HE TRAFFIC ON THE 836 WAS BACKED UP FOR HALF A MILE right after the 395 from Miami Beach poured into it. We inched forward between exits until we could see the problem: a truckload of watermelons had emptied out onto the highway. There was a streak of red-and-green goo six inches thick across the road, dotted with a sprinkling of cars in various stages of destruction. An ambulance went past on the shoulder, followed by a procession of cars driven by people too important to wait in a traffic jam. Horns honked all along the line, people yelled and waved their fists, and somewhere ahead I heard a single gunshot. It was good to be back to normal life.

By the time we fought our way through the traffic and onto surface streets, we had lost fifteen minutes and it took another fifteen to get back to work. Vince and I rode the elevator to the second floor in silence, but as the doors slid open and we stepped out, he stopped me. “You’re doing the right thing,” he said.

“Yes, I am,” I said. “But if I don’t do it quickly Deborah will kill me.”

He grabbed my arm. “I mean about Manny,” he said. “You’re going to love what he does. It will really make a difference.”

I was already aware that it would really make a difference in my bank account, but beyond that I still didn’t see the point. Would everyone truly have a better time if they were served a series of apparently alien objects of uncertain use and origin instead of cold cuts? There is a great deal I don’t understand about human beings, but this really seemed to take the cake—assuming we would have a cake at all, which in my opinion was not a sure thing.

There was one thing I understood quite well, however, and that was Deborah’s attitude about punctuality. It was handed down from our father, and it said that lateness was disrespect and there were no excuses. So I pried Vince’s fingers off my arm and shook his hand. “I’m sure we’re all going to be very happy with the food,” I said.

He held on to my hand. “It’s more than that,” he said.

“Vince—”

“You’re making a statement about the rest of your life,” he said. “A really good statement, that your and Rita’s life together—”

“My life is in danger if I don’t go, Vince,” I said.

“I’m really happy about this,” he said, and it was so unnerving to see him display an apparently authentic emotion that there was actually a little bit of panic to my flight away from him and down the hall to the conference room.

The room was full, since this was becoming a somewhat high-profile case after the hysterical news stories of the evening before about two young women found burned and headless. Deborah glared at me as I slipped in and stood by the door, and I gave her what I hoped was a disarming smile. She cut off the speaker, one of the patrolmen who had been first on the scene.

“All right,” she said. “We know we’re not going to find the heads on the scene.”

I had thought that my late entrance and Deborah’s vicious glare at me would certainly win the award for Most Dramatic Entrance, but I was dead wrong. Because just as Debs tried to get the meeting moving again, I was upstaged as thoroughly as a candle at a firebombing.

“Come on, people,” Sergeant Sister said. “Let’s have some ideas about this.”

“We could drag the lake,” Camilla Figg said. She was a thirty-five-year-old forensics geek and usually kept quiet, and it was rather surprising to hear her speak. Apparently some people preferred it that way, because a thin, intense cop named Corrigan jumped on her right away.

“Bullshit,” said Corrigan. “Heads float.”

“They don’t float—they’re solid bone,” Camilla insisted.

“Some of ’em are,” Corrigan said, and he got his little laugh.

Deborah frowned, and was about to step in with an authoritative word or two, when a noise in the hall stopped her.

CLUMP.

Not that loud, but somehow it commanded all the attention there was in the room.

CLUMP.

Closer, a little louder, for all the world approaching us now like something from a low-budget horror movie…

CLUMP.

For some reason I couldn’t hope to explain, everyone in the room seemed to hold their breath and turn slowly toward the door. And if only because I wanted to fit in, I began to turn for a peek into the hall myself, when I was stopped by the smallest possible interior tickle, just a hint of a twitch, and so I closed my eyes and listened. Hello? I said mentally, and after a very short pause there was a small, slightly hesitant sound, almost a clearing of the mental throat, and then—

Somebody in the room muttered, “Holy sweet Jesus,” with the kind of reverent horror that was always guaranteed to pique my interest, and the small not-quite-sound within purred just a bit and then subsided. I opened my eyes.

I can only say that I had been so happy to feel the Passenger stirring in the dark backseat that for a moment I had tuned out everything around me. This is always a dangerous slip, especially for artificial humans like me, and the point was driven home with an absolutely stunning impact when I opened my eyes.

It was indeed low-budget horror, Night of the Living Dead, but in the flesh and not a movie at all, because standing in the doorway, just to my right, staring at me, was a man who was really supposed to be dead.

Sergeant Doakes.

Doakes had never liked me. He seemed to be the only cop on the entire force who suspected that I might be what, in fact, I was. I had always thought he could see through my disguise because he was somewhat the same thing himself, a cold killer. He had tried and failed to prove that I was guilty of almost anything, and that failure had also failed to endear me to him.

