THE LAST WITNESS
The Second Call
The phone rang at 3 a.m. She answered it. She would spend weeks trying to decide if that was the right choice.
Night || Phone || Threat || Tension
The call came at 3:07 a.m. on Friday morning, three days after the alley. Sara was awake — she had been awake since two, the baby pressing against her bladder and her mind pressing against itself, the specific insomnia of late pregnancy compounded by the specific insomnia of a crisis she couldn’t fully see the edges of. James was asleep beside her with his usual unconscious confidence, the man who slept well in all circumstances, and she had been lying in the dark for an hour with her phone on the nightstand watching the ceiling when it lit up. Unknown number. She looked at it for two full rings — the specific calculation of whether to answer, whether it was the hospital about Greer, whether it was related to the investigation, whether it was a wrong number at three in the morning — and then she slid out of bed with the practiced silence she had developed in the last trimester, padding to the bathroom and closing the door before she answered. “Hello.” A pause. Then a voice: male, low, not disguised but careful, the specific register of someone who was choosing their words while they spoke. “Sara Cole.” “Yes,” she said. “Who is this?” “Someone who knows what you don’t remember,” the voice said. “And someone who is trying to decide whether to help you remember it or let it stay buried.” She pressed her back against the bathroom wall. She was barefoot on the cold tile. The baby was still. She was very, very calm — the kind of calm that was not the absence of fear but the presence of a mind that had decided that fear was not an option it was going to exercise. “Tell me your name,” she said. “You don’t know me,” the voice said. “But you know someone who does. Thomas Greer would know my name.” “Thomas Greer is in a coma,” she said. “I know,” the voice said. “I know exactly how bad that is. I know who put him there.” A beat. “It wasn’t you,” the voice said. “In case you’re wondering.” “I wasn’t wondering that,” Sara said, which was technically true but only technically. “Good,” the voice said. “Because that’s important. You need to be clear about what happened that night. Not just what you remember. What actually happened.” “I’m working on that,” she said. “Work faster,” the voice said. “The person who put Thomas Greer in the hospital is the same person who arranged for your number to be in Greer’s phone. The same person who arranged for the memory gap. And this person is not done.” “Are you threatening me?” “I’m informing you,” the voice said, with a quality that was not unfriendly but was not warm — the quality of someone who had made a decision they weren’t entirely comfortable with and was executing it carefully. “There’s a difference between a threat and a warning.” “What do you want?” Sara said. “I want the right person to go to prison for what happened in 2009,” the voice said. “And in 2024. And everything in between.” “What happened in 2009?” she said. The line was quiet for a moment. “You really don’t remember,” the voice said. Not a question — an assessment. “No,” she said. “What happened in 2009?” “Raymond Doss went to prison for a murder he didn’t commit,” the voice said. “And the people who put him there are the same people who arranged everything you’re currently dealing with. And one of them is very close to you. Closer than you know.” “Give me a name,” she said. “Not yet,” the voice said. “Are you safe?” she said. “To meet?” “When I’m sure you are,” the voice said. “When I know that what I give you will get to the right people without being suppressed.” “I’m an assistant DA,” she said. “I am the right people.” “No,” the voice said, gently. “Someone inside the DA’s office is part of this. You need to understand that before you bring anything official. You need to build it from the outside in, not the inside out.” She thought about this. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?” she said. “You don’t,” the voice said. “But you know that your phone records show calls you don’t remember making. You know that your name appears in a case you have no memory of. You know that something is wrong. I’m just telling you how wrong.” He paused. “I’ll call again,” he said. “When it’s safe. Until then — be careful about who you trust. Including the people who are supposed to be helping you.” The line went dead. Sara stood in the bathroom with the phone pressed against her chest and she breathed. Counted. The baby shifted, pressing against her from the inside with the indifferent physicality of something that needed what it needed regardless of the circumstances of its needing. She breathed again. She went back to bed. She lay in the dark beside her sleeping husband — including the people who are supposed to be helping you — and she listened to him breathe and she thought about closeness and trust and the specific danger of assuming that proximity meant alignment. She thought about James. She thought about Petra. She thought about Webb, with his grey eyes and his careful questions. She thought about the person whose voice she had just heard, who said he was trying to help her, which was exactly what someone who was not trying to help her would also say. She did not sleep. She organized. She had no evidence and no allies she was certain of. She had a brilliant mind and eight months of pregnancy and a phone call from an unknown number and a murdered journalist in a hospital bed. She had worked with less. She arranged what she had into the framework it suggested. She thought: Raymond Doss. Start there. Everything starts there. In the morning, she would go to the library. Not the DA’s office library. The public library, where nobody would see her, where the records were accessible without leaving a trail inside the system. She would find the 2009 case. She would find the name Sara Cole in the record. She would find out what she was supposed to have done ten years ago, in the gap between who she was and who someone needed her to seem to be. She would find the truth because the truth was the only tool she had ever reliably used. She was going to use it now the way she always had: systematically, completely, without flinching at what it revealed.
James’s breathing was even and slow beside her. She turned her head and looked at his profile in the dark. She loved him. She was nearly certain she loved him. The nearly was new, and it disturbed her more than everything else combined, and she could not yet locate its origin. She put it aside. Evidence first. Feelings after. That had always been the way she worked. She pressed her palm against her belly. The baby pressed back. She thought: Whatever this is, I’m going to get to the other side of it. Both of us are. She meant herself and her child. She was not yet including James in that calculation. She noted that she was not including him. Filed it. Moved on.