where the Hotline was located. Once again he smelled the odor he had come to associate with it. Perhaps it was some sort of cleaning compound.
Instead of riding the elevator, he went up the stairs, taking them two at a time, all the way to the third floor. He was glad there was nobody at the top to see him puffing-to see how out of shape he was.
He had also taken the stairs at his second and third Hotline sessions with a mentor, eschewing the elevator. Why? He could barely admit it to himself, but the reason apparently had to do with the fact that he wanted to get into better shape, lose those extra pounds that pushed his belt out. Why? It was ridiculous to think that he would do something he had never done in his life, at least for a woman-any woman, let alone for a seventeen-year-old. Someone who was legally jailbait.
He had not seen Shahla since the first session. His mentors for the other two sessions had also been teenagers, a boy and a girl, and they had been good, but they had made no lasting impression on him. Now he was on his own, an experienced listener. As he walked to the office, he wondered whether there would be anyone else on the lines tonight, or whether he would be alone. He barely dared hope that Shahla would be here, and he knew the odds were long against it. She had not been signed up on the calendar the last time he had looked, several days before.
Tony tried the handle of the brown door. It was locked. He looked at his watch. Ten minutes to seven. Perhaps there was no listener on the four-to-seven shift. Sometimes that happened with a volunteer organization. Fortunately, he had learned the combination to the lockbox on the door. He entered it and pulled off the cover, looking for the key inside. Except that the key wasn’t there. What was going on?
He was at a loss, a feeling he was unfamiliar with. What should he do? Could there be somebody in the office behind the locked door? He had already stored the office phone numbers in his cell phone. He took out the phone and called the administrative office number. No answer. He tried the Hotline number. No answer.
Maybe this was his way out. He had made a good-faith effort to work his shift. If the Hotline was so disorganized that he couldn’t even get in, it wasn’t his fault. Looking back over the last few weeks, he had done everything he set out to do. He had taken the Hotline training class and passed. He had survived three mentoring sessions and received good marks. He had shown empathy. In fact, he had learned all the skills that Mona, his boss at his real job, had wanted him to learn, when she had suggested that he volunteer for the Hotline. And although he had agreed to work at least three shifts a month for a year, if the Hotline staff members didn’t keep their part of the bargain, why was he obligated to keep his?
But back to the present. There was a slight chance a listener was inside, on another call. If so, she-or he, would presumably be coming out in a few minutes-unless she was on a long call. Decision time. Tony decided to wait until five minutes after seven.
He nervously paced up and down the corridor, wondering when a guard might come by and ask him what he was doing here. None did. At three minutes after seven, he tried the Hotline number on his cell phone again. No answer. He left.
Tony went into the third bedroom on the second floor of his townhouse, the one he used as a home office, and fired up his computer. He slept in one of the other bedrooms. Josh occupied the second. Tony decided to check his e-mail. He had an e-mail address at work, of course, but he reserved his home e-mail for his personal life. He could also surf the Internet a little, find out what the stock market did today, visit an adult chat room. After all, he had no girlfriend at the moment.
His spam filter captured a lot of the junk, but some still got through. There was the usual pleading letter from a high-ranking nobody in Nigeria offering him millions of dollars if he would just share his bank account number. He deleted the letter without reading it. After the first few dozen, they all sounded the same.
An e-mail message from the Hotline caught his eye. He clicked on it immediately, partly because he was feeling guilty for skipping his shift, even though it wasn’t his fault. It was from Nancy, the Executive Director, addressed to all listeners. He scanned the note in mounting horror and then went back and read it carefully.
It said, in part, “As you probably know by now, one of our listeners, Joy Wiggins, was murdered last night behind the building in which the Hotline office is located, after she worked the 7 to 10 p.m. shift.” It went on to express the deep shock and sorrow of the Hotline staff and to say that the Hotline would be closed until further notice.
Tony violently shoved his rollered chair away from the computer with his feet, as if the mouse had burned his hand. He stared at the screen from four feet away, hoping the words would read differently from there, but they didn’t. Joy had been a facilitator for the Saturday class that was held in his townhouse. She was one of the girls and boys who had swum in his pool-and the one he remembered most distinctly.
He continued to stare at the computer screen, fighting the idea that a beautiful girl like Joy was dead. It must be a mistake. He remembered seeing her laugh, he remembered her bikini-clad body, and he remembered her critiquing one of the role-play calls he had made during that class, with wisdom beyond her years. She had given him a good suggestion about using silence during calls.
She had been killed almost twenty-four hours ago. Why hadn’t he heard about it before now? Tony went back over his day. He had rushed out of the house that morning, barely taking time to drink a glass of orange juice and eat a piece of toast. He had driven seventy-five miles to a little burg east of Los Angeles and had spoken at a meeting of a women’s club. On the way there, he had listened to a CD on salesmanship-another one of Mona’s ideas. He hadn’t listened to the news on his car radio.
He had spoken to the women about what his company, Bodyalternatives. net, could offer them. Bodyalternatives. net was a new type of company-one that was based on the Internet. Its website, which was getting over a million hits a month, with the number rapidly increasing, featured help for people who had some sort of problem with their bodies-or who were just plain dissatisfied with them. Most of the company’s income came from plastic surgeons and other healthcare professionals who advertised on the site.
Tony’s job, as Manager of Marketing, was to make healthcare contacts, sell advertising space on the site, and also to reach out to potential clients. That is what he had been doing by giving a speech to the women’s club. He had used his newfound listening skills to good advantage, had not judged his audience, and had shown empathy when answering questions. For example, he had not laughed when a woman complained about the crow’s-feet beside her eyes that nobody else could see. Mona, who was president of Bodyalternatives. net, would be pleased. He intended to emphasize the good things he had done in his call report.
Tony had made several other calls during the day, but he had always listened to the tapes when he was in his car. He had grabbed a quick dinner in a fast-food restaurant and gone directly to the Hotline, without going to the office or coming home. That’s why he had been out of the loop.
He rolled his chair back to the computer to look for news reports. They weren’t difficult to find. The story had a sensational aspect, and it had been picked up by all the news services. The first thing he read was that Joy’s body had been discovered in a pocket park behind the mall, cut and bruised, almost naked. Some items of her clothing had been lying nearby.
When Joy hadn’t returned home last night, her parents had driven to the mall. They had found her car parked in the lot behind it. Listeners on the seven-to-ten shift were supposed to call the guard when they left and could request an escort out of the building. They exited by the back door because the front door was locked at night. On the three evenings Tony had worked, he had acted as the escort. Actually, the time he had worked with the boy, they had escorted each other.
Joy’s parents had called the police when they found the car, but not Joy. A search had turned up her body within an hour. Tony tried to picture how devastated Joy’s parents must be. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t put himself in their place. And he didn’t want to. He would never have children.
There was more information. The police had talked to the building guard. The guard claimed he had escorted Joy out to her car and seen her get into it. But he had not seen her drive away. She was an honor student and a member of the Bonita Beach High School volleyball team, one of the best high school teams in the country. Among other volunteer activities, she worked at the Central Hotline, the news reports said.
Who would do such a thing? There were a lot of weirdoes out there-stalkers, rapists. The murderer must have been lying in wait for Joy. Someone who knew where the Hotline was located? Listeners were supposed to keep its location secret, but there were so many of them. Word must leak out-to family, friends. And from there, to
