She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be - J.D. Barker Page 0,182

“That’s the song that was playing the first time you came up the hill. The first day we met.”

“Rick Springfield was the shit.”

“The shit?” Stella said.

“You never heard that expression?”

She shook her head.

“The shit. The bomb, the man. Doctor Noah Drake from General Hospital? Jo used to watch that show whenever she wasn’t working.”

Her face was blank.

“You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

She shook her head again. “We had no televisions in the house. Ms. Oliver wouldn’t stand for it. I was permitted music for one hour each day, providing I completed my studies. Of course, there were books, too, so many books. I lived in those books.”

I pulled out of the parking lot back onto 395, toward the interstate.

“How did you get out of the house?”

“Through the front door, of course.”

The Mercedes picked up speed effortlessly. After years with the Jeep, the quiet cockpit of the German car was jarring.

“Tell me about the day you got out.”

Stella opened Great Expectations at some random place and began to read again. “Please don’t ever ask me about that day. Never again, Pip.”

Sweat trickled down her cheek, down her neck. She ignored it.

I turned the air conditioner on full.

I reached over and took Stella’s gloved hand in mine.

We were five hours outside Carmel, California, with no other white cars in sight.

12

Former detective Terrance Stack, just Terry now, spent the better part of an hour tracking down a phone number for Charter Pharmaceuticals and a live person. The number listed with directory assistance was answered by an auto-attendant. That auto-attendant provided a series of options, none of which led to a real person. Instead, each time he selected something new from the menu, the call either rolled to another recording or disconnected altogether, and he had to start over. He was damn near ready to throw the phone against the wall when he got an idea.

The number directory assistance had given him ended with 371-1050.

He dialed the original area code, then: 371-1051. This, too, went to the auto-attendant.

371-1052. Auto-attendant.

371-1053. Auto-attendant.

371-1054. Auto-attendant.

371-1055. Auto-attendant.

When he got to 1063 through 1081, the auto-attendant no longer picked up. Instead, the lines rang until eventually timing out after a few minutes.

He considered giving up and trying something else as he dialed 371-1097.

“Sanders.” No hello or greeting of any kind, only the single name. Muttered more as an afterthought than the answer to a phone call. “Somebody there?”

Stack opened his mouth to speak and realized he hadn’t figured out what he planned to say if he actually got through to someone. He cleared his throat. “I’m looking for Calvin Gurney. I believe he’s a janitor there.”

Stack knew full well Gurney had died back in 1978 in the Nettleton house, but he figured if he wanted to rattle some chains, no reason to pussyfoot around.

The voice replied. “Who?”

“Calvin Gurney.”

“How’d you get this number?”

“Dunno. The auto-attendant transferred me.”

“Fucking auto-attendant. Hold on.”

There was the rustling of papers, then the voice came back. “I don’t see anyone by that name in the directory.”

Stack said, “Calvin told me if he wasn’t around, I should ask for Eura Kapp.”

Eura Kapp died in 1986—a forty-seven year-old female found burned but not burned.

“Nobody by that name, either.”

“What about Andy Olin Flack?”

Flack was the thirty-three year-old child molester left in the alley across from the kid’s apartment.

“Flack? Flack hasn’t worked here in at least a decade. Who is this?”

Stack thought about that for a second. “Richard Nettleton.”

The line went dead.

When he dialed again, nobody answered.

13

Stella slept.

Sporadic at first, she fought it, but soon when I looked over, I saw the book in her lap, and her head lolled to the side. Even in slumber, though, the quiver in her hands continued. Her breathing went from steady to labored and back again. At one point, her entire body shook so violently, she actually awoke. Her skin was pasty, she appeared feverish, but I dared not touch her forehead to find out.

At one point, she woke and simply said, “I worked there for the money.”

I told her she didn’t have to explain.

“I know,” she replied. Then she was out again.

We were on CA-88 just outside of Dogtown when things got really hairy.

Static burst from the Mercedes’ speakers.

Not the static that usually found its way into a song as a radio station began to fade out of range, but hostile, sharp static at more than twice the volume of Michael Stipe and REM, who were busy losing their religion a moment earlier. The Mercedes bucked, and all the