LITMIR.BIZ

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am I supposed to do?”

      “What you do,” Anatoly said thoughtfully, “is believe in Dena.”

      “Yes,” Monty said, finally joining in the conversation. “Like Tinker Bell.”

      Jason did a quick double take. “What?”

      Monty drew himself to his full height. He had the black hair and coloring of his Mexican father, the delicate, almost aristocratic features of his French Canadian mother and the blindingly bright, optimistic energy that could only be cultivated in America. “We all remember Peter Pan, don’t we?” he asked. “Tinker Bell came back to life because those who loved her believed in her.”

      “Dena,” Jason said between clenched teeth, “is not some kind of insipid, weak-ass little fairy! Dena is…”

      “A fighter,” Monty finished. “Tinker Bell drank poison to protect Peter Pan and then right before collapsing she called him an ass for not taking care of himself. That’s not Dena?”

      Jason hesitated a moment before looking away. “I didn’t realize that Tink was so cool.”

      “Well, she is,” Monty said determinedly. “And Dena’s cooler and I do believe in her so…” He raised his hands in the air and clapped.

      Anatoly’s grip tightened around my waist as he saw my hands clench into fists. “You are not seriously clapping because you believe in fairies!” I hissed. “Not while a team of people are working on my best friend’s spine in the next friggin’ room!”

      “I believe that the magic of positive thinking can help,” he said as his open palms continued to slam into each other. “At least it can’t hurt.”

      Jason shook his head like a wet dog and walked to the other side of the room. “This is insane.”

      “Exactly!” I said, finally pulling away from Anatoly.

      “If only I was a vampire,” Jason moaned. “Then I could give her the gift of eternal life.”

      I closed my eyes and counted to ten. Dena didn’t like normal guys. She liked kindhearted freaks like Jason. For her sake I had to suppress the urge to whack him upside the head.

      “Monty,” Mary Ann said softly, quieting his hands by taking them into hers. “I love Tinker Bell, too, but right now I need someone to pray with me.”

      Monty sighed in what sounded like mild disappointment and kissed Mary Ann on the forehead. “Of course I’ll pray with you, sweetie. It’s just that Tink is so much less complicated than God. I thought it would be easier to appeal to her spirit than that of the Holy Ghost.”

      I sat down on one of the unsightly chairs. “I’ll pray with you, Mary Ann.”

      Mary Ann whispered her words of entreaty to God, each one coming out with more force and urgency. And then, when she could think of nothing else to say she whispered, “Amen,” and leaned her full weight against Monty. “I have to call her parents.”

      I looked up at the ceiling and tried to imagine how this call was going to go. Dena’s parents had retired to Arizona almost ten years ago. They were both very active in their church. Dena’s mother, Isa, was once a nurse practitioner but now toured the high schools and various junior colleges in her personal mission to preach abstinence for unmarried people. And Dena owned a sex shop. It was unclear if Dena’s need to make a career out of the oddities of human sexuality was an act of rebellion or if Dena’s parents’ escalating crusade against immorality was a reaction to their daughter’s eccentricities. Either way it made for a contentious relationship.

      But still, Dena was their daughter. They had the right to a phone call.

      Mary Ann took her cell phone out of her purse and stared at it for a beat. “I think I’m going to take this outside. I’m going to need the fresh air.”

      “I’ll come with you,” Monty said, wrapping his coat over her shoulders and leading her out of the room.

      Anatoly sat down beside me. “Sophie, can you tell me exactly what happened?”

      I shook my head. “God, I wish I could but I don’t really know. Everything was fine. We were all fine and then Mary Ann went in her room for a few minutes to get something and I went to the bathroom. There was a sort of a high pinging noise I think…I can’t even be sure of that, it happened so fast and it wasn’t very loud…then there was the sound of Dena falling….” I shook my head fiercely. I couldn’t repeat it again. The words were like small fish bones scratching against my throat.

      “Yes, you told me that much over the phone,” Anatoly said. “Whoever shot her must have used a silencer. Do you need a key to get into the building or just the apartment?”

      “Both the building and the apartment…but I guess it’s possible that we didn’t lock the apartment door. Mary Ann was kind of distracted…. Did I tell you that she just got engaged to Monty?” It seemed like such a stupid thing to say, so totally out of place with what was going on at that moment.

      Anatoly only gave a nod of acknowledgment and pressed his hand against my knee. “Dena was shot in the back so I’m assuming she was facing away from the door, right?”

      I shrugged. It was one of the million things I didn’t know.

      “Is there any chance that it came through a window?”

      “I would have heard the glass shatter.”

      Anatoly shook his head. “One bullet wouldn’t break a window, just make a hole in it, and you probably wouldn’t have heard it.”

      I tried to think. Had the police looked at the windows? The windows facing the street couldn’t be opened so the shot would have gone through the glass. Plus we had been on the third floor, so the shooter would have been in the building across the street.

      But most importantly, the door had been open when I found Dena. Someone had opened the door, stepped into Mary Ann’s living room and with one tiny move of their finger shattered my world.

      “It came from the doorway,” I said definitively. “I’m sure of it.”

      Jason scanned the beige windowless walls. “Whoever did this isn’t going to get away with it. The police are going to catch this fucker and put him away.”

      I sucked in a sharp breath. Jason had considerably more faith in the police than I did, which was surprising since he was the one who claimed to be an anarchist.

      But if Jason saw the irony of his statement he made no indication of it. I watched him as he ran his hands through his hair and then used his jeans to dry them. “I’m going to get some water. Anyone else want water?”

      Both Anatoly and I shook our heads so Jason just left the room, leaving us alone.

      I shifted in my seat so I could look Anatoly in the eyes. “You know,” I said slowly, “I can’t just sit on my ass and pray that the police make this case a priority.”

      “Sophie, I’m going to look into this and find out what I can, but Jason’s right. The police are likely to catch this guy and make an arrest.”

      “We don’t know that. And besides I want to find him first. I want him to try to hurt me. I want him to give me an excuse to give him what he really deserves.”

      “You do understand that you can’t hunt down and kill the person who did this?” Anatoly asked.

      I didn’t answer right away. I turned away from him and took a fresh look at the room. Why were we the only ones in the waiting room? Was Dena really the only person with loved ones to get hurt tonight?

      Then again, the room wasn’t really empty. My anger was making good use of the space. It was seeping out of every pore, crawling up the walls, its vengeful energy mingled with the hum of the florescent lights. My anger owned that room.

      In fact, it was taking up way too much space to make

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