*69

a short story by

Blake Crouch

SMASHWORDS EDITION

* * * * *

PUBLISHED BY:

Blake Crouch on Smashwords

Copyright 2010 by Blake Crouch

Cover art copyright 2010 by Jeroen ten
Berge

All rights reserved.

PRAISE FOR BLAKE CROUCH

Crouch quite simply is a marvel. Highest
possible recommendation.

BOOKREPORTER

Blake Crouch is the most exciting new
thriller writer I've read in years.

DAVID MORRELL

*69 is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are
the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or
locales is entirely coincidental.

"*69" originally appeared in
Uncage
Me
, edited by Jen Jordan and published by Bleak House Books,
July 2009.

For more information about the author, please
visit www.blakecrouch.com.

For more information about the artist, please
visit www.jeroentenberge.com.

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to
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person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you
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or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return
to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for
respecting the author's work.

* * * * *

*69

At nine-thirty on a Thursday evening, as he
lounged in bed grading the pop quizzes he’d sprung on his 11th
grade honors English class, Tim West heard footsteps ascend the
staircase and pad down the hallway toward the bedroom.

His wife, Laura, appeared in the open
doorway.

“Tim, come here.”

He set the papers aside and climbed out of
bed.

Following her down the squeaky stairs into
the living room, he found immense pleasure in the architecture of
her long legs and the grace with which she carried herself. Coupled
with that yellow satin teddy he loved and the floral tang of skin
lotion, Tim foresaw a night of marital bliss. Historically,
Thursdays were their night.

Laura sat him down in the oversize leather
chair across from the fireplace, and as she took a seat on its
matching ottoman, it struck him—this fleeting premonition that she
was on the verge of revealing she was pregnant with their first
child, a project they’d been working on since last Christmas.
Instead, she reached over to the end table beside the chair and
pressed the blinking play button on the answering machine:

Ten seconds of the static hiss of wind.

A woman’s voice breaks through, severely
muffled, and mostly unintelligible except for, “…didn’t mean
anything!”

A man’s voice, louder and distorted by
static: “…making me do this.”

“
I can explain!”

“…
late for that.”

A thud, a sucking sound.

“…
in my eyes.” The man’s voice. “Look in
them! …you can’t speak….but…listen the last minute…whore-life…be
disrespected. You lie there and think about that while…”

Thirty seconds of that horrible sucking
sound, occasionally cut by the wind.

The man weeps deeply and from his core.

An electronic voice ended the message with,
“Thursday, nine-sixteen, p.m.”

Tim looked at his wife. Laura shrugged. He
reached over, played it again.

When it finished, Laura said, “There’s no way
that’s what it sounds like, right?”

“There any way to know for certain?”

“Let’s just call nine-one—”

“And tell them what? What information do we
have?”

Laura rubbed her bare arms. Tim went to the
hearth and turned up the gas logs. She came over, sat beside him on
the cool brick.

“Maybe it’s just some stupid joke,” she
said.

“Maybe.”

“What? You don’t think so?”

“Remember Gene Malack? Phys ed teacher?”

“Tall, geeky-looking guy. Sure.”

“We hung out some last year while he was
going through his divorce. Grabbed beers, went bowling. Nice guy,
but a little quirky. There was this one time when our phone rang,
and I picked it up, said, ‘Hello?’, but no one answered. The
strange thing was that I could hear someone talking, only it was
muffled, just like that message. But I recognized Gene’s voice. I
should’ve hung up, but human nature, I stayed on, listened to him
order a meal from the Wendy’s drive-through. Apparently, he’d had
our number on speed-dial in his cell. It had gotten joggled,
accidentally called our house.”

One of the straps had fallen down on Laura’s
teddy.

As Tim fixed it, she said, “You just trying
to scare me? Let’s call your brother—”

“No, not yet—”

“No, you’re saying that a man, who we know
well enough to be on his speed-dial list, was killing some poor
woman tonight, and he accidentally…what was the word?”

“Joggled.”

“Thank you. Joggled his phone, inadvertently
calling us during the murder. That where you’re going with
this?”

“Look, maybe we’re getting a little
overly—”

“Overly, shit. I’m getting freaked out here,
Tim.”

“All right. Let’s listen once more, see if we
recognize the voice.”

Tim went over to the end table, played the
message a third time.

“There’s just too much wind and static,” he
said as it ended.

Laura got up and walked into the kitchen,
came back a moment later with a small notepad she used for grocery
lists.

She returned to her spot on the hearth, pen
poised over the paper, said, “Okay, who are we close enough friends
with to be on their speed-dial?”

“Including family?”

“Anyone we know.”

“My parents, your parents, my brother, your
brother and sister.”

“Jen.” She scribbled on the pad.

“Chris.”

“Shanna and David.”

“Jan and Walter.”

“Dave and Anne.”

“Paul and Mo.”

“Hans and Lanette.”

“Kyle and Jason.”

“Corey and Sarah.”

This progressed for several minutes until
Laura finally looked up from the pad, said, “There’s thirty names
here.”

“So, I’ve got an unpleasant question.”

“What?”

“If we’re going on the assumption that what’s
on that answering machine is a man we know murdering a woman, we
have to ask ourselves, ‘which of our friends is capable of doing
something like that?’”

“God.”

“I know.”

For a moment, their living room stood so
quiet Tim could hear the second hand of his grandmother’s antique
clock above the mantle and the Bose CD player spinning Bach up in
their bedroom.

