He Won't Bother You Again

You don't scream. You don't breathe either.

You stand at the bottom of the stairs with your hand on the deadbolt and your eyes on the dark at the top, and the phone in your hand lights up your face.

Unknown Number: That's the radiator. It does that when the heat kicks on. Nobody's up there.

You stare at the screen. Then at the stairs. Then, from the booth, the familiar clank and hiss of the ancient iron radiator under the window, the one that sounds like a ghost dragging chains every November.

You lock the door. You sit down on the third step because your legs have decided they're done.

You: how do you know what my radiator sounds like

Unknown Number: You've complained about it on air. Episode 112. You called it the Kraken.

You put your face in your hands and laugh, a horrible cracked sound that's closer to crying.

You: you're a listener

Unknown Number: Among other things.

The police arrive in a wash of red and blue that turns the stairwell into a nightclub. The fire department arrives after them. Then more police. Then a man in a battered brown leather jacket who knocks on the green door with two knuckles and holds a badge up to the glass.

"Ms. Wilder? Detective Torin Lusk. Organized crime. Can I come in?"

He's younger than you expected for a detective, late thirties, with sandy hair dark from the rain, warm brown eyes creased at the corners like he laughs a lot when he isn't working, and a dimple that shows up when he gives you a careful, kind smile. He looks like the kind of cop they cast in a movie when they want you to trust him in the first scene.

You let him in. He sits on the step below you so he isn't looming, and you notice that, and you're grateful.

"You ordered the cab," he says.

"Through the app. Twelve minutes before."

"And you didn't get in. Why?"

You hesitate. Then you hold out your phone.

He reads the thread. His face doesn't change much, but his eyebrows climb a quarter of an inch, and he reads it twice. When he gets to Good girl his mouth flattens.

"Charming," he says.

"I told him not to call me that."

"I see that." He takes a photo of the screen with his own phone. "Mind if I run the number?"

"Please."

He steps outside to make a call. You watch him through the glass, the rain running down his jacket, the burned-out shell of the cab steaming behind him in the floodlights. When he comes back in, he's frowning.

"The number doesn't exist," he says.

"It texted me eleven times."

"I know. The carrier says it was never issued. It's not a burner, it's not spoofed from any account they can find. It's a number that doesn't belong to anybody." He looks at you for a long moment. "Ms. Wilder. Who'd want you dead?"

You think about two hundred and six episodes. About murderers you've named and cold cases you've reopened and the men who send you angry emails at four in the morning. About the cab driver's surprised face.

"Honestly?" you say. "It's a long list."

Greer gets there at 3:40 a.m. in pajama pants and a men's peacoat, her black curls stuffed under a knit cap, red lipstick on anyway because Greer Ybarra would put on lipstick for her own funeral. She takes one look at you and wraps you up so hard your bruised back screams.

"I'm going to kill whoever did this," she says into your hair. "I'm going to find them and I'm going to beat them to death with Gloria."

Gloria is the aluminum baseball bat she keeps behind the booth door. She has never used it on anything but a pigeon that got inside.

"The police are handling it," you say.

"Then I'll beat the police with Gloria."

She drives you home in her ancient Corolla with the heat blasting and the radio off. Your phone sits in your lap like a live animal.

It buzzes at a red light on Ashland.

Unknown Number: The detective was right to ask. Answer it for yourself tonight.

You: were you LISTENING to us

Unknown Number: No. I read lips. He has an honest face. That's not a compliment.

You: what does that mean

Unknown Number: It means go home, don't open the door for anyone, and get some sleep.

You: i'm not taking orders from a number that doesn't exist

Unknown Number: Then take advice from one.

You: tell me who you are

Unknown Number: Not tonight.

You: then why should i trust you

There's a long pause. The light turns green. Greer glances at the phone, then at you, and says nothing, which for Greer is a medical event.

Unknown Number: Because you're alive, Ava. Start there.

You turn the screen face down on your thigh. Your hand is shaking again.

"Is that him?" Greer says.

"Yes."

"Is he hot?"

"Greer."

"I'm asking because if a mysterious man saves my life by text, I deserve to know if he's hot."

"I have no idea what he looks like."

"Ask him."

"I'm not going to ask him."

You don't ask him. But for the rest of the drive, you can't stop thinking about it. About someone standing on a rooftop in the rain, watching your street, typing your name.

Your building in Ukrainian Village is a three-story brick walk-up with a broken buzzer and a landlord who communicates exclusively in sticky notes. Greer offers to come up. You tell her no; she has a seven a.m. shift at the radio station. She makes you promise to text her when you're inside, then sits idling at the curb anyway, headlights on, watching the door like a guard dog in a Corolla.

You climb the stairs. First floor. Second. The hallway light on the third floor has been flickering for a month, a tired buzzing stutter that makes the long narrow hall jump between gloom and glare.

You round the landing.

And stop.

There's a man lying on the floor outside your apartment door.

He's on his side, one arm flung out, his face turned toward the wall. Big. Dark jacket, work boots, a knit cap pushed half off his shaved head. For one awful moment you think he's dead. Then the light flickers on and you see his back rise and fall. Slow. Deep. Unconscious.

His hands have been zip-tied behind him.

You don't move. The hallway light buzzes. Off. On.

Something is sticking out of his jacket pocket. A photograph. You can see the edge of it from here, glossy, and even from ten feet away you know the face in it, because it's yours. You, laughing, on the sidewalk outside the booth, in the green coat you wore last Tuesday.

Taped to the wall above him, at eye level, right next to your door, is a folded square of white paper.

You walk toward it like you're walking underwater. You step over his outflung arm. Your fingers find the paper and peel it off the wall.

The handwriting is neat and black and completely steady.

He won't bother you again.

Your phone buzzes in your pocket.

You don't need to look. You already know who it is.