Maggie turned blindly and reached out to him, to Nick Gianoulos, and he held her very close. Neither one of them said a word. I didn’t say anything either; I felt empty, dead, so deeply stricken that I couldn’t even feel betrayed. Nick finally let go and pulled Maggie to her feet. She took his hand like a trusting little child and followed him back into the house.

  My house.

  My wife.

  The door shut behind them with a firm, final click.

  After a long time I felt Adam’s gentle cold fingers trail on the back of my neck. “Come.” I didn’t think I could find the strength, all things considered. I lay with my face against the grass and looked into the trench I’d dug in the lawn; there were things squirming there, indignant and unhappy with the exposure. I considered them with simpleminded intensity.

  Nick Gianoulos.

  My wife, goddamn it.

  I managed to get to my feet, then fell forward into Adam’s waiting arms. He held me up, as cold and perfect as a statue, inhumanly strong. I pushed him away and walked slowly to Sylvia’s car, putting one foot in front of the other as if that was a monumentally difficult task.

  When I looked back, I saw a shadow pass behind the curtains inside the house. Two. The lights went out.

  Everywhere.

  Interlude

  Maggie

  Oh, God, it was day again. The rain tapped on the window over her head, birds squawked, thunder grumbled. AU was right with the world.

  Maggie Magill Bowman lay there on her side of the bed and, for one crazy minute, thought she felt his warmth curled up behind her, breath soft on the back of her neck as he slept. When she put her hand back, there was nothing there, nothing at all. Just cold empty sheets.

  God, Mike, sleep—oh, please sleep—

  As she waited to come up out of drowsy grief and into gray life, it all rolled past her eyes again: the Bronco slamming into the guard rail, tilting, hit from the rear and sliding farther out over the drop … and Michael, blood streaming from the side of his head, eyes brilliant and blue, reaching out to her with that half-smile on his lips, the fear so vivid in his face—

  And then they’d jerked her out, and she’d watched him disappear in a scream of metal. He’d tried to yell something, maybe her name, but she hadn’t heard him. She’d still been there, wrapped in blankets and friendship by the uniforms on the scene when the divers had pried Michael out of the crushed beer can of the Bronco and brought him up. They’d tried to turn her away, to get her not to look, but she had watched anyway.

  The terrible thing was that he’d looked just like every other corpse, glaze-eyed and waterlogged and gray. He wasn’t Michael. He was meat, something to be logged and investigated, something that might once have been alive but was just an excuse for other people to cluck their tongues and poke around in their private life. He was the kind of thing Maggie had spent the last six years looking at.

  No offense, ma’am. It’s just a job. It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good.

  She blinked and opened her eyes on the rainy morning. Her head throbbed dully, as it usually did when the weather took a dive, and she shuffled out of bed and off to find some ibuprofen. She downed two, frowned, downed another, then shook the rest of the coarse red pills into her hand and counted them out, meticulously, wondering how many it would take.

  In the end, she was still too strong. She poured them back into the bottle. It was just a thought, brief and unreal. Maggie stared at her reflection in the mirror; it wasn’t a pleasant sight. She looked like shit. She felt like shit.

  There were tears running down her cheeks. She wiped them away with numb fingers and turned the taps on in the shower.

  It wasn’t until she was under the spray that she remembered coming to him in the shower on their anniversary. His body had been warm and smooth and slippery, his hands so beautifully clever. Maggie braced herself on stiffened arms and turned the water on hot, hot enough that her skin turned red where it hit. It was hard to breathe the steam. She put her head down and gasped while the scalding water dripped from her chin, her breasts, her trembling arms. The pain almost made her forget.

  Conversation ceased in the kitchen when she came in. Connie stood up for a sisterly embrace, but something in Maggie’s expression convinced her that it wasn’t such a good idea. She stopped and lowered her hands to her sides.

  “How are you, Maggie?” she asked.

  What a question, Maggie thought, and pushed her out of the way to pour a cup of coffee. She drank it black, more punishment to make herself forget.

  “The car will be here in about fifteen minutes, okay?”

