Stephen King - End of Watch

The other isn’t hers. It reads: Dr Stamos needs to talk to you urgently. You are scheduled tomorrow at 9 AM. Please keep this appointment!

Hodges checks his watch and sees that, although this day seems to have lasted at least a month already, it’s only quarter past four. He calls Stamos’s office and gets Marlee. He can tell it’s her by the chirpy cheerleader’s voice, which turns grave when he introduces himself. He doesn’t know what those tests showed, but it can’t be good. As Bob Dylan once said, you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

He bargains for nine thirty instead of nine, because he wants a sit-down with Holly, Pete, and Isabelle first. He won’t allow himself to believe that his visit to Dr Stamos’s office may be followed by a hospital admission, but he is a realist, and that sudden bolt of pain in his leg scared the shit out of him.

Marlee puts him on hold. Hodges listens to the Young Rascals for awhile (They must be mighty old Rascals by now, he thinks), and then she comes back. ‘We can get you in at nine thirty, Mr Hodges, but Dr Stamos wants me to emphasize that it’s imperative that you keep this appointment.’

‘How bad is it?’ He asks before he can stop himself.

‘I don’t have any information on your case,’ Marlee tells him, ‘but I’d say that you should get going on what’s wrong as soon as possible. Don’t you think so?’

‘I do,’ Hodges says heavily. ‘I’ll keep the appointment for sure. And thank you.’

He breaks the connection and stares at his phone. On the screen is a picture of his daughter at seven, bright and smiling, riding high on the backyard swing he put up when they lived on Freeborn Avenue. When they were still a family. Now Allie’s thirty-six, divorced, in therapy, and getting over a painful relationship with a man who told her a story as old as Genesis: I’m going to leave her soon, but this is a bad time .

Hodges puts the phone down and lifts his shirt. The pain on the left side of his abdomen has subsided to a low mutter again, and that’s good, but he doesn’t like the swelling he sees below his sternum. It’s as if he just put away a huge meal, when in fact he could only eat half of his lunch and breakfast was a bagel.

‘What’s going on with you?’ he asks his swollen stomach. ‘I wouldn’t mind a clue before I keep that appointment tomorrow.’

He supposes he could get all the clues he wants by firing up his computer and going to Web MD, but he’s come to believe that Internet-assisted self-diagnosis is a game for idiots. He calls Holly, instead. She wants to know if he found anything interesting at 1588.

‘ Very interesting, as that guy on Laugh-In used to say, but before I go into that, ask your question.’

‘Do you think Pete can find out if Martine Stover was buying a computer? Check her credit cards, or something? Because her mother’s was ancient . If so, it means she was serious about taking an online course. And if she was serious, then—’

‘Then the chances she was working up to a suicide pact with her mother drop drastically.’

‘Yes.’

‘But it wouldn’t rule out the mother deciding to do it on her own. She could have dumped the pills and vodka down Stover’s feeding tube while she was asleep, then got into the tub to finish the job.’

‘But Nancy Alderson said—’

‘They were happy, yeah, I know. I’m only pointing it out. I don’t really believe it.’

‘You sound tired.’

‘Just my usual end-of-the-day slump. I’ll perk up after I get some chow.’ Never in his life has he felt less like eating.

‘Eat a lot. You’re too thin. But first tell me what you found in that empty house.’

‘Not in the house. In the garage.’

He tells her. She doesn’t interrupt. Nor does she say anything when he’s done. Holly sometimes forgets she’s on the phone, so he gives her a prompt.

‘What do you think?’

‘I don’t know. I mean, I really don’t. It’s just… weird all over. Don’t you think so? Or not? Because I could be overreacting. Sometimes I do that.’

Tell me about it, Hodges thinks, but this time he doesn’t think she is, and says so.

Holly says, ‘You told me you didn’t think Janice Ellerton would take anything from a man in a mended parka and workman’s clothes.’

‘Indeed I did.’

‘So that means…’

Now he’s the one who stays silent, letting her work it out.

‘It means two men were up to something. Two . One gave Janice Ellerton the Zappit and the bogus questionnaire while she was shopping, and the other watched her house from across the street. And with binoculars! Expensive binoculars! I guess those two men might not have been working together, but…’

He waits. Smiling a little. When Holly turns her thinking processes up to ten, he can almost hear the cogs spinning behind her forehead.

‘Bill, are you still there?’

‘Yeah. Just waiting for you to spit it out.’

‘Well, it seems like they must have been. To me, anyway. And like they might have had something to do with those two women being dead. There, are you happy?’

‘Yes, Holly. I am. I’ve got a doctor’s appointment tomorrow at nine thirty—’

‘Your test results came back?’

‘Yeah. I want to set up a meeting beforehand with Pete and Isabelle. Does eight thirty work for you?’

‘Of course.’

‘We’ll lay out everything, tell them about Alderson and the game console you found and the house at 1588. See what they think. Sound okay?’

‘Yes, but she won’t think anything.’

‘You could be wrong.’

‘Yes. And the sky could turn green with red polka dots tomorrow. Now go make yourself something to eat.’

Hodges assures her he will, and heats up a can of chicken noodle soup while watching the early news. He eats most of it, spacing out each spoonful, cheering himself on: You can do it, you can do it.

While he’s rinsing the bowl, the pain on the left side of his abdomen returns, along with those tentacles curling around to his lower back. It seems to plunge up and down with every heartbeat. His stomach clenches. He thinks of running to the bathroom, but it’s too late. He leans over the sink instead, vomiting with his eyes closed. He keeps them that way as he fumbles for the faucet and turns it on full to rinse away the mess. He doesn’t want to see what just came out of him, because he can taste a slime of blood in his mouth and throat.

Oy, he thinks, I am in trouble here.

I am in such trouble.

Eight P.M.

When her doorbell rings, Ruth Scapelli is watching some stupid reality program which is just an excuse to show young men and women running around in their small clothes. Instead of going directly to the door, she slipper-scuffs into the kitchen and turns on the monitor for the security cam mounted on the porch. She lives in a safe neighborhood, but it doesn’t pay to take chances; one of her late mother’s favorite sayings was scum travels .

She is surprised and uneasy when she recognizes the man at her door. He’s wearing a tweed overcoat, obviously expensive, and a trilby with a feather in the band. Beneath the hat, his perfectly barbered silver hair flows dramatically along his temples. In one hand is a slim briefcase. It’s Dr Felix Babineau, chief of the Neurology Department and head honcho at the Lakes Region Traumatic Brain Injury Clinic.

The doorbell chimes again and she hurries to let him in, thinking He can’t know about what I did this afternoon because the door was shut and no one saw me go in. Relax. It’s something else. Perhaps a union matter.

But he has never discussed union matters with her before, although she’s been an officer of Nurses United for the last five years. Dr Babineau might not even know her if he passed her on the street unless she was wearing her nurse’s uniform. That makes her remember what she’s wearing now, an old housecoat and even older slippers (with bunny faces on them!), but it’s too late to do anything about that. At least her hair isn’t up in rollers.