Specimen Days

Pete nodded wearily, warily. Cat hesitated. There was an unwritten rule in the unit. No one speculated, ever. No one waxed philosophical. It didn't work that way. No one went moony about the notable increase in callers who were under eighteen and clearly well educated or about the increase in carry-throughs, from one in a thousand to one in 650 over the last five years. No one spun out over the collapse of the family or of civilization at large; no one wondered about atmospheric gases or irradiated food or rays being projected at the earth by hostile aliens. That was the callers' realm.

Cat said, "Sorry. I'm a little tired right now." "Course you are."

She sat up straighter in her chair. "What have they gotten from the wife and kids?" she asked. "Anything?"

"Wife's hysterical. Daughter, too. Son came down from Vermont, real eager beaver, wants to be of service and get to the bottom of all this and etcetera but can't tell us shit. Dad was a decent guy. Coached Little League, paid the bills on time. My opinion? I think the son's having the time of his life."

"What's he doing in Vermont?"

"Special school for underachievers, kids who do more than the usual amount of drugs. Like that."

"That's interesting."

"We're checking into it."

"They've got the tapes in Washington?" she said.

"They do."

"And they'll be in touch?"

"Nobody's gonna nail you for missing a hint this small."

I wasn't supposed to call anyone. Jesus.

"Unless, of course, they decide they really and truly need someone to nail, and I seem like the best candidate."

"Unlikely. Why worry about it now?"

"Thanks."

"I'll check in with you later."

"You're the best."

She got to work. It was a busy morning, which surprised no one. It always took about twenty-four hours for the callers to man their stations. After a big story hit the news, only the most labile reached immediately for the phone. The majority, the petit bourgeois lunatics, had to mull it over, settle in their own minds just exactly how the event in question belonged to them, and decide that someone in a position of authority ought to know about it. Now they were in full stampede. She got five in her first twenty minutes, three of them so unfocused that even Ed wouldn't have red-tagged them, just a trio of screamers who wanted somebody to know they hadn't seen anything yet, the worst was still to come, Judgment Day was upon us. The fourth was an English guy who wanted to tell her he'd overheard a conversation in the lobby of his building and had come to understand that this incident was part of his neighbor's master plan to bankrupt small businesses in the financial district, sorry, he couldn't leave his neighbor's name or his own name, for fear of reprisals, but given this information, he hoped the police would know how to proceed. The fifth needed to tell her that certain evidence had been planted at the site by white supremacists to implicate the Muslim faith. This one did leave his name: Jesus Mohamed, minister of the Church of Light and Love. He was willing to work with the police in any capacity they required.

She red-tagged the Englishman and Jesus Mohamed, thus setting into motion the inquiries into their lives and natures that would cost taxpayers roughly fifteen grand. She wondered if these people knew, if they had any idea, how much money and muscle they could summon just by making these calls. Better, of course, if they didn't.

Between calls she filed what needed to be filed, wrote her follow-ups, checked the mail, which was for the most part unremarkable: a half-dozen threats and one hex, written variously by hand, on a computer, and on what appeared to be a manual typewriter. The letters about the explosion wouldn't arrive until tomorrow. The day began to establish its momentum; it started feeling ordinary. This would pass, wouldn't it? The kid would turn out to have been Dick Harte's sex toy, or he would turn out to have been regular crazy (the new regular crazy), a friendless and universally bullied weirdo who'd been obsessed with computer games since before he knew how to walk. It was what else could it be? another disaster in a disaster-prone world, tragic but unavoidable. Life would go on.

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