October 1997, outside Cutler, Missouri. I still remember that night at the switchboard — the one red light that wouldn't stop blinking, the voice on the other end that knew my name, and the road I drove down alone at 2 a.m. The call came in just past midnight, from a payphone on Bentley Road, a gravel stretch that runs past the old Hargrave quarry. The woman on the line was calm, almost bored, until she started describing what she could see from the phone booth: a man standing at the edge of the quarry, holding something that glinted, and the way the water didn't ripple. I told her to stay on the line, but the connection kept breaking. When I finally drove out there, the phone was off the hook, swinging in the wind. The line was still open, but all I heard was the sound of wet footsteps walking away.