Chapter 4: Try the Card

I played it at seven in the morning, sitting up in bed with the gray light coming through the curtains.

In daylight it was only a woman's voice.

Callie Maddox sounded tired and hoarse and kind, and under the words I could hear a kettle ticking on a stove.

I listened through "Whoever you are."

Then I let it run past the end.

After the last word there was a pause, and a small dry cough, and Callie saying to herself, not to the phone, "Okay.

"Try the card."

The recording cut off.

I played it again to be sure.

Try the card.

Under the gray bar on the screen, the call list showed two lines from that night.

The first said 11:52 p.m. and lasted one minute.

The second said 11:58 p.m. and lasted forty seconds.

She had called again six minutes later, and Jude's phone had kept both.

I carried the phone downstairs and found him in the kitchen with his boots on, drinking coffee standing up.

He had come back from the wharf with two hours of sleep missing from his face.

"There are two calls," I said.

He set the cup down.

"There's one.

"The second is forty seconds, and I never opened it.

"I can't do that one."

"She says something at the end of the first.

"She says, 'Try the card.' "

He stared at me.

"What card?"

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