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Anyone who says “I’m going to kill you,” Biddle used to tell me, isn’t going to kill you. Why would they be talking to somebody who’s practically dead already? The ones who really mean it just say it with their eyes, and then they do it. Learn to recognize that look, Biddle would say, and you’ll have the edge you need to save yourself—or at least you won’t die surprised. So I learned the Look. The Looks, really. One white-hot with hatred, the other ice-cold and calculated. It was the first Look I saw on Bill Riggs’s face. He’d followed his wife into the White Magic Five and Dime and was reaching for her, trying to clamp onto a wrist and drag her outside again. “You’re coming home,” he said to her. And what his scowl-twisted mouth and flushed face and widened eyes said to me was, “I’m going to kill her. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But eventually. And I’ll say I’m sorry but I won’t really mean it because in my heart I’ll know it was my right.” So I moved one quick step to the left, and that was all it took to change everything.
I’d been walking toward the fish tank in the shop’s waiting area, where customers I didn’t have could flip through the latest People Weekly while I gave readings to other customers I didn’t have. So I
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