Had people looked at me that same way when I was stumbling through the last years of my life? I couldn’t recall and I was glad I had been spared the self-awareness of how far I had fallen. There had certainly been plenty of times I had invited contempt, including right here in this same restaurant. I had often taken the women I was running around with here for dinner, knowing all it would take was that one meal to get her into bed and that my investment in both time and money would be limited. I wasn’t proud of it, and I hadn’t been proud of it back then. Drinking had helped me overlook that.

Maggie sat as far away from Danny as she could, but, to her credit, she appeared perfectly composed. I knew she was aware of Danny’s drunken state. She had reacted to his order of a double bourbon with something close to contempt. But she was determined to get what she could out of him. I admired her perseverance.

“Did you even look into the father as a suspect at all?” she asked Danny as soon as the waiter left with their orders.

“Fahey took care of it,” Danny answered, taking a gulp from his bourbon on the rocks.

The lying bastard. He’d been the one to pursue family members. I’d had my hands full interviewing classmates and tracking the boyfriend’s movements.

“Fahey seems to have taken care of a lot of things when he was your partner,” Maggie observed. She had ordered a glass of white wine, but it sat untouched in front of her. Danny had that effect on people: he made them treasure their sobriety.

“Look, I admit Fahey had lost his edge,” Danny conceded. “It’s possible he missed something.”

“I’ve looked over the report,” Maggie said. “I’m no expert, but the interview notes with the father look an awful lot like your lousy typing, Danny. So why don’t you cut the crap and tell me what you remember?”

Danny would not look her in the eye. “I don’t remember much of anything,” he said after a moment. “I remember the guy was pretty broken up. He’d just lost his daughter and he’d lost his wife only a couple of years before that. How hard was I supposed to push him?”

“I think he did it,” Maggie said flatly. “I think he killed his own daughter and I think he killed Vicky Meeks.”

Danny stared at her, amazed. “You can’t mean that.”

“I can,” she said. “And I do. There is something deeply wrong in that family, something terribly wrong. Anyone could feel it. How the hell could you miss it? You and Fahey let a killer walk free and now he’s done it again. And god knows how many other young women died before Vicky Meeks.”

“Look, the guy’s a little fruity. Maybe creepy even. But he’s not the killer.”

“How do you know?” Maggie asked.

“His wife alibied him.”

“His wife?” Maggie said. “The Russian? Come on. She’s a mail-order bride if ever I saw one. She would have been in America, what? Two months at the time? She would have said anything he told her to say.”

“She’d been in America over a year when I talked to her, and she’s no pushover. Take it from me. That woman is made of iron.”

“So, you remember something after all,” Maggie said.

Danny shrugged. “I may have refreshed my memory a little by looking over the notes.”

“Not much to refresh with those notes,” Maggie pointed out.

“Hey, am I supposed to take the rap for Fahey not giving a shit?” Danny asked. “I tried to save my partner’s life, and now I have to take shit for all of his mistakes on top of people giving me shit for mine?”

Maggie shook her head in disgust. She looked at Danny so strangely, I suddenly knew: she had heard every word Gonzales had said about my death and the role of Danny’s inertia in it.

I wondered if Danny realized it.

“Well?” Danny asked.

“Well, what?” Maggie replied.

“You got a boyfriend?’ he said. Oh, god, I thought—was he really drunk enough to think he had a chance?

“Are you seriously asking me that?” Maggie demanded.

“I’m just making conversation,” Danny said, sounding perplexed as he retreated from all that the question had implied and tried to pretend he was just being friendly.

“Make conversation about something else,” Maggie said flatly.

“Okay, fine. Are you looking into anything else?” Danny asked, a little too casually, as he ran his thumb over the lip of his glass. His drink was gone. He’d sucked it down in four gulps and gestured for another before Maggie had even tasted hers.

“You mean, am I looking into anything besides the Hayes and Meeks cases?”

“Yeah. Does Gonzales have you looking into anything else?” Though he was trying to sound uninterested, I could feel it again: fear rolling off Danny in waves. He had started to perspire and was looking around for the waiter bearing his new drink.

“Why would Gonzales ask me to look into anything else?” Maggie said softly.

“You’re the golden girl,” Danny told her glumly. “Obviously, you’re his pet right now. I just thought . . .”

“You just thought what?” Maggie hissed back. For the first time, I had a glimpse of the immense anger she was capable of when crossed. And, oh, she was magnificent.

“You just assumed because he trusted me to do my job that I was sleeping with him and must be his pet snitch?” she said.

“I didn’t say that,” Danny protested with the kind of truly dumbfounded look that only a drunk can produce.

