“I don’t recognize the name,” Somers says. “I’ll do some recon.”
“There’s one reporter who keeps writing about the Westmans. A rogue freelancer. A guy named Austin Lantz. I emailed him—”
“Listen,” Somers interrupts. “I know you’re in the thick of it down there, and I appreciate what you’re doing. But I wanted to give you a heads-up.”
Something in Somers’s tone tightens a vise around Clare’s chest. “A heads-up about what?”
“I’ve been getting calls at my desk.”
“What kind of calls?”
“Hang-ups, mostly. A couple of times a woman said hello and then hung up. I’m pretty sure it’s been the same woman every time.”
“So? What does that have to do with me?” Clare asks. “Can’t you trace it?”
“The calls come from a blocked number, but after the third or fourth time I asked a guy in tech to set up a tracer on my phone. Over the years I’ve had a fair number of threats against me. Some donkey I put behind bars gets out and thinks it’s a good idea to make a few crank calls, scare me. But sometimes the calls feel… different.”
“And?” Clare prompts her. “Why are you telling me this?”
“My tech guy was able to triangulate a general area. These calls were coming from east of here. A long way east of here. Cell towers within a small radius of each other. One was even from a pay phone.”
“Where?” Clare asks, though she suspects the answer.
“Your hometown.”
Clare blinks fast. She tries to picture the stretch of her hometown’s main strip where the pay phone still stood, the very one she’d use to call her mother to come pick her up after spending a Friday night wandering up and down the block with her teenaged friends. She can summon its exact location next to the hardware store, the feel of the heavy receiver in her hands, the winter nights when she’d turn her back to the wind and press a gloved finger to her ear so she could hear her mother on the other end.
“Are you sure it was a woman?” Clare asks.
“Unless it’s a man pitching his voice.” Somers pauses. “No. It was a woman. The hellos were weird, taunting or something. Drawling it out. Sarcastic. But every time I tried to engage, I’d hear the click before I could say anything beyond hello.”
“And she never said anything else?”
“Once,” Somers says. “She said hello and then she paused. I spoke into the silence, asking the obvious questions. Who are you, why are you calling, yada yada. I wanted to keep the line open as long as possible so my guy could calibrate the location. She said hello again, but this time she added my name. ‘Hello, Somers.’ Upbeat, like we were old friends.”
Now Clare’s mind spins. A woman. If it were a man, the answer would be obvious: Jason. There’s Grace, her childhood friend, who might have traced or followed Clare here after running into her, who might have been indoctrinated even more by Jason, since Clare saw her over a week ago. But Grace wouldn’t stoop to such a tactic. Would she?
“Any chance it might be related to you?” Somers asks. “You have any reason to believe it could be?”
Clare doesn’t answer.
“Listen.” Somers releases a long sigh. “Maybe your husband’s got himself another woman. One who’s willing to do his dirty work. They figured out our connection somehow and now they want to toy with you a bit. In my years as a cop I’ve met my fair share of women willing to play their man’s game. I’ve even met a few who take over and win it.”
“It’s possible,” Clare says, her voice a croak. “Maybe.”
“I’ll confess something to you,” Somers says. “I made a call to the detachment over there. One of the guys here has a cousin who’s married to a cop out your way. It’s always six degrees with cops, you know? Anyway, I asked him to do a head count. Make sure your husband was still in town, minding his own business.”
Minding his business. Clare can so easily recall the simplicity of Jason’s life, his truck and his short commute to the factory, the tediousness of his day on the assembly line ramping him up by the time he arrived home to her, sometimes by way of the bar. And then Jason would pace the kitchen as Clare kept a safe distance, another drink in his hand, spewing the same diatribe about life owing him more, about the world’s failure to recognize how capable he was of bigger things. That he’d find bigger things if they didn’t find him.
“And?” Clare asks.
“He’s there. Jason. Your husband.”
“Ex-husband.”
“Yeah. Sorry. Anyway, he’s there. My guy got some pictures of him coming and going. I didn’t ask for much beyond that. Just a visual. Guy sent me a few pictures as proof.”
Clare breathes heavily into the receiver, her cell phone warm on her ear. Her throat aches with the effort not to cry.
“Hey,” Somers says, ever calm. “Let’s not get ourselves twisted into knots. I’ve been going through my old cases. Checking on my lady friends, which ones have been released recently, who might have had ties to that region. That’s the most likely scenario for these stupid crank calls. I’ve put more than one woman behind bars in my day. The more likely answer is that it has nothing to do with you at all. I just thought I’d ask.”
“Yeah,” Clare says.
In the ensuing pause Clare feels a stab of sadness. She wishes Somers was here with her, that they were actually working this case together, in person. She wants to believe she can trust Somers over everyone else, but even that feels like an impossible feat.
“I’ve got to get going,” Somers says. “No catastrophizing, okay? Just keep working the case. I’ll keep my eyes and ears open. No one’s coming for you that we know of. Not yet. Let’s not panic.”
With a quick goodbye Clare hangs up and splays backwards onto the bed. She refreshes her email, a response popping up from the reporter she contacted.
I’ll be at The Cabin Bar tonight until late, 14th and Burns Rd
Austin Lantz. Clare opens her browser and looks up his name. Hundreds of results pop up, long- and short-form articles on the Westmans, on Zoe and Charlotte. Clare recognizes some of the articles from the file she and Somers curated.
The clock on her phone reads 9:43 p.m. Clare forces herself to stand up, get dressed. She will keep working. Push through the fatigue. At the bathroom mirror, she leans in and stares closely at her reflection. It feels like looking at a stranger, her face creased with worry.
No one’s coming for you that we know of. Not yet.
But there’d been a lilt in her voice as Somers said it, as if it were taking some effort to make the words ring true.
This bar is cozy and dimly lit, empty even for a Tuesday night. A neon sign over the bartender’s head reads WELCOME TO THE CABIN. She spots him seated at the bar just as his email said he would be. Austin Lantz looks different in real life from his pictures online: lanky, younger than Clare, a flannel shirt far too warm for the stuffy air of this bar. She studies him from the door until he checks his watch and twists, anticipating her arrival. Austin smiles and lifts the beer he holds in a cheers, gesturing at Clare to join him.