  If she said it wasn’t okay, Maggie wondered, would it all go away? Would they all look at each other and say, Oh, okay, let’s call it all off and let Michael come back? No. Probably not.

  “Okay,” she said distantly. She blew on the surface of her coffee and stared at the closed kitchen blinds. There was a brief, awkward pause. It was not surprising that Mike’s cousin Larry jumped right into it.

  “Aren’t you going to change?” he asked, too loudly. Maggie raised her eyebrows and turned to look at him. His face went dark with a sudden mottled blush. “Jeez, it’s a funeral, Maggie. You might dress up a little.”

  She put her coffee down and walked over to him. Nobody moved, not her fragile little mother, not Connie, not even Larry’s timid wife, Berna. Maggie pulled up a chair and sat down next to Larry, facing him, all wide-eyed earnestness. She pointed to the blue jeans.

  “After the last time I made love with Michael, I put these on.” Her fingers smoothed over them, over the faint stains that Luisa hadn’t been able to wash out. “See this sweater? It was his favorite sweater, I was wearing it that day and it’s still got his fucking bloodstains on it, so don’t you fucking tell me what to wear, Larry!”

  When she finished, Maggie had her hands on his coat lapels and pulled him almost out of his chair. She was shaking all over. So was he. She let go and he dropped bonelessly back down, mouth working wetly in a search for something to say. Maggie leaned back.

  “You’re crazy,” Larry finally managed. She didn’t say anything. “Jesus. You’re crazy.”

  “I’m a cop,” she reminded him blandly. “We’re all psychos, don’t you watch TV?”

  Michael’s sister was hiding her mouth behind her clenched hands, but from the way her shoulders were shaking Maggie thought she was probably laughing. She turned away and began clanking some dishes in the sink. After preserving his dignity for a full minute, Larry got up and slunk out of the kitchen. Berna, twitty little Berna, fluttered out after him, all shock and murmured pet endearments.

  Another coffee cup—full—appeared in front of Maggie with a rattling thump. When she looked up, her mother put her thin hands on Maggie’s shoulders, squeezed, and kept squeezing, frowning at the knots in her muscles.

  “Sweetie,” she finally sighed, “I love you. I loved Michael. You can wear what you want, and nobody should tell you any different. But you use that language in my presence again and I will slap you, do you understand, Margaret Fagan Magill?”

  Maggie started giggling. The spasms bubbled up like carbonation, driving tears out of her eyes and down her face until she bit her knuckle to stop them. Her mother smoothed her hair in gentle strokes. Laisha Magill smelled of White Shoulders and fresh powder, just as she always had; she looked fifteen years younger than her real age, even at sixty-five, hair still mostly dark and thick and lustrous. Maggie desperately craved the illusion that her mother never changed, especially now, when everything had changed so much. She turned into her mother’s embrace and let the tears run down her cheeks.

  “When your father died, I spent days and days doing nothing but going through his clothes,” Laisha continued. I kept saying I was going to give them away, but I couldn’t, I just kept touching them, folding them, ironing them. It was weeks before I could touch them without crying, but it did get easier. It will get easier, Maggie.”

  I don’t want it to get easier, Maggie thought distantly, and picked up her coffee cup. As she did, someone knocked at the front door, and the cup slipped out of her hand to knock against the table. A wave of dark coffee sloshed over to form a little lake of caffeine. Maggie froze, staying perfectly still, and shut her eyes. When she’d been a little girl she’d played hide and seek by covering up her eyes and pretending that made her invisible. Just now that seemed—reasonable. Logical. If she didn’t acknowledge that knock, then she wouldn’t have to go, and they’d call off Michael’s death.

  “The car’s here, honey,” her mother whispered gently, and urged her to stand. Somehow Maggie did that. Her mother’s hand was under her elbow, supporting and guiding her through the house and out the door; the chauffeur, a dark-suited man who might have been faceless for all Maggie noticed, covered her head with an umbrella for the five or six feet between the door and the rain-beaded black limousine.