The waiter arrived with Danny’s fresh drink and gave Maggie a sympathetic look. She touched his arm lightly. “I need that steak to go after all, Sam. I got beeped and have to go back in.”

The waiter nodded and withdrew without looking at Danny.

“No,” Danny insisted, rising. He drained his new drink. “I can take a hint. Enjoy your dinner in peace. I’ve got to get home anyway.”

He stumbled out before she could reply.

I stayed with Maggie, waiting quietly in Danny’s vacated seat, looking around at the couples with their heads bent together and the noisy groups who were dining together. It was the most wonderful of rituals, I realized, humans breaking bread, sipping wine, tasting the delights of food. I was sorry I had shoveled it in my whole life, either eating furtively because I did not respect myself or eating grudgingly because it took away from the time and room I had for drinking. Now I saw that people connected to one another by sharing the act of feeding their bodies. I noticed how it relaxed people, how it coaxed laughter to the surface and brought out goodwill toward all.

I missed having a chance to enjoy that.

The waiter had seen Danny leave and brought out Maggie’s dinner without bothering to ask if she still wanted it to go. She ate slowly, lost in thought, not noticing the waiter, who hovered around her, anxious to make her meal a pleasant one. I wished that I could tell what she was thinking. She was far away, puzzling over some detail, putting pieces of information together, focusing all of her energy on some mental task—all the while completely unaware of how rare her concentration was.

When she was done, I confess I allowed myself the indulgence of pretending I was alive. As the coat-check girl helped Maggie into her coat, I placed my hands on the woolen shoulders, as if guiding them into place, then I imagined that her smile of thanks was for me.

I had seldom displayed such gallantry while alive. But now I saw that these minor acts were the ways by which people paid homage to a life lived among others—and that I had robbed more than my wife, Connie, of their grace.

Maggie was still distracted as she climbed into her car and headed back toward headquarters. The steak house she had chosen was five miles out of town on a winding two-lane highway and there were few other businesses or homes nearby. Within a minute, we had left the lights of the parking lot behind and were deep into the dark of a country road at night. I sat in the backseat, stretched out, peering out at the darkness, watching the night world whoosh by. Far behind us, I could see twin pinpricks of light, another car, perhaps miles away, approaching fast.

I felt Maggie’s car wobble and then start to shudder before she did. At first, she did not want to acknowledge the problem. She gripped the steering wheel tighter and forced the car back on the road, but it wandered toward the shoulder once again, then began to dip and rock in a rhythm that was unmistakable: one of her tires was flat.

I felt a flash of frustration from her as she steered the car off the road. Her flashlight was stored in the glove compartment and she got it out before she climbed out into the almost complete darkness to take a look. Overhead, the night sky was filled with clouds, with little ambient light to relieve the gloom.

As I followed her, I noticed the twin pinpricks of light growing closer, yet not as quickly as I had imagined they might. The car behind us was slowing. Perhaps they had seen Maggie’s brake lights and would stop to help.

Maggie knelt in the darkness and surveyed the damage. The tire was shredded beyond repair. She sighed and headed for the trunk to retrieve her spare. I stayed behind and examined the tire. We had not hit anything; I would surely have felt the bump. What in the world had caused such damage? I examined the black rubber and saw fine grooves crisscrossing the heavier tread, then spotted a stub of metal driven deep into the rubber: knife marks and a nail. The flat tire was deliberate.

The headlights behind us grew closer.

I was overwhelmed with a foreboding of danger so intense I acted without thinking first. Whoever was following Maggie thought she was alone. I would show them otherwise.

I stepped into the road and stood in the very center of the lane, staring down the oncoming headlights.

Then I remembered that I was invisible to the living and so my actions were futile.

I could do nothing but watch as the car crested a dip in the road and slowed as it drew near. The headlights blinded me, but I could make out a solitary figure behind the wheel: someone large, dressed in a heavy overcoat.

Maggie was in danger.

I willed myself to be seen. I concentrated with all of my being as I lifted my hands above my head and focused my attention on the unknown driver, twisting my face into a warning, letting him or her know that I would not stand by while harm came to my Maggie.

It was useless, I knew. But still, I had to try.

A miracle happened. Just as the car reached us and Maggie lifted her head to see who was approaching, the driver pulled the steering wheel violently to the right. With a screech of rubber, the car veered around me and over into the oncoming lane, then shot past, missing me by inches.

Maggie stared after the car, puzzled at its behavior.

I stared, too, even more puzzled. Because the car had veered around me—it had changed its course because of me.

Whoever was driving had seen me.