Ryan Jahn - The Dispatcher

‘I’m trying not-’

‘There’s no trying here, Andy. I’ll kill you if you touch Genevieve again. I will kill you dead and put you where no one will ever find the body. Do you believe me?’

Andy nods.

‘I want you to say it.’

‘I believe you.’

‘Good.’ And it is good, because though Ian only came here to frighten Andy, he finds that he is telling the truth. He has it in him to do what he is threatening. He could pull the trigger and simply be done with it. But he does not. He reholsters his weapon and takes a step back.

‘See you around,’ he says.

When he gets home, he pulls out the phone book and sets it on his lap, flipping through it till he finds PAULSON, A. amp; G. He dials the number and waits. Genevieve picks up after four rings, and a tentative ‘Hello?’ escapes her mouth.

‘Genevieve,’ he says. ‘It’s Ian Hunt.’

‘Ian. .? Oh, hi, did. . did something happen to Andy?’ Ian might be mistaken, but he believes he hears hope in her voice.

‘No,’ Ian says. ‘But I wanted you to know that if you should decide to leave, he won’t try and stop you. We had us a serious talk, and he knows better now than to do again what he did this morning.’

With a saucepan in hand, he walks to the couch and sits down. He sets the pan on the table and stirs the ramen noodles inside before forking a dripping mass of them into his mouth. Then he grabs the files the sheriff’s department photocopied for him and sets them in his lap. He flips one open. Jamie Donovan was kidnapped from the bedroom of her home in Mencken in 2002. She was eleven. Her body was found in a ditch four days after she went missing. It had been posthumously sodomized and mutilated. There is a picture of her in the file, a color photocopy on a letter-size sheet of paper. Brunette. Sad brown eyes. Something timid in the way she held herself.

His cell phone rings. His first thought is that it’s Jeffrey. He drops the fork into the pan and picks up his phone. He glances at the number. It isn’t Jeffrey.

‘Hello.’

‘Ian.’

‘Deb.’

‘How are you?’

Ian scratches his face. His beard is growing in. It itches. ‘I don’t have any updates on Maggie. I’m sorry.’

‘I know.’

‘You do?’

‘Bill.’

‘Right. I guess he’d know.’

‘Yeah.’

‘So why are you calling?’

Debbie doesn’t answer for a long time, though Ian can hear her breathing.

After a while Ian says, ‘Are you and Bill fighting?’

‘No, it’s not that. Maybe I shouldn’t’ve called.’

‘It’s okay. I’m not busy.’

‘You never stopped believing she was alive, did you?’

‘I never stopped hoping she was alive.’

‘You never doubted?’

‘Of course I did.’

‘But you never gave up hope.’

‘No.’ Ian grabs a bottle of Guinness from the coffee table and takes a swallow.

‘How did you. .’ More silence. Then: ‘I saw the way you looked at me yesterday.’

‘How did I look at you?’

‘Like you wanted to strangle me. Like you hated me.’

‘I didn’t mean-’

‘I guess I deserved it.’

‘You didn’t. You have a life-a new husband, the twins-and you have every right to want to live it. I shouldn’t blame you for that.’

‘But how did you-’

‘Because it’s all I have.’ He looks down at Jamie Donovan’s picture, and then closes the file on it. The image is still in his mind. He takes another swallow of his Guinness. The mental image changes. Maggie. She smiles at him. Then she looks over her shoulder. A man appears behind her. He is out of focus, so Ian cannot identify him. His face a blur, as if smudged out with a wet eraser. Maggie screams and turns back to look at him. ‘Help me,’ she says. ‘Daddy, please.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Debbie says.

‘ “Now I am dead you sing to me.” ’

‘What?’

‘Nothing. What else do I have, Deb?’

‘Are you drunk?’

‘I don’t get drunk anymore.’

‘You quit drinking?’

‘No. I just don’t get drunk.’

Debbie is silent for a long time. Then: ‘Do you think if what happened with Maggie didn’t, hadn’t, do you think we would have made it? You and me, I mean.’

‘No.’

‘Why not? We were good for a long time.’

‘Because something else would have happened. That’s life. One thing happens, then another thing happens, then another thing happens. Only looking back can you try to make sense of it. So something would have happened and we’d still have separated, and we’d still be where we are now, or somewhere like it, wondering what the fuck happened to us. Life happened. It happens to everyone. The lucky ones, anyway.’

Not even breathing from the other end of the line: silence.

‘Deb?’

‘I’m glad she’s alive, you know.’

‘I know. You just wanted an answer and you gave yourself one. The only answer that made any sense, really. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred you would have been right. Seven days later it would have made sense to assume the worst. Seven years later it would have been insane to think anything else.’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

She sniffles on the other end of the line. ‘Have you told Jeffrey?’ she says.

‘No.’

‘You should. He feels responsible, you know.’

‘I know, but I don’t know if he wants to hear from me.’

‘I don’t either,’ Debbie says, ‘but he needs to know and you need to tell him.’

‘I still love you, you know.’

‘But life happens.’

‘Right.’

‘Okay, Ian.’

‘Okay,’ he says, then hangs up the phone. He opens the next file.

Ian makes a right onto Crockett Street and heads north toward work. As he drives he passes the Skating Palace, Bulls Mouth Theater (where they play whatever was on most screens six months ago, the scratched film rolling through a projector that runs louder than the sound system), Wok House, Morton’s Steakhouse, a Dairy Queen, and several other places.

He makes a left onto Crouch Avenue and drives past Interstate 10, Bulls Mouth Baptist Church, the petting zoo, and is rounding the bend that borders the north side of the Dean woods when he sees a police cruiser up ahead. It’s rolling in the opposite direction, headed toward him. Its horn honks and the driver’s side window comes down. The two cars stop side by side and Diego nods at him.

A dachshund barks from the back seat.

Ian nods toward it. ‘What’d he do?’

‘Tried to rob Sally’s Gun amp; Rifle.’

‘Then he deserved to get caught. Nobody with half a brain fucks with Sally.’

‘Not if they want to keep their nuts.’

‘How much you make so far?’

‘Seventy.’

‘How many dogs still loose?’

‘Three or four, I think.’

‘I hope you’re reporting all this to the IRS.’

‘It’s not income. It’s beer money.’

‘You haven’t bought a drink in five years.’

‘Four. And that’s just for myself. I still buy for my friends. If you ever stopped into Roberta’s you’d know that.’

‘I don’t get drunk anymore.’

‘You buy a six pack every day from Bill’s.’

‘Six doesn’t get me drunk.’

‘So have six at Roberta’s.’

‘With that markup?’

‘I said I’d buy.’

‘Maybe.’

‘You hear about Genevieve?’

‘What about her?’

‘She finally left.’

‘Yeah?’ Ian says. ‘Good for her.’

‘Weird thing, though. When Andy showed up at Roberta’s last night, left side of his face was cut and bruised. Refused to talk about it.’

‘That is weird,’ Ian says.

‘It reminded me of what you said about maybe someone should do more than talk to him.’