Odessa returned to Earl Solomon’s hospital room, finding him sitting in a padded chair looking out the grimy window. The sky was baby-blanket blue, and she wondered what it looked like to an aging man who’d had a significant health scare…if he was even seeing the sky at all.

“Is it time?” he said before turning. He had been expecting a nurse. “Oh. Agent Hardwicke.”

“Hello again,” she said, stopping by the foot of his empty bed. The corner television was on mute. “How are you today?”

“I’ve been better.” He turned back to the window. “I can barely see past all the city soot on the glass. I had to shadow a window washer once. In Manhattan. Late ’60s, but the buildings were still tall then. I tried going out on a platform. They didn’t clip in back then with them…what is it, the clips?”

“Carabiners?”

He turned back to her. “No such thing. Not when you got so little sand left in the hourglass.” He scratched at his neck over the top collar of his hospital gown with fingernails like dulled arrowheads. “What’s on your mind?”

“Maybe you saw on television, there was another rampage murder. This one out on Long Island.”

“A local politician,” Solomon said.

Odessa nodded. “Another person who just snapped, no history of violence or aggression. Killed three innocent bystanders before being shot.”

Solomon pursed his dry lips. “You see similarities to your case.”

“Don’t you?”

He smiled, closing one eye—not in a wink, but to get a better look at her. “They always happen in threes, these things. All bad things, actually.”

“Always?” asked Odessa. “How many times have you seen something like this?”

“You went out there, didn’t you,” said Solomon.

She couldn’t tell if he approved or was simply amused. “I did,” she said. “When I was here before, you asked about cauldrons at the crime scene. Why?”

“I was curious.”

“It’s a very specific, and strange, detail.”

“I know. And you looked at me like I was headed for the loony bin. And then you went out to this spree killer’s house in Long Island…”

“Not in his garage,” she told him. “An old shed out in back. An iron pot, just like you described. That’s kind of extraordinary.”

He smiled. “You flatter me because now you’re hungry for information.”

“But how did you know?”

Two nurses knocked at the open door behind Odessa, walking right into the room. “Okay, Mr. Solomon.”

Odessa’s heart dropped. She stepped to the side to allow them through. “You have a visitor?” one said.

“My accountant,” he said. “She handles my vast fortune.”

The older nurse smiled at Odessa. “How wonderful.”

Odessa stood by anxiously as they helped him out of the chair and back into the wheeled bed.