Public Enemy Zero Read online

  “Doctor Lovestrange? Doctor Lovestrange? Huh, it appears he hung up on us. Well, we can look forward to his next call.”

  When Mitchell first heard Rookman, he thought he was the kind of crank that felt Fox News was too liberal. After listening to the show, he actually looked forward to it. The mix of crazy conspiracies and ghost stories was compelling. After a while, they began to sound plausible, until some guy would call in talking about the orgy he had on a flying saucer at Woodstock.

  Mitchell couldn’t figure out where Rookman really stood on all of it. He had to believe some of it. Sitting in the booth in his trucker’s hat and camouflage vest talking about buying up gold coins, he looked the part of the conspiracy nut. To talk to him face to face, he didn’t really seem like the kind of guy that believed a race of lizard people ran the world. But he was the type that would sweep his home for bugs if he heard a click on the line.

  The show was actually just a hobby for Rookman. When Mitchell found out that his day job was as a community college guidance counselor, he was strangely not surprised.

  Working the late shift for barely above minimum wage on a station nobody listened to, Mitchell wished he could have gone to a guy that kept copies of Guns & Ammo, The Economist and Penthouse on his desk.

  The phone in the booth rang. Mitchell picked it up.

  “WQXD, this is Mad Mitch speaking.”

  “Go fuck yourself, Mitch,” said an adolescent voice followed by giggling in the background.

  Mitchell took it as a compliment that the call came in before his show started. That meant they were waiting for him.

  Callers like that were never deterred by the fact that all calls were time-delayed and ones like that never made it to the air. For some reason, they thought that they would be the first one to call in and tell him to eat a dick live on the air.

  When he first took the job, the station manager told him to expect some abuse and showed him a list of numbers to look for on the caller ID. They were known nut jobs who obsessively called the station.

  The morning crew guys would make jokes about them and refer to them by their last four digits of their phone number.

  4788 once called the station 320 times in one day. Anytime someone answered, it didn’t matter if it was a man or a woman, a loud, shrill voice would scream “Faggot!” and then hang up. The guy who made parody songs for the station made an auto-tuned version that got 400,000 views on YouTube.

  Mitchell thought it ironic that probably more people heard that guy than ever listened to the station.

  The phone rang again. Mitchell picked it up.

  “Try not to eat too many dicks tonight, Mitchy boy.” Mitch recognized the voice.

  “I’m sure you already ate them all, Rookman.”

  “I’m a survivor, man. Have a good show.”

  “Thanks man. So that Chinese satellite thing. You believe that?” Mitch didn’t want to sound like the gullible fan boy, but he couldn’t help it.

  “Nah. It’s horse crap. It was Russians.” Rookman hung up.

  Leave it to the Rookman to wrap a mystery in an insult.

  Mitchell flipped on his intro music and then gave out the number for requests. Three calls came in. He took line one.

  “WQXD, this is Mad Mitch speaking.”

  “Fuck you, Mitch.” Click.

  Line two.

  “WQXD, this is Mad Mitch speaking.”

  “Faggot!” Click.

  Line three.

  “WQXD, this is Mad Mitch speaking.”

  “Hi, Mitch. This is Amy,” came a sad voice. “Longtime listener, first-time caller.”

  Her words came out hesitantly, like someone holding back tears.

  “How you doing tonight, Amy? What can I do for you?”

  “It’s been a rough day for me, Mitch. Can you play some Taylor Swift?”

  “Sure thing, sweetheart. Want to tell us what happened?” A juicy breakup story always made a good intro to a love song.

  “I got into an argument with my boyfriend.”

  Please make it about sex, thought Mitchell.

  “Then on my way home from work, my car got a flat tire and ....” She paused. “Some guy attacked me.” The last part came out in halted breaths.

  Mitchell’s body went numb.

  3

  Mitchell stared at the microphone for what felt like an eternity. His back began to tense up. He looked over his shoulder and then through the window into the darkened hallway.

  It was empty. Rookman had left, and Mitchell was alone in the station.

  He looked over at the security panel that would flash when someone came through a door. It was dark.

  “Mitch?” came the sad voice.

  He tried to find enough saliva to speak. “I’m still here, Amy. That sounds ... that sounds horrible.” He took a breath. “Attacked?”

  “I was trying to change my tire and then this psycho comes out of nowhere.” She sniffled.

  Mitchell remembered to breathe. “Did he hit you?”

  “My nose is bloody. I think so. It happened real fast.” Sob. “I called my mom to come get me.”

  Knowing that there were others listening, Mitchell had to ask, “Amy, are you sure you don’t need medical attention?” He tried to hide the tremble in his voice. “Or the police?”

  “I think I scared him off. I just want to go home. Could you play my song, please.” It was the voice of a scared little girl and not the portly demon who tried to kill him hours before.

  “All right, sweetheart.” Mitchell typed in her request.

  “You Belong with Me” began to play.

  “I love you, Mitch.” Click.

  Mitchell sat back and exhaled. His knee was shaking. His stomach was ready to bail out its contents.

