I had assumed I was simply going crazy, dropping several handfuls of marbles into the recycle bin. Very comforting—but if I was ready to assume that, why not admit that it was possible I had committed a series of delightful little pranks without remembering them, except as fragmented dreams? Was insanity really easier to accept than unconsciousness? After all, it was just a heightened form of sleepwalking. “Sleep murder.” Probably very common. Why not? I already gave away the driver's seat of my consciousness on a regular basis when the Dark Passenger went joyriding. It really wasn't such a great leap to accept that the same thing was happening here, now, in a slightly different form. The Dark Passenger was simply borrowing the car while I slept.

How else to explain it? That I was astrally projecting while I slept and just happened to tune my vibrations to the killer's aura because of our connection in a past life? Sure, that might make sense—if this was southern California. In Miami, it seemed a bit thin. And so if I went into this half building and happened to see three bodies arranged in a way that seemed to be speaking to me, I would have to consider the possibility that I had written the message. Didn't that make more sense than believing I was on some kind of subconscious party line?

I had come to the outside stairwell of the building. I stopped there for a moment and closed my eyes, leaning against the bare concrete block of the wall. It was slightly cooler than the air, and rough. I ground my cheek against it, somewhere between pleasure and pain. No matter how much I wanted to go upstairs and see what there was to see, I wanted just as much not to see it at all.

Talk to me, I whispered to the Dark Passenger. Tell me what you have done.

But of course there was no answer, beyond the usual cool, distant chuckle. And that was no actual help. I felt a little sick, slightly dizzy, uncertain, and I did not like this feeling of having feelings. I took three long breaths, straightened up and opened my eyes.

Sergeant Doakes stared at me from three feet away, just inside the stairwell, one foot on the first step. His face was a dark carved mask of curious hostility, like a rottweiler that wants to rip your arms off but is mildly interested in knowing first what flavor you might be. And there was something in his expression that I had never seen on anybody's face before, except in the mirror. It was a deep and abiding emptiness that had seen through the comic-strip charade of human life and read the bottom line.

“Who are you talkin' to?” he asked me with his bright hungry teeth showing. “You got somebody else in there with you?”