Assault with a Deadly Lie: A Nick Hoffman Novel of Suspense

Chapter 6

44 6 Stefan shushed Marco and looked at me, eyes bleak and angry. The call had been brief, but the sound of that voice was as dismal as the stench of burning plastic, and I felt my mouth go dry. Marco headed out of the kitchen, possibly searching for someplace saner and quieter. It crossed my mind then to say to Stefan that we should quit our jobs, sell the house and move as far away from Michigan as possible. We’d have to downsize, but we’d be free of this insanity. From a golden routine, we had gone to base unpredictability. Vanessa was right: we were privileged white men who had never been treated the way millions of less fortunate Americans were treated all the time. Academia made our lives even more remote from reality. It wasn’t just a shock being manhandled and brutalized; it was as if we had been radically ripped from our own lives and dumped into an alternate reality. “Son of a bitch,” Stefan said, and it was the second time in an hour I’d heard him curse in a way he never did. I didn’t object, but it bothered me that he didn’t sound like himself. “We need an unlisted number,” I muttered, feeling a surge of helplessness, because I knew that nothing would make us safe, not even cancelling our landline. Nothing really could, not flight, not drugs. What was going to happen next? Hacking our email accounts? I thought of the terrible sad observation in Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays: “In the whole world there was not enough sedation as there was instantaneous peril.” Stefan rose and headed for the phone. “Hitting star fifty-seven gets you the number that called, right?” “Forget it, Stefan. Knowing the number won’t matter. Anybody taking the trouble to disguise their voice like that would make sure you couldn’t track them. It’s like murderers using gloves. Whoever called us 45 would have used a burner phone, or a payphone if they could find one, or a soft phone.” Stefan sat back down heavily, pushed his plate away and finished his beer without any sign of enjoyment. “What the hell is a soft phone?” “I don’t know how it works exactly, but it’s software so you can phone from your computer.” “But all of that can be traced somehow!” “Only if you have a subpoena, or if you’re the government and you don’t need one.” “Great.” “Still think it’s Bullerschmidt?” Stefan frowned. “What do you mean?” “He’s malevolent, sure, but is he tech-savvy enough?” I answered my own question before Stefan could even consider it. “He wouldn’t have to be, you can probably get one of those voice things on Amazon. And who knows what else.” “Or he hired someone.” I felt momentarily ashamed of myself at how ugly our speculation was. But then what we were saying about the dean wasn’t uglier than what had happened to us. “Couldn’t we hire someone?” I asked. “You mean a bodyguard?” Stefan squinted as if seeing an ex-Marine in a black Brioni suit standing in the corner of our kitchen. “Maybe. I don’t know. I’m not sure what I was thinking.” I might have meant an assassin, but that never turned out well, in movies or in real life. Besides, we didn’t have a definite target. Stefan abruptly pushed back from the table and said, “Let’s go out to the sunroom.” He didn’t even suggest cleaning up from our lunch, which was a sure sign he was distraught. Stefan wasn’t obsessivecompulsive , but he was orderly, and leaving a mess behind was totally unlike him. Marco was already there, curled up behind one of the well-stuffed bamboo-framed blue chairs and didn’t even stir when we walked in and sat on the couch. I thought briefly of Vanessa’s warning to talk outside, but I needed to be indoors, as little protection as that might be. “I know I said I wanted to shoot people,” Stefan brought out quietly. “But even if I did, it wouldn’t change anything, it wouldn’t help. There’s no such thing as closure after last night.” 46 “Well, maybe there’s justice. Or revenge.” “The country’s changed. Vanessa’s right...