The Game

by Scollins, Shane

  “I know, right? I threw him out last night, tossed his precious Xbox on the lawn. He actually cried more about the Xbox, says he’s going to sue me for it.”

  Candice shook her head. “We should just become lesbians.”

  “It’s a deal. If we’re not married by the time we’re thirty-five, it’s you and me, babe.”

  They both laughed. Candice wanted to tell Zee about the phone call, but resisted. It seemed so far away now that it almost didn’t matter. A full day in the real world pushed the whole experience back into the realm of the unreal.

  “So you need a ride home?” Zee asked as she stood and pulled her tight black skirt back into place.

  Candice nodded and started to gather her things.

  As they headed out of the lot in Zee’s brand new white Honda Civic, Candice looked towards Eddie’s parking spot, but his Chevy was long gone. A lot of people left early on Fridays from Altruistic Innovations because they offered a flex-time working schedule. It was a thirty-five hour week. Most people had that by noon on Friday.

  She and Zee had left early on Monday to get to Madison Square Garden to catch the New York Rangers game. Zee’s brother Alex was an equipment manager for the Rangers, so she often got tickets.

  Zee said, “Straight home, or do you want to stop at O’Flannigan’s for a drink?”

  Candice thought about the question with a twist of her lips. “Yeah, let’s stop off. I could use a drink.”

  “Everyone can always use a drink.”

  The lounge came into view and Zee pulled in. O’Flannigan’s had a serious identity crisis. It was a rustic place with tons of ornate wood and hand-carved beams. It looked like a pirate’s ship, which had been attacked, boarded, and claimed…by every local sports team.

  They picked a booth towards the back just under a hanging fishnet filled with footballs and basketballs. Candice wasn’t in the mood to talk, but luckily, Zee was a good enough friend they didn’t need to fill the air with needless conversation, nor did they need to communicate every detail.

  Zee joked earlier about becoming lesbians, but the truth was that Candice did love her. They were as much like sisters as she’d ever been with anyone in her life. If there were such things as soul mates, hers came in the form of a tall Russian blonde, with a snarky attitude and a good heart.

  Zee pulled her martini away from her lips and said, “Twelve o’clock. Two undesirables are eyeing us.”

  “Are they going to make a move?” Candice didn’t turn behind her to look.

  Zee’s eyes narrowed. “I think so.”

  There was a downside to going out with Zee. Neither one of them were conceited, but there was no denying they were attractive, especially Zee, who liked to dress somewhat provocatively. Guys had a way of bringing the full court press down on them. And Candice relished being the one they usually noticed second. Some girls might have a problem with that, but Candice actually liked it. She liked watching which of the guys would notice she was pretty in her own, more subtle way.

  “How d’you wanna play it?” Candice asked.

  “I’m thinking the preemptive strike.” Zee stood.

  “Vaya con Dios.” Candice tipped her vodka and cranberry and Zee went to do her thing.

  Zee wasn’t gone but a minute when Candice’s phone rang in her purse. She fished the device out and looked at the display. A lump grew in her throat when the phone identified the caller as NAME UNKNOWN.

  Instinctively, she started looking around O’Flannigan’s Bar and Grill, but no one drew her attention. She didn’t answer the call, but it didn’t stop ringing. She could only guess why it wasn’t going to voicemail.

  She looked around for Zee, but couldn’t see her in the bar, either. She must’ve walked around the corner. A strange panic came over her. Shaking it off, she finally answered the phone. “Hello?” There was no one on the other line that she could hear, but again, as last night, it was clear there was a connection open. “Hello?” she said again.

  A computer beep was slightly audible, then the voice of a whispering man started rambling almost incoherently. “Is this a good time? Of course it’s a good time. Any time I say is a good time. Are you having a good time? Do you know what time it is? Is there any time like the present? Time is of the essence. Don’t forget me this time. Your time is coming up.”

  Candice ended the call. The phone rang again, but she didn’t answer. Then a text came through from, of course, NAME UNKNOWN. The text mocked her again, it just said I’m everywhere.

  Candice felt her breath grow rapid and shallow. She mindfully started taking deep breaths just to calm herself down. This game wasn’t fun anymore. She tried to call the number back, but it wouldn’t connect.

  Zee came back and swung into the booth.

  “Problem solved! I don’t think they’ll be bothering us.” Zee must have read her face. “You okay?”

  “Fine…why?”

  “You look like you just saw a ghost.”

  “No, I’m just…I’m not feeling that well.”

  Zee nodded. “Okay, well we can leave if you want.”

  “Yeah, maybe we should.”

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Yeah…I’m just tired. Eddie sapped my energy this morning, and then AI took the rest. I spent half the day working on the same graphic, that stupid swan for the splash page of OBG Insurance.”

  Zee shook her head. “Oh they’re bitches. I got the assignment last time around and they hated everything I designed. The clown from their marketing department complained about every shade of every color.”

