The Last Dead Girl

by Harry Dolan

  • • •

  There’s one last thing to tell. It happened in October, on a Sunday afternoon. I was walking on the hill at the farm.

  In another year everything would be grown over, but on that day I could still see the long rectangular footprint where the barn had stood and the square plot that had held the ruined farmhouse. I paced back and forth between them, my shoes dragging through the grass.

  Moretti had come here looking for quiet, and if I wanted to fool myself I could say I hoped to find quiet too, and a measure of peace. But what I wanted was to find Jana.

  There were nights in her apartment when I woke up and lit the candles on the mantel and walked out onto the patio and into the grass, and if the moon was out I could almost feel her there. Almost.

  I’d had the same feeling here on the hill. Once. I stood at twilight and watched the first stars appearing in the sky. I closed my eyes and she was next to me, as real as a touch on my shoulder.

  Now I came to the footprint of the barn and turned back, and in the distance, at the edge of where the farmhouse used to be, I saw a crow.

  It was on the ground, but it hovered over the grass, as if it didn’t weigh anything, as if the tips of the blades of grass could hold it up. I walked toward it. I thought it would fly, but it stayed. As I got closer I realized it was perched on something: the wagon wheel.

  The wheel had been torn from the ground, but no one had hauled it away. It lay on its side in the grass, and the crow sat on the rim.

  I stopped a few feet short of the wheel, not wanting to startle the bird.

  It took off.

  It flew a circle in the air and headed for the pond. I followed, jogging down the slope through a scattering of autumn leaves, red and orange.

  The crow made its landing on the dock.

  I lost sight of it until I stepped through the weeds and onto the sun-bleached planks. Then I saw it: shaking out its black wings and hopping over the boards to the end of the dock. It looked down into the water.

  I walked out to join it. Slow, careful steps. It let me get close. I got down and crossed the last distance on hands and knees. I stretched out along the dock on my stomach. I looked into the water.

  I heard the wind stirring through the cattails on the other shore. I saw the blue-gray sky below me. I saw my own face in the water and the crow beside me.

  The crow leapt into the air.

  I watched it fly through the sky’s reflection until it passed out of sight.

  I reached down and my fingers broke the surface of the water. It felt cold. The ripples spread. They passed through the image of my face. And that’s when I saw her. Jana. She was there in the water, only for a moment. I saw those brown eyes looking up at me. Those high exotic cheekbones. She had no bruise. Her mouth looked like it was laughing.

  In that moment, I reached for her, even though I knew I could never touch her.

  I knew.

  But I could swear she was reaching back.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  When I was a kid growing up in Rome, New York, hardly anyone ever got murdered there. Things are a little different in this book.

  In the course of setting this story in my hometown, I’ve gone beyond tinkering with the crime rate; I’ve sometimes altered the geography of the place to suit my purposes. People familiar with Rome will recognize the many liberties, large and small, that I’ve taken in describing the city.

  That kid who grew up in Rome had a moderately wild imagination, but he never would have guessed that he would one day have the good fortune to work with people like Amy Einhorn and Victoria Skurnick. I’d like to thank them on his behalf, and mine.

  Thanks also to Tom Colgan, Ivan Held, Leslie Gelbman, Ashley Hewlett, Glory Plata, Elizabeth Stein, Tom Dussel, David Chesanow, Melissa Rowland, Lindsay Edgecombe, Elizabeth Fisher, and Miek Coccia.

  This book is dedicated to my brother and sister, but I’m grateful for the support of all my family: the Dolans in New York and the Randolphs in Michigan. And always, especially, Linda.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Harry Dolan is the bestselling author of Bad Things Happen and Very Bad Men. He graduated from Colgate University, where he majored in philosophy and studied fiction writing with the novelist Frederick Busch. A native of Rome, New York, he now lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with his partner, Linda Randolph.