Page 13 of Dusty

Rogen dispatched the police to the address and verified that the call was coming from the address that Harlin had given her. Waiting for him to speak again, she brought up the cameras that were in his area and tried to look at the house. All she could see was a black blob of some kind of car outside the home.

“He killed my mom a week ago. I’ve been trying my best to make sure that he can’t come back but I think he’s worried on account of the police not showing up.” That was confusing to her, and she asked him what he meant. “Listen to me.” His voice was sharp with her. “I said that the police didn’t show up after he killed my mom, and that has him worried. About me telling on him. Are you paying attention to what I’m saying?”

“Yes. And I know that you’re scared or nervous, so I’m going to let it slide about how you’re speaking to me.” She could almost hear him rolling his eyes when he answered her back withwhatever. Putting him on mute, she told the police that the child, if he was one, was being too snarky to be extra careful. They told her to ask for details. “Where is your mother’s body? Is it in the house with you?”

“Yes. Where else would it be? Are the police coming or not?” Not liking this at all, she told two more cruisers to go to the house. The kid was acting funny. And usually her instincts were correct on that. And most of the cops knew her well enough to know that she wasn’t one to jerk them around, too. “Is. The. Police. Coming? Should I hang up and try someone else.”

“Go ahead, and I’ll cancel the police. Now, tell me where your mother’s body is?” He said that she was in the basement and that since she started smelling the place up, he thought she’d be better down there. “Okay. Why didn’t you call the police? Is it because you were afraid?”

“I’m not afraid of anything, you stupid bitch. Who are you?” Again, the sharp voice, almost like she’d hit a nerve with him. She told him her first name was Rogen. “Rogen? What sort of name is that? Can I speak to your supervisor?”

Alarm bells were going off in her head now. The kid was nearly screaming at her about her supervisor. Calling for one, she let him know what was going on and the issues that she was having with the caller.

“He’s loud, for one thing. If there was someone in the house, he would have tipped them off by now. Also, he’s not helping himself by threatening me that he’s planning to hang up. I told him that I’d stop the police from coming, and that set him off again.” Scott told her to turn on the mike again. “My supervisor is here. His name is Scott.”

“She’s a bitch.” While not agreeing with the caller, Scott did laugh a little. “And are the police coming here? I’ve been waiting for them for what seems like forever. The alarm went off about an hour ago and there hasn’t been anyone showing up of authority.”

“The police are nearly there. Tell me why you think that this man is looking for you? You believe that, or he’s said that?” The man sitting next to her took off his headset and stared at her for a moment before speaking to her.

“I know that address. There isn’t a woman in the house that I’ve ever seen. Just an elderly manthat is in a wheelchair.” Rogen asked Scott how he knew that. “I’m boarding in the house across the street and I’ve been talking to the elderly man named Gross for the last few weeks. He said that his wife was dead and that he had no other children. He plays a good game of chess.”

Relaying the information to the cops, she waited until they pulled onto the street before she told them to be careful again. Scott asked if he could see the house, just to make sure it was the same one when she nodded. It was, he told her and went back to work at his own cameras.

Scott hadn’t been there for long before everyone was saying how he was all right. He didn’t speak much. Made notes all the time about calls and the people around them. Never once had he said anything to her or the others but when asked, he was polite with his answers. Someone told her that he was coming from an abusive place and was truly afraid that someone was coming for him.

Rogen had heard it was his mom but didn’t know if she believed that or not. He didn’t strike her as a momma’s boy, and figured maybe that was the point. He wasn’t, and she wanted him to be. When the kid on the phone started getting louder again, she had contact with the officer first on the scene.

“He said that her body was in the basement, and he put her there when she started to smell the place up. It could be just as we were told, but one of the other dispatchers said that the house didn’t have a female in it.” Roger told her that he didn’t think a woman was living there either, as there were no flowers in the front yard, and the trash can was filthy. “I’m not even going to ask you why you’d assume a woman would be planting flowers and cleaning trash cans.”

“My mom. She keeps hers clean by rinsing it out after pick-up day. It’s dead summer, and those suckers get really nasty. As for the flowers, every other house on the street has them planted. This house looks like it’s not had any kind of touch to it in months to years.” She didn’t care for Roger’s take on what was going on but she let him speak. For all she knew, there wasn’t anyone planting his flowers. But it made her nervous for the police to be going into the house.

The police, as it turned out, were a bit more cautious than she could have hoped for. After going into the house from the front and back, they were greeted with gunfire that blasted into her headset like she was right there with them. It wasn’t until the smoke, whatever that meant to them, was cleared before they were able to answer her questions about how they had faired.

