departure. After all, what could be so important to risk an approaching nor’easter with a seven-year-old child alone in the house at night?

  “Yeah, but my dad has chains on his wheels,” Justin answered. Which meant that Mom and Dad had been bent on braving the weather either way.

  The absence of windows in our office lent power to my imagination. In my mind’s eye, I saw the blowing snow drifting higher and higher, burying roads and driveways. My Bronco had four-wheel drive, but how deep would the snow be come nine o’clock tonight? The mother in me drummed at the need to call home and assure Tammy that things were okay and not to worry.

  Relax, Leslie. Tammy will be fine. She knows you’ll be on the phone all night. Besides, they probably have those plows out by now, so there’s no need to waste—

  “I heard him again,” Justin whispered suddenly.

  I paused before asking, “What did it sound like?”

  “A drawer. He opened a drawer. Down in the kitchen.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Uh-huh, yeah.” His voice trembled.

  “I know you’re scared, Justin, but you need to relax for me, okay? You must relax. I’m right here with you.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Continue whispering like you are now. If he’s making as much noise as you say he is, then he must think the house is empty. He probably thinks you aren’t home, that you went out with your mom and dad. As long as he doesn’t know you’re there, we have the advantage. We just have to keep it that way. And you need to be relaxed, right?”

  “Yeah,” he replied. “He just closed the drawer down there.”

  I believed him now. I believed everything he’d told me. It wasn’t just one thing but the merging of all the elements. The veracity of the fear in his voice, the sequence of events and how he described them had all the trappings of reality.

  Then a new thought occurred to me. According to the boy, the intruder was down in the kitchen. But where might he wind up? Not in the sunroom checking out the perennials and biennials, I don’t think. And not in front of the television watching Monty Hall reruns, either. He’ll be on his way up the stairs, Leslie. And after that …

  The master bedroom. I couldn’t help but think back to Sam’s call, the boy who’d hung low in his sister’s bedroom while the twenty-four grand of jewelry had been lifted from the parents’ room.

  Which was precisely where Justin was now, as we spoke. The intruder was in the kitchen, but the master bedroom was a certain stop along the way. How would the boy react? And what of the cordless phone? Didn’t some models have that little red light that lit up when the receiver was removed from the cradle? Would the intruder see it? Might he waltz into the master bedroom confident he was alone, then stop dead in his tracks when he saw the cordless housing on the nightstand with th
e phone missing and the little red light on?

  So many questions, Leslie, but so little time in which to ask them. You know what has to be done now, don’t you?

  “Okay, Justin, enough is enough. I want you to sit tight while I dial the police.” I held my car phone in my free hand, keeping it below the desktop to keep it hidden. “Do you know your address, Justin?”

  “Um … uh … my what?”

  “Do you know the name of the street you live on?”

  “Uh … it’s … I don’t … I’m not sure.”

  He either doesn’t know it or he’s too damned scared to remember it. What are you gonna do now, Leslie?

  “How ’bout your phone number, Justin? Do you know your phone number?”

  “Um, it’s … it’s …”

  “Relax and take a breath. It might even be written on the inside of the phone, right above the buttons.”

  “It’s 724 … uh, 8159.”

  “Okay … good.” I jotted down the number on a slip of scratch paper as I dialed 911 on my private phone. “Hold still, Justin, I’m calling the police now.”

  Teri can take her ultimatums and go to hell, I thought, waiting as the line rang in one ear. It rang four, five, six times, until finally an automated female voice clicked on: “All lines are currently busy. Please try your call later.”

  This was followed by the dry click of a disconnect.

  I sat perfectly straight in my chair, the car phone held absently to one ear, immersed in a stunned semistupor. All lines are currently busy? How can 911 possibly be busy?

  Another voice, one that was cool, calculating, and a little bit frightening: The storm. Something’s happened, somewhere. Some major event or catastrophe, and everybody’s calling to report it, and the lines are log-jammed.

  I had to resolve myself to remain calm. I’d give it another ten minutes and then try again. In the meantime, there was still the matter of Justin hiding in the master bedroom … what was now a potentially dangerous location.