“You might be interested to know that the famous puppeteer Frank Oz did Yoda’s voice,” Holly says. She looks around. “Well, I find it interesting.”

“I find this cake interesting,” Pete says. “Could I have a little more? Maybe just a sliver?”

Barbara does the honors, and it’s far more than a sliver, but Pete doesn’t object. He takes a bite and asks how she’s doing.

“Good,” Jerome says before she can answer. “She’s got a boyfriend. Kid named Dereece Neville. Big basketball star.”

“Shut up, Jerome, he is not my boyfriend.”

“He sure visits like a boyfriend,” Jerome says. “I’m talking every day since you broke your leg.”

“We have a lot to talk about,” Barbara says in a dignified tone of voice.

Pete says, “Going back to Babineau, hospital administration has some security footage of him coming in through a back entrance on the night his wife was murdered. He changed into maintenance-worker duds. Probably raided a locker. He leaves, comes back fifteen or twenty minutes later, changes back into the clothes he came in, leaves for good.”

“No other footage?” Hodges asks. “Like in the Bucket?”

“Yeah, some, but you can’t see his face in that stuff, because he’s wearing a Groundhogs cap, and you don’t see him go into Hartsfield’s room. A defense lawyer might be able to make something of that stuff, but since Babineau’s never going to stand trial—”

“No one gives much of a shit,” Hodges finishes.

“Correct. City and state cops are delighted to let him carry the weight. Izzy’s happy, and so am I. I could ask you—just between us chickens—if it was actually Babineau who died out there in the woods, but I don’t really want to know.”

“So how does Library Al fit into this scenario?” Hodges asks.

“He doesn’t.” Pete puts his paper plate aside. “Alvin Brooks killed himself last night.”

“Oh, Christ,” Hodges says. “While he was in County?”

“Yes.”

“They didn’t have him on suicide watch? After all this?”

“They did, and none of the inmates are supposed to have anything capable of cutting or stabbing, but he got hold of a ballpoint pen somehow. Might have been a guard who gave it to him, but it was probably another inmate. He drew Zs all over the walls, all over his bunk, and all over himself. Then he took the pen’s metal cartridge out of the barrel and used it to—”

“Stop,” Barbara says. She looks very pale in the winterlight falling on them from above. “We get the idea.”

Hodges says, “So the thinking is . . . what? He was Babineau’s accomplice?”

“Fell under his influence,” Pete says. “Or maybe both of them fell under someone else’s influence, but let’s not go there, okay? The thing to concentrate on now is that the three of you are in the clear. There won’t be any citations this time, or city freebies—”

“It’s okay,” Jerome says. “Me ’n Holly have still got at least four years left on our bus passes, anyway.”