Public Enemy Zero

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 away.

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.