The last time I had seen Doakes the paramedics had been loading him into an ambulance. He had been unconscious, partly as the result of the shock and pain of having his tongue, feet, and hands removed by a very talented amateur surgeon who thought Doakes had done him wrong. Now it was true that I had gently encouraged that notion with the part-time doctor, but I had at least had the decency to persuade Doakes first to go along with the plan, in order to catch the inhuman fiend. And I had also very nearly saved Doakes at considerable risk to my own precious and irreplaceable life and limbs. I hadn’t quite pulled off the dashing and timely rescue I’m sure Doakes had hoped for, but I had tried, and it was really and truly not my fault that he had been more dead than alive when they hauled him away.

So I didn’t think it was asking too much for some small acknowledgment of the great hazard I had exposed myself to on his behalf. I didn’t need flowers, or a medal, or even a box of chocolates, but perhaps something along the lines of a hearty clap on the back and a murmured, “Thanks, old fellow.” Of course he would have some trouble murmuring coherently without a tongue, and the clap on the back with one of his new metal hands could prove painful, but he might at least try. Was that so unreasonable?

Apparently it was. Doakes stared at me as if he was the hungriest dog in the world and I was the very last steak. I had thought that he used to look at me with enough venom to lay low the entire endangered species list. But that had been the gentle laughter of a tousle-haired child on a sunny day compared to the way he was looking at me now. And I knew what had made the Dark Passenger clear its throat—it had been the scent of a familiar predator. I felt the slow flex of interior wings, coming back to full roaring life, rising to the challenge in Doakes’s eyes. And behind those dark eyes his own inner monster snarled and spat at mine. We stood like that for a long moment, on the outside simply staring but on the inside two predatory shadows screeching out a challenge.

Someone was speaking, but the world had narrowed to just me and Doakes and the two black shadows inside us calling for battle, and neither one of us heard a word, just an annoying drone in the background.

Deborah’s voice cut through the fog at last. “Sergeant Doakes,” she said, somewhat forcefully. Finally Doakes turned to face her and the spell was broken. And feeling somewhat smug in the power—joy and bliss!—of the Passenger, as well as the petty victory of having Doakes turn away first, I faded into the wallpaper, taking a small step back to survey the leftovers of my once-mighty nemesis.

Sergeant Doakes still held the department record for bench press, but he did not look like he would defend his record anytime soon. He was gaunt and, except for the fire smoldering behind his eyes, he looked almost weak. He stood stiffly on his two prosthetic feet, his arms hanging straight down by his sides, with gleaming silver things that looked like a complicated kind of vise grip protruding from each wrist.

I could hear the others in the room breathing, but aside from that there was not a sound. Everyone simply stared at the thing that had once been Doakes, and he stared at Deborah, who licked her lips, apparently trying to think of something coherent to say, and finally came up with, “Have a seat, Doakes. Um. I’ll bring you up to date?”

Doakes looked at her for a long moment. Then he turned awkwardly around, glared at me, and clumped out of the room, his strange, measured footsteps echoing down the hall until they were gone.

On the whole, cops don’t like to give the impression that they are ever impressed or intimidated, so it was several seconds before anyone risked giving away any unwanted emotion by breathing again. Naturally enough, it was Deborah who finally broke the unnatural silence. “All right,” she said, and suddenly everyone was clearing their throats and shifting in their chairs.

“All right,” she repeated, “so we won’t find the heads at the scene.”

“Heads don’t float,” Camilla Figg insisted scornfully, and we were back to where we had been before the sudden semi-appearance of Sergeant Doakes. And they droned on for another ten minutes or so, tirelessly fighting crime by arguing about who was supposed to fill out the paperwork, when we were rudely interrupted once again by the door beside me swinging open.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Captain Matthews said. “I’ve got some—ah—really great news, I think.” He looked around the room frowning, which even I could have told him was not the proper face for delivering great news. “It’s, uh, ahem. Sergeant Doakes has come back, and he’s, uh—It’s important for you people to realize that he’s been badly, uh, damaged. He has only a couple of years left before he’s eligible for full pension, so the lawyers, ah—we thought, under the circumstances, um…” He trailed off and looked around the room. “Did somebody already tell you people?”

“Sergeant Doakes was just here,” Deborah said.

“Oh,” Matthews said. “Well, then—” He shrugged. “That’s fine. All right then. I’ll let you get on with the meeting then. Anything to report?”

“No real progress yet, Captain,” Deborah said.

“Well, I’m sure you’ll get this thing wrapped up before the press—I mean, in a timely fashion.”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

“All right then,” he said again. And he looked around the room once, squared his shoulders, and left the room.

“Heads don’t float,” somebody else said, and a small snort of laughter went around the room.

“Jesus,” Deborah said. “Can we focus on this, please? We got two bodies here.”

And more to come, I thought, and the Dark Passenger quivered slightly, as if trying very bravely not to run away, but that was all, and I thought no more about it.