The Phone, part 2

The entire drive back was silent, as both driver and passenger were last in thought. As they pulled back into the driveway, they spotted Leslie coming out of the front door. Kati Jumped out and ran over to her. "Hey Les. Where are ya headed?" She immediately realized it was kinda a dumb question, since Leslie had her hair pulled back in a pony tail, and was dressed in her usual workout attire.

Leslie smiled. "I'm headed to the gym on campus. It's that time of the day."

Alexis was just catching up, having finished parking and getting the car settled. "Hold on, Les. We need your help with something. Sara's gone missing, and we're trying to find her. Plus, we have a puzzle for you."

"And it's a hard one" added Kati. "Seems to be a code of some kind, we just don't know what, or what the key is. And we know how you like puzzles. Get ready for one that'll be challenging and help your roommate."

"Alright," said Leslie. "Just let me go back upstairs and get changed. I'm not dressed for puzzling."

"OK," said Alexis. As Leslie started up the stairs, Alexis added "Oh, hey, can you get Heather, if she's up there? I think we should all work together on this one."

"Yeah, sure," called down Leslie.

A few minutes later, Heather came running down the stairs. She was wearing her PJs still, but her hair had been cleaned up a bit from bed-head to slightly-out-of-control. A few minutes after that, Leslie ran down to join them, now in a floral print skirt, weird tie-dye shirt, and with her long hair let back down. Most people would have just assumed she was a hippie, straight out of the 60s, but really she just dug the style.

"Alright, why don't we start from the beginning," she said. "Some of us haven't been filled in all the way, yet."

Kati and Alexis proceeded to run through everything they knew, thought they knew, and suspected about the previous evening, as well as the steps they had taken to learn it all. Finally, they presented the note and the phone to the others, and opened up the floor.

"Why the phone, though?" Leslie was obviously as stuck on this point as Kati.

"Maybe it was just a good way to ensure the note was found," said Heather.

Kati spoke up again. "Maybe, and we thought of that. But there had to be a better way of doing that, if that was all it was for. Why not give it to the bartender, or send it as a text message to one of us? Surely one of those would be an option, and would let her hang on to the phone for use today. I still think she left it as a hint to the meaning of the numbers, or a clue for us, in addition to making sure the note was found. Maybe it has the key to whatever code this is on it."

Alexis continued, "And we thought of that too, but if the key is on there, it is extremely non-obvious. Which I guess makes sense. If you put the key with the coded document, then it has to be a well hidden key. Which still leaves me wondering about the note with the hamster. What is up with that? Is that the key?"

They stopped for a moment to think about that. Finally, Heather spoke up. "She told me once that she had a pet hamster growing up. I think she said his name was George.... maybe." She paused for a moment, trying to remember. "Maybe it was Greg. Anyway, it was a G name, for sure."

Leslie picked up the phone, and started flipping through the names in it. "Huh. That is odd. She has an entry in here labeled 'Greg from childhood.' The number is 411."

"Anything else odd in the phone book?" asked Alexis.

"Well, maybe. There seems to be about 20 entries that start with a period, which puts them at the front of the list, but they are all 555 numbers," responded Leslie. She sat for a moment thinking over the consequences of this setup, when it dawned on her. "The note! Of course, she had to leave the phone because it has the key, which is the phone book. The first however many entries are the key. The numbers are in pairs because the first number gives an entry in the list, and the second a letter in that entry."

With some effort, the girls decoded the message, Alexis reading numbers, Leslie finding the entry and letter, and Kati writing them out on the whiteboard. Through their team effort, they put together a translation of the note. It said "Send help. Jack is back. Has a posse. Seems to be stalking me. Followed me to this bar after three others."

Great, thought Kati. Jack. He was always trouble, but disappeared a few months back after a run in with the cops. He used to live near here, and had always hit on Sara. She had always turned him down, but he kept trying. Finally, he seemed to get the hint that she wasn't interested. Or so it seemed. A few weeks after that, he had started following her to parties and the like, until he ran into Nick at a Kappa Phi party, and Nick shoved him through a table for something Jack had tried to do with Nick's girl. After the cops came, they tried to pick up Jack on some outstanding warrant, and Kati thought it was over. Apparently not, since he was back.

As they sat there staring at the board, Heather was the first to speak up. "Maybe we should let Nick know. I bet he wouldn't mind kicking Jack around again."

Kati frowned. "No, that won't work. He graduated in December, moved out of town. Not much he can do about it. The police might be some help, though. Jack was arrested last time he was here for something. Whatever it was, I doubt he finished his time for it."

