“Figured you’d have your cell on do not disturb,” Pete Huntley says. He sounds wide awake and weirdly jovial. Hodges squints at the bedside clock but can’t read it. His bottle of painkillers, already half empty, is blocking the digital readout. Jesus, how many did he take yesterday?

“I don’t know how to do that, either.” Hodges struggles to a sitting position. He can’t believe the pain has gotten so bad so fast. It’s as if it was just waiting to be identified before pouncing with all its claws out.

“You need to get a life, Kerm.”

A little late for that, he thinks, swinging his legs out of bed.

“Why are you calling at . . .” He moves the bottle of pills. “At twenty to seven in the morning?”

“Couldn’t wait to give you the good news,” Pete says. “Brady Hartsfield is dead. A nurse discovered him on morning rounds.”

Hodges shoots to his feet, producing a stab of pain he hardly feels. “What? How?”

“There’ll be an autopsy later today, but the doctor who examined him is leaning toward suicide. There’s a residue of something on his tongue and gums. The doc on call took a sample, and a guy from the ME’s office is taking another as we speak. They’re going to rush the analysis, Hartsfield being such a rock star and all.”

“Suicide,” Hodges says, running a hand through his already crazed hair. The news is simple enough, but he still can’t seem to take it in. “Suicide?”

“He was always a fan,” Pete says. “I believe you might have said that yourself, and more than once.”

“Yeah, but . . .”

But what? Pete’s right, Brady was a fan of suicide, and not just the other guy’s. He had been ready to die at the City Center Job Fair in 2009, if things worked out that way, and a year later he rolled a wheelchair into Mingo Auditorium with three pounds of plastic explosive strapped to the seat. Which put his ass at ground zero. Only that was then, and things have changed. Haven’t they?

“But what?”

“I don’t know,” Hodges says.

“I do. He finally found a way to do it. Simple as that. In any case, if you thought Hartsfield was somehow involved in the deaths of Ellerton, Stover, and Scapelli—and I have to tell you I had my own thoughts along that line—you can stop worrying. He’s a gone goose, a toasty turkey, a baked buzzard, and we all say hooray.”

“Pete, I need to process this a little.”

“No doubt,” Pete says. “You had quite the history with him. Meanwhile, I have to call Izzy. Get her day started on the good foot.”

“Will you call me when you get back the analysis of whatever he swallowed?”

“Indeed I will. Meanwhile, sayonara Mr. Mercedes, right?”

“Right, right.”