The psychic was a young mother from upstate New York. An electrical shock from some jumper cables had put her into a coma from which she emerged, three weeks later, able to "know" things by handing an object or touching a stranger's hand. The police had used her successfully in a number of missing-person cases. Once she had found the body of a strangled child by merely pointing to an area on a surveyor's map. Henry, who was so superstitious that he sometimes left a saucer of milk outside his door to appease any malevolent spirits who
might happen to wander by, watched her, fascinated, as she walked alone on the edge of campus-thick glasses, suburban car coat, red hair tied up in a polka-dot scarf.