Brian Freeman - The Bone House

'I know, but I think it was her.'

Katie closed the cover of her laptop and shifted in her seat so she was sideways. She pulled her skinny legs underneath her. She was medium height and lean compared to Amy, who had a big-boned, muscular frame. Katie poked Amy in the shoulder.

'OK, so you saw her. I know it's creepy.'

'It's not just that. It's who I saw her with.' 'Who?'

Amy opened her mouth and closed it. Her eyes darted around the bus to see if he was nearby, and her full pink lips sank into a frown. 'This is crazy. I must be wrong.'

'Come on, you're freaking me out, Ames.'

'It's nothing,' Amy insisted. 'Write your article.'

'Tell me.'

'There's nothing to tell. I'm a dork.'

'You think that's news to me? Spill it. What did you see?'

'Forget it. You've got a deadline. I'm going to sleep.' Amy gave her it hollow smile.

She waited until her roommate was typing again, and then she closed her eyes. Her blond curls splashed across her face. She tried to convince herself that she was being stupid. She wasn't sure of anything; she'd made a mistake. Or if she hadn't made a mistake, maybe it didn't mean anything at all. What she'd seen, what she'd heard, was a misunderstanding.

She breathed slowly in and out. She was certain she wouldn't be able to sleep, but the vibrations and noise worked on her brain like 11 drug. Glory Fischer went away. The bus went away. She was back at school in Green Bay.

In her dream, Amy practiced a dance routine, solo, in the center of the gymnasium, moving to the beat of a song by Kristina DeBarge. She knew her moves were feline and sexy, and she wished she had a crowd to admire her, but the gym was almost deserted. She could see only one person in the uppermost row of the bleachers, almost invisible in the shadows, and she realized it was her old dance teacher from high school in Chicago. Hilary Bradley. She hadn't seen Hilary in years, but she looked the same, still pretty and confident, exactly the kind of woman Amy wanted to become. Hilary waved at her and cheered.

Seeing Hilary made Amy want to hit every step, to show off how good she was. She wanted to dazzle her and make her proud. Instead, she felt her body lose the rhythm of the music. Every motion felt awkward and clumsy. It was as if she couldn't remember dancing before in her life, as if her mind had erased every move she'd ever learned. She stuttered. Tripped. Stopped. Her face grew hot and red with embarrassment. She stood in the center of the lacquered floor, frozen.

The music ended. The gym had an echoing silence. She stared up at Hilary and wanted to shout an apology to her for failing, but Hilary was gone. The bleachers were empty.

She heard sarcastic clapping, slow and mean. She realized someone else was with her in the gym. She wasn't alone.

It was him. Her coach. Gary Jensen.

Gary walked toward her. He wore a black turtleneck and gray slacks. His black dress shoes tapped on the floor. He smiled at her, but his smile was like the snarl of a wolf. She heard herself begin to explain and ask for another chance, but he said nothing at all. He came up to her until he was so close that she smelled burnt coffee on his breath, and then, still smiling, he wrapped both hands firmly around her neck and began to choke her. His fingers were strong. Amy struggled. Pushed back. Fought. She tried to scream and couldn't. She waved at the bleachers, but no one was there to rescue her. Amy sucked for breath and found nothing. Her eyes closed.

Then they opened.

Amy awoke with a start, lurching forward, her heart racing. She was back on the bus, which rattled on as if nothing had happened while she was gone. Outside, she saw highway signs for Nashville. She'd been asleep for almost two hours. The other girls on the bus were still sleeping, too, their tousled heads dipping off the seats into the aisles. Beside her, Katie dozed, her article finished, her laptop closed and packed away.

Amy cupped her hands over her face. The dream had unnerved her.

'You OK?'

Amy jumped as a hand touched her arm. She looked up and saw Gary Jensen standing over her, and she recoiled. He smiled at her, and it was the same hideous smile from her dream. His hand on her bare skin was warm. She had to remind herself that it wasn't real. He hadn't been trying to kill her a moment ago.

'Oh,' she said. 'Oh, yeah, I'm fine. Bad dream.'

'Take it easy, Amy,' he said. 'We'll be stopping for a break soon.'

'Good.'

'Great job in Florida. You were a star.'

'Thanks,' she said.

Gary winked. He continued toward the front of the bus, and she watched him go. She wondered if he knew how much she disliked him. He'd been the dance coach and a physical education instructor at Green Bay ever since she'd arrived at the school three years ago from her high school in Highland Park. He knew his stuff, and as a coach he had an eye for what worked and what didn't in their routines. But that wasn't the only thing he had an eye for. The girls on the team all talked about it in the locker room. The coach was a flirt. A lech. He was in his middle forties, widowed, with a head of thinning brown hair that she knew he colored. He biked. He stayed in shape, and he made sure everyone knew it with his tight shirts and jeans. He was the kind of teacher who never made an overt pass, because the university frowned on teacher-student relationships, but you got the signal in his attitude and his grin. She'd felt the come-on when she was a freshman in the way he looked at her and touched her. If you wanted more, he had more to give.

Gary sat down near the driver and glanced back down the dark aisle of the bus and saw Amy watching him. Something in her expression obviously made him uncomfortable. Normally, she had warm blue eyes and an easy, infectious laugh, but not now. He looked as if he were about to come toward her again, with a question on his lips. Instead, he turned away and sank into his seat.

'What is it?'

Amy glanced at her roommate, who had awakened and was staring at her. It's nothing, Amy told herself.

But she didn't think it was nothing.

'I saw Gary talking to the girl who was killed,' she murmured.

'Gary? Are you sure? When?'

'Last night. Late, around eleven o'clock. I saw them on the terrace of the hotel. At first, I thought it was one of the Green Bay girls, but then I realized it wasn't.'

'Did you hear what they were talking about?'

'No, but Glory looked upset.' Amy shook her head. 'If it was really her. I just don't know.'

'All the coaches talk to the girls from different schools,' Katie reminded her.

'But this is Gary.'

'I know you don't like him, but that doesn't mean anything. I profiled him in the paper last year. He didn't seem like such a bad guy.'

'What about the thing with his wife?' Amy asked.

'Wasn't that an accident?'

'There were rumors.'

'I think you're getting paranoid.'

'There's more,' Amy said. 'There's something else.'

'What?'

Amy could see the back of Gary's head. A reading light bounced off the pate of his skull. It was almost as if he could feel her stare, because he looked up into the driver's mirror. She saw his pupils glow the way a cat's eyes shine at night, and she felt a shiver of fear as their eyes met. He reached up and turned off the light above him.

'My room was next to his,' Amy said.

'Yeah, so?'

'I couldn't sleep last night. I was awake sometime after three in the morning, and I heard footsteps in the hallway. I didn't look out, but I heard Gary's door. He was going back into his room in the middle of the night.'

Cab sipped a Starbucks iced latte through a straw and watched Tresa Fischer and Troy Geier behind the window of the interview room. It was late afternoon on Sunday, and the police headquarters building on Riverside was uncomfortably warm, the way it usually was. The counselor who had been with the two teenagers for most of the day had departed ten minutes earlier, leaving them alone. Cab had received word that Delia Fischer, Glory's mother, had landed at the Fort Myers airport, and he wanted a chance to sit down with Tresa and Troy individually before Delia arrived. He knew that once the victim's mother was in the building, the two kids would be more guarded with their answers.