Stephen King - End of Watch

‘Any idea what her chances are?’

‘No, but they didn’t just let her crater, and that means something. Pretty sure she was there looking for an executive secretary’s position. I went in her purse for ID – got a blood type from her driver’s license – and found a whole sheaf of references. Looks like she was good at her job. Last position was at the Bank of America. Got downsized.’

‘And if she lives? What do you think? Just the legs?’

Jason stared at the TV, where basketball players were running fleetly up the court, and said nothing for a long while. Then: ‘If she lives, she’s gonna be a quad.’

‘For sure?’

‘Ninety-five percent.’

A beer ad came on. Young people dancing up a storm in a bar. Everyone having fun. For Martine Stover, the fun was over. Rob tried to imagine what she would be facing if she pulled through. Life in a motorized wheelchair that she moved by puffing into a tube. Being fed either pureed gluck or through IV tubes. Respirator-assisted breathing. Shitting into a bag. Life in a medical twilight zone.

‘Christopher Reeve didn’t do so bad,’ Jason said, as if reading his thoughts. ‘Good attitude. Good role model. Kept his chin up. Even directed a movie, I think.’

‘Sure he kept his chin up,’ Rob said. ‘Thanks to a cervical collar that never came off. And he’s dead.’

‘She was wearing her best clothes,’ Jason said. ‘Good slacks, expensive sweater, nice coat. Trying to get back on her feet. And some bastard comes along and takes it all.’

‘Did they get him yet?’

‘Not the last I heard. When they do, I hope they string him up by the nutsack.’

The following night, while delivering a stroke victim to Kiner Memorial, the partners checked on Martine Stover. She was in the ICU, and showing those signs of increasing brain function that signal the imminent recovery of consciousness. When she did come back, someone would have to give her the bad news: she was paralyzed from the chest down.

Rob Martin was just glad it wouldn’t have to be him.

And the man the press was calling the Mercedes Killer still hadn’t been caught.

A pane of glass breaks in Bill Hodges’s pants pocket. This is followed by a jubilant chorus of boys, shouting ‘ That’s a HOME RUN! ’

Hodges winces and jumps in his seat. Dr Stamos is part of a four-doctor cabal, and the waiting room is full this Monday morning. Everyone turns to look at him. Hodges feels his face grow warm. ‘Sorry,’ he says to the room at large. ‘Text message.’

‘And a very loud one,’ remarks an old lady with thinning white hair and beagle dewlaps. She makes Hodges feel like a kid, and he’s pushing seventy. She’s hip to cell phone etiquette, though. ‘You should lower the volume in public places like this, or mute your phone entirely.’

‘Absolutely, absolutely.’

The old lady goes back to her paperback (it’s Fifty Shades of Grey , and not her first trip through it, from the battered look of the thing). Hodges drags his iPhone out of his pocket. The text is from Pete Huntley, his old partner when Hodges was on the cops. Pete is now on the verge of pulling the pin himself, hard to believe but true. End of watch is what they call it, but Hodges himself has found it impossible to give up watching. He now runs a little two-person firm called Finders Keepers. He calls himself an independent skip-tracer, because he got into a little trouble a few years back and can’t qualify for a private investigator’s license. In this city you have to be bonded. But a PI is what he is, at least some of the time.

Call me, Kermit. ASAP. Important.

Kermit is Hodges’s actual first name, but he goes by the middle one with most people; it keeps the frog jokes to a minimum. Pete makes a practice of using it, though. Finds it hilarious.

Hodges considers just pocketing the phone again (after muting it, if he can find his way to the DO NOT DISTURB control). He’ll be called into Dr Stamos’s office at any minute, and he wants to get their conference over with. Like most elderly guys he knows, he doesn’t like doctors’ offices. He’s always afraid they’re going to find not just something wrong but something really wrong. Besides, it’s not like he doesn’t know what his ex-partner wants to talk about: Pete’s big retirement bash next month. It’s going to be at the Raintree Inn, out by the airport. Same place where Hodges’s party took place, but this time he intends to drink a lot less. Maybe not at all. He had trouble with booze when he was active police, it was part of the reason his marriage crashed, but these days he seems to have lost his taste for alcohol. That’s a relief. He once read a science fiction novel called The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress . He doesn’t know about the moon, but would testify in court that whiskey is a harsh mistress, and that’s made right here on earth.

He thinks it over, considers texting, then rejects the idea and gets up. Old habits are too strong.

The woman behind the reception desk is Marlee, according to her nametag. She looks about seventeen, and gives him a brilliant cheerleader’s smile. ‘He’ll be with you soon, Mr Hodges, I promise. We’re just running a teensy bit behind. That’s Monday for you.’

‘Monday, Monday, can’t trust that day,’ Hodges says.

She looks blank.

‘I’m going to step out for a minute, okay? Have to make a call.’

‘That’s fine,’ Marlee says. ‘Just stand in front of the door. I’ll give you a big wave if you’re still out there when he’s ready.’

‘That works.’ Hodges stops by the old lady on his way to the door. ‘Good book?’

She looks up at him. ‘No, but it’s very energetic.’

‘So I’ve been told. Have you seen the movie?’

She stares up at him, surprised and interested. ‘There’s a movie? ’

‘Yes. You should check it out.’

Not that Hodges has seen it himself, although Holly Gibney – once his assistant, now his partner, a rabid film fan since her troubled childhood – tried to drag him to it. Twice. It was Holly who put the breaking pane of glass/home run text alert on his phone. She found it amusing. Hodges did, too… at first. Now he finds it a pain in the ass. He’ll look up how to change it on the Internet. You can find anything on the Internet, he has discovered. Some of it is helpful. Some of it is interesting. Some of it is funny.

And some of it is fucking awful.

Pete’s cell rings twice, and then his old partner is in his ear. ‘Huntley.’

Hodges says, ‘Listen to me carefully, because you may be tested on this material later. Yes, I’ll be at the party. Yes, I’ll make a few remarks after the meal, amusing but not raunchy, and I’ll propose the first toast. Yes, I understand both your ex and your current squeeze will be there, but to my knowledge no one has hired a stripper. If anyone has, it would be Hal Corley, who is an idiot, and you’d have to ask hi—’

‘Bill, stop. It’s not about the party.’

Hodges stops at once. It’s not just the intertwined babble of voices in the background – police voices, he knows that even though he can’t tell what they’re saying. What stops him dead is that Pete has called him Bill, and that means it’s serious shit. Hodges’s thoughts fly first to Corinne, his own ex-wife, next to his daughter Alison, who lives in San Francisco, and then to Holly. Christ, if something has happened to Holly…

‘What is it about, Pete?’

‘I’m at the scene of what appears to be a murder-suicide. I’d like you to come out and take a look. Bring your sidekick with you, if she’s available and agreeable. I hate to say this, but I think she might actually be a little smarter than you are.’