“We’ll need the wagon.” She dispatched the coroner to the scene and then asked about the kid. “He’s not a kid, Rog. I’d say from looking at him, he’s between twenty-five and thirty years old. You were right in that this was something eerie going on. He was set up with enough shit to take out the city block. Also, he had a list of things that he was going to fulfill. After killing as many cops as he could, he was going to head to the grocery store on Eleventh to kill kids. You did right in warning us, honey.”

Their town was small, so hearing someone call her by her nickname wasn’t unusual. But it was frightening to know this person was out to kill a lot of people. Everyone knew everyone’s business here. Even if you didn’t have any business for them to get into, they weren’t above making shit up about you. That was why she’d been so surprised that a man like Scott had moved here and set himself up in a boarding house. Like this was the spot where he was going to be living out the rest of his life.

“Are you all right?” She asked Scott what he meant when they both went on break at the same time. “That call? Did it rattle you? I think that it would have me. And I’ve not been doing this as long as you have.”

“It did, thanks for asking. I think that since we rarely get any calls that involve the police, mostly it’s missing cats or something, this one got on my last nerve. In a way that had me second-guessing myself.” Nodding, he sat down beside her in the small cafeteria and smiled. “You’re new around here.”

“I am. I’ve lived here for about a month now. And this is my first job that I’m enjoying. I thought that I liked the job I had before coming here, but this is my own, and I love it.” She didn’t understand that but didn’t comment. “You’re not at all like anyone else that lives around here. You seem, I don’t know, more resigned to the fact that you live here. Is it that bad?”

“No, not really. I used to live in a bigger city but I kept losing myself there and decided to come home for a change. My sister and her husband live not far from this building, and I can hang out with them when I’m off.” They spoke about the town and the residents that were there. “I was thinkingearlier about how I’ve not heard a great deal about you. You must be keeping to yourself pretty well.”

He stood up and sat down when Roger came into the room with them. He’d come by to check on her like she was some sort of delicate rose or something, and it seemed to spook Scott a bit. After telling them what had gone down at the house, Mr. Sharp being killed, and the elderly man that had lived there was dead as well. He didn’t know for sure, Roger told her but he thought that the elderly man was gone long before tonight and that the suspect had taken advantage of the situation.

After he left, Rogen looked at Scott. “You’re on the run, aren’t you? Or you’re some kind of weirdo that I need to avoid. Listen up, buddy, I don’t take kindly to a stranger marking me as some kind of trip that they want to play with.” He laughed.

Rogen didn’t know why but she thought that it had surprised the man as much as it had her. He also looked rusty at having a sense of humor. Leaning back in her chair, she asked him point blank what he was doing there.

“I want to tell you. However, I’d hate for that to make it so that you don’t want to see me or talk to me again. I like you.” She snorted, and he laughed again. “I’ve run away from home and my mother to start my life over here. I was helped by some really nice people to not only leave my mother behind but to also go someplace where no one cares where I’m from or what I do so long as it doesn’t bother them. I think I got that by coming here.”

“You’re serious.” He nodded and told her how he’d been given money for a ticket and decided that he didn’t want to go far. Not because he wanted to return home but so that his mother would think that he had, and staying close seemed a better idea. She stared at him for a full two minutes. “Why? I mean, why did these nice people help you? Not that it’s really any of my business, but I was just wondering.”

“I ask myself that very question everyday since. It’s not like I was nice to them. I was a pest, as a matter of fact. And was set to marry a woman I didn’t love or wanted in my life simply because my mother told me to do it. She thought that she’d be a good person to have around since she was a doctor and had strong arms. I kid you not. I thought it was as good a reason to marry as any, I suppose, and became a pain in the ass to this other woman and her soon-to-be husband. For all I know, they’re probably married by now.” When she asked him where he was from, she immediately told him that she didn’t want to know. “Thank you for that. I would tell you if you asked but I’m a little shy around all that many people knowing where I’m from. I’m…well, I’m terrified that my mother will find me and drag me back to her level. I’m enjoying being my own boss—that was another thing that I did all wrong. I was a terrible employer to those that answered to me. Now I can see that I wasn’t even as nice as I thought I might well have been. I was just a pain in the ass all the way around.”

“Do you feel like you’ve changed all that much?” He nodded telling her that he was living in the boarding home that Ms. Archer owned and he was enjoying all the other people that came and went. “Ms. Archer was my teacher in grade school. Even back then, I thought her odd and old.”

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