He sat down on the edge of the gurney. "We got the call around midnight. Headed over to Wacker. The cops were there already. Found this guy on the street, all busted up. Two hits in the chest and two in the abdomen. He was bleeding bad."

I nodded, listening.

"We tried to stabilize him. But there wasn't much point to it. Simmons and me both knew that. But we tried. It's what you do, you know? He was awake for it. Scared as hell. Screaming some. Kept begging us not to let him die. Said he had a little girl to look after."

"What happened?"

"He died," Lamar said, his voice flat. "I've seen it before. Here in town. In action while I was in the corps. You get to where you can recognize death when he comes knocking." He rubbed his large, rather slender hands together. "We tried to resuscitate, but he was gone. That's when it happened."

"Go on."

"This woman shows up. I don't know from where. We just looked up and she was standing over us looking down."

I leaned forward. "What did she look like?"

"I don't know," Lamar answered. "She was… like, wearing this costume, right? Like those people at Renaissance fairs. Big old black robe with a hood over her head. I didn't see much of her face. Just her chin and her throat. She was white."

"What did you do?"

"I figured she was a nut. You get them a lot this time of year. Or maybe going to a costume party or something. Hell, it's almost Halloween. She looks at me and tells me to back up and let her help him."

How many women in a black hooded robe could have been running around town last night? Kumori. That would have been maybe forty-five minutes or an hour before I saw her at Bock's.

Lamar peered at my face. "You know her," he said.

"Not personally. But yeah. What did she do?"

His face grew more remote. "She knelt down over him. Like, straddling the stretcher. Then she leaned down. The robe and the hood fell over them both, right. Like, I couldn't see what she was doing." He licked his lips. "And it got cold. I mean, ice started forming on the sidewalk and the stretcher and on our truck. I swear to you, it happened."

"I believe it," I said.

"And the victim all of a sudden starts coughing. Trying to scream. I mean, it wasn't like the wounds were gone, but… I don't know how to describe it. He was holding on." His face twisted with a sickened expression. "He was in agony, and he was stable. It was like… like he wasn't being allowed to die.

"So the woman stands up. She tells us we've got less than an hour to save him. And then she's gone. Like, poof, gone. Like she was all in my imagination."

I shook my head. "Then?"