Dispatch (21 page)

But the apartment building sat there.

No one went in; no one went out.

I was overreacting, reading too much into this. It was the middle of the day. Most people were at work. There were all sorts of reasons why a run-down apartment building was not a hub of social activity at two thirty on a Monday afternoon. And writing letters was a telecommuter's dream. It was the type of business that could easily be done at home, and theoretically, there was no reason its headquarters
couldn't
be in an apartment.

Still...

I locked the car door and walked across the street. Next to the curb in front of the complex was a dented and vandalized communal mailbox with small locked cubicles for each individual apartment. I searched in vain for a name, but found only numbers. Across the mailbox someone had spray-painted in stylized letters
Shorty. Chico. Spooky.
A stray line that looked like an arrow led from the word
Spooky
to the mail slot for apartment number 3. That seemed ominous.

Shangri-La.

Nothing seemed to be breaking right today, and the smart, logical part of my mind was telling me to get out of here, run away, abort the mission. It could come to no good end. Still, I pressed forward, walking through the gate into the slummy courtyard. I looked around. A bent screen door hung loosely from broken hinges at apartment number 3. There was no wooden door behind it, and although the apartment inside was open, it was too dark to see anything.

The courtyard was quiet.
Too
quiet. Even noises from the street died before they reached here. I glanced at the other apartments, at the drawn shades and closed doors. I had the feeling that no one else lived here, that all of those apartments were empty, abandoned.

Before me, the doorway to apartment 3 yawned blackly behind the broken screen like the open mouth of a monster.

I gathered what courage I had and strode forward purposefully. Stopping before the door, I knocked on the wooden frame and tried to peer inside. I could see nothing. No outlines of furniture, no sign of people. "Hello!" I called.

Nothing.

Taking a deep breath, I pulled open the broken door and walked over the threshold.

Inside was blackness.
 

I awoke in an empty office. Or, rather, came
to
. I had no idea what had happened to me—the last thing I could remember was walking through that doorway into the dark apartment—but it seemed clear that I had been drugged or somehow rendered unconscious and then brought here.

Wherever "here" was.

I was lying on a flat couch, and I sat up straight, looked around. The room in which I found myself had white walls, recessed bars of fluorescent light and a tiled floor buffed so shiny that it reflected the ceiling. It possessed the generic, slightly antiseptic quality of a room in a hospital or law enforcement agency.

I stood, walking over to the closed door at the opposite end of the room.

Suddenly the door swung open. I nearly jumped out of my skin. Two men appeared and immediately positioned themselves to either side of me. Young, wholesome, clean-cut, wearing nondescript clothes that were somewhere between a suit and a uniform, they did not take my arms, but there was still an element of coercion in the way they moved forward, pressuring me to move into the corridor with them.

There was something familiar about the two, and for a brief befuddled moment my still-dazed mind could not place what it was.

Then I figured it out.

They reminded me of the men who had interviewed us about our letter writing back in college.

I said nothing but silently accompanied the men down the corridor. I realized that I had left my application back in my car, although I was not sure that made any difference. I did not feel as though I were being led to a job interview; I felt as though I was a prisoner being transferred to a new cell. It was a weird sensation, one I could have doubtlessly dispelled with a simple question, but I remained silent, not wanting to speak.

No, that was not true.

I was
afraid
to speak.

Our shoes clicked on the shiny tile with a crisp clarity that was almost martial. We passed closed door after closed door. Metal frames for nameplates were affixed to the wall next to each door, but they were all empty. This building had been either abandoned or never occupied.

We reached an elevator. The man on my left turned in front of me, blocking my way, forcing me to stop. There was no call button, but as if sensing our presence, the doors slid open, and the three of us stepped inside. The interior of the elevator was burnished steel, with no buttons or levers or indicator lights, so I can only assume that we went up, because that's what it felt like to me.

