#scenebreak
A-a-a-and thirty minutes later, we were still waiting for the 9-1-1 transcript. While the hugs and goodwill meant I was off the complete pariah list, Tango was missing and a lot needed to be resolved. No one seemed quite ready for small talk.
So, Juicy. . . lesbian, eh? How’s that working out for you? Any other crushes you’ve kept secret for a decade we should know about?
Then Woody drove up. Before he even left his car, Ephraim materialized at the door. Their conversation was low enough I couldn’t understand a word, but the gist was clear. Ephraim was pissed at getting “stood up.” Woody seemed to believe his reason quite valid. They both kind of freaked me out, truth to tell. And neither of them had been in the room when Twist texted us about Tango’s kidnapping. So. . .
Ephraim grabbed Woody’s shirt, but Woody easily broke his grip.
Okay. I started over to slow things down, but Saundra’s text alert alerted her. Buzz, buzz.
Everyone froze.
In total, the transcript read:
Operator: 9-1-1. Please state the nature of your emergency.
Female (?): 9-1-1? There’s someone here. Oh, God, who is it? Wait. . . you?
[Ringtone (?) in background.]
Female (?): Shit.
[Call disconnects.]
Operator: Hello? Hello?
[End of transcript.]
“What the hell?” No matter how long I stared at the screen, the words made no sense to me. I handed the cell to Saundra. “This came from Tango’s cell?”
“Yep.” Saundra handed her phone around.
“And no one noticed it at the time?” Juicy asked.
Saundra sat on a table and crossed her legs. “They thought it was a prank. She isn’t officially a missing person, since she’s an adult and Warren told the state everything was under control. 9-1-1 wasn’t notified they should be looking for potential calls. Out here they get more pranks than real ones. Kids assume they can’t be traced on a cell.”
“We can?” Farmer-C asked.
Saundra glared at him.
He blushed. “Why is there a question mark after ‘female’?”
“I don’t know,” Saundra admitted. “Probably a lot of interference. I’d have to hear the actual recording.”
“Can we do that?” K-pop asked. All eyes turned to him. “Can we get the actual recording?”
“To what purpose?” Saundra regarded him.
K-pop turned sheepish.
“Dude?” I asked. “You can do the same with audio you do with video?”
From sheep to wolf. “There’s a difference?”
I turned to Saundra. “He’s amazing. I know we’re just meddling kids, but no one else around here seems to give a shit. He might be able to figure something out from the recording.”
She considered me, then looked at K-pop. “You have an iPad or something? I’m not letting you take anything away from here.”
He vibrated with excitement. “I do. . . but my laptop’s at home. All the really good apps are on the laptop.”
She pointed at the door. “Go.”
He looked at me hopefully. “To the Batcave?”
Juicy and Cosita snickered despite the seriousness of the situation.
I didn’t want to leave. What if news came through? But what good was I at the studio, really? And I still owed him. Something about the snickers bothered me, too. I turned to Saundra. “Anything happens, call me?”
“On the red phone,” she said.
I pointed at the door. “To the Batcave.” Batman wouldn’t use an exclamation point. I was definitely Batman. K-pop was Robin.
He led the way out to his 1990-something Honda Civic. Red, of course. Before my door was even closed, he announced: “She’s not into me.”
“What?”
“I know we have more important things to worry about, but, Cosita? She’s not into me.”
“How do you know?”
“She said, ‘You’re a cutie, K-pop, but I’m not into you.’”
That took a second to process. It didn’t leave a lot of wiggle room for optimism. “I have absolutely no response for that,” I admitted. “Sorry, dude.”
“That’s just it, Foxtrot. Not your fault.” He pulled into his driveway. Yeah, already there. “Blurting that out was a bonehead maneuver, dude, but it didn’t hurt my chances.” He jumped out of the car and grinned at me over the roof. “It actually made me work up the balls to ask her out.”
“Hai?” I followed him into the house.
“After the drama scene, she was crying. I talked to her.” He nabbed the laptop from his room and we ran back to the car. “Figured I didn’t have anything to lose.” He stopped on his side of the car and regarded me across the shiny red roof. “I don’t know you all that well yet, bro,” he said, “but we’ve had a few Sam and Dean moments, hai? Not many people in a small town like this understand a freak like me. You do. So you get to screw up once in a while. No harm, no foul.” He smiled. “Life isn’t a championship. Ain’t no judges or scorecards.”
Wow. “Have you given any thought to the possibility it might not be you she isn’t into, but guys in general?”
His eyes opened into exclamation points.
“She’s been touching Juicy a lot since the big reveal.”
He glanced around as he thought through the last hour or so, then he nodded. “Bro, I am going to whack off to that possibility for a month.” His face lit up. “You think—”
“Straight guys are the only ones with that fantasy. Lesbians never, ever have it.”
He raised an eyebrow. “And how would you know?”
“I’ve asked.” I ducked into the car before he could tell if I was yanking his chain.
He slipped in beside me with a dorky grin, which made the whole excursion worth every second. Two minutes later, we dashed into the studio.
Everyone gathered around as he warmed up the laptop and uploaded the 9-1-1 MP3 from Saundra’s cell. I tagged Woody and led him off to a corner. “Where were you?”
He shrugged away from my hand. “What the fuck? Are you my mom?”
Okay, I might have sounded a bit hostile. “Sorry.” I watched his eyes. “Tango’s stalker texted us. We’re jumpy.”
“Juicy brought me up to speed while you were gone.”
Oh yeah. Shit. No element of surprise then. No way to tell if he was conning us.
