“So?” Hodges asks.

“Keith Frias and Krista Countryman,” Pete says. “Both were also at City Center on the morning of April tenth, when Hartsfield did his thing. Frias, age nineteen, lost most of his arm, plus four broken ribs and internal injuries. He also lost seventy percent of the vision in his right eye. Countryman, age twenty-one, suffered broken ribs, a broken arm, and spinal injuries that resolved after all sorts of painful therapy I don’t even want to think about.”

Hodges doesn’t, either, but he’s brooded over Brady Hartsfield’s victims many times. Mostly on how the work of seventy wicked seconds could change the lives of so many for years . . . or, in the case of Martine Stover, forever.

“They met in weekly therapy sessions at a place called Recovery Is You, and fell in love. They were getting better . . . slowly . . . and planned to get married. Then, in February of last year, they committed suicide together. In the words of some old punk song or other, they took a lot of pills and they died.”

This makes Hodges think of the grinder on the table beside Stover’s hospital bed. The grinder with its residue of oxycodone. Mom dissolved all of the oxy in the vodka, but there must have been plenty of other narcotic medications on that table. Why had she gone to all the trouble of the plastic bag and the helium when she could have swallowed a bunch of Vicodin, chased it with a bunch of Valium, and called it good?

“Frias and Countryman were the sort of youngster suicides that also happen every day,” Izzy says. “The parents were doubtful about the marriage. Wanted them to wait. And they could hardly run off together, could they? Frias could barely walk, and neither of them had jobs. There was enough insurance to pay for the weekly therapy sessions and to kick in for groceries at their respective homes, but nothing like the kind of Cadillac coverage Martine Stover had. Bottom line, shit happens. You can’t even call it a coincidence. Badly hurt people get depressed, and sometimes depressed people kill themselves.”

“Where did they do it?”

“The Frias boy’s bedroom,” Pete says. “While his parents were on a day trip to Six Flags with his little brother. They took the pills, crawled into the sack, and died in each other’s arms, just like Romeo and Juliet.”

“Romeo and Juliet died in a tomb,” Holly says, coming back into the kitchen. “In the Franco Zeffirelli film, which is really the best—”

“Yes, okay, point taken,” Pete says. “Tomb, bedroom, at least they rhyme.”

Holly is holding the Inside View that was on the coffee table, folded to show a picture of Johnny Depp that makes him look either drunk, stoned, or dead. Has she been in the living room, reading a scandal sheet all this time? If so, she really is having an off day.

Pete says, “Have you still got the Mercedes, Holly? The one Hartsfield stole from your cousin Olivia?”