After a minute or two, the doors slid open once again, and we stepped out into a corridor nearly identical to the first.
Nearly
because the doors here did have nameplates—although the only letters engraved on them were alternating As, Bs and Cs. I was led to one of the B doors, and the man on my right opened it.

I went inside.

They remained outside.

The door closed behind me.

I heard the click of a lock engaging.

I examined the room in which I found myself. It looked like an office, but there was no furniture other than two wooden chairs on either side of a folding table in the center of the gray-carpeted floor. The walls were bare. There was no window.

I'd heard the door lock, but I knew they'd expect me to try the knob and check anyway, so I refused to do it.

I wondered if there was a hidden camera trained on me. Assuming there was, I remained standing, walking casually around the room as though waiting for someone who'd promised to meet me here and was late. If there'd been objects or knicknacks about, I would have picked them up and pretended to examine them. After a while—an hour? two?—my feet started hurting, so I sat down. I did so indifferently, as though not thinking about it, not forgetting for a second that I might be under surveillance.

I crossed my legs, searching for a comfortable position. I had no place to put my arms, so I put them on the table before me, but that felt awkward.

What would happen if I had to go to the bathroom? I was already thirsty and would eventually get hungry, too. Were they expecting me to pound on the door and demand to be let out? Beg for a cup of water?

I wouldn't give them the satisfaction. This was a test. The application had been a ruse to get me in the door. This was the way they were really going to determine whether I would be allowed to write for them.

Allowed?

Yes. This was the major leagues. It would be an honor and a privilege, a dream come true, to write letters for a living—and I had no doubt that they knew that already. I had no idea what the agenda was here, whether this was part of a private think tank or a clandestine agency within the Department of Defense or the CIA, but I believed—no, I
knew
—that they had found a way to legitimize the letter-writing talent, to harness its potential.

Then why have they been stalking you, invading your dreams?
a deep rational part of my brain asked.

I told that part of my brain to shut up.

Time passed.

If it had been late afternoon when I came into this room, which my interior clock had said it was, it now had to be evening. Eight or nine o'clock. I was hungry, and my mouth was so dry that each time I swallowed, I almost gagged, the saliva bunching up in weird configurations on its way down my parched throat. I desperately had to take a piss.

Just when I thought I wouldn't be able to hold it anymore, the door opened and one of the two men who'd accompanied me here—my guards, as I'd come to think of them—said, "Bathroom break." I followed him down the corridor to a knobless door, not speaking, though the guard's words had given me an opening. I adopted the attitude of a prisoner of war.

The man waited outside, while I went in to relieve myself. The small restroom, barely bigger than a large closet, had a urinal and a toilet but no sink. I'd been planning to use the sink in order to get a drink of water, and seeing that there was none made my mouth feel even drier. I used the urinal, then reluctantly walked back out. The man led me back down the corridor to my room.

When I returned, there was a pitcher of water and a glass on the table. I waited until the guard had left, until the door had been closed and locked again, before I nonchalantly reached for the glass and poured myself a drink. I wanted to chug the entire tumbler, but instead took an ordinary sip, trying not to let my face react as the cool soothing liquid slid easily down my dehydrated throat, refusing to let them know how important this was to me, how desperately I needed this. I casually took another small sip, vowing to drink only the one glass.

Who knew how long this pitcher would have to last me.

Until now, I'd been sitting in silence, the only noises in the nearly empty office my own, but suddenly screams issued from the room next door, shrieks of agony so raw that they sounded as though they'd been forcibly ripped from the throat of the man being—

tortured

—interviewed in there.

I knew I was supposed to hear those cries of pain, but I had no idea why. The screams were muffled—my door was shut, his door was shut, and there was a wall between us, after all—but there was no mistaking what they were, just as there was no mistaking the fact that I was meant to hear what was going on.