The 911 call played, stealing my full attention. I hurried to K-pop’s side. The reason for the gender confusion was obvious. Static filled the line and the voice sounded like a girl’s voice, but there was something weird about it.
Juicy spoke up first. “That’s not Tango.”
K-pop played the call again.
“You’re certain?” Saundra asked.
Juicy threw her a look. “Are you that old? I’ve been on the phone with that girl a million hours, tired, drunk, sick and whatever. That’s not her.”
“So some girl kidnapped her and made a fake 9-1-1 call from her phone?” I asked. “What for?”
“It’s not a girl,” K-pop declared. He fiddled with the computer.
Saundra leaned over his shoulder. “How can you be certain?”
“It’s been pitched up.”
Saundra gave him an annoyed glance he didn’t notice. “Pretend for the moment that not all of us are tech savvy.”
“The caller used something to make his voice sound higher, like a girl’s.” His fingers flew across the keyboard and touchpad. “You can get a gadget at Spencer’s and hold it between your mouth and the phone. That’s why it sounds distorted. It’s a cheap one.”
He hit a key. The message played again, but this time much lower. Definitely a man’s voice. And the ring tone at the end. . .
“What the fuck?” I dropped to one knee, reached past K-pop and rewound the file to just before the end.
Four tones chimed before the file cut off, but Farmer-C and I sang the en
d of the phrase. It was the off-key, tempo-challenged Big Ben tune from the police station clock.
The voice was easy to recognize, too.
“Officer Friendly,” I said.
“Warren?” Farmer-C asked.
The crew headed for the door.
Saundra stopped them with a piercing whistle. “This man is a cop and he has guns.”
Farmer-C scoffed. “My mom has guns.”
Saundra blocked the door. “This is Texas. I’m sure you all have guns. The point is making sure Katy is safe, right?” Everyone agreed. “So let’s not go off half-cocked and get her killed.”
The seriousness of the situation prevented anyone from cracking a joke about being “half-cocked.”
“Let’s think this through,” I tossed out. “Warren placed a 9-1-1 call from Tango’s phone inside the station. Why?”
“Why would he even kidnap her?” Juicy asked.
“None of it makes sense,” I admitted. Another thought hit me. “How did Sick Little Twist know about the call?” Murmurs all around. “Does he have the station bugged, too?”
“Maybe. Who cares?” Farmer-C paced like a caged wolf. “We need to go see if Tango’s there.”
“And do what?” Saundra asked. “We were in that station. It was standing room only. How could she be there and none of us knew it?”
No one had an answer.
“Just because he made the 9-1-1 call there,” she said, “doesn’t mean she’s there now.”
I touched Farmer-C’s shoulder. “I agree with her, bro. Right now, we have an advantage because he doesn’t know we heard the call. We go charging in and he knows we’re onto him.”
“At least now we know why he’s keeping the state out,” Saundra said.
“But how the hell could she be there without anyone knowing it?” Juicy asked.
“The hole,” Farmer-C said out of nowhere.
Everyone glanced at him and then went on with the discussion. To be honest, it happened every so often. Farmer-C said random shit sometimes that no one understood.
But something in his face made me pay attention. “Wait a minute. What hole?”
“Whenever one of the guys started mouthing off or we started fighting, Warren threatened to throw us in ‘the hole’.” He used exaggerated air quotes and rolled his eyes to show his obvious disdain for all things hole-y. “Solitary confinement.” He pointed at me and Juicy. “He could’ve put one of y’all in there, but he didn’t. Says to me it was already being used.”
“I was in that interrogation room a long time,” I said. “Warren could’ve been using it to interrogate other people.” I turned to Saundra. “What do you think?”
She contemplated Farmer-C for several seconds before answering. “I bitched about you and the girls being held in rooms that were not meant as housing,” she said. “He told me there weren’t any other rooms.”
“He lied.” K-pop drew everyone’s attention to his laptop. “These are the blueprints for the building.” He pointed at the screen. “Here’s the solitary confinement room.”
“And how in holy hell did you hack that?” Saundra asked.
K-pop blushed. “Not all of us spend our computer time posting selfies on Facebook, ma’am.”
She shook her head. “Why does this shit always happen in small towns?”
“It’s all the alien cow mutilations,” Woody explained. “Nos hacen loco.”
He seemed a bit too amused by the whole thing. Too casual. I drew him aside again.
He rolled his eyes but followed me. “Look, Foxtrot, I get that I missed the big group hug and everybody loves you now, but who died and made you king?”
I stopped. “What? I never claimed—”
“Then why are you here asking me questions? You think I was off somewhere texting y’all? You think I’m the guy who trashed Tango’s car just because I was off getting laid instead of sitting here accomplishing nothing with the rest of you?”
“You were. . . oh.” Well, that would explain why he seemed so relaxed.
“You want to see the used condom in the back of my car?” He had a pretty intense stare when he chose.
Deep breath. “Not really.”
He stepped closer and lowered his voice. “You’ve been here in this town all of half an hour, okay?” Hostility poured off him. “But Corey’s been a friend my whole life, and what you said to him? He may forgive you just like that—” He snapped his fingers. “But I’m only easy for the pretty girls. And the fact that you took Katy from him? I’m not so happy about that either.” He drilled me with his eyes. “So you want someone to ask me questions? Have the hot lady lawyer do your dirty work.” He turned away.
What a douche. I snatched his arm. “What about the cameras K-pop helped you buy?”
His head snapped back the same moment he yanked his arm away. His eyes narrowed as he studied my face. Then he sighed. “I thought K-pop was my friend, too.” He pointed two fingers in my face. “Chinko me dinga, pendejo.”
Er, that’s South Texan for “None of your business, bro.”