The next statement was just as chilling. “Turn off the tape recorder.”
I obeyed and set it gently on the toilet seat, glancing apprehensively at the walls and ceiling. My voice was hoarse, shaky. “It’s off.”
“We know that you stopped by Bel Air Foods Tuesday morning to buy a bag of trail mix, a banana, and an iced tea. We know that you watch your wife cry most mornings through the kitchen window. We know you went to the West L.A. police station today at four thirty-seven, that you saw Detective Richards at her desk on the second floor, that you spoke to her for thirteen and a half minutes.” Cold. Steady. Scrubbed of emotion. “Do you have any question as to the range of what we can find out about you or anyone else?”
“No.”
“Do you have any question as to our capability to reach into your life and touch you where we want?”
The electronic filter made the voice flatter, the utter lack of modulation all the more unsettling. My mouth felt gummy. “No.”
Ariana was leaning toward me, hands on her knees, her eyes wide and wild. I tilted the earpiece away from my face so she could hear better.
“Do not go to the police again. Do not talk to the police again.” A pause. I rotated the mouthpiece up so the caller couldn’t hear how hard my breath was coming. “Stand up. Leave the bathroom.”
I exited, Ariana ahead of me walking backward, stumbling over books and strewn clothes. The bedroom air iced my face, a bracing contrast from the lingering steam of the shower.
“Go out into the hall. Watch your shin on the corner of the bed. Turn right, pass your office.”
Ariana was now scurrying alongside me as I marched, my cheek sweating against the plastic.
“Is there anything I can do to make you stop?” I asked, but the voice forged ahead.
“Pass the M movie poster. Down the stairs. Pass the alarm pad. Hard left. Watch out for the table. Right. Left. Rotate. Another forty-five degrees.”
I was standing with my back to the TV, facing my meager puddle of blankets.
“Open the couch that you’ve refused to fold out.”
I flung the cushions aside, my heartbeat kettledrumming in my ears. What was inside? What had I been sleeping on top of?
The vinyl loop handle slipped from my hand, and Ariana stepped in to help pull. My other hand pressed the phone to my ear, a shock connection I couldn’t break. We tugged and the contraption opened, an insect unfolding from its shell. Ari grabbed the metal brace, which creaked and thumped to the floor, the bottom third of the weary mattress still folded back.
Hiding something.
With a numb hand, I reached out and nudged the mattress, which flipped over. It landed flat, setting the crappy springs on twangy vibration and revealing a manila folder and a black wand, maybe four feet long, with a circular head like that of a metal detector.
“That folder contains a floor plan of your house. The red circles indicate where we have planted surveillance devices. The instrument beside the folder is a nonlinear junction detector. It will help you locate those devices and search for any others you believe we may not have indicated on the floor plan.”
I didn’t have to examine the folder itself to know it had been taken from my desk drawer upstairs. Inside, as promised, two printouts, one for each floor of the house—JPEGs from our contractor that I’d saved in my computer after we’d opened up the fifties bathrooms a few years ago. Down the center of each page ran a faded stripe from my mostly spent toner drum—they’d been printed in my office recently. But that’s not what sent the wave of panic-nausea through my stomach.
It was the dozen or so red circles pockmarking each sheet.
Placing the pages side by side, I tried to process the scope of the intrusion. All this time I’d thought my life had turned into Fatal Attraction. But I was really in Enemy of the State.
Ariana mopped hair off her forehead and let out something between a sigh and a groan. Slowly, I tilted my head and took in my disused proofreading marker, tucked into a year-end edition of Entertainment Weekly at the edge of the coffee table. With shaking hands I retrieved the pen and drew in the margin of the top page, the frayed felt tip tracing a matching, distinctive circle.
Ariana stepped back, her eyes darting around the walls, the furnishings. With a glance to the printout, she trudged over and stuck a finger into a tiny dent in the plaster just below a framed Ansel Adams she’d had since her dorm-room days. “It can’t . . . They can’t . . .”
The voice startled me out of my stunned reverie; I’d forgotten that the call was still live. “A Gmail account has been set up for you, patrickdavis081075”—my birthday. “Password is your mother’s maiden name. The first e-mail will arrive Sunday at four P.M., telling you what’s next.”
The first e-mail? The phrase intensified my controlled panic into full-blown terror. I was a fish newly hooked, my journey only beginning. But I barely had time to shudder when the voice said, “Now walk outside. Alone.”
Forcing my feet toward the door, I gestured for Ariana to stay put. She shook her head and trailed me, chewing at the side of a thumbnail. I stepped out onto the walk, Ariana waiting behind, shouldering against the jamb and tugging the door tight to her side so only the front sliver of her was exposed.
“End of the walk. You see the sewer grate? Just past the curb-painted house numbers?”
“Hang on.” I stopped ten feet shy of the grate. “Okay,” I lied, “I’m standing right on top of it.”
“Lean over and look at the gap.”
So they weren’t watching all the time. The trick was to know when.
“Patrick. Patrick!”
With dread, I turned to see Don making his way over from his driveway, toting a box of office files. I muttered, “Wait a second,” into the mouthpiece through clenched teeth. And then: “This really isn’t the best time, Don.”
“Oh, didn’t see you were on the phone.”
“Yes. I am.” Out of the corner of my eye, I sensed movement at the front door, Ariana easing back and shutting it to barely a crack.
“Don’t stall us.”
Don was stammering at me, “Listen, I just . . . felt I should apologize for my role in . . . everything, and—”
“You don’t need to. It’s not between me and you.” My face burned. “Listen, I’m on a critical call. I can’t get into this right now.”
“Get rid of him. Now.”
“I’m trying,” I muttered into the phone.
“Well, when, Patrick?” Don asked. “I mean, it’s been six weeks. For better or worse, we are neighbors, and I’ve tried a number of times—”
“Don, I don’t need to discuss this with you. I don’t owe you anything. Now, get out of my face and let me finish this call.”
He glared at me and took a few backward steps before turning for home.
“Okay,” I said, “the curb drain . . .”
“Once you’ve removed the devices from the house, put them in your black duffel bag on the top shelf of your closet and drop them down there. All lenses, cables, even the nonlinear junction detector. At midnight tomorrow. Not a minute before. Not a minute after. Say it back to me.”
“Midnight tomorrow, sharp. Everything down the grate. Sunday at four P.M., I get an e-mail.”
Until then, live with dread about what that e-mail might hold.
“This is the last time you will hear my voice. Now set the phone on the ground, smash it with your foot, and kick it down the sewer grate. Oh—and, Patrick?”
“What?”
“This is nothing like what you imagine.”
“What do I imagine?”
But I was talking to a dead line.