The Body on Ortega Highway (4 page)

“
You told me you’d be home by
5:00. I’ve had dinner waiting for you for
two hours.”

“
I’m sorry, honey. Some of
the guys wanted to go out for a beer after we left the
dockyards.”

“You could have called.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why didn’t you answer your
phone?”

“
I never got your
call.”

“You better not have been to one of
those stripper joints.”

“Honey. I don’t do that anymore.
Not since I met you.”

Clarissa isn’t buying any of this.
She sits on the sofa and pouts. Gumbo comes over and puts his nose
on her knee.

Ron says, “Gumbo wants his
walk.”

“Clarissa wants her walk, too.”

“Then let’s go,” he says, trying to
appease her.

“Without Gumbo this time.”

“Okay. Sorry little dude,” he tells
the dog.

They walk over to nearby
Fisher Park and find a secluded spot under a tree. They both sit
down on the grass.

He tells her
again how sorry he is for not calling. She won’t
even look at him.

“
I will call next time,
honey. This won’t happen again. I swear.” He tries to get her to
look at him and lifts up her chin when she’s looking down. He tells
her how much he loves her. He starts stroking her hair away from
her face. She relents a little and they start kissing. At first
it’s a chaste kiss, but then they kiss again for a longer time. Ron
reaches under her blouse and unhooks the front clasp of her bra,
releasing her large breasts. He starts caressing them, and she
reaches down to the inside of his thigh to feel his
hardness.

She tells him, “I think we’d better
go home before this goes any further.”

He says, “That’s a very good
idea.”

*******

T
hey
are basking in the afterglow and Ron says, “It’s a good thing we
stopped when we did. Can you imagine the headlines, ‘Two cops
arrested for lewd and immoral conduct’?”

“We’d never hear the end of it from
our coworkers,” Clarissa says, laughing.

Ron’s phone rings. “Now what?” he
says.

The call is from his
boss, who wants Ron to go back out to the docks
because the cars are being loaded right this minute.

He tells Clarissa, “Sorry,
honey. They want me to go back out. I’m might have to stay there
all night.”

“Damn! At least eat your dinner
first before you go.”

“
I will.”

He finishes his dinner and
kisses her goodbye. “Be careful out there!” she tells
him
, as he is walking out the
door.

*******

After he leaves that night,
she
is propped up in bed watching Sherlock
Holmes with Gumbo snuggled next to her when the phone rings. She
picks up the phone, and is greeted by silence. “Hello?” she says
again.

A man on the other end of the
phone says, “I’d give you any amount of money if you’d do to me
what you were doing to your husband at the park.”

Clarissa is terrified and slams the
phone down. Her hands are shaking. She gets out of her bed and
checks the door and windows to make sure they’re locked. She looks
for Gumbo and starts calling out for him. She finds him still in
bed where she had left him. She hugs him and says, “I need you,
little guy. I’m scared.” She calls Ron and tells him what’s
happened.

“This is so creepy, Clarissa. I’d
like to beat the crap out of this pervert. I can’t believe he was
watching us and we didn’t even know he was there.”

She says, “What I don’t like
is that he knows our phone number and where we live. I’m going to
speak to the people in the Sexual Assault Unit tomorrow to ask what
all I can do.”

“Please do. I wish I was with you
now.”

“
Me, too.”

“You got me on speed-dial,
right?”

“Yes.”

“
Call me. Please if anything
more happens tonight or tomorrow.”

“I will, honey.”

“Take care. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

Chapter Seven

Clarissa didn’t sleep very
well
last night, and when the alarm goes off
at 6:30, she feels like throwing the clock across the room. Gumbo
is asleep under the covers at the foot of the bed.

She crawls out and he follows
her into the kitchen. She puts his dog chow in his bowl, mixes it
with some chicken broth
, and grates some
Parmesan cheese over it--just the way he likes it. “You are so
lucky, little doggie,” she says, as she gives him some extra
cheese. She makes him sit and shake her hand before she puts the
bowl on the floor. “We miss Dad, don’t we?” she asks the
dog.

She pours herself some Raisin
Bran and dices half a banana on top. She puts on her bathrobe and
slippers, and pads out to the driveway to pick up the newspaper.
When she opens the front door she looks out both ways to see if
anyone’s watching her. ‘I hate being so paranoid!’ she tells
herself.

The headline in the paper
says, “Still no leads on the Hillside
Chopper.” The article shows a picture of the victim’s single
mother who says how frustrated she is that it’s taken so long to
find the killer. “What if he strikes again?” she plaintively
asks.

Clarissa sets the newspaper
aside and goes to take a shower. After she’s dressed, she
calls her friend, Raylene, who works in the D. A.’s
Sexual Assault Unit. She asks her friend, “Can I buy you a cup of
Starbucks and ask you some questions about some disturbing phone
calls I’ve been getting?”

“Sure. Let’s meet at the Starbucks
on Broadway.”

*******

As Clarissa walks over to
downtown Santa Ana, she notices all of the teenagers walking around
with cameras
taking pictures of each other.
‘Why aren’t they in school?’ she wonders. Then she remembers that
the students are probably from nearby Orange County School of the
Arts, a very expensive private school and training ground for all
the ‘Glee-Wanna-Be’s’. Next to Starbucks, she walks by an outdoor
shrine in front of a night club, where candles are still burning
and flowers are still being laid in memory of a teenage girl who
recently had been beaten to death by other girls there. ‘What’s
wrong with girls these days, anyway?’ she asks herself. ‘It’s bad
enough that boys do this kind of crap.’

When
she opens the door to Starbucks, she sees that her colleague
is already sitting at a table drinking coffee. Clarissa says, “Hey!
I was supposed to be buying you coffee.”

