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wanted to tell Hollis that if I were performing any other service, he wouldn’t be sitting there all huffy; if I cleaned houses, he wouldn’t be asking me to go clean his for free, right? My lips parted, but I clamped them shut. I refused to justify myself.
    He thrust the money, still in its bank envelope, into my hand. I slid the envelope into my jacket pocket without comment. We drove back to the turn-off that led to the cemetery. We were parked on a gravel path winding among the tombstones, when he turned off the engine. “Come on,” he said. “The grave is over here.” The day had cleared up,turned bright, and I watched big sycamore leaves turn cartwheels in the wind across the dying grass.
    â€œEmbalming mutes the effect,” I warned him.
    His eyes lit up. He was thinking I’d faked my results before, somehow, and that now he’d unmask me. And he’d get his money back. He had about a ton of ambiguity resting on his shoulders.
    I stepped gingerly onto the nearest grave, the ground chilly under my bare feet. Since a cemetery is so full of death, I have difficulty getting a clear reading. When you add the competing emanations from the corpses to the effects of the embalming process, you have to get as close as you can. “Middle-aged white man, died of . . . a massive coronary,” I said, my eyes closed. The name was Matthews, something like that.
    There was a silence while Hollis read the headstone. Then Hollis growled, “Yes.” He caught his breath jaggedly. “We’re going to walk now. Keep your eyes shut.” I felt his big hand take mine, lead me carefully to another patch of ground. I reached down deep with that inner sense that had never yet failed me. “Very old man.” I shook my head. “I think he just ran down.” I was led to yet another grave, this one farther away. “Woman, sixties, car accident. Named Turner, Turnage? A drunk, I think.”
    We went back in our original direction, and I knew by the tension in his body that this was the grave he’d been aiming for all along. When he guided me onto the grave, I knelt. This was death by violence, I knew at once. I took a deep breath and reached below me. “Oh,” I said sharply. I realized dimly that because Hollis was thinking of this dead person so strongly, it was helping me to reach her. I couldhear the water running in the bathtub. House was hot, window was open. Breeze coming in the high frosted window of the bathroom. Suddenly . . . “Let go!” she said, but it was as if I were the woman, and I was saying it, too. And then her/my head was under water, and we were looking up at the stippled ceiling, and we couldn’t breathe, and we drowned.
    â€œSomeone had ahold of her ankles,” I said, and I was all by myself in my skin, and I was alive. “Someone pulled her under.”
    After a long moment, I opened my eyes, looked down at the headstone in front of me. Sally Boxleitner, it read. Beloved Wife of Hollis .
    â€œCORONER always said he couldn’t figure it out. I sent her for an autopsy,” the deputy said. “The results were inconclusive. She might have fainted and slipped under the water, fallen asleep in the tub or something. I couldn’t understand why she couldn’t save herself. But there wasn’t any evidence either way.”
    I just watched him. Grieving people can be unpredictable.
    â€œVagal shock,” I murmured. “Or maybe it’s called vagal inhibition. People can’t even struggle, if it’s sudden.”
    â€œYou’ve seen this before?” There were tears in his eyes, angry tears.
    â€œI’ve seen everything.”
    â€œSomeone murdered her.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œYou can’t see who.”
    â€œNo. I don’t see who. I see how, when I find the body. Iknow it’s not you. If you were the murderer, and you were right by your victim, I might