“Yeah,” Hodges says.

“I asked him if he shot Dr. Babineau, too. He just shook his head and said he wanted to go back to sleep. Right around then Izzy comes tripping back from the kitchen and says Chief Horgan called the SKIDs, on account of Dr. B. is a high-profile guy and this is going to be a high-profile case, and besides, a pair of them happened to be right here in the city, waiting to be called to testify in a case, isn’t that convenient. She won’t meet my eye, she’s all flushed, and when I start pointing around at all the Zs, asking her if they don’t look familiar, she won’t talk about it.”

Hodges has never heard such anger and frustration in his old partner’s voice.

“So then my cell rings, and . . . you remember when I reached out to you this morning I said the doc on call took a sample of the residue in Hartsfield’s mouth? Before the ME guy even got there?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, the phone call was from that doc. Simonson, his name is. The ME’s analysis won’t be back for two days at the soonest, but Simonson did one right away. The stuff in Hartsfield’s mouth was a combination of Vicodin and Ambien. Hartsfield wasn’t prescribed either one, and he could hardly dance his way down to the nearest med locker and score some, could he?”

Hodges, who already knows what Brady was taking for pain, agrees that that would be unlikely.

“Right now Izzy’s in the house, probably watching from the background and keeping her mouth shut while the SKIDs question this Brooks guy, who honest-to-God can’t remember his own name unless he’s prompted. Otherwise he calls himself Z-Boy. Like something out of a Marvel comic book.”

Clutching the pen in his hand almost hard enough to snap it in two, Hodges prints more headline caps on the pad, with Holly bending over to read as he writes: LIBRARY AL LEFT THE MESSAGE ON DEBBIE’S BLUE UMBRELLA.

Holly stares at him with wide eyes.

“Just before the SKIDs arrived—man, they didn’t take long—I asked Brooks if he also killed Brady Hartsfield. Izzy says to him, ‘Don’t answer that!’”

“She said what?” Hodges exclaims. He doesn’t have much room in his head right now to worry about Pete’s deteriorating relationship with his partner, but he’s still amazed. Izzy’s a police detective, after all, not Library Al’s defense attorney.

“You heard me. Then she looks at me and says, ‘You haven’t given him the words.’ So I turn to one of the uniforms and ask, ‘Did you guys Mirandize this gentleman?’ And of course they say yeah. I look at Izzy and she’s redder in the face than ever, but she won’t back down. She says, ‘If we fuck this up, it won’t come back on you, you’re done in another couple of weeks, but it’ll come back on me, and hard.’”

“So the state boys turn up . . .”