Blue Smoke

herself, where she let him touch her. Whore-bitch.
    Have some of that, oh yeah, a good piece of that before you light her up.
    Window goes dark. In bed now.
    Let her fall asleep. More fun if she’s asleep. Take your time, got nothing but.
    Have a cigarette. Relax.
    Take out the phone. Got a good picture of her in your head. Naked, in bed.
    Wake up, bitch.
    The phone rang, shooting her out of sleep. She glanced at the clock first, noted she’d barely been down ten minutes. The Caller ID display made her frown. Local number, unfamiliar.
    “Hello?”
    “It’s almost time for the surprise.”
    “Oh, for God’s sake.”
    “Hot and bright. You’ll know it’s for you. Are you naked, Catarina? Are you wet?”
    When he said her name, a fist hit her heart. “Who—”
    She cursed when the phone clicked in her ear. Once again, she wrote down the number, the time.
    First thing in the morning, she thought grimly, somebody else was getting a goddamn wake-up call.
    She got out of bed, got her weapon. Checked her load. Taking it with her, she checked her doors, her windows. Then stretched out on the couch in the living room, the gun on the table beside her, and tried to get some sleep.
    B oth cell phones.” With O’Donnell beside her, Reena reported the calls to her captain. “Each is registered to a different party, but they’re both Baltimore city numbers.”
    “He called you by name.”
    “The second call, yeah.”
    “You didn’t recognize the voice?”

    “No, sir. He may be disguising it. He’s keeping it soft, a little hoarse. But it didn’t ring any bells. The first time I figured it was just some jerk spinning the dial, getting off. But this was personal.”
    “Go check it out.”
    “Feel stupid, dragging you along,” Reena said to her partner when they walked to the car. “I could handle something like this on personal.”
    “Guy makes threatening calls—”
    “He didn’t threaten me.”
    “Underlying,” O’Donnell said, and pouted a little when Reena got to the driver’s side before he did. “Threat’s implied, and he makes it to a cop—uses the cop’s name. It’s official business.”
    “Lots of people know my name. And it looks like one of them’s a crank-calling pervert.” She backed out of the parking spot. “Closest is number two’s work address. Phone’s registered in the name of Abigail Parsons.”
    Abigail Parsons taught fifth grade. She was a generously sized woman of sixty who wore sturdy shoes and a bright blue dress.
    In Reena’s judgment she looked a little thrilled to have been called out of class by the police.
    “My cell phone?”
    “Yes, ma’am. Do you have your cell phone?”
    “Of course.” She opened a bag the size of Rhode Island, plucked a little Nokia out of the meticulously ordered interior. “It’s off. I don’t turn it on during class, but I keep it with me. Is there a problem with it? I don’t understand.”
    “Could you tell me who else has access to this phone?”
    “No one. It’s mine.”
    “Do you live alone, Ms. Parsons?” O’Donnell asked.
    “Since my husband died two years ago.”
    “Do you remember the last time you used it?”
    “I used it yesterday. Called my daughter when I left school. I was going over there for dinner, wanted to see if she wanted me to pick up anything. What’s this about?”
    The second number took them to a gym where the owner was leading an aerobics class. When she broke, she got the phone out of the bagin her employee’s locker. She was a bubbly twenty-two, and stated she’d come home alone the night before after a girls’ night out. She lived alone.
    Neither phone displayed a call to Reena’s number in memory.
    “Cloned ’em,” O’Donnell said when they were back outside.
    “Yeah, and that’s just weird. Who do I know who’s going to take the time and trouble to clone cell phones so he can wake me up in the middle of the night?”
    “Better to ask who knows you. We can go through some old case files, see if anything shakes.”
    “Surprise for me,” she murmured. “Big and bright. Sexual overtones.”
    “Old boyfriend? New boyfriend?”
    “I don’t know.” She pulled open the car door. “But he’s got my attention.”
    S he set it aside, but she was ill at ease all day. Who would clone two phones just to mess with her head? Wasn’t that hard to clone, if you had the equipment and the know-how. And the know-how was easy to come by.
    But it took deliberation and planning. And