“Uh . . . hello? Is this Dr. Brockton?” The caller sounded tentative and timid, as if she hoped I were someone else.
“Yes, this is Dr. Brockton,” I snapped. I’d just returned from helping Tyler haul a fresh body from the morgue to the research facility. He now had two research subjects in the cage—“Double your data, double your smell,” I’d joked—and I’d brought some of the aroma back with me. I’d ducked into the shower to wash it off, and the phone had begun to ring just as I’d lathered up. I’d ignored the first dozen rings, but finally the insistent jangling had gotten to me. For the second time in as many weeks, water pooled beneath my bare feet on the grimy concrete floor, the grime turning to slime.
There was silence on the other end of the line, and my annoyance ramped another notch higher. “I said, this is Dr. Brockton. How can I help you?”
“It’s . . . it’s Peggy.”
“Peggy? Peggy who?”
“Peggy Wilhoit.” The hesitancy and fear in her voice faded, displaced by what sounded like indignation. “Your new secretary Peggy.” Oops, I thought. “Peggy, who opens your gruesome, disgusting mail.”
“Oh, Peggy,” I gushed. “Sorry, I couldn’t quite hear you,” I fibbed. “There’s a leaf blower right outside my hideout.” I waited for a response—a No problem or That’s okay or other phrase of forgiveness—but instead, I heard only silence. Deafening, damning silence, on her end of the call and also on mine: no droning leaf blower backing up my story. I cleared my throat. “How are you settling in by now, Peggy?”
“Well, the backlog’s a bit overwhelming, but I can see most of the desktop now. And I haven’t come across anything else that’s made me scream. Yet.” She paused. “Where did you say you are?”
“In my hideout. My sanctuary. My secret office, up at the north end of the stadium. I only use the one next to yours when I’m being a bureaucrat,” I explained. “Pushing papers, counseling students, chewing out junior faculty. I use this one when I need to get real work done.”
“Ah. Well, perhaps you’ll be so good as to show me where it is sometime. Meanwhile, you have a visitor here at Bureaucracy Central.”
Oh, hell—not a visitor, I thought, but then I checked my watch: eleven thirty. “Ah,” I said. “Tell him to meet me here.”
“Him who?”
“Him Jeff,” I said, sighing at the woman’s denseness. “My son. My visitor.”
“Could this be a different visitor? A young woman?”
“You’re asking me if it’s a woman? Can’t you tell the difference?”
“Yes, of course I can . . .” She paused, and when she resumed speaking, I felt frostbite nibbling my ear. “Let me start over. You have a visitor, Dr. Brockton. She is a young woman. Her name is Jenny Earhart.”
“Oh—the artist?”
“I don’t know, Dr. Brockton; I didn’t ask her about her talents. But I’ll do so now.” I heard a murmured exchange, then, “Yes, Jenny Earhart, the artist.”
“Does she have a sketch for me?”
Another murmured exchange. “Yes, she says she has a sketch for you.”
“Excellent! Send her my way.”
“Which way would that be, Dr. Brockton?” Clearly I had gotten off on the wrong foot with my new secretary.
“Oh. Right. Tell her I’ll be right there. Thank you, Peggy.” Without waiting for a reply, I hung up the phone, toweled off, and yanked on clean clothes, which snagged and dragged on my damp skin. Then I jogged through the curving concrete corridor beneath the stadium, skidding to a stop outside Peggy’s door just in time to avoid colliding with my son.
“Jeff. What are you doing here?”
“Gee, try to contain your excitement, Dad. It’s a teacher-training day at school. You invited me to lunch, remember? Ribs at Calhoun’s?”
“Sure. I knew that. I meant, what are you doing here now? Is it lunchtime already?” I brushed past him, squeezing through the doorway into the outer office. Behind the desk sat the new secretary, Peggy the Frosty, eyeing me coolly. In front of her, sitting sideways, wedged into the narrow gap between the desk and the doorway to my inner office, was Jenny, a leather portfolio and a skull-sized hatbox on her lap.
“Good morning,” I said, taking the box off her lap and setting it on the corner of Peggy’s desk. “Don’t open that,” I warned Peggy. “You won’t like what’s inside.” I gave Jenny a conspiratorial smile. “That was quick,” I said to her. “I figured it’d take you at least a week.”
She shrugged. “I got really caught up in it—stayed up all night working on it. It was like she was . . . I don’t know, trying to reach out to me.” She blushed. “Sounds silly, I know.”
“Actually, not at all,” I assured her. “I sometimes imagine I hear the dead when I’m looking at their bones. Hear them whispering—telling me what happened.”