She Discovered Too Late novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Dispatch

The county dispatch office was a low brick building behind a fire station.

I rode in the back seat of the car beside Miriam, and she did not know I was there.

She held the folded second sheet in her fist the whole way.

The woman at the front desk looked at her suit and her face and did not ask for an appointment.

"I need a recording," Miriam said. "March ninth, fourteen years ago. A call from forty-one Alder Road."

"That's an archive request." The woman typed something. "It needs a case number, ma'am, or a court order."

"Try the name Ellingham."

The woman typed again. Her eyebrows rose.

"It's here," she said, and then, more softly, "You're the patient on this call. You're allowed to hear it."

She printed a slip. A younger man in a cardigan led Miriam down a hall to a small windowless room.

There was a table, a laptop and a pair of headphones with a worn foam band.

"I'll be outside," the man said, and closed the door.

Miriam sat down.

She looked at the laptop for a long moment. Her hand reached for the mouse and stopped.

I stood against the wall, the only place left in the room.

You don't have to listen, I wanted to tell her, but I had no voice to tell her with.

She put on the headphones.

She pressed play, and I heard it too, tinny and thin through the foam.

First came a rush of static.

"Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?"

"My sister won't wake up."

It was a boy's voice. It was high and cracked, and it climbed on every word.

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