She’s picking at her sandwich again, shredding the lettuce and dropping it onto her plate. Waiting for him.

“Go on, Holly. I’m not going to say it for you.”

“You’re thinking Brady talked her into it somehow? I don’t see how that could be possible.”

“I don’t, either, but we know Brady has a fascination with suicide.”

“This Sadie MacDonald . . . did she happen to have one of those Zappit things?”

“God knows.”

“How . . . how did . . .”

This time he does help. “With a scalpel she filched from one of the surgical suites. I got that from the ME’s assistant. Slipped her a gift card to DeMasio’s, the Italian joint.”

Holly shreds more lettuce. Her plate is starting to look like confetti at a leprechaun birthday party. It’s driving Hodges a little nuts, but he doesn’t stop her. She’s working her way up to saying it. And finally does. “You’re going to see Hartsfield.”

“Yeah, I am.”

“Do you really think you’ll get anything out of him? You never have before.”

“I know a little more now.” But what, really, does he know? He’s not even sure what he suspects. But maybe Hartsfield isn’t a human wasp, after all. Maybe he’s a spider, and Room 217 at the Bucket is the center of his web, where he sits spinning.

Or maybe it’s all coincidence. Maybe the cancer is already eating into my brain, sparking a lot of paranoid ideas.

That’s what Pete would think, and his partner—hard to stop thinking of her as Miss Pretty Gray Eyes, now that it’s in his head—would say it right out loud.

He stands up. “No time like the present.”

She drops her sandwich onto the pile of mangled lettuce so she can grasp his arm. “Be careful.”

“I will.”

“Guard your thoughts. I know how crazy that sounds, but I am crazy, at least some of the time, so I can say it. If you should have any ideas about . . . well, harming yourself . . . call me. Call me right away.”

“Okay.”

She crosses her arms and grasps her shoulders—that old fretful gesture he sees less often now. “I wish Jerome was here.” Jerome Robinson is in Arizona, taking a semester off from college, building houses as part of a Habitat for Humanity crew. Once, when Hodges used the phrase garnishing his resume in relation to this activity, Holly scolded him, telling him Jerome was doing it because he was a good person. With that, Hodges has to agree—Jerome really is a good person.

“I’m going to be fine. And this is probably nothing. We’re like kids worrying that the empty house on the corner is haunted. If we said anything about it to Pete, he’d have us both committed.”