As I slowed and pulled to the shoulder of the road, Stormy said, “What’s up?”

“A dead guy just came aboard.”

“What dead guy?”

“I don’t know. Never saw him before. Covered in blood, meat cleaver in his neck, looks a little excited.”

“Maybe he’s an Elvis fan.”

I parked along the side of the road and turned in my seat to confront our new passenger. He appeared to be about forty. Shaved head. Blue eyes. No beard. No tattoos. He wore khakis and a red-and-white checkered shirt that looked as though it had been made from the tablecloth in an Italian restaurant, but the stains all over it weren’t spaghetti sauce.

“Tell me,” Stormy said, because she couldn’t see the new guy any more than she could see Mr. Presley.

“Well,” I said, “his partially severed head wobbles like a bobblehead doll with a horizontal-motion feature. His eyes are so wide they look as lidless as fish eyes, and he’s screaming at me as if he hasn’t realized yet that the dead can’t be heard, even by me.”

“Vivid,” Stormy said.

Although he had been capable of flamboyance on the stage, Mr. Presley looked appalled by the grotesque spectacle of the recently deceased passenger. He tapped the newcomer on the shoulder (a spirit can feel another spirit), and with the forefinger of his right hand, he made a wind-it-down gesture.

“I think he must have been murdered just minutes ago,” I said. “That’s why he’s so excited.”

Stormy sighed. “I thought we were going to the fair.”

“We are.”

“We are, huh? So you mean for once the dead guy doesn’t want vengeance?”

“He’d probably call it justice.”

“And I suppose he wants us to get it for him.”

“Not us. Me. Then we’ll go to the fair.”

The spirit recently freed from his body had taken Mr. Presley’s advice and had manifested as he appeared in life. No blood. No meat cleaver embedded in his neck. He nodded vigorously, to assure me that he wanted justice.

An instant later, he was outside of the car, running ahead of it, his feet never quite touching the ground.

I drove in pursuit of the spirit, turned left into a narrow country lane, and said to Stormy, “He’s leading us to his murderer.”

“I was looking forward to a snow cone with orange syrup.”

“There’ll be plenty of time for a snow cone,” I assured her.

“And a cheeseburger and jalapeño french fries and a ride on the Tilt-a-Whirl.”

“There’ll be plenty of time for all of that and even time for you to throw up afterward, but we’ve got to deliver a little justice first.”

“It’s like being married to some Perry Mason lawyer with superpowers.”

“I don’t have superpowers.”

“What would you call them?”

“Quirks.”

Two

The two-lane blacktop was so narrow that if we met oncoming traffic, I would have to drive partly on the graveled shoulder of the road. Following the sprinting spirit in khakis and checkered shirt, we passed a few humble houses that featured cacti as lawn shrubs and pebbles instead of grass, in recognition of the desert that, in these outskirts of Pico Mundo, couldn’t be denied as easily as it could in the center of town.