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up.
    "But today," Stewart continued, "we could have had something I've repeatedly said this kind of research really needs."
    Jesus, Earl thought, give it a rest. "What's that?" he asked, knowing he shouldn't.
    "An interview with a dead man."

Chapter 3
    Friday, July 4, 11:45 p.m.
    Palliative Care, St. Paul's Hospital,
    Buffalo, New York

    I crept up the back stairwell and let myself into the darkened hallway.
    Empty.
    So far so good. Still, better wait to see if a nurse emerged from one of the rooms.
    I shrank back in the shadows.
    The possibility of being spotted always worried me. I could make up a story to explain my presence, but people could see through that sort of thing, and it might invite questions.
    My cover all the other times remained bulletproof. Then I became the person everyone knew me as. Not pretended it, but, like a Method actor, inhabited the role so completely that even the character's memories emerged as my own. It helped that I had invented up a past based on mine, and now that I'd lived my created history so long, it often seemed more vivid than the reality. But the real trick had been learning to believe my own lie. During those hours no one could trip me up, because I had banished my secret self to the point that what I'd been no longer existed, and the new me reigned supreme. Sometimes I even inherited the peace of mind that went with my created persona, and for those precious moments I fooled myself so completely that anyone could have read my thoughts and never guessed me to be other than what I seemed. I loved those times. They let me experience hope. After they passed, I knew, once I finished what must be done, I would enter that realm forever, pull on a fresh skin, and the thing that had eaten at me for so long would be dead.
    The usual chorus of muffled cries drifted toward me, stoking a sense of dread that soured the pit of my stomach.
    I also heard the distant sounds of nurses talking at the far end of the corridor, their carefree voices erupting into laughter.
    But no one appeared.
    Occasionally a flicker from a late reveler's fireworks came through the window and illuminated the floor in front of my hiding spot, but where I stood remained pitch-black. Nevertheless, the sooner I got in the room and completely out of sight, the easier I'd feel.
    I started forward, having already chosen tonight's victim. I figured the holiday meant fewer doctors, and with rookies all over the place, the nurses in other parts of the hospital should be preoccupied, riding herd on the newcomers. They'd never notice me prowling about; the bunch on duty here would be their usual lazy selves. Perfect conditions to run another subject.
    Locating the room number, I slipped inside the door and softly closed it behind me.
    I stood perfectly still, letting my eyes adjust to the lack of light. Someone, presumably those idiotic nurses outside, had closed the Venetian blinds, blocking out the possibility that even a glimmer of illumination from the city, moon, or stars would reach the inhabitant who lay dying in the bed.
    Fools, I thought. Cut off all sense of day or night, and a patient could become confused, perhaps psychotic. The observation came as a reflex, my training completely at odds with what I intended to do. The incongruity set my stomach churning, and bilious hot juices rose to the back of my tongue. I swallowed repeatedly and managed to send the acidic mix down the way it'd come up.
    The ragged breathing of the woman I'd come for filled my ears. Sometimes the sound caught in her throat and ceased altogether, only to restart seconds later, when she would gasp, then exhale with a soft moan.
    I tiptoed over to the blinds and opened them a sliver, just enough to admit an orange glow reflected from sodium lamps in the parking lot below. It cast her thin face in garish pumpkin shades, as if she'd applied too much makeup, and I could see that her mask had slipped down to her chest like a bib. She continued to breathe