Doing this—being able to do this—cheered Brady up. Payback is a bitch, he thought, and I am that bitch.

He sometimes fantasized about sending Z-Boy after Hodges and shooting him in the belly. How good it would be to stand over the Det.-Ret., watching him shudder and moan as his life ran through his fingers!

It would be great, but Brady would lose his drone, and once in custody, Al might point the police at him. There was something else, as well, something even bigger: it wouldn’t be enough. He owed Hodges more than a bullet in the belly followed by ten or fifteen minutes of suffering. Much more. Hodges needed to live, breathing toxic air inside a bag of guilt from which there was no escape. Until he could no longer stand it, and killed himself.

Which had been the original plan, back in the good old days.

No way, though, Brady thought. No way to do any of it. I’ve got Z-Boy—who’ll be in an assisted living home if he keeps on the way he’s going—and I can rattle the blinds with my phantom hand. That’s it. That’s the whole deal.

But then, in the summer of 2013, the dark funk he’d been living in was pierced by a shaft of light. He had a visitor. A real one, not Hodges or a suit from the District Attorney’s office, checking to see if he had magically improved enough to stand trial for a dozen different felony crimes, the list headed by eight counts of willful murder at City Center.

There was a perfunctory knock at the door, and Becky Helmington poked her head in. “Brady? There’s a young woman here to see you. Says she used to work with you, and she’s brought you something. Do you want to see her?”

Brady could think of only one young woman that might be. He considered saying no, but his curiosity had come back along with his malice (perhaps they were even the same thing). He gave one of his floppy nods, and made an effort to brush his hair out of his eyes.

His visitor entered timidly, as if there might be hidden mines under the floor. She was wearing a dress. Brady had never seen her in a dress, would have guessed she didn’t even own one. But her hair was still cropped close to her skull in a half-assed crewcut, as it had been when they had worked together on the Discount Electronix Cyber Patrol, and she was still as flat as a board in front. He remembered some comedian’s joke: If no tits count for shit, Cameron Diaz is gonna be around for a long time. But she had put on a little powder to cover her pitted skin (amazing) and even a dash of lipstick (more amazing still). In one hand she held a wrapped package.