In Winston’s office, Ernest and Juliette stage a negotiation with the fictional Fencer. Ernest insists that Juliette be the next hostage released so she can investigate Cordelia’s doctor on the outside. Juliette argues that Eric, who is only 15, should be freed instead.

While they talk, Ernest studies a children’s chemistry textbook and reviews a spectrometer report that he found in Felix’s locker. The report shows that the components match cast iron but include an unexplained presence of gold. Ernest confesses to Juliette that he enjoyed the power that came with impersonating the Fencer. Convinced that the two seemingly impossible deaths of Bryce and Edward are connected, he gives Juliette a key he stole from Gabriel’s pocket and asks her to open the priest’s safe deposit box.

Ernest finds Eric watching the police operation from a window. Eric is upset that Tobias has not secured his release. Ernest questions Eric about competitive video game Buccaneers, in which Eric was the world’s top-ranked junior player. When Ernest mentions that Ben Huxley once beat him, Eric becomes angry and claims Ben cheated using an “aimbot,” a program that automates aiming. Eric explains that Ben died by “swatting,” a hoax in which someone places a false emergency call to bring a SWAT team to someone’s address. Eric believed Ben had deliberately set up the situation so the police would mistake the game’s sound effects for real gunfire, seeking death after the cheating scandal had ruined his reputation.

Juliette returns from the vault with items from Gabriel’s safe deposit box: a red ledger and a jar of holy water. The ledger details large wagers on video game matches, including a losing $300,000 bet and a subsequent $220,000 bet placed on the day Ben Huxley died. Ernest concludes that Gabriel is not a gambler; he is an illegal bookie. He deduces that earlier, Gabriel had voted to attack the Fencer because he wanted the robbery to end quickly so Eric would not miss a tournament the night before, on which Gabriel had taken bets.

Juliette also reports finding cash and a powerful magnet in the vault. She uses the magnet to confirm that the large gold nugget on display is not magnetic and is therefore genuine.

Juliette is released from the bank, holding money that she and Ernest agreed could be used to bribe Cordelia’s doctor into revealing the truth. Believing that a significant theft could be the motive for murder, Ernest decides to confront Gabriel. He finds the priest asleep in Edward’s office and begins looking through Gabriel’s iPad. Among the messages Gabriel had written throughout the day, Ernest finds a threatening one that reads, “KEEP YOUR FUCKING MOUTH SHUT” (281). As he stares at the page, he realizes that Gabriel is awake and watching him. Gabriel breaks his vow of silence and says it is time for him to talk.

Breaking his year-long vow of silence, Gabriel reveals that he is a bookie. He explains that Edward Huxley had been a compulsive gambler who had lost $300,000 betting against his own son, Ben, in his competition against Eric. Contradicting Eric’s belief that Ben had arranged his own death, Gabriel suspects that a desperate Edward arranged the swatting incident in order to win back his losses on a subsequent bet.

Gabriel’s guilt over his role in accepting the bets that created the financial pressure behind Edward’s actions had prompted his vow of silence. The priest also confesses to laundering the betting money through an eBay account where he sells celebrity memorabilia at inflated prices. He admits that he had stolen items from Laurence Birch for this purpose when he performed last rites. Before the robbery, he had entered Edward’s office to retrieve the gold bar, as collateral for the debt, but he fled after seeing what appeared to be blood on it.

As police prepare to raid the bank, Ernest speaks with Juliette over the radio. She confirms that Cordelia’s doctor forged the medical records using Emma Fredericks’s real chart. She also reports that “Laverna” is an alias taken from the Roman goddess of thieves and that “Cordelia” means “heart.”

Juliette’s most significant discovery concerns the Fredericks family’s rare genetic disorder, porphyria. Bryce’s form of the condition made him allergic to sunlight. She also offers a scientific explanation for the partial combustion of Edward’s corpse: the “wick effect,” a process in which a body’s own fat fuels a self-contained, high-intensity fire that often burns out before reaching the feet.

Ernest gathers the hostages to end the siege, but Laverna confronts him, aware that he is lying about Milton. Ernest questions her about her past as a truck driver, pointing out that earlier, she said she drove dangerous cargo but then referred to peanuts as her cargo. She clarifies that peanuts are considered dangerous cargo because their high oil content can cause them to spontaneously combust.

Ernest has a revelation and races upstairs to explain his new theory to Juliette over the radio: After suffering a concussion when Tobias hit him with the gold brick, Edward locked himself in the vault, where he lost consciousness. The pistachios in his pocket self-ignited from his body heat and sweat. Ernest also deduces that Edward swapped his safe with Winston’s for security, using the wool lift. Using Winston’s combination, Ernest opens the safe in Edward’s office.

Now, writing from inside the locked safe, Ernest recounts the attack. Just as he opened the safe, an assailant shoved him inside. He heard four gunshots, and then his crushed radio and Felix’s revolver, now with only two bullets remaining, were thrown in with him. He recognizes that the police will assume he was the robber’s accomplice, and he killed his partner and escaped. No one will believe Juliette (who doesn’t know where to look for him, anyway), so no one will look for him. Trapped and suffocating, he reviews the final clues and, facing a slow death, considers using the gun on himself.

Ernest concludes that he has solved the entire mystery; there were multiple killers. He formulates a three-stage plan to escape the safe. First, he will fire a bullet at the door’s seam and hopefully create an air hole. If that fails, he will shoot a plastic bag in which he trapped the hydrogen gas during his electrolysis experiment to produce a small explosion. As a last resort, he will rock the heavy safe until it topples backward through the third-story window it stands in front of. He notes that if he dies, Juliette can solve the case using his written account.

A few fragmented words describe Ernest’s escape attempt. “Ricochet” and “Stomach” indicate that the bullet bounced back and wounded him. “No time” and “Window” suggest he proceeded with his final plan to topple the safe out of the building. His last written words are a message to Juliette: “You are wonderful” (313).

The chapter concludes with a funeral announcement for Ernest Cunningham, scheduled for three days later, at which a parrot named Ditto is listed to give a reading.