The Dead Love Longer Read Online Free PDF Page A

finished, I gave the forms back to her, accidentally brushing her fingers. Her flesh was cold.
    She noticed my shocked expression. "Titanic victim," she said with some pride. She checked over my application.
    "Un-huh...un-huh…" she muttered under her breath as she read . " Okay, we can work with this. Ready for your assignment?"
    "Assignment?"
    "Yeah? Didn't life teach you anything? If you want something, you have to work for it. It's not as easy as getting on your knees and sucking up to some invisible deity."
    I nodded. "Just tell me what to do."
    "You've got to go back and solve your own murder. And you've got to do it before your funeral."
    "Back?"
    "To Earth," she said, distracted, already thumbing through the next file.
    "Does that mean I get to be alive again?"
    "You were barely alive when you were alive , if you know what I mean. You never knew how to live."
    "But I'll be real?"
    "You'll be able to interact with the world of the living. But it will cost you."
    Well, that was nothing new. And the afterlife wasn't shaping up as any great shakes in the "free ride" department, either. But at least I'd have a chance to nail down one last case. Justice always prevailed, at least on the TV shows.
    "What's the cost?" I said. As far as I remembered, I'd left behind a couple of hundred in my bank account, an ashtray full of change in my car, and some cheese dip from Thanksgiving in my fridge. Not much when facing a cosmic debt.
    "You'll find out," she said. "That's part of your job."
    A nobody like me doesn't end up with holes in his coat for no good reason. If solving the case meant Lee and I had a chance, then I was anxious to tackle it. And, I must admit, a little old-fashioned revenge is always a pretty good motivator. I didn't like loose ends, especially when my own end was blowing in the eternal breeze.
    "Give me the facts," I said, falling ever so easily back into my old profession. Finally, something normal. Like fear, it was familiar and safe.
    "There are no facts. That's why we need you, so we can get the records squared away on your murderer."
    "Say, wait a second," I said. "I thought you guys already knew everything."
    "I don't know nothing until somebody sends me a memo," she said by way of dismissal.
    ***

 
     
    3.
    Just like that, like magic or some film editor's trick, I was flat on my back, my chest burning and my lungs gurgling. My mouth was filled with the taste of lead and copper, my head was a plastic bag stuffed with thorny cotton. I opened my eyes and saw the ceiling of my apartment. You could see faces in the stucco swirls, if you looked hard enough. One face , actually. Diana's, multiplied by twenty. She seemed happy to see me dead.
    I arose, a real ghost this time, not some heavily burdened human who was a few thousand sit-ups in arrears. I looked around quickly, hoping to catch the perp in the act. But I should have known I wouldn't pass my test of faith so easily. This had been no close-range assault.
    The room was the same as I had left it, except one wall was pocked with four gashes in the Sheetrock. One of the bullets had passed through my Pet of the Month calendar, right through the beagle that was Mister December. Another had sheared my little artificial Christmas tree, cutting a plastic candy cane in half. The clock on the wall said five minutes until four, and it appeared to still be ticking. That gave me a great deal of comfort, though it meant my opportunity to solve the case and save my soul was ticking away with it.
    The wall with the holes was to the north, so the bullets had come from the south. Through the open window. I drifted to the window and looked out. Los Angeles was spread out beyond me like broken toys on a brat's bedroom floor.
    The sharpshooter must have been in one of the buildings across the street. A motel, one of the old fake-adobe kind that rented rooms by the hour, was the most obvious choice. But as a detective, I'd learned that the most obvious choice was often the