He's talked nine people off the Carquinez Bridge.

Forty-six years old, night shift, a thermos of gas station coffee and a portable radio tuned to AM talk. One kid who calls on holidays and one who doesn't. A divorced toll booth operator who made a career out of the dead hours between eleven at night and seven in the morning. His ex-wife Donna said he had a gift for other people's darkness and a blind spot the size of Texas for his own. She wasn't wrong.

Then the woman walked out of the fog.

Two-thirty in the morning. November. No car, no headlights. Soaking wet, barefoot, blue-lipped, water running off her fingertips and pooling on the asphalt. She held up a wet five-dollar bill and asked for change for the toll. Her skin was ice. No pulse underneath.

He made change. She dropped the coins in the basket, walked through the  ...