Stephen King - End of Watch

At last he sees the tall red posts that are his final landmark. Brady pumps the brakes and makes the turn at walking pace. The last two miles are on an unnamed, one-lane camp road, but thanks to the overarching trees, the driving here is the easiest he’s had in the last hour. In some places the road is still bare. That won’t last once the main body of the storm arrives, which will happen around eight o’clock tonight, according to the radio.

He comes to a fork where wooden arrows nailed to a huge old-growth fir point in different directions. The one on the right reads BIG BOB’S BEAR CAMP. The one on the left reads HEADS AND SKINS. Ten feet or so above the arrows, already wearing a thin hood of snow, a security camera peers down.

Brady turns left and finally allows his hands to relax. He’s almost there.

In the city, the snow is still light. The streets are clear and traffic is moving well, but the three of them pile into Jerome’s Jeep Wrangler just to be on the safe side. 442 Maritime Drive turns out to be one of the condos that sprang up like mushrooms on the south side of the lake in the go-go eighties. Back then they were a big deal. Now most are half empty. In the foyer, Jerome finds F. LINKLATTER in 6-A. He reaches for the buzzer, but Hodges stops him before he can push it.

‘What?’ Jerome asks.

Holly says primly, ‘Watch and learn, Jerome. This is how we roll.’

Hodges pushes other buttons at random, and gets a male voice in return on the fourth try. ‘Yeah?’

‘FedEx,’ Hodges says.

‘Who’d send me something by FedEx?’ The voice sounds mystified.

‘Couldn’t tell you, buddy. I don’t make the news, I just report it.’

The door to the lobby gives out an ill-tempered rattle. Hodges pushes through and holds it for the others. There are two elevators, one with an out-of-order sign taped to it. On the one that works someone has posted a note that reads, Whoever has the barking dog on 4,I will find you.

‘I find that rather ominous,’ Jerome says.

The elevator door opens and as they get in, Holly begins to rummage in her purse. She finds her box of Nicorette and pops one. When the elevator opens on the sixth floor, Hodges says, ‘If she’s there, let me do the talking.’

6-A is directly across from the elevator. Hodges knocks. When there’s no answer, he raps. When there’s still no answer, he hammers with the side of his fist.

‘Go away.’ The voice on the other side of the door sounds weak and thin. The voice of a little girl with the flu, Hodges thinks.

He hammers again. ‘Open up, Ms Linklatter.’

‘Are you the police?’

He could say yes, it wouldn’t be the first time since retiring from the force that he impersonated a police officer, but instinct tells him not to do it this time.

‘No. My name is Bill Hodges. We met before, briefly, back in 2010. It was when you worked at—’

‘Yeah, I remember.’

One lock turns, then another. A chain falls. The door opens, and the tangy smell of pot wafts into the corridor. The woman in the doorway has got a half-smoked fatty tweezed between the thumb and forefinger of her left hand. She’s thin almost to the point of emaciation, and pale as milk. She’s wearing a strappy tee-shirt with BAD BOY BAIL BONDS, BRADENTON FLA on the front. Below this is the motto IN JAIL? WE BAIL!, but that part is hard to read because of the bloodstain.

‘I should have called you,’ Freddi says, and although she’s looking at Hodges, he has an idea it’s really herself she’s speaking to. ‘I would have, if I’d thought of it. You stopped him before, right?’

‘Jesus, lady, what happened?’ Jerome asks.

‘I probably packed too much.’ Freddi gestures at a pair of mismatched suitcases standing behind her in the living room. ‘I should have listened to my mother. She said to always travel light.’

‘I don’t think he’s talking about the suitcases,’ Hodges says, cocking a thumb at the fresh blood on Freddi’s shirt. He steps in, Jerome and Holly right behind him. Holly closes the door.

‘I know what he’s talking about,’ Freddi says. ‘Fucker shot me. Bleeding started again when I hauled the suitcases out of the bedroom.’

‘Let me see,’ Hodges says, but when he steps toward her, Freddi takes a compensatory step back and crosses her arms in front of her, a Holly-esque gesture that touches Hodges’s heart.

‘No. I’m not wearing a bra. Hurts too much.’

Holly pushes past Hodges. ‘Show me where the bathroom is. Let me look.’ She sounds okay to Hodges – calm – but she’s chewing the shit out of that nicotine gum.

Freddi takes Holly by the wrist and leads her past the suitcases, pausing a moment to hit the joint. She lets the smoke out in a series of smoke signals as she talks. ‘The equipment is in the spare room. On your right. Get a good look.’ And then, returning to her original scripture: ‘If I hadn’t packed so much, I’d be gone now.’

Hodges doubts it. He thinks she would have passed out in the elevator.

Heads and Skins isn’t as big as the Babineau McMansion in Sugar Heights, but damned near. It’s long, low, and rambling. Beyond it, the snow-covered ground slopes down to Lake Charles, which has frozen over since Brady’s last visit.

He parks in front and walks carefully around to the west side, Babineau’s expensive loafers sliding in the accumulating snow. The hunting camp is in a clearing, so there’s a lot more snow to slip around in. His ankles are freezing. He wishes he’d thought to bring some boots, and once more reminds himself that you can’t think of everything.

He takes the key to the generator shed from inside the electric meter box, and the keys to the house from inside the shed. The gennie is a top-of-the-line Generac Guardian. It’s silent now, but will probably kick on later. Out here in the boonies, the electricity goes down in almost every storm.

Brady returns to the car for Babineau’s laptop. The camp is WiFi equipped, and the laptop is all he needs to keep him connected to his current project, and abreast of developments. Plus the Zappit, of course.

Good old Zappit Zero.

The house is dark and chilly, and his first acts upon entering are the prosaic ones any returning homeowner might perform: he turns on the lights and boosts the thermostat. The main room is huge and pine-paneled, lit by a chandelier made of polished caribou bones, from back in the days when there were still caribou in these woods. The fieldstone fireplace is a maw, almost big enough to roast a rhino in. Overhead are thick, crisscrossing beams, darkened by years of woodsmoke from the fireplace. Next to one wall stands a cherrywood buffet as long as the room itself, lined with at least fifty liquor bottles, some nearly empty, some with the seals still intact. The furniture is old, mismatched, and plushy – deep easy chairs, and a gigantic sofa where innumerable bimbos have been banged over the years. Plenty of extra-marital fucking has gone on out here in addition to the hunting and fishing. The skin in front of the fireplace belonged to a bear brought down by Dr Elton Marchant, who has now gone to that great operating room in the sky. The mounted heads and stuffed fish are trophies belonging to nearly a dozen other docs, past and present. There’s a particularly fine sixteen-point buck that Babineau himself brought down back when he was really Babineau. Out of season, but what the hell.

Brady puts the laptop on an antique rolltop desk at the far end of the room and fires it up before taking off his coat. First he checks in on the repeater, and is delighted to see it’s now reading 243 FOUND.

He thought he understood the power of the eye-trap, and has seen how addictive that demo screen is even before it’s juiced up, but this is success beyond his wildest expectations. Far beyond. There haven’t been any new warning chimes from zeetheend, but he goes there next anyway, just to see how it’s doing. Once again his expectations are exceeded. Over seven thousand visitors so far, seven thousand, and the number ticks up steadily even as he watches.