Diane Burke - Midnight Caller

Jack grew more excited as the day approached. His excitement must have stemmed from the thought of having a whole afternoon to play with Amy, Carol’s daughter. Best of friends just like their moms, they had fewer play dates due to crazy work schedules now that the hospital was transitioning to the new building.

Or maybe he was excited because he loved picnics.

Either way, Erin had to admit she was looking forward to the event herself. She’d been antsy lately. Feeling unsettled. Wary. And not sure why. Probably because winter had clung longer than normal to Florida this year.

Or maybe she felt unsettled because she hadn’t been sleeping well lately because of prank calls throughout the night.

Erin’s gaze fell upon the small walker beside her son’s chair and her heart clenched. No matter how tired she was or how inviting a relaxing day at home might be she knew she couldn’t let her son down. After all, asking to go on an Easter egg hunt wasn’t unreasonable. She glanced at her watch. If they hurried, they’d be just in time for the parade.

“Finish your milk and we’ll go,” Erin said.

Jack reached for his glass and knocked it over.

Erin grabbed a dish towel and started to sop up the liquid.

“I’ll get Jack changed,” Tess said.

Erin nodded. “Thanks, Tess. Don’t know what we’d do without you.”

“Never mind that,” she said, but blushed beneath the compliment. She shooed Jack toward the bedroom.

Erin glanced at the empty doorway and thought about how lucky she was that Tess had moved in to help after Erin’s father, Tess’s brother, had died. It had taken years for her father and Erin to reconcile but she had been devastated when he was killed. She didn’t think she would have made it through without Tess and her newfound faith to comfort her.

The phone rang.

Lost in thought, the trilling sound startled her. It rang a second time. She stood perfectly still, staring at the instrument like it was a dagger poised to strike. Please, God, not another one.

She hugged her arms to her body. Uneasiness crept up her spine. She was surprised she was letting a few anonymous telephone calls make her this jittery. It had to be that boy down the street. He had harassed the neighborhood for days last year until his father discovered what he was doing. He was probably up to his old tricks. She needed to get a hold of herself. And she needed to go have a chat with the boy’s dad.

Erin grabbed the phone on the fourth ring.

“Hello.”

Silence.

“Hello?”

No reply. She’d answered at least a dozen calls over the past three days, half of them waking her in the middle of the night.

“I know you’re there.” Erin pressed the phone tightly against her ear. Straining to hear something. Anything. The breathing grew heavier, but still, no one spoke.

“Quit calling here or I’m going to call the police.” She slammed the phone in the cradle. Yep, it had to be a bored teenager playing a prank. Absently rubbing her arms, she continued to stare at the instrument. But it didn’t feel like a prank. She didn’t hear muffled giggles on the end of the line. She heard—She didn’t know what she heard. She only knew that her instincts blared an inner warning that something was wrong and she had learned through the school of hard knocks to trust those instincts.

“Ready, Mom?” Jack rolled his walker across the room and grinned up at her, wearing his favorite green-striped shirt with the dinosaur logo and a pair of jeans.

Shaking off her anxiety as the result of lack of sleep, she leaned down and hugged him. “You bet. Let’s go.”

Less than an hour later, while they waited by the side of the parade route, Erin’s sense of uneasiness returned. Crazy as it was, she couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching them. Goose bumps shivered along her arms. Glancing over her shoulder, her eyes roamed the crowd. Children and adults formed two lines up and down the parade route. Some of the parents had brought folding chairs. Others stood. Children sat cross-legged in the grass. A young couple chased a laughing toddler bent on escape.

Nothing sinister. Nothing ominous. Why couldn’t she shake this feeling?

Erin recognized many of her coworkers from the hospital. She couldn’t identify everyone by name, but she’d passed them in the halls or had ridden with them on an elevator. She waved to the ones she did know and nodded to others. It seemed like half the hospital staff came. Dr. Clark and his family. Shelley from the cafeteria crew. Mr. Peters from housekeeping. Even Lenny, the lab tech, had come. But that was no big surprise. The hospital cosponsored the event and all personnel had been encouraged to buy a ticket.

She turned her head and her eyes lit on her friend. She waved for Carol to join them. Erin banished her anxiety when Carol elbowed her way through the crowd and stood beside her.

“Can you believe this?” Carol asked. “I knew we’d have a crowd, but this is twice as many people as I expected. Times are tough. Money is tight, but it didn’t stop folks from reaching into their wallets to buy a ticket for a good cause, did it?”

Carol scooped Amy up into her arms. The child’s soft blond curls framed a little round face which held a smiling mouth and the slightly slanted eyes of a three-year-old Down syndrome child.

“You’ve done a great job, Carol.”

“Not just me. The committee worked hard and it looks like it paid off.” Music began playing and the excitement of the crowd became palpable. The sound of children’s laughter and yells of excitement tinkled in the air like wind chimes.

“The parade’s about to begin. Look,” Carol said, pointing to her right. “Here comes the Easter Bunny.”

He steadied the camera and clicked a picture. Then, he took another. He cursed when people moved in front of him and obstructed his view of her. Move. All of you. Get out of my way. He elbowed his way through the crowd until her image filled the camera lens again. Click. She threw her head back and laughed. Click. She shaded her eyes against the sun while she talked. Click. Click. Click.

Her son waited for his mother’s attention. The child leaned heavily on the walker, shifting his weight from one leg to another. But his mother was too busy flapping her gums to pay any attention to him. The boy tugged on her shirt. She glanced down, signaled for the child to wait a minute and returned to her conversation. He knew it. He knew he was right about her. She was self-centered and selfish. A rotten excuse for a mother.

He wasn’t at all surprised when the boy wandered away. The woman didn’t even notice he had gone. A deep hatred flowed through his veins like molten lava. She was like all the other women. Soon he would make her pay. Click. First he had to finish the job he started last night. Click. She’d pay, all right. Click. Click. She deserved to die.

The sun beat down without mercy as Tony Marino looked out over the crowd from his vantage point on top of the picnic table. Not even a hint of a breeze. This kind of weather you expected in August in Florida not April. Remember spring, Lord? Supposed to be warm and balmy, not hot and sticky. But it was hot. Miserably hot. And he wasn’t any closer to finding a lead on this case.

He wanted to curse so badly his lips twitched. Five years ago when Tony had found the Lord and decided to mend his ways, cursing seemed the easiest vice to attack first. He was wrong. As a detective for the Volusia County sheriff’s office cursing had been a natural part of his daily conversation. No different than any other word. He started out promising himself to say a prayer and put a dollar in a jar each time he uttered a curse word. When his prayers took hours and his jar collected enough money to buy a small car, he knew it was going to be more difficult than he first believed.