Stephen King: End of Watch

Izzy swipes to the next picture. Hodges waits for another oough from Holly, but she is silent and studying the photo closely. Stover is in bed with the covers pulled down to her knees. The damage to her face was never repaired, but what remains looks peaceful enough. Her eyes are closed and her twisted hands are clasped together. A feeding tube juts from her scrawny abdomen. Her wheelchair – which to Hodges looks more like an astronaut’s space capsule – stands nearby.

‘In Stover’s bedroom there was a smell. Not coffee, though. Booze.’

Izzy swipes. Here is a close-up of Stover’s bedside table. There are neat rows of pills. There’s a grinder to turn them to powder, so that Stover could ingest them. Standing among them and looking wildly out of place is a fifth of Smirnoff Triple Distilled vodka and a plastic syringe. The vodka bottle is empty.

‘The lady was taking zero chances,’ Pete says. ‘Smirnoff Triple Distilled is a hundred and fifty proof.’

‘I imagine she wanted it to be as quick for her daughter as possible,’ Holly says.

‘Good call,’ Izzy says, but with a notable lack of warmth. She doesn’t care for Holly, and Holly doesn’t care for her. Hodges is aware of this but has no idea why. And since they rarely see Isabelle, he’s never bothered to ask Holly about it.

Have you got a close-up of the grinder?’ Holly asks.

‘Of course.’ Izzy swipes, and in the next photo, the pill grinder looks as big as a flying saucer. A dusting of white powder remains in the cup. ‘We won’t be sure until later this week, but we think it’s oxycodone. Her scrip was refilled just three weeks ago, according to the label, but that bottle is as empty as the vodka bottle.’

She goes back to Martine Stover, eyes closed, scrawny hands clasped as if in prayer.

‘Her mother ground up the pills, funneled them into the bottle, and poured the vodka down Martine’s feeding tube. Probably more efficient than lethal injection.’

Izzy swipes again. This time Holly does say ‘Oough,’ but she doesn’t look away.

The first photo of Martine’s handicap-equipped bathroom is a wide shot, showing the extra-low counter with its basin, the extra-low towel racks and cabinets, the jumbo shower-tub combination. The slider in front of the shower is closed, the tub in full view. Janice Ellerton reclines in water up to her shoulders, wearing a pink nightgown. Hodges guesses it would have ballooned around her as she lowered herself in, but in this crime scene photo it clings to her thin body. There is a plastic bag over her head, secured by the kind of terrycloth belt that goes with a bathrobe. A length of tubing snakes from beneath it, attached to a small canister lying on the tile floor. On the side of the canister is a decal that shows laughing children.

‘Suicide kit,’ Pete says. ‘She probably learned how to make it on the Internet. There are plenty of sites that explain how to do it, complete with pix. The water in the tub was cool when we got here, but probably warm when she climbed in.’

‘Supposed to be soothing,’ Izzy puts in, and although she doesn’t say oough , her face tightens in a momentary expression of distaste as she swipes to the next picture: a close-up of Janice Ellerton. The bag had fogged with the condensation of her final breaths, but Hodges can see that her eyes were closed. She also went out looking peaceful.

‘The canister contained helium,’ Pete says. ‘You can buy it at any of the big discount stores. You’re supposed to use it to blow up the balloons at little Buster’s birthday party, but it works just as well to kill yourself with, once you have a bag over your head. Dizziness is followed by disorientation, at which point you probably couldn’t get the bag off even if you changed your mind. Next comes unconsciousness, followed by death.’

‘Go back to the last one,’ Holly says. ‘The one that shows the whole bathroom.’

‘Ah,’ Pete says. ‘Dr Watson may have seen something.’

Izzy goes back. Hodges leans closer, squinting – his near vision isn’t what it once was. Then he sees what Holly saw. Next to a thin gray power cord plugged into one of the outlets, there’s a Magic Marker. Someone – Ellerton, he presumes, because her daughter’s writing days were long over – drew a single large letter on the counter: Z.

‘What do you make of it?’ Pete asks.

Hodges considers. ‘It’s her suicide note,’ he says at last. ‘Z is the final letter of the alphabet. If she’d known Greek, it might have been omega.’

‘That’s what I think, too,’ Izzy says. ‘Kind of elegant, when you think of it.’

‘Z is also the mark of Zorro,’ Holly informs them. ‘He was a masked Mexican cavalier. There have been a great many Zorro movies, one starring Anthony Hopkins as Don Diego, but it wasn’t very good.’

‘Do you find that relevant?’ Izzy asks. Her face expresses polite interest, but there’s a barb in her tone.

‘There was also a television series,’ Holly goes on. She’s looking at the photo as though hypnotized by it. ‘It was produced by Walt Disney, back in the black-and-white days. Mrs Ellerton might have watched it when she was a girl.’

‘Are you saying she maybe took refuge in childhood memories while she was getting ready to off herself?’ Pete sounds dubious, which is how Hodges feels. ‘I guess it’s possible.’

‘Bullshit, more likely,’ Izzy says, rolling her eyes.

Holly takes no notice. ‘Can I look in the bathroom? I won’t touch anything, even with these.’ She holds up her small gloved hands.

‘Be our guest,’ Izzy says at once.

In other words, Hodges thinks, buzz off and let the adults talk. He doesn’t care for Izzy’s ’tude when it comes to Holly, but since it seems to bounce right off her, he sees no reason to make an issue of it. Besides, Holly really is a bit skitzy this morning, going off in all directions. Hodges supposes it was the pictures. Dead people never look more dead than in police photos.

She wanders off to check out the bathroom. Hodges sits back, hands laced at the nape of his neck, elbows winged out. His troublesome gut hasn’t been quite so troublesome this morning, maybe because he switched from coffee to tea. If so, he’ll have to stock up on PG Tips. Hell, buy stock. He’s really tired of the constant stomachache.

‘Want to tell me what we’re doing here, Pete?’

Pete raises his eyebrows and tries to look innocent. ‘Whatever can you mean, Kermit?’

‘You were right when you said this would make the paper. It’s the kind of sad soap-opera shit people love, it makes their own lives look better to them—’

‘Cynical but probably true,’ Izzy says with a sigh.

‘—but any connection to the Mercedes Massacre is casual rather than causal.’ Hodges isn’t entirely sure that means what he thinks it means, but it sounds good. ‘What you’ve got here is your basic mercy killing committed by an old lady who just couldn’t stand to see her daughter suffer anymore. Probably Ellerton’s last thought when she turned on the helium was I’ll be with you soon, honey, and when I walk the streets of heaven, you’ll be walking right beside me.’

Izzy snorts at that, but Pete looks pale and thoughtful. Hodges suddenly remembers that a long time ago, maybe thirty years, Pete and his wife lost their first child, a baby daughter, to SIDS.

‘It’s sad, and the papers lap it up for a day or two, but it happens somewhere in the world every day. Every hour, for all I know. So tell me what the deal is.’

‘Probably nothing. Izzy says it is nothing.’

‘Izzy does,’ she confirms.

‘Izzy probably thinks I’m going soft in the head as I approach the finish line.’