Stephen King: End of Watch

‘Valued?’ Jerome suggests.

‘Yes! Valued.’

‘You should have felt that way,’ Jerome says, ‘because you were very valuable. And still are.’

She gives the plant a final critical look, dusts dirt from her hands and the knees of her pants, and sits down next to him. ‘He was brave, wasn’t he? At the end, I mean.’

‘Yes.’

‘Yeah.’ She smiles a little. ‘That’s what Bill would have said – not yes, but yeah.’

‘Yeah,’ he agrees.

‘Jerome? Would you put your arm around me?’ He does.

‘The first time I met you – when we found the stealth program Brady loaded into my cousin Olivia’s computer – I was afraid of you.’

‘I know,’ Jerome says.

‘Not because you were black—’

‘Black is whack,’ Jerome says, smiling. ‘I think we agreed on that much right from the jump.’

‘—but because you were a stranger. You were from outside . I was scared of outside people and outside things. I still am, but not as much as I was then.’

‘I know.’

‘I loved him,’ Holly says, looking at the chrysanthemum. It is a brilliant orange-red below the gray gravestone, which bears a simple message: KERMIT WILLIAM HODGES, and, below the dates, END OF WATCH. ‘I loved him so much.’

‘Yeah,’ Jerome says. ‘So did I.’

She looks up at him, her face timid and hopeful – beneath the graying bangs, it is almost the face of a child. ‘You’ll always be my friend, won’t you?’

‘Always.’ He squeezes her shoulders, which are heartbreakingly thin. During Hodges’s final two months, she lost ten pounds she couldn’t afford to lose. He knows his mother and Barbara are just waiting to feed her up. ‘Always, Holly.’

‘I know,’ she says.

‘Then why did you ask?’

‘Because it’s so good to hear you say it.’

End of Watch, Jerome thinks. He hates the sound of that, but it’s right. It’s right. And this is better than the funeral. Being here with Holly on this sunny late summer morning is much better.

‘Jerome? I’m not smoking.’

‘That’s good.’

They sit quiet for a little while, looking at the chrysanthemum burning its colors at the base of the headstone.

‘Jerome?’

‘What, Holly?’

‘Would you like to go to a movie with me?’

‘Yes,’ he says, then corrects himself. ‘Yeah.’

‘We’ll leave a seat empty between us. Just to put our popcorn in.’

‘Okay.’

‘Because I hate putting it on the floor where there are probably roaches and maybe even rats.’

‘I hate it, too. What do you want to see?’

‘Something that will make us laugh and laugh.’

‘Works for me.’

He smiles at her. Holly smiles back. They leave Fairlawn and walk back out into the world together.

Thanks to Nan Graham, who edited this book, and to all my other friends at Scribner, including – but not limited to – Susan Moldow, Roz Lippel, and Katie Monaghan. Thanks to Chuck Verrill, my longtime agent (important) and longtime friend (more important). Thanks to Chris Lotts, who sells the foreign rights to my books. Thanks to Mark Levenfus, who oversees such business affairs as I have, and keeps an eye on the Haven Foundation, which helps freelance artists down on their luck, and the King Foundation, which helps schools, libraries, and small-town fire departments. Thanks to Marsha DeFilippo, my able personal assistant, and to Julie Eugley, who does everything Marsha doesn’t. I’d be lost without them. Thanks to my son Owen King, who read the manuscript and made valuable suggestions. Thanks to my wife, Tabitha, who also made valuable suggestions… including what turned out to be the right title.

Special thanks to Russ Dorr, who has traded in his career as a physician’s assistant to become my research guru. He went the extra mile on this book, patiently tutoring me on how computer programs are written, how they can be rewritten, and how they can be disseminated. Without Russ, End of Watch would have been a far lesser book. I should add that in some cases I deliberately changed various computer protocols to serve my fiction. Tech-savvy individuals will see that, which is fine. Just don’t blame Russ.

One last thing. End of Watch is fiction, but the high rate of suicide – both in the United States and in many other countries where my books are read – is all too real. The National Suicide Prevention Hotline number given in this book is also real. It’s 1–800–273-TALK. If you are feeling poopy (as Holly Gibney would say), give them a call. Because things can get better, and if you give them a chance, they usually do.

‘I challenge you not to read this book in one breathless sitting’ – Guardian

‘Deserves to be ranked alongside King’s masterpieces’ – Daily Mail

‘A thrilling cat-and-mouse game’ – Irish Mail on Sunday

Have you read the second novel featuring Bill Hodges? FINDERS KEEPERSis spectacular suspense and it is King writing about how literature shapes a life – for good, for bad, for ever.

1978: Morris Bellamy is a reader so obsessed by America’s iconic author John Rothstein that he is prepared to kill for a trove of notebooks containing at least one more unpublished novel.

2009: Pete Saubers, a boy whose father was brutally injured by a stolen Mercedes, discovers a buried trunk containing cash and Rothstein’s notebooks.

2014: After thirty-five years in prison, Morris is up for parole. And he’s hell-bent on recovering his treasure.

Now it’s up to retired detective Bill Hodges – running an investigative company called Finders Keepers – to rescue Pete from an ever-more deranged and vengeful Morris…

Not since Misery has King written with such visceral power about a reader with such a dangerous obsession.

‘Packed with suspense’ – The Times

‘A classic cat-and-mouse tale’ – Mail on Sunday

‘A first-rate crime thriller’ – John Connolly, Irish Independent

‘An almost constant build of momentum… manages to thrill with every page’ – Guardian

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