  Funny, she’d always wanted to ride in one. This one didn’t have any of the typical amenities, no bar, no TV, no fold-out seats. It was just a car, only the seats faced each other. There was a brief fuss as Larry and Berna tried to enter the limo, but Connie’s hiss warned them off. They waddled off to their rental car, and the chauffeur got in the front and pulled away from the curb.

  There was a large crowd in the church pews by the time the family arrived, but of course there was no problem finding a place to sit. Maggie found herself staring at little details—the trim on her mother’s black dress, the wine-colored stained glass over the altar, the regulation Southern Baptist flip of Pastor Carlson’s hair. The casket was closed. Why had she—oh, yes. Adam had told her Mike had wanted it that way. Once he’d mentioned it, Maggie had decided that it was a fine idea, but suddenly she wanted to unlatch that lid, take one more look at him before he was gone for good.

  Her mind was suddenly wrenched away on aside rail to the last autopsy she’d witnessed. Dr. Kay Gillespie, young, aggressive, and with an inappropriately sunny manner, had staked out the corpse like a lab experiment, all the while telling Maggie gleefully about the time she’d gotten a drowning victim with eels breeding in his guts. This time, in Maggie’s memory, it was Michael on the table with his beautiful blue eyes staring and clouded, and in the white mass of his intestines something dark and snakelike whipped and hissed.

  Maggie flinched and gasped, almost knocking the hymn book out of Connie’s hands as they rose to sing. The pastor had been speaking, she gathered. The church was too full, too hot, the coffin too close. She just wanted out.

  Everybody was crying before it was over—everybody except the widow. Maggie’s eyes were dry and feverish. Mike’s colleagues and friends came to touch her hands and murmur uncomfortable words of sympathy. The worst moment was when Carl Voorhees, reduced to a whisper, came up to kiss her cheek. He clung to her as if he couldn’t let go, and when he pulled away, his eyes flooded and filled with the helpless hurt of a tortured puppy. He finished by patting Maggie awkwardly on the shoulder, shoved his hands in his coat pockets, and walked away with his shoulders hunched and bowed in against the pain. She felt a distant sympathy for him, but she just wanted out. Out of everything.

  Eventually, the pastor and her mother got her out of the church and into the limousine again. It glided out, following the curlicued splendor of the hearse and trailing a long snaky caravan of cars with their lights on. When they passed cars that stopped to let the procession by, Maggie saw the wonder and curiosity on the faces of the passengers. She’d gotten the same looks on her wedding night when she and Michael had driven to the reception still in gown and tux—wonder and curiosity. Ceremonies. Was there any difference, really? Well, the funeral was splashier, maybe. And better attended.

  Because it was still raining, the graveside service was shorter than usual, and the crowd smaller. The powers-that-be didn’t lower the casket anymore in the presence of the family—too distressing, apparently—so after the pastor finished his words of support and encouragement, they stood awkwardly around in the mud and rain until someone handed Maggie a rose. She walked up and put it on the casket, pressed her hand flat on the wood, and turned away.

  Her knees gave way. She didn’t think she tripped. Anyway, someone grabbed her and got her back upright; she was surprised to see that it was Larry, foul-mouthed, mean-spirited little Larry. He very carefully helped her to a bench and tried to get her to accept a little water from the ever-prepared funeral director. Nothing, Maggie told him.

  That wasn’t really what she wanted, of course, but there wasn’t anything Larry or the funeral director could do about that. Eventually they wandered off and let her sit in silence. That was when Maggie noticed a woman, a stranger, standing under a huge black umbrella about a hundred feet away.

  She’d never seen her before, but there was something about her that was notable; middle-aged but still exotically beautiful, coppery skin and Indian cheekbones, pale strange eyes. She was crying, her eyes fixed not on the grave but on Maggie. She turned quickly away when Maggie noticed her, walked to a dull green car, and drove off without a backward look.

  Larry came back to collect her for the limo driver. He turned out to be kind of decent, all things considered. He even got her a bottle of Glenlivet and took Laisha out to dinner and the movies. Maggie was well into the bottle when Carl Voorhees came by and delivered the package that contained Michael’s personal effects; she waited until he was gone before she unwrapped it.

