DEAD AIR

by

Jack Hardway

       "...to worry about a thing, honey. It's done. She's dead."
       I jerked the wireless phone away and looked at it. What the hell? My thumb hovered over the Cancel button, but I didn't press it. Instead, I put the phone back against my ear.
       "...just like I told you it would go. The back of the house went up like a big firecracker, then the whole place burned to the ground."
       "Somebody'll suspect us, Paul. Somebody has to have seen us together sometime. They'll figure you did it somehow."
       "No, they won't. And if they do, screw 'em. I was five hundred miles away at a sales conference when it happened. Anyway, I didn't kill her. The mutt did."
       I wondered if I oughtn't be doing something, telling somebody about this. Tell them what? That somebody somewhere in the English-speaking world might have committed a murder? Wireless was virtually impossible to trace. All I'd done was to speed-dial Allison to let her know I was on my way home, and I'd found myself connected to a call already working between two other people who could be anywhere. I knew this kind of thing was said to happen once in a blue moon, but it had never happened to me before. At least, not in a way that I'd know about it, not when I was on the listening end. 
       So far, they didn't seem to know I was there...I  was a fly on the wall. Hang up, I said inside my head. I didn't do that, of course. I did what about anybody else would do; I kept listening, trying to keep things as quiet as one can in a moving car in city traffic. The Lexus was incredible at keeping outside noises outside, but there was still the subdued ruckus of lesser engines and trucks and occasional horns. They were kept at a respectable distance by the car's engineering, but I could still hear them. I wondered if the people on the other end of the phone could.
       The woman managed a nervous giggle, then said, "I still can't believe you got the dog to do that."
       "He did it, all right. She always locks Bruno up in the basement rec room at night so he won't go on her hallway rubber tree, so it was nice and closed up down there like always. She left the TV on to keep him company like any other night, tuned to the same old-time TV channel as always. He heard the music to Petticoat Junction start at one AM and went right to the gas space heater and turned the gas valve handle with his teeth. Just like I've spent the last six months since January training him to do. Only he got a different reward this time. When the vapors finally made it to the water heater's element in the far corner of the room, that end of the house was blown to smithereens and the rest burned."
       "You're sure she's dead?"
       "She looked awfully dead to me, sugar. The master bedroom is—was—right over the rec room...she was probably dead before the fire even started. Her sister called me at three in the morning at my hotel room in Atlanta to tell me about it. Her, the dog, the house, the next-door neighbor's garage...the funeral's tomorrow. Everybody understands why I want everything over with as soon as possible. I'm pretty torn up over it."
       A semi moving by me released his air brakes, and the loud hiss penetrated the sanctuary of the Lexus.
       "What was that?" the woman said with what sounded like an edge of worry.
       "What was what?"
       "That sound, like a fire extinguisher."
       "Just static. It's nothing."
       There was a moment's silence, then: "We ought not say too much so much on the phone."
       "Will you relax? This is wireless, baby. The sweet thing about throwaway wireless phones is that even if somebody was listening all they'd know is that we're somewhere in the western hemisphere of the planet."
       I turned the exchange over in my head as the woman repeated her worry and the guy basically told her the same thing again. I'd had lots of dogs in my life and had to allow that, as screwy as it sounded, it wouldn't be all that complicated to teach a dog to go to something and twist it with its teeth when it heard a particular sound. It wouldn't be that hard to teach it to do any one of a lot of different simple things. Hell, our neighbor's pooch fetched the morning paper and brought it to him when he clapped his hands. What was the difference? All it would take would be enough time and enough cheese crackers for rewards. It sounded out-there, but this guy could have done it over a period of time without his wife being any the wiser. Trained the dog to do a certain thing whenever it heard a certain sound, then made sure he was a million miles away the next time it heard that sound. The thing would have required a little patience to put together, but that's all it would have required. Without much trouble at all, the sonofabitch could have pulled it off. Evidently had pulled it off.
       "I'll call you tomorrow evening, after the services."
       "Okay. Love you."
       "Love you. Bye."
       And that was all there was to it. That was it, and I was listening to dead air. I pressed the End Call button and put the phone on the passenger seat, and pulled onto the freeway on-ramp, still trying to process the last few minutes. Once I was in the slow lane and underway, I retrieved the phone and tried the house again. This time she picked up.
       "I should be home in about twenty minutes."
       "Finally? After five days away I'd think you could make it for supper on Friday. My parents are coming over."
       Great.
       "Do you know you've been gone more days than you've been home the last month?"
       "That's what over-the-road trucking is, Ally. That's why I make three times the money of the other guys."
       "Can't you get local driving?"
       "Sure. For a third of the money. But listen to me for a second, Ally. The single weirdest thing of my life just happened to me. You won't believe it."
       "Well, you could do something," she went on as if she hadn't heard me. "I don't like being here by myself all week...."
       Then, in an instant, everything changed. It was as if a switch had been flipped inside my head. She kept talking, but I only caught parts of it. I was starting to feel great, like I was in the carpool lane sailing by the other traffic and everything was right with the world. I felt a little guilty, too, but it was passing.
       "I don't like it either, Ally," I said. I gave the thing another second's thought to make sure, then smiled and said, "I'll talk with you about it some more when I get home. I think I know just the thing to keep you company while I'm away."