“Housekeeper gets here at seven thirty, okay? Nora Everly by name. And at the top of the drive she sees Babineau’s BMW on the lawn, with a bullet hole in the windshield. She looks inside, sees blood on the steering wheel and the seat, calls 911. There’s a cop car five minutes away—in the Heights there’s always one five minutes away—and when it arrives, Everly’s sitting in her car with all the doors locked, shaking like a leaf. The unis tell her to stay put, and go to the door. The place is unlocked. Mrs. Babineau—Cora—is lying dead in the hall, and I’m sure the bullet the ME digs out of her will match the one forensics dug out of the Beemer. On her forehead—are you ready for this?—there’s the letter Z in black ink. More all around the downstairs, including one on the TV screen. Just like the one at the Ellerton place, and I think it was right about then my partner decided she wanted no part of this particular tarbaby.”

Hodges says, “Yeah, probably,” just to keep Pete talking. He grabs the pad beside Holly’s computer and prints BABINEAU’S WIFE MURDERED in big block letters, like a newspaper headline. Her hand flies to her mouth.

“While one of the cops is calling Division, the other one hears snores coming from upstairs. Like a chainsaw on idle, he said. So they go up, guns drawn, and in one of the three guest bedrooms, count em, three, the place is fucking huge, they find an old fart fast asleep. They wake him up and he gives his name as Alvin Brooks.”

“Library Al!” Hodges shouts. “From the hospital! The first Zappit I ever saw was one he showed me!”

“Yeah, that’s the guy. He had a Kiner ID badge in his shirt pocket. And without prompting, he says he killed Mrs. Babineau. Claims he did it while he was hypnotized. So they cuff him, take him downstairs, and sit him on the couch. That’s where Izzy and me found him when we entered the scene half an hour or so later. I don’t know what’s wrong with the guy, whether he had a nervous breakdown or what, but he’s on Planet Purple. He keeps going off on tangents, spouting all sorts of weird shit.”

Hodges recollects something Al said to him on one of his last visits to Brady’s room—right around Labor Day weekend of 2014, that would have been. “Never so good as what you don’t see.”

“Yeah.” Pete sounds surprised. “Like that. And when Izzy asked who hypnotized him, he said it was the fish. The ones by the beautiful sea.”

To Hodges, this now makes sense.

“On further questioning—I did it, by then Izzy must have been in the kitchen, busy ditching the whole thing without asking for my input—he said Dr. Z told him to, I quote, ‘make his mark.’ Ten times, he said, and sure enough, there are ten Zs, including the one on the deceased’s forehead. I asked him if Dr. Z was Dr. Babineau, and he said no, Dr. Z was Brady Hartsfield. Crazy, see?”