Spyware

With all that done, he decided to call Mrs. Trumble and leave another message for Sarah. Whatever happened next, she needed to understand what he was doing.

He flipped open the phone and pressed the buttons. To his surprise, it actually worked. He had expected Nog’s phone to require some kind of password to be used. He knew that Brenda’s was like that. She had always been paranoid about the wrong things.

“Mrs. Trumble?Hello,” he began. He told her he was outside Ingles’ house and that he was going to look for Justin inside. He told her to call his wife and police if he didn’t call back in a few hours.

Ray stood up then and looked at the house. It was time to act. He put the cell phone into a dusty pocket, wondering if he had just written his epitaph with it.

***

Sarah got both of Ray’s latest messages at the same time. She hadn’t checked recently, as her mother had come over to comfort her. When she finally managed to slip away from Mom, (who had, of course, been the one who needed the comforting most) she headed for Trumbles’ house. At the door, Abner Trumble appeared. He had an odd look of wariness on his aged face. He invited her in with a hand-gesture. Sarah hesitated, not looking forward to a formal visit. Their house was always dark and dank inside. The house belied the dry, dusty climate of the Central Valley, like a tropical oasis in a desert. The humidity was such that water droplets condensed on the inside of all the windows and Sarah knew she would sweat immediately upon entering. She had long suspected that they kept the shower running twenty-four hours a day.

She sighed and followed him into the living room. She supposed that she owed them the courtesy. The classic sunken living room had frozen in time during the sixties. It was all there: The green shag carpet, the fireplace of painted brick with the sunburst clock over the mantle, all of it matched by furniture of ochre velour. A planter full of redwood chips with a half-dozen plastic inhabitants guarded the archway entrance. Next to the coffee table sat a large ceramic fish with gold-painted eyes and no clear purpose. The fish had a huge open mouth that aimed upwards, as it were gulping air from the surface. Or possibly, Sarah thought to herself, swallowing a duck whole. Sarah avoided the thing as one might a strange, sleeping housepet.

Abner waved her to a couch and took up a velour armchair himself once she had been seated. He reminded Sarah of her own grandpa, recently departed. He wore a white tee-shirt over his sagging body. A black leather belt held up his baggy trousers. A tiny, flesh-colored plastic knob was embedded in his right ear. He stared at her intently.

Right away, Sarah thought to herself that they had finally figured it out. They had finally heard about Ray, and the virus, and the fact that he was now considered to be Justin’s murderer. They had not learned the truth from CNN, not these two, but rather on AM radio, or from one of their bridge club friends.

“Is there something you wanted to talk about, Mr. Trumble?” she asked.

He looked at her oddly, then stared suspiciously about the room. His eyes alighted on his hands and stayed there. Sarah frowned, wondering if he had perhaps a touch of some grim disease named after a dead physician. Alzheimer’s perhaps, or Parkinson’s.

Mrs. Trumble finally made her appearance. She seemed nervous and apologetic. She worked her hands and sat down on the couch beside Sarah. The ceramic fish sat on the floor between them and both of them glanced at it.

“Would you like coffee?”

“Ah, no thank you,” said Sarah.

“It’s a newspaper bin, you know,” said Mrs. Trumble.

“What?”

“The fish. He holds rolled up newspapers, you see, in his mouth. Herman, we call him. Everyone asks about Herman, so I thought you might like to know what he is.”

“Oh,” said Sarah, feeling surreal. What were they thinking? Were they going to cut off her only communication path with Ray?

“Abner wants to tell you something,” said Mrs. Trumble.

Sarah glanced at him and found that he was no longer studying his hands. He was staring at her intently. She looked from one of them to the other. “What? Have you heard from Ray?”

They both fidgeted. “Abner was in the war, you see. He was an intelligence officer. He knows about these things.”

“What things?” asked Sarah. And what war? Korea? Vietnam? she wondered, but didn’t ask.

“He wants to tell you that someone is-listening.”

“Listening? What do you mean?”

“On the phone lines, and with tiny microphones, maybe even with devices aimed at your windows and ours,” she said.

Sarah’s mouth fell open. She glanced at Abner, who watched them intently. She wondered if he could speak, or if he had written all of this down for her.

“Well, thank you for the warning. I’ll keep it in mind. But have you heard from Ray?”