I had no watch, and there was no clock in the room and no windows, so there was no way for me to gauge the passage of time, but I endured the screams for what felt like the better part of an hour before the door finally opened and a middle-aged man wearing the generic white-collar uniform of a bureaucrat or middle manager stepped inside. He was carrying a black binder, and he sat down in the chair on the opposite side of the table and ruffled through several of the binder's pages before looking up at me. "How are you, Mr. Hanford?" he asked non-committally.

"Fine," I answered, though I wasn't.

He didn't care, wasn't interested, did not even listen to my answer. "Good," he murmured. "Good." He flipped through several more pages, then stood up. "Anything you'd care to add?" he asked.

From the next room, I heard a piercing screech that did not end but was cut off.

Then, ominously, silence.

"No," I told the man.

"Well, if you do, you'll let us know, won't you?" He didn't pause to wait for a response but walked to the door, tapped on it three times, then opened it and stepped into the outside corridor.

I was alone once again with myself and the silence.

After a while, I poured myself another glass of water and drank it.

After a longer while, I fell asleep.

I awoke hunched over in the chair, my neck muscles stiff and hurting. I'd obviously been in the same position for quite some time. There was food on the table in front of me. Two huge blueberry muffins and a tall glass of orange juice. Breakfast. The muffins were still warm; the juice was still cold. They'd been brought in fairly recently. Still cognizant of the fact that I was probably being watched, I did not dig in the way I wanted to but ate slowly, politely, as though this were an ordinary day and this my ordinary breakfast. I ate both muffins and drank all the juice.

Time passed at an excruciating glacial pace. I had plenty of time to wonder what was happening to me, to think about what the future had in store, but I forced my mind to stay away from those topics. I didn't want to get sucked into that mental spiral, and I purposely occupied my brain by thinking about music, about records I'd recently picked up, records I still wanted to find, records I'd loaned to friends back in high school or college that those friends had never given back. Thinking about old friends made me think about writing them letters, which made me think about writing other kinds of letters, which made me think about why I was here.

I couldn't get away from it.

I really like that Jethro Tull bootleg I bought last week that was recorded on the
Passion Play
tour,
I thought.
I just wish I could find one from the
Minstrel in the Gallery
tour.

After a while, I had to go to the bathroom, and a while after that, the other guard appeared at the door with the same announcement, "Bathroom break." This time, upon my return, I found a pen and a blank piece of paper waiting for me on the table next to a new glass and pitcher of water. When I picked up the paper to see if anything had been written on the other side, I saw a stamped envelope lying on the table underneath the page.

I was expected to write a letter.

But what kind and to whom?

Just as I'd refused to give in and speak to my guards or ask any question of the man who had visited me, I decided that I would not give in to temptation and write. I would continue to do nothing but wait and stare into space.

But as the hours dragged by, that resolution became harder and harder to keep. My mind was racing with ideas, complaints I wanted to make, ideas I wanted to express, questions I wanted to ask.

Still, I refused to write. This was a test.

I wanted to pick up that pen, but I didn't.

I waited.

As before (yesterday?), the bureaucrat returned, carrying his black binder. Once again, he sat down in the chair on the opposite side of the table and looked through the binder's pages. "How are you, Mr. Hanford?"

I didn't answer.

He looked up at me. "You killed your father, did you not?"

I fidgeted nervously, not sure what the right answer was.

"It's a yes-or-no question."

I nodded.

The man smiled. "Very good, very good. And you continued to harass your mother by letter long after you'd severed contact?"

Again I nodded.

"Excellent!"

He closed the binder, standing up. "It's been a pleasure as always, Mr. Hanford." He tapped on the door, it was opened, and he left.

In the silence, in the emptiness, I was forced to look at myself, look within myself, to see myself as I really was, and I did not like what I saw. I was an evil man. Not amoral, as I'd always assumed, as I'd in many ways prided myself on being, but consciously and actively evil. Despite what I'd led Vicki to believe, despite what I'd told myself, I was not a nice guy who'd found himself doing questionable things due to extenuating circumstances. I was a cold-blooded killer, a calculating murderer willing to do anything to make my life easier and more comfortable.