Stephen King - End of Watch

‘I’ll come as fast as I can while still obeying the speed limit.’ She hurries to the corner lot where she parks her car. On the way, she drops the unopened pack of cigarettes into a litter basket.

Hodges sketches in his visit to the Bucket for Holly on the ride to the Strike Avenue police station, beginning with the news of Ruth Scapelli’s suicide and ending with the odd thing Barbara said before they wheeled her away.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Holly says, ‘because I’m thinking it, too. That it all leads back to Brady Hartsfield.’

‘The suicide prince.’ Hodges has helped himself to another couple of painkillers while waiting for Holly, and he feels pretty much okay. ‘That’s what I’m calling him. Got a ring to it, don’t you think?’

‘I guess so. But you told me something once.’ She’s sitting bolt upright behind the wheel of her Prius, eyes darting everywhere as they drive deeper into Lowtown. She swerves to avoid a shopping cart someone has abandoned in the middle of the street. ‘You said coincidence doesn’t equal conspiracy. Do you remember saying that?’

‘Yeah.’ It’s one of his faves. He has quite a few.

‘You said you can investigate a conspiracy forever and come up with nothing if it’s actually just a bunch of coincidences all strung together. If you can’t find something concrete in the next two days – if we can’t – you need to give up and start those treatments. Promise me you will.’

‘It might take a little longer to—’

She cuts him off. ‘Jerome will be back, and he’ll help. It will be like the old days.’

Hodges flashes on the title of an old mystery novel, Trent’s Last Case , and smiles a little. She catches it from the corner of her eye, takes it for acquiescence, and smiles back, relieved.

‘Four days,’ he says.

‘Three. No more. Because every day you don’t do something about what’s going on inside you, the odds get longer. And they’re long already. So don’t start your poopy bargaining stuff, Bill. You’re too good at it.’

‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Three days. If Jerome will help.’

Holly says, ‘He will. And let’s try to make it two.’

The Strike Avenue cop shop looks like a medieval castle in a country where the king has fallen and anarchy rules. The windows are heavily barred; the motor pool is protected by chainlink fencing and concrete barriers. Cameras bristle in every direction, covering all angles of approach, and still the gray stone building has been gang-tagged, and one of the globes hanging over the main doors has been shattered.

Hodges and Holly empty the contents of their pockets and Holly’s purse into plastic baskets and go through a metal detector that beeps reproachfully at Hodges’s metal watchband. Holly sits on a bench in the main lobby (which is also being scanned by multiple cameras) and opens her iPad. Hodges goes to the desk, states his business, and after a few moments is met by a slim, gray-haired detective who looks a little like Lester Freamon on The Wire – the only cop show Hodges can watch without wanting to throw up.

‘Jack Higgins,’ the detective says, offering his hand. ‘Like the book-writer, only not white.’

Hodges shakes with him and introduces Holly, who gives a little wave and her usual muttered hello before returning her attention to her iPad.

‘I think I remember you,’ Hodges says. ‘You used to be at Marlborough Street station, didn’t you? When you were in uniform?’

‘A long time ago, when I was young and randy. I remember you, too. You caught the guy who killed those two women in McCarron Park.’

‘That was a group effort, Detective Higgins.’

‘Make it Jack. Cassie Sheen called. We’ve got your guy in an interview room. His name is Dereece Neville.’ Higgins spells the first name. ‘We were going to turn him loose, anyway. Several people who saw the incident corroborate his story – he was jiving around with the girl, she took offense and ran into the street. Neville saw the truck coming, ran after her, tried to push her out of the way, mostly succeeded. Plus, practically everyone down here knows this kid. He’s a star on the Todhunter basketball team, probably going to get an athletic scholarship to a Division I school. Great grades, honor student.’

‘What was Mr Great Grades doing on the street in the middle of a schoolday?’

‘Ah, they were all out. Heating system at the high school shit the bed again. Third time this winter, and it’s only January. The mayor says everything’s cool down here in the Low, lots of jobs, lots of prosperity, shiny happy people. We’ll see him when he runs for reelection. Riding in that armored SUV of his.’

‘Was the Neville kid hurt?’

‘Scraped palms and nothing else. According to a lady across the street – she was closest to the scene – he pushed the girl and then, I quote, “Went flyin over the top of her like a bigass bird.”’

‘Does he understand he’s free to go?’

‘He does, and agreed to stay. Wants to know if the girl’s okay. Come on. Have your little chat with him, and then we’ll send him on his way. Unless you see some reason not to.’

Hodges smiles. ‘I’m just following up for Miss Robinson. Let me ask him a couple of questions, and we’re both out of your hair.’

The interview room is small and stifling hot, the overhead heating pipes clanking away. Still, it’s probably the nicest one they’ve got, because there’s a little sofa and no perp table with a cuff-bolt sticking out of it like a steel knuckle. The sofa has been mended with tape in a couple of places, and that makes Hodges think of the man Nancy Alderson says she saw on Hilltop Court, the one with the mended coat.

Dereece Neville is sitting on the sofa. In his chino pants and white button-up shirt, he looks neat and squared away. His goatee and gold neck chain are the only real dashes of style. His school jacket is folded over one arm of the sofa. He stands when Hodges and Higgins come in, and offers a long-fingered hand that looks designed expressly for working with a basketball. The pad of the palm has been painted with orange antiseptic.

Hodges shakes with him carefully, mindful of the scrapes, and introduces himself. ‘You’re in absolutely no trouble here, Mr Neville. In fact, Barbara Robinson sent me to say thanks and make sure you were okay. She and her family are longtime friends of mine.’

‘Is she okay?’

‘Broken leg,’ Hodges says, pulling over a chair. His hand creeps to his side and presses there. ‘It could have been a lot worse. I’m betting she’ll be back on the soccer field next year. Sit down, sit down.’

When the Neville boy sits, his knees seem to come almost up to his jawline. ‘It was my fault, in a way. I shouldn’t have been goofing with her, but she was just so pretty and all. Still… I ain’t blind.’ He pauses, corrects himself. ‘Not blind. What was she on? Do you know?’

Hodges frowns. The idea that Barbara might have been high hasn’t crossed his mind, although it should have; she’s a teenager, after all, and those years are the Age of Experimentation. But he has dinner with the Robinsons three or four times a month, and he’s never seen anything in her that registered as drug use. Maybe he’s just too close. Or too old.

‘What makes you think she was on something?’

‘Just her being down here, for one thing. Those were Chapel Ridge duds she was wearing. I know, because we play em twice every year. Blow em out, too. And she was like in a daze. Standing there on the curb near Mamma Stars, that fortune-telling place, looking like she was gonna walk right out into traffic.’ He shrugs. ‘So I chatted her up, teased her about jaywalking. She got mad, went all Kitty Pryde on my ass. I thought that was cute, so then…’ He looks at Higgins, then back at Hodges. ‘This is the fault part, and I’m being straight with you about it, okay?’