Lisa Gardner - Catch Me

Overall, the city of Grovesnor, all twenty-five thousand people, was tame compared to my time in Arvada. There, I’d worked in a major call center, handling hundreds of calls an hour. These days, it was me, sitting alone in a darkened room with the dog that was not my dog. I generally received between ten and forty calls a shift. Ten on a night like tonight, forty on a weekend.

Number one call I handled every night-wrong number. Number two call-Mr. Big Butt, or Mr. Pepperoni Pizza to Go, or whatever latest thing a bunch of bored kids thought was funny. And yeah, I dispatched a uniformed officer to each and every address. Hey, I didn’t make the rules.

Only a third of the calls to 911 are for actual emergencies. More typically, I got reports of reckless driving, a dead or injured animal in the road, the occasional complaint against noisy neighbors. Information came in on my ANI ALI screen-ANI standing for Automatic Number Identification, ALI for Automatic Local Identification. Landlines were the easiest calls, with name, phone number, and address winking across my screen. Cell phone calls and Internet-based phone carriers (think Vonage) automatically went to the state police for them to sort out location, as such numbers weren’t linked to a physical address, making it difficult for me to dispatch an officer.

In addition to my ANI ALI monitor, I had a second system, the Dispatcher Event Mask. I entered all the information from the call into this system-details of an accident, description of an intruder, whatever. Then, I could shoot this information straight from my computer to an officer’s Mobile Data Computer in his police cruiser. Push of a button and ping, we were all on the same virtual page.

Assuming the system didn’t crash. Assuming I had the wherewithal to multitask between two monitors while simultaneously soothing a distressed caller, asking all pertinent questions, and typing in all relevant answers.

But other than that, easy breezy.

My ANI ALI monitor blazed to life. Name, phone number, street address appearing on the screen. I put on my headset and hit the button.

“Nine-one-one. Please state the nature of your emergency.”

“I…I don’t know.” Female voice this time. Quivering.

“Ma’am? Do you need assistance?”

“My husband is angry.”

“I see. Are you at home, ma’am?” I rattled off the street address from my screen; she confirmed. “And your name, ma’am?”

“Dawn.” She didn’t offer a last name. My screen listed the number as belonging to Vincent Heinen. For the time being, I didn’t press her.

“Dawn, nice to meet you. I’m Charlie. Is your husband at home?”

“Yes.” Her voice had dropped to nearly a whisper. I took that to mean he was someplace close.

“Are there kids in the house?”

“No.”

“Pets, dogs?” Officers like to know about dogs.

“No.”

I settled in, got down to it. “Has he been drinking?”

“Yes.” Very soft now.

“Dawn, is he in the room?” Then, when she didn’t immediately answer, my own voice dropping low: “Are you hiding from him? You can hit a button on the phone. One beep for yes. Two beeps for no.”

I heard a beep, and I took a deep breath. Okay, so the makings of a genuine call. At my feet, Tulip stirred. She seemed to sense my tension, sitting up.

“Dawn, are you afraid of him?”

Beep.

Still monitoring the call, I got on the radio. “Four sixty-one to nine twenty-six,” I said into the radio.

Nine twenty-six, aka Officer Tom Mackereth, tagged back. “Nine twenty-six to four sixty-one.”

“Four sixty-one to nine twenty-six, I have a female party online,” I informed him crisply. “States husband is angry. States husband has been drinking. States she’s afraid of him.”

“Nine twenty-six to four sixty-one, location of caller?”

“Four sixty-one to nine twenty-six, sending through.” I updated my Dispatcher Event Mask with the extremely limited data I’d collected thus far and shot it through to Officer Mackereth’s mobile computer. “Four sixty-one to nine twenty-six, caller states they are at home, no kids or animals present.”

“Nine twenty-six to four sixty-one, can you get more details? Description of both parties, is the male party armed, are we talking alcohol, or also drugs?”

No shit Sherlock , I felt like saying. But our radio dialogue, plus the 911 call, was being recorded for posterity, so I kept to the script.

“Four sixty-one to nine twenty-six, will do.”

Back to my caller, who’d remained disturbingly silent.

“Dawn, it’s Charlie. You there?”

Beep.

All right, contact reestablished. I leaned closer to my event monitor, adjusting my headset. I could hear the woman better now, the rapid sounds of her distressed breathing as she tried desperately not to make a sound.

“Dawn, are you in the bedroom?” I asked quietly, wanting to keep her communicating.

Another beep.

“Are you locked in the bathroom?”

Two beeps.

Two beeps meant no. I pictured a bedroom, tried again. “The closet?”

Another beep.

I played the odds in New England colonial architecture: “Dawn, is your bedroom upstairs?”

Beep.

I added the details to the call profile, moving along. “Dawn, is your husband armed?”

Silence. Not a yes, not a no. Did that mean maybe?

I worked to clarify: “Dawn, Mrs. Heinen, is it you don’t know if your husband is carrying a weapon?”

Beep.

“Officer Mackereth is gonna love that,” I murmured to Tulip, who was sitting straight up and staring at me now. Situation unknown-an officer’s most typical and most dangerous kind of call.

I got back on the radio, summoned 926 and provided the short update: Caller was in the upstairs bedroom. Husband was within listening distance and may or may not be armed.

“Drugs?” Officer Mackereth wanted to know, because a drunk husband was bad enough, but a cokehead or meth addict was even worse-beyond the reach of logic and pain. Officers got tense about that.

I returned to Dawn Heinen.

“Dawn, does your husband do drugs?”

Beep.

I wasn’t surprised. I added to the profile.

“Dawn, has he done drugs tonight?”

Silence.

“You don’t know if your husband has done drugs tonight?”

Beep.

My fingers stilled on the keyboard and I closed my eyes, starting to feel the pressure. My job was to get information. I was Officer Mackereth’s eyes and ears. If I did my job right, he walked into a situation forewarned and forearmed. If I failed at my job, a lone officer got to approach a darkened house at one thirty in the morning, with nothing but his quick wits to save him.

I got back on the radio. “Four sixty-one to nine twenty-six. Caller states she doesn’t know if husband is armed. Caller states she doesn’t know if husband has done drugs tonight, but states he has done drugs in the past.”

“Nine twenty-six to four sixty-one, roger that,” Officer Mackereth replied. I felt the weight of his disappointment in those words. He was counting on me, and I was letting him down. He notified me that his position was one block from the address. He was cutting his sirens and going dark. Meaning I hadn’t given him enough information. Meaning he was approaching quietly, in order to assess the situation for himself.

“Come on, Dawn,” I murmured under my breath. “We gotta do better. For all of us, we gotta do better.”

I returned to my caller, listening to the sound of her shallow breathing and straining now for other noises in the background. A husband calling a wife’s name? Shattering glass from a man in the throes of a violent rage? Or maybe even a knock on the downstairs front door marking Officer Mackereth’s arrival. I heard nothing.