  Item: one pair pants, waterstained, bloodstained. Item: one shirt, ditto. When she held it close to her she could smell him on it, however faintly. Belt. Underwear, splashed with pink stains like he’d gotten careless with some pastel tropical drink. Socks. One shoe, the other had been lost.

  Item: one gold wedding band. On the inside, in tiny letters, it said Til Death.

  Oh, dear God.

  Dear, merciful God.

  She finished the bottle.

  Chapter Twelve

  Vigil

  I had a lovely funeral, by all accounts. The day was appropriately rainy and gray, the crowd large, the flowers lavish. My widow looked fragile and determined, and—according to Sylvia’s firsthand account—she had stayed well away from Nick Gianoulos, even though Nick had tried hard to be of service in escorting her around. Maggie had walked through the services alone, faltering only when she had to put a rose on the casket at graveside.

  “Who’s in the casket?” I asked, yanking myself out of the depths of an imaginary—or very real—grave. Sylvia looked up from the tarot cards she was idly shuffling and shook her head in ignorance. I turned to Adam, who sat on my left. “Anybody I know?”

  “Nobody anybody knows,” he said distantly, watching Sylvia’s fingers as she coaxed the thick cards into orderly piles and riffled them together. We were sitting in the kitchen, Sylvia sipping hot coffee and Adam and I drinking something colder and thicker. “A JD, on his way to a cut-rate coffin and a plastic notecard in the pauper’s corner. I figure he got a good deal.”

  “I figure he doesn’t really care,” Sylvia shot back, and took a sip of her coffee. The steam writhed up to veil the brilliance of her eyes, the challenge. “I don’t think I want to know how you managed that.”

  “No, you probably don’t,” Adam acknowledged with an absence of expression more descriptive than a sigh. “Cheer up, Michael, you’re the only man in Dallas I know who can visit his own grave.”

  “Can I?” I was startled. The idea hadn’t occurred to me. Adam sat back, sipping at his dark mug, and tapped his fingers lightly on the table.

  “Do you want to?”

  That gave me pause. I wasn’t exactly sure I was ready for that, but I was going crazy in the house, and the oppressive waiting for Sweet William’s next move had already taken its toll on me. The more I thought about Nick and Maggie, the crazier I got. I nodded. Adam drank the rest of his radon, waited while I drained mine, and looked past me to where Sylvia turned over cards.

  “Who are you casting for?” he wanted to know, staring at the polished pasteboard. She tapped the first card without looking up. “Ah. Must be me.”

  “The Fool,” she agreed dryly. I picked up the card and looked at it—at the long-haired young man stepping trustingly over the abyss, eyes clear and unafraid. There was an odd resemblance.

  “And what do the cards have in store for me?” Adam continued, taking the Fool and studying it. She turned over cards and showed them, green eyes intent and searching.

  Second card: Death. Adam snorted and shrugged.

  Third card: Queen of Swords. I looked at Sylvia, curious, but she was watching Adam. He touched the card with contemplative fingertips, a secret smile on his lips.

  Fourth card: The Tower, shadowy figures screaming and hurtling down from the crumbling structure, hounds snarling and baying beneath it, all lit by the brilliant light of the full fertile moon. Adam’s smile vanished. Sylvia reached out to turn it over, face down, but he caught her hand and stopped her.

  ’You want to tell me what that one means?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  Sylvia didn’t look at him, just broke free and shuffled the Tower back into the deck. Adam sat back, frowning, rubbing his fingertips lightly on the smooth tabletop. Sylvia squared the edges on her deck, wrapped them in a dark scarf, and opened a drawer in the little oak sideboard next to her. She didn’t say a thing to either one of us, just got up and left the room.

  “What’s wrong with her?” I asked Adam. His lips pressed together, smothering some expression he didn’t want me to see.

  “You understand women all the time?”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. I don’t even understand them some of the time.” I picked up his mug and rinsed it in the white porcelain sink. The dregs of the blood turned pink and disappeared into the whirlpool of the drain. “How long you going to keep me here, Adam?”

  “Nobody’s keeping you here.”

  I stuck the mugs into the waiting dishwasher and turned to look at him, eyebrows raised. He smiled.