27...

“What guy are you talking about Lou? What did he tell you?”
“This guy showed up yesterday,” Lou whispered down the phone in a tone that was the audio equivalent of an itch. “He was in my house, just sitting at the table in the kitchen, smoking a cigarette.”
“Was he a homeless guy?” Frank asked, his eyes widening, waiting intensely for an answer.
“No,” Lou said as if it were the dumbest question he had ever been asked. “It was a guy in a suit. I asked him what he was doing in my house and he asked me where Alexis was.”
“Where is Alexis?”
There was silence at the other end of the phone. Frank could hear a dry, swirling sound, like the noise of ghosts slowly rubbing their hands together, and something intangible. He could hear silent indecision.
“Lou?”
“How do I know this is you Frank?”
Frank looked up at Bryan with this perfect look of shocked incredulousness. He put his hand up in a questioning gesture and Bryan leaned forward with a face full of worried desire.
“What do you mean, ‘how do you know this is me’?” Frank repeated, more for Bryan’s benefit. Bryan pantomimed a perfect ‘are you fucking kidding me’ look.
“How can I be sure this is Frank?”
Lou’s voice sounded as if it were coming through sand.
“Well, I used to stay at Mary’s place above yours a lot. I would occasionally bum smokes off of Alexis when Mary wasn’t around. Mary squeals every time she sees your dog…”
Frank again looked at Bryan and began snapping his fingers, trying to pull a name from the very air in front of him. Bryan shrugged his shoulders.
“Charlie!” Frank shouted out. He sat back in the chair as if coming up with the name had spent him. “Is that enough Lou?”
There was that ghostly silence once again.
“She killed a guy, Frank.”
Frank felt his stomach fall at the same time that he felt his balls crawl up into his body. Some flailing, prehistoric nerve endings were screaming for him to run and all he could think for some reason, in this calm voice, was ‘we are fucking useless’.
“What do you mean?” Frank finally choked out.
“That’s what the guy told me. That’s what he said, that she butchered this guy like a professional. And I think I had known.” Frank could hear the stretched beginnings of tears reflecting off that damaged voice. “I’m pretty sure that I knew she had done it, but I didn’t want to believe it. She took off months ago, borrowed Danny’s car and just took off. And I gotta tell you Frank, I was relieved, because somewhere inside I knew. I knew she had something to do with the body they found down by the railroad tracks. I had seen blood on her clothes and the story about hitting a deer up on the 32 just didn’t wash, you know? And I heard from somebody else that when they found that guy, there was no face left on him. And I started to get scared, and bad ideas started forming.”
He was talking faster and louder, nearing hysteria with a force that felt like a point pressing into Frank’s temple.
“Okay Lou,” Frank tried out his best calming voice. “Try to settle down man. Do you know where she’s at now?”
“No.”
There was another long interval of expectant silence.
“The guy didn’t seem to know either.”
“Who was this guy Lou?”
Another pregnant pause was formed that pushed out against a mad world.
“I gotta go Frank. Take care, man.”
And that click that speaks of so much finality and dead ends came through the receiver louder than usual.