Stephen King - End of Watch

‘If there’s chatter about the demo screen. I should have thought of that myself. I’ll do it now.’ She hurries into the outer office.

‘What I don’t understand,’ Hodges says, ‘is why Brady would kill himself before seeing how it all came out.’

‘You mean before seeing how many kids he could get to off themselves,’ Jerome says. ‘Kids who were at that fucking concert. Because that’s what we’re talking about, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah,’ Hodges says. ‘There are too many blank spots, Jerome. Far too many. I don’t even know how he killed himself. If he actually did.’

Jerome presses the heels of his hands to his temples as if to keep his brain from swelling. ‘Please don’t tell me you think he’s still alive.’

‘No, he’s dead, all right. Pete wouldn’t make a mistake about that. What I’m saying is maybe somebody murdered him. Based on what we know, Babineau would be the prime suspect.’

‘Holy poop!’ Holly cries from the other room.

Hodges and Jerome happen to be looking at each other when she says it, and there is a moment of divine harmony as they both struggle against laughter.

‘What?’ Hodges calls. It’s all he can manage without bursting into mad brays of hilarity, which would hurt his side as well as Holly’s feelings.

‘I found a site called Fishin’ Hole Hypnosis! The start-page warns parents not to let their kids look at the demo screen too long! It was first noticed in the arcade game version back in 2005! The Game Boy fixed it, but the Zappit… wait a sec… they said they did, but they didn’t! There’s a whole big long thread!’

Hodges looks at Jerome.

‘She means an online conversation,’ Jerome says.

‘A kid in Des Moines passed out, hit his head on the edge of his desk, and fractured his skull!’ She sounds almost gleeful as she gets up and rushes back to them. Her cheeks are flushed and rosy. ‘There would have been lawsuits! I bet that’s one of the reasons the Zappit company went out of business! It might even have been one of the reasons why Sunrise Solutions—’

The phone on her desk begins to ring.

‘Oh, frack,’ she says, turning toward it.

‘Tell whoever it is that we’re closed today.’

But after saying Hello, you’ve reached Finders Keepers, Holly just listens. Then she turns, holding out the handset.

‘It’s Pete Huntley. He says he has to talk to you right away, and he sounds… funny. Like he’s sad or mad or something.’

Hodges goes into the outer office to find out what’s got Pete sounding sad or mad or something.

Behind him, Jerome finally powers up Dinah Scott’s Zappit.

In Freddi Linklatter’s computer nest (Freddi herself has taken four Excedrin and gone to sleep in her bedroom), 44 FOUND changes to 45 FOUND. The repeater flashes LOADING.

Then it flashes TASK COMPLETE.

Pete doesn’t say hello. What he says is, ‘Take it, Kerm. Take it and beat it until the truth falls out. Bitch is in the house with a couple of SKIDs, and I’m out back in a whatever-it-is. Potting shed, I think, and it’s cold as hell.’

Hodges is at first too surprised to answer, and not because a pair of SKIDs – the city cops’ acronym for State Criminal Investigation Division detectives – is on some scene Pete is working. He’s surprised (in truth almost flabbergasted) because in all their long association he’s only heard Pete use the b-word in connection with an actual woman a single time. That was when speaking of his mother-in-law, who urged Pete’s wife to leave, and took her in, along with the children, when she finally did. The bitch he’s talking about this time can only be his partner, aka Miss Pretty Gray Eyes.

‘Kermit? Are you there?’

‘I’m here,’ Hodges says. ‘Where are you?’

‘Sugar Heights. Dr Felix Babineau’s house on scenic Lilac Drive. Hell, his fucking estate. You know who Babineau is, I know you do. No one kept closer tabs on Brady Hartsfield than you. For awhile there he was your fucking hobby.’

‘ Who you’re talking about, yes. What you’re talking about, no.’

‘This whole thing is going to blow up, partner, and Izzy doesn’t want to get hit with the shrapnel when it does. She’s got ambitions, see? Chief of Detectives in ten years, maybe Chief of Police in fifteen. I get it, but that doesn’t mean I like it. She called Chief Horgan behind my back, and Horgan called the SKIDs. If it’s not officially their case now, it will be by noon. They’ve got their perp, but the shit’s not right. I know it, and Izzy does, too. She just doesn’t give a rat’s ass.’

‘You need to slow down, Pete. Tell me what’s going on.’

Holly is hovering anxiously. Hodges shrugs his shoulders and raises a finger: wait.

‘Housekeeper gets here at seven thirty, okay? Nora Everly by name. And at the top of the drive she sees Babineau’s BMW on the lawn, with a bullet hole in the windshield. She looks inside, sees blood on the steering wheel and the seat, calls 911. There’s a cop car five minutes away – in the Heights there’s always one five minutes away – and when it arrives, Everly’s sitting in her car with all the doors locked, shaking like a leaf. The unis tell her to stay put, and go to the door. The place is unlocked. Mrs Babineau – Cora – is lying dead in the hall, and I’m sure the bullet the ME digs out of her will match the one forensics dug out of the Beemer. On her forehead – are you ready for this? – there’s the letter Z in black ink. More all around the downstairs, including one on the TV screen. Just like the one at the Ellerton place, and I think it was right about then my partner decided she wanted no part of this particular tarbaby.’

Hodges says, ‘Yeah, probably,’ just to keep Pete talking. He grabs the pad beside Holly’s computer and prints BABINEAU’S WIFE MURDERED in big block letters, like a newspaper headline. Her hand flies to her mouth.

‘While one of the cops is calling Division, the other one hears snores coming from upstairs. Like a chainsaw on idle, he said. So they go up, guns drawn, and in one of the three guest bedrooms, count em, three , the place is fucking huge, they find an old fart fast asleep. They wake him up and he gives his name as Alvin Brooks.’

‘Library Al!’ Hodges shouts. ‘From the hospital! The first Zappit I ever saw was one he showed me!’

‘Yeah, that’s the guy. He had a Kiner ID badge in his shirt pocket. And without prompting, he says he killed Mrs Babineau. Claims he did it while he was hypnotized. So they cuff him, take him downstairs, and sit him on the couch. That’s where Izzy and me found him when we entered the scene half an hour or so later. I don’t know what’s wrong with the guy, whether he had a nervous breakdown or what, but he’s on Planet Purple. He keeps going off on tangents, spouting all sorts of weird shit.’

Hodges recollects something Al said to him on one of his last visits to Brady’s room – right around Labor Day weekend of 2014, that would have been. ‘Never so good as what you don’t see.’

‘Yeah.’ Pete sounds surprised. ‘Like that. And when Izzy asked who hypnotized him, he said it was the fish. The ones by the beautiful sea.’

To Hodges, this now makes sense.

‘On further questioning – I did it, by then Izzy must have been in the kitchen, busy ditching the whole thing without asking for my input – he said Dr Z told him to, I quote, “make his mark.” Ten times, he said, and sure enough, there are ten Zs, including the one on the deceased’s forehead. I asked him if Dr Z was Dr Babineau, and he said no, Dr Z was Brady Hartsfield. Crazy, see?’

‘Yeah,’ Hodges says.