For two or three minutes we maintained the silent standoff, and then, as if at the end of some test of strength, Lily collapsed onto the recliner. She was breathing hard. There was perspiration across her forehead.

“Renny called me in the middle’a the night outta nowhere,” she said, her gaze cast down upon the pitted parquet floor. “I drove out to some roadside gas station that was closed and found him in his car with a knife in his chest.” She looked up at me. It seemed like she’d aged a decade since letting me in.

“I brought him home,” she said, putting great weight on the words. “Brought him home to die.”

The third death. The charm. I thought of Mouse telling me that I had more luck, both good and bad, than anyone he knew.

“Where is he?” I asked.

Lily turned her head away from me. At first I thought that she was embarrassed or maybe feeling guilty about her and her son. But then I realized that she was looking toward a closed gray door.

“In there?”

She nodded.

I’ve seen a lot of death in my time. From the Louisiana backwoods to Houston. From the European theater to the streets of LA. The fact of death never bothered me, but the anticipation was another thing altogether. Knowing that there was a dead man on the other side of a closed door made me hesitant. I had to take a breath before putting my hand on the knob.

“Oh God,” Lily said when I turned that handle.

Another breath and I pushed the door open.

The bedroom smelled of infection. Reynolds Ketch was laid up in the bed, his shirt cut open and the knife still protruding from his chest. His dead eyes made Lily’s fever look like a light frost.

Then he took in a gurgling breath.

I am not ashamed to say that I nearly ran screaming from that bungalow.

There was a straight-back wood chair set near the head of the bed. I imagined that Lily sat there whispering prayers rather than calling a doctor or, at least, a friend.

I sat there next to that impossible specimen of life.

“Ketch?”

He turned those hot, confused eyes on me.

“Help,” he whispered.

“What you need?”

“Call the, call the hospital. Mama won’t do it.”

“Okay,” I said. “I will if you tell me what happened to you.”

Death peered at me through Ketch’s eyes and decided that I could be trusted.