  The girl sounded like she was still in shock. What was going to happen when her mother came to pick her up and saw what a bloody mess she was? He began drumming his finger on the table and then realized he still had an open microphone.

  He raced through the hypotheticals. What if they called the police?

  Could she remember his license plate? What he looked like?

  She sounded disoriented on the phone. She seemed confused. He was pretty sure she couldn’t remember enough to directly finger him. Pretty sure.

  He thought for a moment, if she called the police, the first thing they’d want to do is run a rape kit on her. That’d of course come back negative. At least for him.

  So then they’d be dealing with possible assault.

  There was a fax machine in the radio station that was dedicated to police reports. Mitchell would sometimes read them. He tried to think of anything relevant.

  If he went to the police right now, it’d scream to them like he was guilty and feeling remorseful about it.

  He knew there was no way he could convince them of the hysteria, the blood lust in her eyes or the panic he felt. They’d just see the scared girl who asks for a Taylor Swift song when she cried.

  He had wanted to pry for more information but knew that would have been a bad idea over the air.

  On the caller ID, he could still see her number. Should he call her back off the air and talk to her?

  Mitchell loaded up the track list. He turned off his microphone and reached for his iPhone. He was about to type the number into the keypad when he realized that would put his contact information right on her phone.

  He put his phone away. What about the station phone?

  He didn’t know how much attention he could pay toward her without looking guilty or callus.

  Fuck it. He picked it up and dialed. It went to voicemail.

  Mitchell didn’t know what to do next. He heard the beep.

  He hung up.

  He rationalized that by at least calling back he could justify that he tried to make an effort to follow up. If the station manager asked, he did his due diligence.

  This girl was confused, probably bipolar and a fan. If he just let it go, it’d probably go a
way.

  Mitchell began to relax. He leaned back in the chair and looked at the ceiling.

  If she couldn’t remember anything specific about him, then it’d never trace back to him. There was nothing connecting him to what happened.

  He ran his fingers through his hair and tried to think of something to say when the song ended.

  “Hey everyone, it’s your pal Mad Mitch here in the late-night hour.” He thought about saying a white lie about being dropped off by a friend or having showed up at the studio an hour earlier. Then he realized the stupidity of that.

  He tried to think of a question to throw out to callers. Everything he could think of sounded like it would point directly back at him.

  Favorite song to do it to. Attempted rapist.

  Weirdest thing that happened. Attacked a girl.

  Biggest fear. Getting caught.

  Biggest wish. Getting away with it.

  “Fuck! The blood on my car!”

  Mitchell looked at the display. The microphone was live. He felt all the blood drain out of his body. He was lightheaded. His cheeks burned with fire.

  He looked down at his right finger. He didn’t remember doing it. But it was there. It was pure instinct that made him click the drop button when he heard the word “fuck.”

  He counted off the syllables of “The blood on my car.” He was well under the seven-second delay.

  Mitch threw to commercial and queued up his play list. No more audience interaction tonight. At least for now.

  He set the timer on his iPhone and ran out of the studio. Mitchell grabbed a bunch of paper towels from the break room and ran out the backdoor to the parking lot. He’d parked it under a bright light so it wouldn’t have made as big of a target. Now it just looked like a bright neon sign pointing to his guilt.

  His guilt.

  Why did he feel guilty about this? Was it because she was a woman?

  Mitchell looked at the driver’s side window. Her forehead, cheek and part of her nose were imprinted with her blood. He could even see the ridges where her knuckles struck the window.

  For a fleeting moment he thought about taking a photo to prove his case later on. To whom and what would he prove?

  A bloody, angry girl tried to smash and claw her way into his car? Or did it look like he ran her face-first into the window? He was sure a clever forensics person could tell the difference. If they wanted to.

  Screw it. He began wiping down the window. The blood just smeared around, covering it in a red film.

  “For fuck sake, can’t I get a break?” he screamed under his breath.

  He dampened a paper towel in a puddle and used that to wipe the window.

  He looked around the parking lot. His was the only car.

  The blood finally began to come off. He used the entire handful of towels to get the rest of it.

  His alarm rang. He almost pissed himself.

  Mitchell gave the car another look. The window looked OK. He was sure the police could find it if they looked. But at that point he’d tell them everything anyway.

  His door was still kicked in, but oddly, that made him look like the victim. A kicked-in door showed, at least in Mitchell’s mind, that he was the target of aggression. He knew other people may not see it that way. But for him it was physical proof that what happened had happened the way he remembered it. The door was physical proof of her violent rage. That made him feel better.

  He ran back to the station.

  He flushed the paper towels down the toilet. He waited to make sure they went down and then jumped back into the booth as the playlist ended. He flipped on the microphone.

  “All right gang, here’s your question. I want to know what superhero you wanted to be when you were a kid? Besides the holy trinity of Spider-Man, Batman or Superman.”

  The Invisible Woman came immediately to his mind.

  4

  The rest of the night was mostly panic-free until he remembered Rookman. He used the same parking lot as he did. He had to have seen his car and the blood. What did he think?