Leslie jumped in. "But she could have gotten a message to the police. Went in to the bathroom and gave them a call, or something. If the police could help, they would be in this already. Might not hurt to give them a call and see if Jack is still wanted. One of us could call and say we thought we saw him at the bar last night."

Kati leaned back on the couch. "I don't know. I think there is more going on here then is obvious. After all, Sara wouldn't have just given up. And she tried to make sure we could get this figured out."

Silence returned to the room, as the girls tried to think of what to do next. Kati kept returning in her mind to the phone call she couldn't remember from last night. There must have been something important there, but she couldn't think of what it was. She tried to remember, and as she struggled, she started to remember only bits and pieces. She remembered Sara saying "This will be a night to remember" and "There he is again. You have to do something! Help me, Kati, please!" The words began to come back to her, starting from where the last sentence left off.

"There is nothing I can do for you, Sara. I'm way too drunk to come get you," she had said.

"You have to, Kati. Call Alexis. Call Heather. Call Leslie. Call the cops. Call McGuyver for all I care, just call someone and get me some help, Kati."

"I don't even know how I called you. Like I said, I am way too drunk. Plus I think someone put something in my drink. My head is so fuzzy right now."

"Kati, he's here. I think he sees me. He's coming this way. Look, I left you a note here. I hope you're not so drunk as to forget this call. I have to go, try and run. Just remember, Jack is here again, and he's coming after me again. I'm going to try and get to the old church on fourth, and slip into their homeless shelter. Come find me tomorrow." Then a click. Silence. She must have hung up.

Leave it to Sara to carry duct tape in her purse, and use that to plant a note and a phone.

As she focused back on the moment, she realized Leslie was speaking. "... have to search the area, see if anyone law anything last night. Any ideas where to start?"

"The church on fourth. She said she was going there on the phone last night." The others looked at her, with a look that said "why are we just hearing about this now?" Kati took a moment to collect her thoughts, and replayed the conversation she remembered for them. "I'm still trying to figure it all out. We were on the phone for an hour last night, but I don't remember any more then just the end part there. I guess whatever I had was starting to wear off. But I don't know who spiked my drink, or why. I mean, if you go to that much trouble, why not do something to me while I can't remember it? Why just let me talk on the phone for an hour? I know I don't look that bad."

"That is a good question," said Alexis. "Maybe whoever did it was working with Jack, and just needed to get your mind blanked for the night. Sara would've known that the rest of us had things to do today, and wouldn't have been up late enough. So you were her only option for help. If jack knew that too, he could have had someone make you helpless too. But I do agree, why stop there. He must have whoever did it pretty freaked to make them afraid to try something more, especially when you were that vulnerable."

Leslie jumped in. "Before we get too carried away on that, we need to check the church. Sara may have made it there." She paused a moment. "OK, Heather and I will take the church. Lexi, take Kati and go back to Emily's. Try and figure out what happened with her drink, and what happened to her on her way home. Kati, keep trying to figure out what you talked to Sara about. There had to be something more to it. While we're going to the church, we'll drop by the police station, and see if we can't get some information about Jack's criminal record."

"Sounds like a plan," said Alexis.

"OK," said Heather, as she got up and started heading up the stairs to change.

Kati got up, and started to head for the kitchen. "I'm just going to get a drink first. I need some water to clear my head a bit." She got in, grabbed a glass from the cabinet, and filled it from the tap. The bubbles in the water flowed up, reminding her of all the booze last night. The bubbles filled the cups, little white balls on a sea of amber, surrounded by white walls of plastic. Her mind caught on the bubbles, seeing them over and over, rising and bursting. As the water flowed over the edge of the cup, covering her fingers. Snapping back to the moment, she turned off the tap, set the glass down on the counter, and grabbed the towel from the oven. She wiped off her hands and the glass, then gabbed it and took a drink.

Alexis came in as she was taking her second drink. "You OK? You look a little out of it still."

"Yeah, I am. My mind was wandering, and I spilled water all over my hands. I don't know how I got so distracted."

"Let's go. I imagine that as you remember more of last night, you'll start to feel a bit less out of it. Hopefully, we'll find what happened to you last night."

Alexis headed back towards the door, and Kati turned to follow. She let her mind think back to the bits of conversation, trying to grab more threads of the discussion, but they all seemed just out of reach. No matter hew much she tried, she just could not get a good grip on the words that she and Sara had spoken the night before.