“I’ve got a name,” he said.

“Me, too.”

“You first.”

“Corey Mustin.”

“Oh, come on, you’re just saying that ‘cause
he took me to that titty bar in Vegas, and you’ve hated him
ever—”

“I hate most of your college friends, but he
in particular gives me the creeps. I could see him turning
psychotic if he got jealous enough. Woman’s intuition, Tim. Don’t
doubt it. Your turn.”

“Your friend Anne’s husband.”

“Dave? No, he’s so sweet.”

“I’ve never liked the guy. We played ball in
church league a couple years ago, and he was a maniac on the court.
Major temper problem. Hard fouler. We almost came to blows a few
times.”

“So what should I do? Put a check by their
names?”

“Yeah…wait. God, we’re so stupid.” Tim jumped
up from the hearth, rushed over to the phone.

“What are you doing?” Laura asked.

“Star sixty-nine. Calls back the last number
that called you.”

As he reached for the phone, it rang.

He flinched, looked over at Laura, her eyes
covered in the bend of her arm.

“That scared the shit out of me,” she
said.

“Should I answer it?”

“I don’t know.”

He picked up the phone mid-ring.

“Hello?”

“Tiiiiiimmmmm.”

“Hi, Mom.”

“How’s my baby boy?”

“I’m fine, but—”

“You know, I talked to your brother today and
I’m worried—”

“Look, Mom, I’m so sorry, but this is a
really bad time. Can I call you back tomorrow?”

“Well, all right. Love you. Kisses and hugs
to that pretty wife of yours.”

“You, too. Bye, Mom.” Tim hung up the
phone.

Laura said, “Does that mean we can’t star
sixty-nine whoever left the message?”

“I don’t know.”

“You think there’s some number you push to
like, double star-sixty—”

“I don’t work for the phone company,
Laura.”

“Remember, I suggested we buy the package
with caller ID, but you were all, ‘No, that’s an extra five bucks a
month.’ I think it’s time to call the police.”

“No, I’ll call Martin. He’ll be off his shift
in an hour.”

A few minutes shy of eleven o’clock, the
doorbell rang.

Tim unlocked the deadbolt, found his brother,
Martin, standing on the stoop, half-squinting in the glare of the
porchlight, his uniform wrinkled, deep bags under his eyes.

“You look rough, big bro,” Tim said.

“Can I come in or you wanna chat out here in
the cold?”

Tim peered around him, saw the squad car
parked in the driveway, the engine ticking as it cooled.

Fog enveloped the streets and homes of Quail
Ridge, one of the new subdivisions built on what had been a
farmer’s treeless pasture, the houses all new and homogenous, close
enough to the interstate to always bask in its distant roar.

He stepped to the side as Martin walked into
his house, then closed and locked the door after them.

“Laura asleep?” he asked.

“No, she’s still up.”

They walked past the living room into the
kitchen where Laura, now sporting a more modest nightgown, had put
a pot of water on the stove, the steam making the lid jump and
jive.

“Hey, Marty,” she said.

He kissed her on the cheek. “My God, you
smell good. So you told him about us yet?”

“Never gets old,” Tim said. “You think it
would, but it just keeps getting funnier.”

Laura said, “Cup of tea, Marty?”

“Why not.”

Martin and Tim retired to the living room.
After Laura got the tea steeping, she joined them, plopping down in
the big leather chair across from the couch.

Martin said, “Pretty fucking quaint and what
not with the fire going. So what’s up? You guys having a little
crumb-cruncher?”

Laura and Tim looked at each other, then
Laura said, “No, why would you think that?”

“Yeah, Mart, typically not safe to ask if a
woman’s pregnant until you actually see the head crowning.”

“So I’m not gonna be an uncle? Why the hell
else would you ask me over this late?”

“Go ahead, Laura.”

She pressed play on the answering
machine.

They listened to the message, and when it
finished, Martin said, “Play it again.”

After the message ended, they sat in silence,
Martin with his brow furrowed, shaking his head.

He finally said, “I know you’re too much of a
cheap bastard to have caller ID or anything invented in the
twenty-first century, so did you star-sixty-nine it?”

“Tried, but Mom called literally the second I
picked up the phone.”

Martin undid the top two buttons of his navy
shirt, ran his fingers around the collar to loosen it.

“Could just be a prank,” he said. “Maybe
someone held the phone up to the television during a particular
scene in a movie.”

“If that’s what it is, I don’t recognize the
movie.”

Martin quickly redid the buttons on his
shirt, said, “What do you think you’ve got there?”

“I think someone’s phone got jiggled at the
worst possible moment, and we were on their speed dial.”

“You call nine-one-one?”

“Called you.”

Martin nodded. “There’s gotta be a way to
find that number. You know, something you dial other than
star-sixty-nine.”

Tim said, “Star-seventy?”

“I don’t know, something like that.”

“We tried to call the phone company a little
while ago, but they’re closed until eight a.m. tomorrow.”

Martin looked at Laura, said, “You okay,
sweetie? You don’t look so hot.”

Tim saw it, too—something about her had
changed, her face seasick yellow, hands trembling
imperceptibly.

“I’m fine,” she said.

“You sure? You look like you’re about to blow
chunks all over your new carpet.”

“I said I’m fine.”

Martin stood. “I need to use the little
girl’s room.”