“Well, Jerry,” she said cheerfully as we settled into chairs facing Halpern. “Would you like to talk about those two girls?”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” he said. He was very pale, almost greenish, but he looked a lot more determined than he had when we brought him in. “You’ve made a mistake,” he said. “I didn’t do anything.”

Deborah looked at me with a smile and shook her head. “He didn’t do anything,” she said happily.

“It’s possible,” I said. “Somebody else might have put the bloody clothes in his apartment while he was watching Letterman.”

“Is that what happened, Jerry?” she said. “Did somebody else put those bloody clothes in your place?”

If possible, he looked even greener. “What-bloody-what are you talking about?”

She smiled at him. “Jerry. We found a pair of your pants with blood on ’em. It matches the victims’ blood. We found a shoe and a sock, same story. And we found a bloody fingerprint in your car. Your fingerprint, their blood.” Deborah leaned back in her chair and folded her arms. “Does that jog your memory at all, Jerry?”

Halpern had started shaking his head while Deborah was talking, and he continued to do so, as if it was some kind of weird reflex and he didn’t know he was doing it. “No,” he said. “No. That isn’t even-No.”

“No, Jerry?” Deborah said. “What does that mean, no?”

He was still shaking his head. A drop of sweat flew off and plopped on the table and I could hear him trying very hard to breathe. “Please,” he said. “This is crazy. I didn’t do anything. Why are you-This is pure Kafka, I didn’t do anything.”

Deborah turned to me and raised an eyebrow. “Kafka?” she said.

“He thinks he’s a cockroach,” I told her.

“I’m just a dumb cop, Jerry,” she said. “I don’t know about Kafka. But I know solid evidence when I see it. And you know what, Jerry? I’m seeing it all over your apartment.”

“But I didn’t do anything,” he pleaded.

“Okay,” said Deborah with a shrug. “Then help me out here. How did all that stuff get into your place?”

“Wilkins did it,” he said, and he looked surprised, as if someone else had said it.

“Wilkins?” Deborah said, looking at me.

“The professor in the office next door?” I said.

“Yes, that’s right,” Halpern said, suddenly gathering steam and leaning forward. “It was Wilkins-it had to be.”

“Wilkins did it,” Deborah said. “He put on your clothes, killed the girls, and then put the clothes back in your apartment.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Why would he do that?”

“We’re both up for tenure,” he said. “Only one of us will get it.”

Deborah stared at him as if he had suggested dancing naked. “Tenure,” she said at last, and there was wonder in her voice.

“That’s right,” he said defensively. “It’s the most important moment in any academic career.”

“Important enough to kill somebody?” I asked.

He just stared at a spot on the table. “It was Wilkins,” he said.

Deborah stared at him for a full minute, with the expression of a fond aunt watching her favorite nephew. He looked at her for a few seconds, and then blinked, glanced down at the table, over to me, and back down to the table again. When the silence continued, he finally looked back up at Deborah. “All right, Jerry,” she said. “If that’s the best you can do, I think it might be time for you to call your lawyer.”

He goggled at her, but seemed unable to think of anything to say, so Deborah stood up and headed for the door, and I followed.

“Got him,” she said in the hallway. “That son of a bitch is cooked. Game, set, point.”

And she was so positively sunny that I couldn’t help saying, “If it was him.”

She absolutely beamed at me. “Of course it was him, Dex. Jesus, don’t knock yourself. You did some great work here, and for once we got the right guy first time out.”

“I guess so,” I said.

She cocked her head to one side and stared at me, still smirking in a completely self-satisfied way. “Whatsa matter, Dex,” she said. “Got your shorts in a knot about the wedding?”

“Nothing’s the matter,” I said. “Life on earth has never before been so completely harmonious and satisfying. I just-” And here I hesitated, because I didn’t really know what I just. There was only this unshakable and unreasonable feeling that something was not right.

“I know, Dex,” she said in a kindly voice that somehow made it feel even worse. “It seems way too easy, right? But think of all the shit we go through every day, with every other case. It stands to reason that now and then we get an easy one, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “This just doesn’t feel right.”

She snorted. “With the amount of hard evidence we got on this guy, nobody’s going to give a shit how it feels, Dex,” she said. “Why don’t you lighten up and enjoy a good day’s work?”

I’m sure it was excellent advice, but I could not take it. Even though I had no familiar whisper to feed me my cues, I had to say something. “He doesn’t act like he’s lying,” I said, rather feebly.

Deborah shrugged. “He’s a nut job. Not my problem. He did it.”

“But if he’s psychotic in some way, why would it just burst out all of a sudden? I mean, he’s thirty-something years old, and this is the first time he’s done anything? That doesn’t fit.”

She actually patted my shoulder and smiled again. “Good point, Dex. Why don’t you get on your computer and check his background? I bet we find something.” She glanced at her watch. “You can do that right after the press conference, okay? Come on, can’t be late.”

And I followed along dutifully, wondering how I always seemed to volunteer for extra work.

Deborah had, in fact, been granted the priceless boon of a press conference, something Captain Matthews did not give out lightly. It was her first as lead detective on a major case with its own media frenzy, and she had clearly studied up on how to look and speak for the evening news. She lost her smile and any other visible trace of emotion and spoke flat sentences of perfect cop-ese. Only someone who knew her as well as I did could tell that great and uncharacteristic happiness was burbling behind her wooden face.

So I stood at the back of the room and watched as my sister made a series of radiantly mechanical statements adding up to her belief that she had arrested a suspect in the heinous murders at the university, and as soon as she knew if he was guilty her dear friends in the media would be among the first to know it. She was clearly proud and happy and it had been pure meanness on my part even to hint that something was not quite righteous with Halpern’s guilt, especially since I did not know what that might be-or even if.

She was almost certainly right-Halpern was guilty and I was being stupid and grumpy, thrown off the trolley of pure reason by my missing Passenger. It was the echo of its absence that made me uneasy, and not any kind of doubt about the suspect in a case that really meant absolutely nothing to me anyway. Almost certainly-

And there was that almost again. I had lived my life until now in absolutes-I had no experience with “almost,” and it was unsettling, deeply disturbing not to have that voice of certainty to tell me what was what with no dithering and no doubt. I began to realize just how helpless I was without the Dark Passenger. Even in my day job, nothing was simple anymore.

Back in my cubicle I sat in my chair and leaned back with my eyes closed. Anybody there? I asked hopefully. Nobody was. Just an empty spot that was beginning to hurt as the numb wonder wore off. With the distraction of work over, there was nothing to keep me from self-absorbed self-pity. I was alone in a dark, mean world full of terrible things like me. Or at least, the me I used to be.

Where had the Passenger gone, and why had it gone there? If something had truly scared it away, what could that something be? What could frighten a thing that lived for darkness, that really came to life only when the knives were out?