“No,” he says, “no books in the living room, although I saw a couple in the photo of Stover’s bedroom. One of them looked like a Bible.” He glances at the folded Inside View in her lap. “What have you got in there, Holly? What are you hiding?”

When Holly flushes, she goes totally Defcon 1, the blood crashing to her face in a way that’s alarming. It happens now. “It wasn’t stealing,” she says. “It was borrowing. I never steal, Bill. Never!”

“Cool your jets. What is it?”

“The thing that goes with the power cord in the bathroom.” She unfolds the newspaper to reveal a bright pink gadget with a dark gray screen. It’s bigger than an e-reader, smaller than an electronic tablet. “When I came downstairs, I sat in Mrs. Ellerton’s chair to think a minute. I ran my hands between the arms and the cushion. I wasn’t even hunting for something, I was just doing it.”

One of Holly’s many self-comforting techniques, Hodges assumes. He’s seen many in the years since he first met her in the company of her overprotective mother and aggressively gregarious uncle. In their company? No, not exactly. That phrase suggested equality. Charlotte Gibney and Henry Sirois had treated her more like a mentally defective child out on a day pass. Holly is a different woman now, but traces of the old Holly still remain. And that’s okay with Hodges. After all, everyone casts a shadow.

“That’s where it was, down on the right side. It’s a Zappit.”

The name chimes a faint chord far back in his memory, although when it comes to computer chip–driven gadgetry, Hodges is far behind the curve. He’s always screwing up with his own home computer, and now that Jerome Robinson is away, Holly is the one who usually comes over to his house on Harper Road to straighten him out. “A whatsit?”

“A Zappit Commander. I’ve seen advertisements online, although not lately. They come pre-loaded with over a hundred simple electronic games like Tetris, Simon, and SpellTower. Nothing complicated like Grand Theft Auto. So tell me what it was doing there, Bill. Tell me what it was doing in a house where one of the women was almost eighty and the other one couldn’t turn on a light switch, let alone play video games.”

“It seems odd, all right. Not downright bizarre, but on the odd side, for sure.”

“And the cord was plugged in right next to that letter Z,” she says. “Not Z for the end, like a suicide note, but Z for Zappit. At least that’s what I think.”

Hodges considers the idea.

“Maybe.” He wonders again if he has encountered that name before, or if it’s only what the French call faux souvenir—a false memory. He could swear it has some connection to Brady Hartsfield, but he can’t trust that idea, because Brady is very much on his mind today.

How long has it been since I’ve gone to visit him? Six months? Eight? No, longer than that. Quite a bit longer.