  “Same deal with the swan. First, it was too tall, then, too fat, then the feathers were too long. Then it was too modern. I have no energy for those people.”

  They decided to finish their drinks and head out.

  Chapter 4

  Candice tossed her bag on the wood chair by the door and kicked off her shoes. A part of her expected the phone to ring just before it did. The logical part of her mind screamed at her, just let it ring, or unplug the phone. But some sense of morbid curiosity dug at her spine.

  She picked up the phone but didn’t say anything. She expected the voice of the little girl again, but that’s not what she heard. This time it was a man, an old man.

  “Hello, Candice. Why didn’t you talk to me at the bar, when I called you earlier?”

  She was confused yet again. “Who the hell is this?”

  “What do you mean? You don’t remember me? I’m glad you told that loser Eddie to beat it. He’s not good enough for you.”

  She hung up the phone.

  The phone rang again. She answered. “Leave me alone, dammit! If you call back, I’m going to call the cops.” She hung up the phone.

  Her thumb was barely off the receiver when it rang again. Reluctantly, she answered again. “What do you want from me? Why are you doing this?”

  “I want you, Candice.” This time the voice was sinister, haunting, that of a deranged, cliché psychopath out for blood. “Time to play.” The call ended.

  She went into the living room. The phone rang again. This was maddening. She answered the call, prepared to scream, but on the other end was the tra-la-la of a young girl.

  “Candy? Are you there?”

  Candice could feel her mind twisting into a knot. This was pure insanity.

  “Candy, can you come out to play?”

  She disconnected the call and turned off the ringers on her phones. She then turned off her cell and crawled into her bed. Part of her wanted to go to the police right now, but that seemed exceedingly paranoid. She would go first thing in the morning. Maybe they could trace the calls. And she would have to call the phone company and change her number. Then she’d visit her cell carrier to get a new phone, too.

 
; Exactly what the purpose of this harassment was she could only guess. She couldn’t make heads or tales of the different voices. A young girl, an old man, a psycho, obviously the voices were artificial. She wasn’t ignorant about technology. She had a degree in graphic design and had to take many computer science classes. There were programs that could produce any voice you wanted.

  Instead of sleeping, she turned on her laptop and started a list of possible suspects that could be doing this. Eddie was an obvious choice. He was hurt, but she didn’t think he would do this. Not to mention, the calls started days before she broke up with him.

  As hard as she tried, there wasn’t really a single person she could imagine who would want to harass her. She leaned back and rested her forearm on her forehead. Before long, she fell asleep.

  As soon as she woke up, Candice turned on the coffee pot and then walked over to check the caller ID on her phone. During sleep, she missed twenty-one calls. She snatched up her cell, turned it on. There were another fifteen calls missed. All the calls were from NAME UNKNOWN except for one text from Eddie. He was asking for his Linkin Park DVD back.

  Her cell rang, and in her tiredness, she pressed the send button and answered the call.

  “How dare you!” It was a man’s voice this time, a different one from the scary one yesterday.

  “Excuse me?” Candice wasn’t feeling any fear or anxiety over it first thing this morning, she was angry.

  “You’ve ignored me for the last time, Candice. I tried to be nice to you. I tried to give you the benefit of the doubt. You’ve scorned me, Candice.”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “I’m someone you don’t want to mess with. And you’re going to be sorry.”

  “I’m calling the police, right now!”

  “Oh but you can’t.”

  She tried to call on her landline, but when she picked up the phone, the young girl’s voice filled the dial tone. “Candy? Candy, is that you? Are you mad at me?”

  Candice dropped the phone onto the table and backed away. She brought up her free hand and covered her gaping mouth. She pressed the cell back to her ear.

  “Oh Candice, you’re not learning quickly enough, so I’m going to have to accelerate your lesson plans.” The man was very sure of himself, confidence oozed from this voice.

  “What are you talking about?” She shook her head.

  “You look sexy, my oh my, could those pink shorts be any smaller? And that tight top really makes your boobs look huge, wow. Look at that belly, I just wanna bite your ass.” He laughed. “I’m going to have to go now. I’ll call again soon.” The line went dead.

  Her breath caught in her throat. He could see her. This raised the stakes. She ran to the front windows, but the shades were already drawn. How was he seeing her? She looked around the walls of her house, wondered if there could be a camera hidden somewhere, but her walls weren’t cluttered with many things. Her shelves weren’t full of knick-knacks. There was no obvious place to hide a camera.

  She quickly dressed and headed to her car. She was going straight to the police station.

  She took her cell with her out of habit. She nearly threw it out the window when it rang again while pulling away from the curb. She didn’t even bother to look at the caller. “What do you want? Why are you doing this?”

  “Candice?”

  “Zee?”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Zee, I can’t talk right now. I’m on my way to the police station.”

  “What? What’s going on?”

  “Some stalker is harassing me, calling me nonstop.”

  “Where are you going? I’ll meet you there.”

