“Are you sure it isn’t just that bird squawking?”
“I know what a bird sounds like, Harris.”
My after-hours number was intended only for emergencies—a flooded bathroom or some bolt-struck tree limb crashing through a bedroom window—but Joanne Huff seemed to think it was okay to phone anytime with simple noise complaints. She was the reason I kept my work cell on vibrate after midnight and sometimes considered turning the damn thing off completely. I remember thinking: If anything bad ever happens in the night and I don’t hear about it, it will be her fault.
“There’s a county noise ordinance.” I wasn’t as loud and forceful as I wanted to be, since I didn’t want to wake Lynn. “You’re free to call the police.”
She ignored my suggestion and continued. “Shawna told me there weren’t any contractors in that unit. They shouldn’t be doing construction work this time of night anyway—am I correct? Wait. Wait a minute. Listen.”
I knew she was holding the phone in the air, turning it the way people do when trying to get more signal bars.
“I don’t hear anything.”
“Shhhh. Wait.” After a moment, she gave up. “Well, of course it stops while I have you on the phone. But I know what I’ve been hearing. It’s not any construction noise.”
“Okay. What kind of noise is it?”
“I’d rather not say.”
“If you don’t tell me, then how am I supposed to help?”
Too late, I realized my mistake. I’d hoped to put her off until the morning, but now that I’d admitted the possibility that I might help, she’d never let me off the hook.
“Yes, good,” Joanne said. “Only because you’ll check that apartment now. You have to catch these things while they’re going on. Otherwise I’d never say.”
My wife shifted in the bed. Her back was to me, the way she usually slept. I moved my legs, trying not to jar the mattress as I prepared to stand.
Joanne said, “I’ll tell you what it sounds like. It sounds like pleasure.”
She paused, in case I’d ask her to elaborate. I declined.
“The wrong kind of pleasure,” she finished.
As I pulled some khakis over my pajamas and shrugged into a loose sweatshirt, I speculated on what Joanne might consider the “wrong kind” of pleasure. Was she homophobic? Or maybe she meant something involving animals or plush toys. Sharp metal points or leather straps.
Then I wondered how she would know. Joanne Huff didn’t strike me as someone who’d ever experienced pleasure. This is a bit mean to say, especially since she and I were about the same age, but the best way I could describe her would be to say that she seemed kinda…dried up.
I didn’t wake Lynn. She understood the hazards of my job and wouldn’t worry if she found my side of the bed empty. I tiptoed to the hall closet and gathered my toolkit, so I’d look official walking around the complex so late at night. Also, I made sure I had my passkey and I grabbed my Maglite, since the electricity was likely turned off in the vacant apartment. Plus, the three D-cells and metal casing made the flashlight a pretty hefty club if I needed a weapon.
Mostly I decided there was nothing going on. Just Joanne being her usual paranoid self. Somebody’d thrown shoes for a tumble in the basement dryer and the noise carried. Or maybe a stray cat or rodent found its way inside the vacant apartment. If there was a human noise in that apartment, though, I had a guess about the cause.
Stillbrook Apartments was within walking distance of a satellite campus to the University of Maryland, and college kids sometimes grew tired of their dorm rooms and went exploring. A few years back, another local apartment complex had trouble with kids breaking into an empty unit and having a “quiet” party there: beer, of course, and other mild drugs students might experiment with; whispers and laughter, likely accompanied with the usual late-night, dark-room activities. Nothing too messy to clean up after, at least initially. Such things tended to escalate.
The first group was cautious, enjoying how the forbidden location added fresh excitement to their partying routine. The next weekend brought extra recruits and the larger group became reckless: more noise, a few glasses breaking, some wilder physical couplings. And the following week brought even more students, trying to top the fun of the previous nights, not caring how rowdy they got in “their” secret party suite, until of course the cops showed up and the whole crowd rushed out at the sound of sirens—kids running in all directions, so many that the cops didn’t know where to turn and caught none of them.
Following the usual course of rumor—that, and ratings-hungry TV channels—the whole thing practically grew into local legend. The kids had a few candles, since the apartments wouldn’t have electricity. Rumor turned these into black candles, arranged in a Satan-suggestive pattern. And in all those furtive, dark fumblings, teenagers were bound to spill stuff. Alcohol, mostly, but some predictable bodily fluids, too. Rumor added blood to the mix—again, arranged in an ominous pattern.
Anything for ratings or to make the town seem more thrilling than it actually is.
So I was braced for college kids but expecting nothing more than a squeak mouse.
You know what I found, but I’ll tell you anyway. You want this whole thing in my words, and that’s what I’m giving you.