One moment I was stepping out of the station-house door in response to a telephoned invitation for a midnight meeting with a presumed snitch promising me some interesting information, and the next I was hit between the ribs with a 150-grain soft-nosed .30 '06 caliber rifle slug fired from the darkness across the street. I died instantly. And although it's been nearly three weeks since my murder, my buddies ... make that my former buddies ... are still digging through my old cases looking for somebody with a motive for killing me.

        I wish they'd hurry. If you think time drags when you're alive and bored, wait until you're dead and bored. After almost three weeks of absolute dullness, I'm dying ... make that aching ... to do something interesting, like helping capture my killer and then getting the hell away ... make that moving on out of here.

        Not that I'm an expert on boredom. I seldom experienced it during my lifetime. There were a few drab periods in my growing-up years, but even they had their occasional rewards, like discovering the joys of fly fishing, the laughter distilled into good bourbon, the solace of a cigarette, the warmth flowing from a friendship, the comfort found in the arms of a lover. Later, after I stumbled into my niche, first as a rookie cop and later as a veteran detective working homicides in the world's best little city police department, life was mostly fascinating. And after Becky came along, there scarcely ever was a dull moment right up until that .30 '06 slug hit home.

        So how do I know the nature of the bullet that killed me, where it was fired from, how quickly I demised and that I'm stuck here until the retrievers come for me? I know because that data just lately has been downloaded into my psyche's random-access memory.

        You question this? Don't. Consider: How does a salt-water salmon know to follow its fresh-water river, find its tributary, home in on its tiny spawning site in the vast expanse of its watery universe? How does a goose know which way to wing across oceans and landmasses, journeying from one speck of earth in the south of its huge world to another in its far northern reaches? How does an ugly old caterpillar know to sew itself into a cocoon and onto a tree branch at just the proper moment to begin its conversion into a beautiful new butterfly? Right. The same way I know the circumstances of my death and that I am to hang around until they come for me. Something, and I've no clue who or how or even why, updates the software in our respective data-processing psyches when it's time, whether we're salmon or geese or caterpillars or people.

        Anyway, I've been floating around the station since my funeral, looking in on the guys I worked with for so many years, bored to death ... ah ... bored silly and, even worse than that, confused. See, I'm not me anymore, though I'm still me. Wait! Let me rephrase that. I'm no longer Det. Lt. Sam Ephraim. The 55-year-old plain-clothes cop with bad feet who used to limp around the station sharing workloads and doughnuts and camaraderie with his colleagues is gone, sealed into a box and covered with dirt. Yet I am still here, "I" being the psyche, the Central Processing Unit that manages the software that used to control the hardware known as Lt. Sam Ephraim. Only now he's ... I'm without that hardware, stripped of my peripherals, disembodied.

        It's really strange being a CPU not connected to anything. I'm here and yet I'm not. My buddies ... my former buddies ... can't see me, aren't aware of me, don't even suspect I'm around. Oh, and I can't see myself, either. I checked. I peered into the restroom mirrors from all angles: Nothing. It was like I wasn't there to be seen, although I was there trying to see me.

        It's also strange not to have to eat or sleep or go to the bathroom or do anything that was required of me when my CPU was anchored to its hardware. This freedom from needs adds to the boredom, though, because there is absolutely nothing I must do except wait for them to come for me.

        When that will be, who the retrievers are and where I will be going I have no idea. That parameter of my software modifications hasn't yet been downloaded.

        Meanwhile, though, I do know who killed me. It was Patrick Finnegal. I could have figured it out even if the data hadn't been fed me, and I'm disappointed that my buddies haven't made the connection without the help I've been trying to provide them.

        Finnegal was a small-time hoodlum with a big-time rap sheet of minor offenses until I caught him at the biggest one, murder. It was about a year ago. He killed another hoodlum, Frankie Sierra, in an exchange of gunfire during a disagreement over division of the cash from an automatic-teller machine the two of them had just then managed to pry open. I saw him fire the fatal shot. I had happened onto the scene at the right moment quite by accident--I'd stopped to use that particular ATM on my way home from a late-night work session. Thus, it was I who called the ambulance that took Finnegal to the hospital, along with the dead man who'd wounded him; it was I who filed the report that led to his arrest; it was I who told the story to the grand jury that indicted him; and it was I who was to testify at his trial coming up in a few weeks. I am ... make that was ... the prosecution's eye-witness, able to put Finnegal away forever or even bring him a death-penalty sentence. So why wouldn't he want me dead?

        I've been unable, however, to put Finnegal's name into Fred's head by telepathy. Fred is ... was ... my partner. He's a good guy, although a bit stubborn and maybe a trifle slow. Fred

        Ahern is his name. We came up through the ranks together. Fred and his Hilda and me and my Becky have been best friends for the last thirty years. That's why I thought I could plant in Fred's mind the reason I was killed and by whom.

        I've been following him around the station, concentrating on the name "Finnegal," trying to project it, hoping to imprint it in Fred's mind, but it hasn't worked. I guess I'll just have to wait for him to get to the Finnegal case if and when its turn comes up in the search pattern. He and two of the other guys have been checking my old activities to see who might want me dead. The three of them are going through my desk right now ... hey, wait! Fred's found something. He's holding it up for the others to see. It's my daily chore calendar. He's reading it to them.

        "'Monday, September 17,'" Fred is reciting. "'I'll probably be in court. The Finnegal trial is set for Wednesday, September 12. Kowalski says jury selection should take two days. That means opening arguments and witnesses probably about Monday.'"

        Great! Okay, Fred, now make the connection. You know I’m ... I was the main witness. That tells you Finnegal would want me dead. You know he's in jail, so you can assume he hired someone outside for my hit, and that gives you two trails to chase. Get to work on who....

        "Hey, hey," Fred is shouting. "That's it! Finnegal's up for murder one. He's facing lethal injection or life without parole and Sam was the state's whole case against him. That's got to be it. Charley, get up a list of Finnegal's jail visitors and all his incoming-outgoing phone calls."

        "Betcha," says Charley, scurrying off.

        "Otto, we need names, last-known addresses, hangouts of all his associates, friends, relatives, former cell-mates. You know the drill."

        "I'm on it," Otto says, and departs.

        "Sam." Fred is looking up at the ceiling. "We're gonna get the son of a bitch for you."

        "Sure you are," I tell him, knowing he can't hear me. "Thanks, Buddy."

        And now I’m suddenly aware that my retrievers are coming for me, like maybe they’ve been waiting for Fred's break-through. I can't see them or hear them, but my software senses their approach. I’ve no idea what happens now. I’m curious, though.

        Am I perhaps heading toward a delightful hereafter reunited with loved ones, or maybe to a hellish eternity in unpleasant company? Is my psyche about to be reprogrammed and fitted with new hardware converting me into a salmon, a goose, a caterpillar? Will I be reincarnated as a baby girl mothered by a New Guinea aborigine, as a male heir to the British throne, as a Chilean peon? Or will I perhaps just be ending, winking out into oblivion?

        Whatever, I'm ready....