The hold music is barely a second, but it feels like forever.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
The dispatcher’s voice is clipped, annoyingly calm.
“I’d like to report an assault—an attack, I guess,” I say, and that’s when I realize I have no idea how to explain any of what just happened. “My friend was—he was… There was violence.”The words don’t line up in my head. They get jammed in my throat.
The pause on the other end is infinitesimal but cutting. “Where did this occur, ma’am?”
“Fangerella’s Pizza. On the corner of Westing and Mill.” I glance at Casey. His fingertips are barely grazing the outline of the bruises like he’s afraid to make contact. “We got out but I think… I think there are bodies. Or what’s left of them.”
I can’t bring myself to say what I really saw.
“Fangerella’s… Can you spell that?”
I spell it.
“I’m not seeing a Fangerella’s Pizza at that location,” the operator says, her keyboard clicking in the background. “Could you repeat the location?”
I do.
The operator’s tone gets tighter, more skeptical.
“Tell me what you think happened,” she says.
I clock the tone immediately.
“We had just walked in. There was a fight, I don’t—It was so fast. The guys were huge. I guess they were on something? One, the owner, I think, grabbed my friend, and it was like—I don’t know—he was strong enough to lift him one-handed off the floor.”
“Any defining details you can remember?”
“He had tattoos,” I reply, “and a suit. The other guy, I don’t know. I just remember his eyes were… wrong.”
“‘Wrong how?” The dispatcher’s voice is dull, bored. Clearly she thinks I’m making it up.
“Too bright. Reflective? Like an animal at night. I can’t describe it. Sorry.”
Silence. “Ma’am, are you currently under the influence of any substances?”
I want to throw the phone through the wall. “No,” I say, then, “Not for us.”
There’s another silence, this one thicker.
“We have your information on file. An officer will be out to follow up as soon as one is available.”
Click.
Casey’s voice is low. “They didn’t believe us.”
“Nope.” I plop onto the seat next to him. I want to kick something. “No one’s coming.”
He stares at me for a second, then lets his head drop into his hands. “What the hell happened in there, Kallie?”
I shake my head. “I have no fucking clue.”
Casey’s gaze drops from my eyes to my hands, and his brow furrows.
“Kal, your hand.”
