The Shadow Hunter

pulled onto Pico, heading east. After five blocks he changed lanes, then quickly changed lanes again, watching his rearview mirror to see if any vehicle behind him performed the same maneuver. None did. He was pretty sure he wasn’t being followed.
    At a gas station on Pico he stopped and used the pay phone, calling one of several numbers he had memorized. A message machine answered, as usual. He wouldn’t have minded the machine so much if Kris’s voice had been recorded on the tape, but it was the voice of a man, presumably her husband.
    After the beep Hickle said, “Hi, Kris, it’s me. I know you’re at work. Just wanted you to know I’m thinking of you. And that yellow blouse you wore yesterday on the air—no offense, but frankly I didn’t care for it. Blue is your color. I enjoyed your repartee withPhil, the sports guy, especially that part about the Dodgers. I didn’t realize you were a baseball fan. I hope you don’t try eating one of those Dodger dogs. Those things’ll kill you. Your health is important to me. Bye.”
    He got back in the car. Two blocks later he stopped at a convenience store and used another pay phone. He felt it was important to call from a variety of locations. To stay on the line too long at any one place might have been dangerous. He wasn’t sure why. He just knew he had to stay on the move.
    This time he called her work number, reaching her voicemail service. “Hello, Kris. I guess you’re busy getting ready for the six o’clock show. I wanted to ask if you got the flowers I sent last week. I hope you liked them. I picked the same arrangement you had on your desk in the
LA Magazine
photo shoot. It was hard to match the bouquet exactly. You should cut off the tips of the stems every few days to keep the flowers fresh. Oh, this is Raymond, in case you couldn’t tell. Break a leg.”
    He drove for another mile, parked at a mini-mall, and used a pay phone outside a submarine sandwich shop. He called the KPTI switchboard. “Kris Barwood, please.”
    The operator said Ms. Barwood was unavailable. This might have been true, but it was more likely that the woman simply recognized Hickle’s voice. He did call the switchboard nearly every day, after all. “May I take a message?” she asked.
    “Yes, please tell her Raymond Hickle called. I have some urgent information for her, but I can’t convey it through an intermediary. It’s important that I speak with Kris directly.”
    “I’ll pass that on,” the operator said, sounding bored. He noticed she did not ask him for a number where he could be reached.
    He hung up, drove three more blocks, parked at a fast-food restaurant, and used the pay phone, calling Kris’s home number again and shifting his weight restlessly until the answering machine beeped. “Kris, hi, it’s Raymond. Look, I wanted to tellyou this directly, but it looks as if we keep playing telephone tag, so I’ll have to leave a message. The thing is, I had a dream about you, and it might have been a prophetic dream. I saw you doing the news, and you were reporting on a murder, one of those drive-by shootings, and then a car came careening right through the wall and into the TV studio, and shots were fired, and you were hit, Kris. You were hit, and there was blood all over. You were a bloody mess. I don’t think they caught who did it, either. I thought it was something you should know. Sometimes dreams foretell the future, or so people say. Gotta go now, bye.”
    He drove a half block, parked at the curb, and risked returning to the same pay phone for a quick follow-up that had just occurred to him. “One more thing,” he said when he got through to her home number. “You know that flower arrangement I sent you? It would look good at a funeral, don’t you think? Talk to you soon.”
    He thought he was done, but three blocks later he pulled into a supermarket parking lot and used his last thirty-five cents to call the KPTI switchboard again. The same operator answered. “Kris Barwood, please,” Hickle said.
    She let out a sigh. “I’m sorry, but Ms. Barwood—”
    “Is unavailable. That’s what you were going to say, right?”
    “Yes, sir. I can take a message—”
    “Would you, please? Uh, tell her Raymond called. Just Raymond, no last name. She knows me.”
    “Fine, sir, I’ll do that.”
    “And one more thing? Hello?”
    “I’m still here. What is it?”
    “Tell her I hope a fucking rat crawls between her legs and chews out her