  “I’m going to the State Police barracks in Springfield.”

  “Okay, I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Do you need me to stay on the line?”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  She ended the call with Zee and steered into the right lane. Instinctively, she checked the rearview mirror, but nothing was suspicious. A few deep breaths calmed her down again.

  The drive wasn’t far, and there was no traffic to speak of early on a Saturday morning. She reached the police barracks and wheeled into the first spot in front of the one story square building.

  Once inside, the man at the desk could obviously read some form of panic in her face because he stood quickly. “Can I help you?”

  “I’d like to report some harassment.”

  “Okay,” the man said. “Have a seat and I’ll get someone who can speak with you.”

  The thinly built, sandy-haired young cop turned back behind the counter and entered the glass door behind his desk. Candice watched him with interest as he disappeared. She glanced at the two dark blue chairs along the glass window in front, but did not choose to sit. The gray room had little décor, other than two fake looking four-foot trees in red pots, there was nothing to speak of to define the space.

  After a few minutes of pacing, the tan door in the lobby opened, revealing an older man in a shirt and tie. He was wearing a shoulder holster with a pistol, and around his neck, a badge hung on a chain.

  “Hi, I’m Special Investigator Webb. C’mon in.”

  He held open the door and let her pass into the long hallway, where they entered a very clean white room with a black office desk. He asked her to sit in the chair in front of his desk and they both sat.

  “So, what can we do for you?” he asked.

  Candice placed her cell on the desk. “Someone has been harassing me with constant phone calls, to both my house and my cell. At first, it was just annoying, but the last one, I think he’s watching me. He knew what I was wearing.”

  “Did he threaten you?”

  She thought back to his words, and the exact phrasing did not come back to her. “I don’t remember. He said he wants me.”

  “When did the calls start?”

  “About three days ago, but I didn’t answer the phone the first two nights.”

  “How do you know it was the same caller?”

  “It always comes up on the caller ID as name unknown. The calls were all at three in the morning until yesterday, when they started coming all the time.”

  The cop nodded. His gray eyes studied her. He was probably in his early sixties, but he was still attractive and in good shape. His gray hair was thick, and though his face had creases, it was distinguished.

  He took out a pad and pen, asked her for her name and address. He said he had to run a background check on her, that it was standard procedure for anyone filing an official complaint. He agreed that opening an investigation was a good idea. She filled him in on Eddie, and about the guy at the market last week who she thought was following her around while she shopped.

  When he finished gathering the pertinent information, he asked her if they could keep her cell phone and she agreed. She was going to change her number anyway, her home number, too. He also agreed to send a tech team to her apartment and sweep for bugs and cameras but that wouldn’t be until Monday. Until then, he advised that she stay in a hotel or with a friend.

  When she walked out to the lobby, Zee was waiting for her.

  Chapter 5

  Spencer Webb pulled all the strings he could to hasten the phone records on the Candice Laguna investigation, but he didn’t expect to see what he did. According to the phone company, there were no calls to the girl’s house at the times she claimed. Worse yet, her cell phone provider didn’t confirm the calls, either.

  He folded his hands and placed his steeple fingers to his lips. The girl seemed honest, and she appeared legitimately scared. It didn’t seem like she was touched in the head at all. It didn’t make sense that no records were showing up.

  The background check on Candice came up clean as a whistle. There was no history of
anything on her. She was a recent college graduate, had held down the same job Altruistic Innovations in Morristown since her internship. She didn’t have as much as a single speeding ticket. In fact, the only thing he could find on her at all was that she was a regular participant in an annual charity bicycle ride for the American Cancer Society.

  He picked up her cell phone again, and paged through all her data. Her text messages were typical. Most of her calls were to contacts, her friend Zyanna, there were a few to Eddie and a few to Mom. But nothing of the unknown variety.

  The pictures on the cell showed no lewd behavior or drunken stupidity. There was nothing in the phone, or her history, that would cause him to doubt her story. Yet, there was no evidence to back her up.

  He picked up the phone on his desk to make a call to his friend Walter Stewart at the FBI. Even though it was the weekend, he knew Walt would be working, just as he was.

  “Walt, it’s Spence. How are you?”

  “Hey, Spence. It’s been a long time, old buddy. You’re working on the weekend again?” Walter had a thick southern accent but he didn’t talk slowly like some southern drawlers. His diction was concise and direct.

  “You, too.”

  “Yeah, well, I guess some old horses refuse to go to pasture. I gotta stay busy or else I go off my rocker. What can I do you for, Spence?”

  “I just caught this case. Woman says she’s getting harassing calls but there’s no record of them from either the cell phone carrier or landline provider. What do you make of that?”

  “I’d say she’s pulling your leg.”

  “I thought that, but she seems solid.”

  “There should be some record.”

  “You’d think so. But is there a way to mask a call?”

  “Sure, you can mask who’s calling, and from where, with a good software program. But I don’t know how someone would completely erase that the call took place.”