Jared growled through his ground teeth and raised the phone over his shoulder to spike it into the wall.
'Damn it!' he shouted, catching himself before shattering his only lifeline into a thousand plastic shards.
He turned the phone off and then back on again, and dialed *69.
'The number you are calling...' he started to say before the voice had even responded.
'The last number to call your line was...' the voice began. Jared dashed to the desk and grabbed the pen to frantically take down the number. '...three five one, four six eight nine.'
Jason hung the phone up again, waited a moment, and then dialed *69 to make sure that everything had really just happened.
He logged his computer onto the internet.
Google came up as the number one match, and he clicked the link to it.
At the home screen he typed in the phone number he had lifted from the last call return service, including the area code, and poised the cursor over the 'Google Search' box, instead opting for the button directly to the right, labeled 'I'm Feeling Lucky.'
By the time his finger recoiled from pressing the mouse button, the search yielded its results.
It was a little trick he had learned back in high school. Given any given phone number, Google would provide the name and address of the person to whom the number belonged. It would even offer links to Yahoo!Maps and MapQuest.
Jared printed out the page, tapping his foot anxiously and tugging gently at the paper as it rolled far too slowly out of the printer.
'Room two-sixteen, Kenward Hall,' he said, whirling to grab his jacket and shoes. 'Scott Nelson or Andrew Cosgrove.'
Jared stood ankle deep in the accumulated snow in the field to the west of Kenward Hall. He had no idea what time it was or how long he had been standing there staring up at the side of the dorm. There had only been a half dozen windows with their lights still on when he had arrived, and from where he stood, he could still see three of them.
The falling snow alighted atop his head, forming a layer of frost over his ruffled hair. His body heat melted the snow ambitious enough to make it all the way to his scalp into thin, frigid rivulets.
Droplets of freezing water quivered from his jaw line, threatening to snap free, but holding tightly to the week's worth of stubble that thickened on his skin.
'Scott Nelson or Andrew Cosgrove,' he said, studying those lighted windows for even the remote hint of a shadow to move across them.
'Can I help you?' the resident advisor working the front desk called across the lobby.
Jared just shook his head and looked off in a different direction, feigning indifference.
He had found a seat in the back rear corner, partially concealed by one of the tall potted ferns. His damp hair clung limply to his head, and his flesh prickled beneath his drenched clothes.
'I can't just let you sit there all night.'
'I'm waiting for a friend,' Jared called back, turning his attention to the television bracketed to the wall, staring at the vacant gray screen.
'I could ring his room if you would like.'
'I'm early,' he called back. 'I'm sure he'll be down soon enough.'
'Who are you waiting for?'
'Scott Nelson or Andrew Cosgrove from room two-sixteen.'
Jared forced a smile.
'I think Scott goes home just about every weekend, but Andrew's generally here.'
Was it the weekend? Had he really missed nearly the entire week of class?
'Perfect,' Jared said. He smiled to the RA, and went back to waiting for the breakfast crowd to begin rolling through the lobby.
The doors to either side of the front desk were access-controlled by a button beneath the reception desk, though one could easily walk right through if someone were to open it for him and he were to merge into the crowd...
Jared had slowly worked his way across the lobby until he was standing on the far side of a Pepsi machine from the front counter, leaning against the wall.
His eyes were so irritated and red that they hurt to blink.
So he didn't.
Through the window in the middle of the wooden door---the glass crisscrossed with diamonds of wire---he could see a group of girls approaching, flipping their hair, swinging their heads, completely absorbed in whatever conversation held them in such a state of enthrallment.
As soon as the door opened, Jared darted directly for it, pulling it wide and stepping behind it as if to do the gentlemanly thing for them and hold it.
The girls thanked him in chorus, and he slipped past them and into the hallway.
'Two-sixteen,' he whispered, heading for the stairs.
From where he crouched behind the door to the stairwell, he could clearly see the golden numbers affixed to the center of the door. One of the guys in room two-eighteen to the right had come and gone several times, as had the people across the hall in two-fifteen, but the knob hadn't even budged to room two-sixteen.
He had discretely walked down the hall and pressed his ear to the door---maybe an hour ago now---to ensure that he could hear noise within, and then rushed back down to take his spot in the doorway. There had been the sound of typing, of frantically hammered keys.
Jared had dumped the contents of his pockets---loose change, his keys, candy wrappers---onto the ground in front of him. Whenever he heard someone coming up or down the stairs, he pretended as though he was merely gathering his belongings to shove back into his pocket.
He knew there was someone in the room, and at some point that person would have to come out. There was a communal bathroom for each wing on each floor, which was down the hall and around the bend to the left. Eventually, whoever was inside was going to have to make a trip to it.
He was counting on that person leaving the door unlocked when he did, as he was only going to be heading down the hall for a few minutes tops.
Jared saw the glint on the round knob the moment it moved.
The door opened inward and a guy strode purposefully out into the hall, allowing the door to swing shut behind him. He had dark hair that was cropped on the top, but other than the fact that he had bare feet a wore a pair of jeans, that was all Jared could determine before he turned away down the hallway.
Jared threw back the door to the stairwell and sprinted toward room two-sixteen, twisting the knob and shouldering his way through.
The room looked just like every other on campus: same painted cinder block walls, same wood-railed beds, same damn pipes running along the rust-stained ceiling.
He needed to find a journal, a diary, something that would offer insight into the voice's psyche. Or failing at that admitted miracle, he needed to find a bottle of prescription painkillers, an overabundance of over-the-counter drugs, or maybe even a gun. Something.
Throwing the drawer of the nightstand open, he riffled through the contents, but there was nothing but a packet of Tylenol and an opened box of condoms. He hurriedly lifted the mattress, but there was nothing stashed beneath but the box-spring.
He similarly scoured the matching setup on the opposite side of the room, yielding nearly identical results.
Both roommates were sexually active. There was no sign of drug or alcohol abuse. Both walls were thick with