  Crazy for sure, but Rookman was a perceptive man. Mitchell once wore the same shirt two days in a row and got a call from Rookman congratulating him for getting laid.

  When Rachel broke up with him and he wore a shirt two days in a row again out of depression, Rookman called him up and said let it go and move on.

  It was the same shirt.

  Rookman knew something happened. Mitchell tried to think whether there was any kind of clue in his phone call. That’s how he would have told him he knew.

  Maybe he didn’t notice. Or if he did, he was keeping his mouth shut.

  Mitchell had to resist the urge to run outside and look under his windshield wiper for a note. Rookman’s style would have been to leave the business card for a lawyer or bail bondsman.

  Guys who talk tough have a habit of being the first to fold. He thought Rookman was pretty genuine. It wasn’t all an act, was it?

  No. Rookman was a sincere guy. He was a ball-buster, for sure. But he had character. If Rookman noticed the car, he probably decided it wasn’t any of his business.

  Mitchell thought about the crazy stuff he probably heard from students every day. This was minor in comparison, he was sure.

  If Rookman mentioned it, Mitchell would tell him everything. He was pretty sure Rookman of all people would believe him.

  He opened up the phone lines again for requests. He kept his finger on the drop button, fearful that he was going to get another call from the girl. Only this time she was going to call him out and publicly accuse him of trying to rape and murder her.

  Every time he heard a female voice, he clinched up a little bit.

  When a man called in and said he wanted to be Daredevil, all Mitchell could think about was the fact that his day job was being an attorney. Guilty!

  He also got the usual amount of insults. People invited him to do all sort of lewd acts to himself or family members. The interesting thing was always that the later it got, the more they sounded like some kind of Freudian expression.

  “Whore.”

  “Junky.”

  “Faggot,” of course.

  The most disturbing calls were the rambling ones from drunk people. They always had something important to say. They just never could get around to saying it. If you cut them short, they’d call you any or all of the previous insults.

  The last hour felt pretty normal. He screwed around on his iPad during the playlists and just did what he did on a normal night.

  A calendar reminder popped up and he felt sick to his stomach for a much more mundane reason than being accused of attempted rape.

  That was the day he’d promised to drop off his ex-girlfriend’s keys. He’d wanted to just send them, but he didn’t want to look like a coward. He was pretty sure there was a new guy living with Rachel. He hadn’t known that when he agreed to drop them off.

  A three-week turnaround from Mitchell to that guy. It was probably faster than that. It just made his gut hurt even more. The last thing he wanted to do was to see her or him, worst of all her and him together.

  Thinking about it was like having every negative emotion in the world explode inside of him like a grenade. Jealousy, sadness, anger, inadequacy, impotency and a million others he could describe if he took the time.

  By agreeing to drop them off, he told himself he was outwardly doing what a person who feels none of those things feels. Another part of him felt that he was only justifying her actions by going along with her nonchalant attitude about the situation.

  Whatever, he thought. He’d drop the keys and the whole thing would be done with. He didn’t want to spend any more time dwelling on it. He had other things to worry about.

  Christ, the other thing. He couldn’t decide which was worse to worry about.

  He watched the minutes tick down on the station clock. He’d go drop the keys off and then go home and sleep through the rest of the nightmare while everyone else went to wor
k.

  Damn. He realized that she wouldn’t be up for another two hours. That meant he couldn’t go home and crash. Mitchell would have to sleep in his car while he waited for her to get up.

  Fine, he thought. Whatever it takes.

  The last hour passed uneventfully. He saw the alarm pad light up by the door as the early morning shift host was coming in.

  Bonnie walked by the window and gave him a wave. Mitchell felt it wasn’t an unfriendly wave, but it had the feeling like she was kind of just waving at him and the station furniture alike. Waving to him was just one part of the ritual she had for realizing that life hadn’t turned out like she wanted. Hello, Mitch. Hello, fern.

  She was in her late forties and was probably pretty once. She had that deep voice too many late nights and too much alcohol gave women. Mitchell and his friends used to call that a “boozer” voice.

  Someone had told him she’d been an MTV veejay for a little while back when kids knew that term as someone who announced music videos and not as slang for vagina.

  Mitchell could believe it. She was good at what she did and acted like a pro. You always got a sense that she felt she was too good for the place, and she probably was.

  Mitchell wondered what it was like to go from MTV celebrity to obscure early morning host. Was it a gradual slide? Or an overnight thing you never recovered from?

  He looked around the tiny booth he was in and wondered if he’d be grateful in twenty years to even have the job he had there. That scared him.

  He’d struggled to find a job in broadcasting. The current job came about because a friend from college was leaving the station and pushed hard for him.

  The station really never let you know if you were doing good or bad, so there was never any security. He didn’t have a gimmick like Rookman, so he really didn’t have a following. People knew him, but he wasn’t known for anything other than being on the radio.

  He’d gotten a date with Rachel because she was fascinated by the idea of a radio personality. When she realized that was the only interesting thing about him, her interest began to wane.

  He couldn’t blame her. He had an audience and nothing to say to them.