Free The Last Dead Girl by Harry Dolan Page B

routes on the shelter wall, and a quick check confirmed that none of the routes would take me anywhere near Jana’s apartment, even if I wanted to wait until six. My back ached from sitting in the white-tile room, and the cut on my temple itched. I was tired. I took out my phone to call a cab, and the display revealed seven missed calls, all of them from Sophie.
    I tried to imagine what I might say to her, came up with nothing, put the phone down on the bench. I leaned my head against the plexiglass wall of the shelter and closed my eyes, just to rest them.
    The man in the trench coat said, “You got the wrong idea, son, sleepin’ in a bus stop. Cops’ll roust you for sure.”
    â€œI’m not going to sleep.”
    He laughed. “Think I know what a man looks like when he’s ’bout to sleep.”
    I slept. Had a dream too, though I don’t remember much of it. I know there was candlelight in it, and Jana Fletcher, and she was alive.
    I woke with the man in the trench coat shaking my shoulder.
    â€œCome on now, son, your ride’s here,” he said.
    I sat up and rubbed my eyes.
    â€œYou’re a lucky fella,” he said. “Ride like that.”
    I looked around for a cab, then remembered I hadn’t called one.
    The man in the trench coat was trying to hand me my cell phone. “I took the liberty of makin’ the arrangements,” he said. “Figured you wouldn’t mind.”
    On the other side of the street, a car sat by the curb. The hazard lights blinking, the driver’s door open. A woman stood by the door. Cat’s-eye glasses and her hair gathered in a clip. Sophie.
    â€œYour phone rang while you were sleepin’, so I took the liberty,” the man in the trench coat said. “Good thing I did, since it was your lady callin’.”
    Sophie was watching me but she stayed where she was. She didn’t cross the street.
    â€œGo on now,” the man said. “You’d be a damn fool not to go with a lady like that.”
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    T he following afternoon I woke up in my own bed for the first time in ten days.
    The blinds were closed but I could see daylight seeping through. I sat up, swept the covers off, planted my feet on the floor. Raised a hand to my temple and felt the stitches Sophie had put there after she brought me home.
    She’d been unnaturally calm in the car.
    â€œSeven times I called you,” she’d said.
    â€œI’m sorry.”
    â€œI heard on the news, about that girl. Local news, eleven o’clock. I didn’t know where you were. I called and you didn’t answer.”
    â€œThe cops took my phone.”
    â€œI thought you were dead.”
    â€œWhy would—”
    â€œI thought you were with that girl and you were dead, just like her. The news didn’t mention you, but I thought maybe they wouldn’t—maybe they’d wait until the police notified your next of kin. And that’s not me, I’m only your fiancée. They’d be trying to call your damn mother in Florida—”
    â€œSophie, I’m alive.”
    â€œSeven times. Finally some detective answered, and he passed me off to some
other
detective, and he wouldn’t tell me anything, except that you couldn’t come to the phone, you were being questioned.”
    â€œThat was probably Moretti—”
    â€œSo then I knew you were alive, and I was left to wonder if you were a suspect in a murder.”
    â€œI’m not.”
    â€œIs that why they kept you there half the night?”
    â€œWell, I might be, a little,” I said. “But it’ll pass. I didn’t do it.”
    Without taking her eyes off the road Sophie made a fist and punched me in the shoulder. She punched me again, harder. And again.
    â€œYou didn’t do it,” she said, echoing me. “Did you think I thought you did