going back to walk the approach to the scene. Maybe there’s something we missed in the dark. May as well carpool, right?” When she smiled, Danny stared back at her suspiciously. He could handle anger thrown at him and his fists were as ready as anyone’s to back up his words. But kindness and a backing down of ego? That was new to him. He didn’t know what to make of it. At all.
I realized how utterly sad it was that his world was so devoid of goodwill he could not recognize it when it appeared. Had I been like that, too, so ready to fight, so cut off from all but the darkest of emotions?
“Okay,” Danny agreed. “But you’re buying lunch.”
“Just don’t make it a triple burger,” she countered, but she was smiling.
For just a moment, I felt something good rise in Danny, something still alive in my old partner that responded to laughter and kindness. Then it was gone.
Chapter 8
I had watched people eat since I died, of course, and longed for that lost pleasure, but seeing Danny eat was a whole other ball game. He wolfed, he chomped, he licked, crunched, and dripped. Watching him, it was impossible not to miss the pleasure of filling one’s gut. But I think I might have been the only one who got any satisfaction from it. Danny shoveled his food in without seeming to get any joy from it at all, as if he feared someone might snatch it from him if he didn’t hurry. My guess was that he was at the point in the day where he felt as if the alcohol had eaten a hole in his stomach and he had to fill it as soon as he could. I had been there myself and remembered the sensation: a weakened body, fighting back against the poison.
If Maggie noticed, she said nothing. Indeed, she never even looked at Danny at all. She drove in silence, ignoring his frantic chewing and slurping. It wasn’t that she had given up on Danny, I realized. She had never considered counting on him in the first place, never weighed it for an instant. I felt ashamed at the possibility that I had once been worthy of such treatment myself. Had Danny gotten worse, or had we unknowingly shared in this sort of dismissal before? I’d had no perspective while alive, no awareness of what others thought of me, or maybe it was more like no interest in what others thought of me. In many ways, I had been dead even back then.
But there was something more to Maggie’s ability to shut out Danny and, indeed, the rest of the world with preternatural concentration. She had trained herself to reject all unbidden thoughts, I decided, perhaps as protection against a painful memory. A failed marriage, perhaps. A professional failure of her own? I could feel nothing from her that might guide me toward an answer. She kept all but the present de terminedly at bay.
When they reached the center of campus where the student dorms were located, Maggie dropped Danny off without comment. He had a mustard spot on his left shoulder as he climbed from the car and he smelled like he’d been ga toring on a barroom floor. Great. Law enforcement was about to make another good impression on young people. But what could I do?
I stayed with Maggie.
I had never seen a person act with so much single-minded purpose before. And whether it was brilliance or self-preservation, it enthralled me. I could not stay away. She radiated a brightness that drew me to her and paled all else.
She started at the parking area far down the hill, searching the sidewalks and grass in a grid pattern, her eyes never wavering as she sought evidence that might lead her closer to the identity of the girl’s killer. It was almost an hour before she left the busy lower area and started up the path that led to the top of the hill. The hillside was rimmed with occasional stands of trees that slowed her even further. She took out a flashlight and scrutinized the base of each tree she passed, examined the underside of each bush, seeking a primary site for the murder but finding nothing. An hour later, she was far above the campus, in sight of the officer guarding the crime scene above. I was her shadow, searching the ground with her, mimicking a meticulousness I had rejected when