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She entered our detectives’ room at the end of my shift. I should have realized this was going to be a late one. She had that strange look on her face, the type that told me she probably shouldn’t be here. She should be at home, perhaps preparing dinner or taking care of her kids. Or, after I got a closer look at her clothing, she should have been supervising her nanny who would prepare dinner and bathe and put the kids to sleep. In my precinct, we get a lot of her type. I wondered not for the first time whether we were fighting crime or paid to fight these women’s boredom. I guess in the end it didn’t make a difference. Talking with her was what kept the money in my bank and the food on my kids table. Their mother prepared their dinners and was happy to do it. And I was happy for her to do it. She wasn’t a kept woman. She was a good woman. She did her share and I did my share. It didn’t take a detective to know that the woman before me never did her share.

She walked through the wooden gate and made her way to my desk. I was the only one left. I was here to catch any calls before we called it a night. Her clickity-clackity shoes echoed off the walls. She was more plastic than natural. Good to look at but not look at too closely. “Officer?” she asked as she made her way to the front of my desk.

“Detective, Ma’am. Detective Thomson. What may I do for you this evening?”

“May I sit?” she asked as she sat on the wooden chair. I should have told her that less than an hour before an HIV-positive drug addict sat on that very chair. We caught him lurking around the mansions around Turner’s bend. We couldn’t figure out how he got there since no public transportation went anywhere near our precinct. He wouldn’t tell us, but we figured a drug deal went bad and they dropped him here as a little lesson. I guess that made us the drug dealers’ muscles. We had a job to do and we did it. The addict won’t be heading to these parts again. For all I knew, he might have bled a little into the wood. It was an old chair and there were many splinters. The office was one big splinter, when you really got down into it. The fresh coat of paint they threw on the walls each year was as bogus as she was. It was all rotten to the core.

“Please. What’s on your mind?” I asked her. I maintained a bemused look. It was the most serious I could manage at this time of night in front of these type of woman.

She looked me in the eye. She had blue eyes. The type of blue you only see in aquariums and advertisements for tropical beaches in far off islands where I’ll never be able to afford a vacation. I could see why swimming in her waters could be so addicting. It’s too bad that sharks infested her waters. I feel bad for her husband. He probably thought he was getting so much more than a plastic trophy. I guess we always think we’re getting so much more until we get it home and unwrap it.

“I had the strangest call tonight,” she said. “I debated whether I should come here. There are so many prank calls. But he sounded so honest, so sincere.”

I judged she fell for a swindle, and she wanted me to pry her out away from whatever they got from her. I thought I misjudged. Perhaps this wouldn’t be a late night after all. We fill out the paper, and she talks to her bank and credit cards and makes everything right. It’s better when they come early on this. I’ve caught a few of these cases where they waited too long and it took hours to get all the paper straight. There’s a reason their husbands thought to keep these women in trophy cases. Better there than breaking everything in sight. A bull in a china store is no better.

“Tell me about what happened, Ma’am. It’s never worse than you think it is. We’ll take care of it.”

“Protect and serve, eh, officer?” the woman asked. Her head turned to the side and she looked at me sideways. I could see each of her black lashes curled up and away from her eyes. My wife was a good cook and great with the children, but she didn’t have an eyelash to bat an eyelash at, if you see where I’m going. I’m a man, as weak as any other man. And don’t think I didn’t think about it right there. Finish the paperwork. Maybe she’s feeling lonely. Maybe she likes men in uniform. I have a uniform in the back, in the locker room. It was all very private. Everything was always very private back there.

“That’s what I’m here for. To protect and serve, Ma’am. In all ways. What is your name? For the report, I mean. We need to keep good records here.”

“Sandra MacDonald,” she said. She put her left hand on the desk and the huge engagement ring almost blinded me. It was larger than her thumb’s knuckle. I pulled out my notepad and jotted down her name. “That’s with an M-A-C,” she added.

“Okay, Mrs. MacDonald. What happened on that call tonight?”

“Do you mind if I go on? There’s just so much I want to tell you. Not many people want to listen once I get into it. I know it’s me and all my talking, and I completely understand if you want to go. I know how I must sound. It’s fantastical. Unbelievably so. You’ll be entertained either way: a crazy person’s detailed delusions, or an fantastical and sad story.

“That is kind of you.

“Before I called you? I was studying the phone. When I’m not talking on it, I spend a lot of my time studying the phone. I stare at it for hours at a time, some days. The phone is red and heavy. It is much larger than the phones I remember. Of course, it’s been so long time since I’ve seen other phones, it’s hard to know for sure. My memory is no longer my friend. It tricks me sometimes. Makes me think I remember something that I don’t, or creates a memory that I know couldn’t be real. What do phones look like today?

“Oh, that is interesting. That small, really? I’m not doubting you. It’s just this phone is not small. I know things have changed. My little window into the world gives me at least that much information.

It’s a bit of a cliché that I have a big red phone but I enjoy the color. The walls and floor in the room are white, as is the table. The table has a few blue and red speckles as well. The chair at the table is a worn white leather chair. And the toilet and sink are both porcelain white. If it wasn’t for the red phone, I think I would lose the ability to discern colors.

The phone has a rotary, with the ten numbers working their way around the dial counterclockwise. I sometimes sit at the phone and turn the rotary. It doesn’t do anything, mind you. When I lift the headset, it automatically connects somewhere. I don’t know who does connection or who decides on what number. If they listen in on my conversation, they never say anything. When someone hangs up on the other end, another call is placed, and another, until I hang up the phone on the receiver.