Stephen King - End of Watch

She’s up and shuffling toward the door of the computer room when the obvious reason why it is not the best idea hits her. Brady is gone, but he wouldn’t leave if he couldn’t monitor his projects from a distance, especially the repeater, and doing that is the easiest thing in the world. He’s smart about computers – brilliant, actually, although it pisses her off to admit it – and he’s almost certainly left himself a back door into her setup. If so, he can check in any time he wants; all it will take is a laptop. If she shuts his shit down, he’ll know, and he’ll know she’s still alive.

He’ll come back.

‘So what do I do?’ Freddi whispers. She trudges to her window, shivering – it’s so fucking cold in this apartment once winter comes – and looks out into the dark. ‘What do I do now?’

Hodges is dreaming of Bowser, the feisty little mongrel he had when he was a kid. His father hauled Bowser to the vet and had him put down, over Hodges’s weeping protests, after ole Bowse bit the newspaper boy badly enough to require stitches. In this dream Bowser is biting him , biting him in the side. He won’t let go even when young Billy Hodges offers him the best treat in the treat bag, and the pain is excruciating. The doorbell is ringing and he thinks, That’s the paperboy, go bite him , you’re supposed to bite him .

Only as he swims up from this dream and back into the real world, he realizes it isn’t the doorbell, it’s the phone by his bed. The landline. He gropes for it, drops it, picks it up off the duvet, and manages a furry approximation of hello.

‘Figured you’d have your cell on do not disturb,’ Pete Huntley says. He sounds wide awake and weirdly jovial. Hodges squints at the bedside clock but can’t read it. His bottle of painkillers, already half empty, is blocking the digital readout. Jesus, how many did he take yesterday?

‘I don’t know how to do that, either.’ Hodges struggles to a sitting position. He can’t believe the pain has gotten so bad so fast. It’s as if it was just waiting to be identified before pouncing with all its claws out.

‘You need to get a life, Kerm.’

A little late for that, he thinks, swinging his legs out of bed.

‘Why are you calling at…’ He moves the bottle of pills. ‘At twenty to seven in the morning?’

‘Couldn’t wait to give you the good news,’ Pete says. ‘Brady Hartsfield is dead. A nurse discovered him on morning rounds.’

Hodges shoots to his feet, producing a stab of pain he hardly feels. ‘What? How? ’

‘There’ll be an autopsy later today, but the doctor who examined him is leaning toward suicide. There’s a residue of something on his tongue and gums. The doc on call took a sample, and a guy from the ME’s office is taking another as we speak. They’re going to rush the analysis, Hartsfield being such a rock star and all.’

‘Suicide,’ Hodges says, running a hand through his already crazed hair. The news is simple enough, but he still can’t seem to take it in. ‘ Suicide? ’

‘He was always a fan,’ Pete says. ‘I believe you might have said that yourself, and more than once.’

‘Yeah, but…’

But what? Pete’s right, Brady was a fan of suicide, and not just the other guy’s. He had been ready to die at the City Center Job Fair in 2009, if things worked out that way, and a year later he rolled a wheelchair into Mingo Auditorium with three pounds of plastic explosive strapped to the seat. Which put his ass at ground zero. Only that was then, and things have changed. Haven’t they?

‘But what?’

‘I don’t know,’ Hodges says.

‘I do. He finally found a way to do it. Simple as that. In any case, if you thought Hartsfield was somehow involved in the deaths of Ellerton, Stover, and Scapelli – and I have to tell you I had my own thoughts along that line – you can stop worrying. He’s a gone goose, a toasty turkey, a baked buzzard, and we all say hooray.’

‘Pete, I need to process this a little.’

‘No doubt,’ Pete says. ‘You had quite the history with him. Meanwhile, I have to call Izzy. Get her day started on the good foot.’

‘Will you call me when you get back the analysis of whatever he swallowed?’

‘Indeed I will. Meanwhile, sayonara Mr Mercedes, right?’

‘Right, right.’

Hodges hangs up the phone, walks into the kitchen, and puts on a pot of coffee. He should have tea, coffee will burn the shit out of his poor struggling innards, but right now he doesn’t care. And he won’t take any pills, not for awhile. He needs to be as clearheaded about this as he possibly can.

He snatches his mobile off the charger and calls Holly. She answers at once, and he wonders briefly what time she gets up. Five? Even earlier? Maybe some questions are best left unanswered. He tells her what Pete just told him, and for once in her life, Holly Gibney does not gild her profanity.

‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!’

‘Not unless Pete was kidding, and I don’t think he was. He doesn’t try joking until mid-afternoon, and he’s not very good at it then.’

Silence for a moment, and then Holly asks, ‘Do you believe it?’

‘That he’s dead, yes. It could hardly be a case of mistaken identity. That he committed suicide? To me that seems…’ He fishes for the right phrase, can’t find it, and repeats what he said to his old partner not five minutes before. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Is it over?’

‘Maybe not.’

‘That’s what I think, too. We have to find out what happened to the Zappits that were left over after the company went broke. I don’t understand how Brady Hartsfield could have had anything to do with them, but so many of the connections go back to him. And to the concert he tried to blow up.’

‘I know.’ Hodges is again picturing a web with a big old spider at the center of it, one full of poison. Only the spider is dead.

And we all say hooray, he thinks.

‘Holly, can you be at the hospital when the Robinsons come to pick up Barbara?’

‘I can do that.’ After a pause she adds, ‘I’d like to do that. I’ll call Tanya to make sure it’s okay, but I’m sure it is. Why?’

‘I want you to show Barb a six-pack. Five elderly white guys in suits, plus Dr Felix Babineau.’

‘You think Myron Zakim was Hartsfield’s doctor ? That he was the one who gave Barbara and Hilda those Zappits?’

‘At this point it’s just a hunch.’

But that’s modest. It’s actually a bit more. Babineau gave Hodges a cock-and-bull story to keep him out of Brady’s room, then nearly blew a gasket when Hodges asked if he was all right. And Norma Wilmer claims he’s been conducting unauthorized experiments on Brady. Investigate Babineau, she said in Bar Bar Black Sheep. Get him in trouble. I dare you . As a man who probably has only months to live, that doesn’t seem like much of a dare.

‘Okay. I respect your hunches, Bill. And I’m sure I can find a society-page picture of Dr Babineau from one of those charity events they’re always having for the hospital.’

‘Good. Now refresh me on the name of the bankruptcy trustee guy.’

‘Todd Schneider. You should call him at eight thirty. If I’m with the Robinsons, I won’t be in until later. I’ll bring Jerome with me.’

‘Yeah, good. Have you got Schneider’s number?’

‘I emailed it to you. You remember how to access your email, don’t you?’

‘It’s cancer, Holly, not Alzheimer’s.’

‘Today is your last day. Remember that, too.’

How can he forget? They’ll put him in the hospital where Brady died, and that will be that, Hodges’s last case left hanging fire. He hates the idea, but there’s no way around it. This is going fast.