“I was thinking about your ponytail,” Mahler said. “You were the youngest. Just twenty, right?”

“I still am twenty.”

“Your father talked about the things you won’t get to do.”

“What’s to stop me? You asked me once what I want. You know what I want? To breathe again. To take a long, full breath and feel it in my lungs.”

“I can’t help you with that.”

“You keep blinking.” Susan Hart leaned forward and peered at him. “What’s wrong with your eyes?”

“The migraine affects my vision. Someone’s coming to help me.”

“Good,” she said. “You know, I never saw the guy who killed me. Did I tell you that? I stopped to catch my breath, and he came up behind. It’s usually the best part of a run. You’ve got the high of your run, of being spent. Except for that time—”

“We figured that from the footprint patterns.”

“I heard him, though. Voice like he had a snake for a tongue. ‘You should be more careful.’ That’s what he says as he’s squeezing the cord around my neck. ‘Bitch,’ he says. I always hated men saying that word, and it was the last thing I heard.”

“This time we’ll arrest him.”

“It won’t change my murder, will it? I’m not coming back. This…with you…it’s not living in the real world.”

“I get that.”

“You remember that Dickinson poem where she says our death makes a short, potential stir? My death wasn’t my own.”

“It’s my fault we didn’t get Partridge.”

She looked down at her hands. “I hated that my death was with that man…and you.”

“With me?”

“After I died, you were always there, wanting something.”

“You’re right.”

“I like you, Eddie, but I don’t want to be stuck here with you. Saying the same things over and over.”

“Is that what we do?”

“It’s better when we talk about other things or we don’t talk at all.”

“So it’s changing?”

She smiled a thin, wan smile. “You are, Eddie. I’m dead, remember? This is you. Each time you think of me, it’s different.”

A knock sounded on Mahler’s office door. He looked up to see Kate standing inside.

“Your message said to come over.” Holding her briefcase, she shifted back and forth. “It said urgent.”

He glanced at the empty chair opposite him. Susan Hart never hung around for company. “Close the door, Kate. Please.”

“What is it, Eddie? Come on.”

“Close the door.”

Kate pulled the door shut and looked at her phone. “I’m due for a court appearance in forty-five minutes. What do you want?”