“Next time,” her friend says.

Clarissa orders a Café Latte and
sits down with her friend.

“I was so sorry to hear about your
cousin in Savannah dying, Clarissa.”

“Thanks. She was a great person. I
wish I could have spent more time with her.”

They’re both quiet while Clarissa
stirs her latte.

Her friend says, “So, you
wanted to tell me about some telephone calls you’ve been
getting.”

“Yes. They are really starting to
freak me out.”

“Tell me everything that
happened.”

“Well, it started out innocently
enough. He said he was doing a brief survey for his sociology class
at Chapman.”

“
Survey, huh? That’s classic.
They love the fact that you are willing to stay on the line because
you want to help them with their homework.”

“
Yes. It started out all
innocent-like. He wanted to know when I went to college and where
my last vacation was.”

“And then he went on to more
personal things.”

“
Yes. That’s right. It got
bad after he asks me if I was married.”

“
Classic. Go on. I bet he
asked for your opinion on premarital sex?”

“Yes! That’s exactly what he
did.”

“
It’s like these guys have
scripts or something. They are so predictable.”

“Then he asked me if I’d ever
watched X-rated movies.”

“Is that when you hung up?”

“Yes. I don’t know why I even
stayed on the line as long as I did.”

“
Probably because you thought
you were helping him with his ‘homework assignment’. I know you.
You’re so Minnesotan. You don’t want to appear rude and you put up
with all sorts of obnoxious behavior that other people would never
allow.”

“I do? Nobody’s ever told me that
I’m Minnesotan.”

“I mean that with the greatest
affection.”

“
Thank you…I
think.”

“
Did he call
again?”

“
Yes. And here’s the creepy
part. Ron and I were sitting at the park and we got into an
argument. He tried to get me to make up with him and started
touching my face and stoking my hair.”

“
Uh-Oh. Here we
go.”

“It was getting dark. We didn’t
think anybody was around.”

“
So, you guys started making
out like a couple of horny teenagers.”

“Well we are newlyweds, after
all.”

“You got to watch those hands,
honey.”

“Okay. You get the picture. I won’t
bore you with the details.”

“
You got a fine looking
husband, girlfriend. I don’t blame you if you got a bit carried
away.”

“There’s nothing like make-up
sex.”

“Been there; done that, honey.”

“So anyway…Last night, when I was
all by myself, I get another phone call. He said that he’d give me
any amount of money I want if I’d do to him what I was doing to my
husband at the park.”

“He was watching you?!”

“
Yes. He knows where we walk
and probably where we live. He seems to know when Ron’s gone,
too.”

“And he has your phone number.”

“What should I do? Change my phone
number?”

“There are a number of things you
could do. You could change it, or just let the answering machine
answer. He wants to hear your voice live, and may eventually give
up if can’t talk to you directly.”

“You said there are a number of
things. What else?”

“
You could go ahead and
answer and simply hang up if the caller doesn’t identify himself
after you say ‘hello’ two times. Or you could report the incident
to the telephone company and/or the police.”

“
Okay. I tried doing ‘Star
69’
for call return, but all I got was a
ringing phone on the other end.”

“
I assume Caller ID didn’t
show anything?”

“
No; it didn’t.”

“
Well, calls are logged by
the telephone company, so his phone number can be discovered.
However, many people who regularly do this kind of thing often use
payphones or prepaid cell phones.”

“
I’m going to get tracing
turned on.”

“
Good idea.”

“Why do guys do this?”

“
A lot of these guys started
doing these types of calls when they were teenagers with their
friends. They’d do it and start giggling if the girls played along
or got upset. Most guys outgrow it. But some start doing it by
themselves, without their friends. It’s very addicting for them.
They’re often isolated and have problems with their own personal
relationships. Or they’re overweight or think they’ll ugly, so they
feel safer behind a telephone receiver. And who knows? They might
just get lucky.”

“But are they dangerous?”

“It depends on a lot of things. But
mostly, they like being anonymous and don’t want to see the girl on
the end of the line in person. They like the fantasy aspect of it.
That’s what gets them off.”

“
I see. Well, I think I’ll
start with the phone company and see
if they
have a record of the call.”

“
That’s a good
idea.”

“
Okay. This is really
starting to freak me out.
I’m
scared.”

“Try not to be. You’re a strong
person. Don’t let him get to you.”

“I’ll try. Thanks for all your
help.”

“You’re very welcome. You take care
and let me know if you have any more questions, okay?”

They both stand up and hug
each other; then Clarissa watches her friend go out the door.
Clarissa calls the phone company to see if they have any record of
where last night’s phone call came from, but, unfortunately, it was
from a pay phone in Santa Ana.

Chapter Eight

That
night, Clarissa and Ron are in bed asleep when their home
phone rings at midnight.

Ron wakes up and says, “Who the
hell is calling at this hour?!”

Clarissa hears him and says, “Don’t
answer it.”

“This has got to stop,” Ron says
and climbs out of bed. He goes to the kitchen and gruffly answers,
“Hello?”

The man at the other end of
the line says, “Are you two having sex right now?”

“Listen, you bastard. I am going to
find you and beat the living crap out of you.”

The line goes dead. Ron looks up to
see Clarissa and Gumbo standing in the kitchen with him.

“What did he say?” Clarissa
asks.

“He wanted to know if we were
having sex right now.”

Clarissa says, “Ron! Oh, my God!
This has got to stop!”

“I know, honey. I know.”

She picks up the phone and dials
“Star 69”, but the phone line on the other end rings and rings. “I
don’t know how much more I can take of this, Ron.”