Стивен Кинг - If It Bleeds

She laughs. “I just hope it’s not haggis.”

“What’s that? More Latin?”

“Sheep’s heart,” Mrs. Keller says. “Also liver and lungs. I know because my husband took me to Scotland for our tenth wedding anniversary.”

The delivery guy pulls a face that makes her laugh some more, then asks her to sign the window in his reader gadget. Which she does. He wishes her a good day and a merry Christmas. She wishes him the same. When he’s gone, Mrs. Keller grabs a loitering kid (no hall pass, but Mrs. Keller lets it go this once) to take the box to the storage closet between the school library and the first-floor teachers’ room. She tells Mr. Griswold about the package during the lunch break. He says he’ll take it down to his classroom at three-thirty, after the last bell. Had he taken it at lunch, the carnage might have been even worse.

The American Club at Renhill Secondary did not send the kids at Albert Macready a Christmas box. There is no such company as Pennsy Speed Delivery. The truck, later discovered abandoned, was stolen from a mall parking lot shortly after Thanksgiving. Mrs. Keller will excoriate herself for not noticing that the delivery guy wasn’t wearing a name tag, and when he aimed his reader at the package’s address label, it didn’t beep the way the ones used by the UPS and FedEx drivers did, because it was a fake. So was the customs stamp.

The police will tell her anyone might have missed these things, and she has no reason to feel responsible. She does, nevertheless. The school’s security protocols—the cameras, the main door that’s locked when school is in session, the metal detector—are good, but they’re only machinery. She is (or was) the human part of the equation, the guardian at the gate, and she let the school down. She let the kids down.

Mrs. Keller feels that the arm she lost will only be the beginning of her atonement.

It’s 2:45, and Holly Gibney is getting ready for an hour that always makes her happy. That may suggest certain low tastes, but she still enjoys her sixty minutes of weekday television viewing, and tries to insure that Finders Keepers (nice new digs for the detective agency, fifth floor of the Frederick Building downtown) is empty from three to four. Since she’s the boss—a thing she still finds hard to believe—that isn’t difficult.

Today Pete Huntley, her partner in the business since Bill Hodges died, is out trying to track down a runaway at the city’s various homeless shelters. Jerome Robinson, taking a year off from Harvard while he tries to turn a forty-page sociology paper into what he hopes will be a book, is also working for Finders Keepers, although only part-time. This afternoon he’s south of the city, looking for a dognapped golden retriever named Lucky who may have been dumped at a Youngstown, Akron, or Canton dog impound when Lucky’s owners refused to pay the demanded ransom of ten thousand dollars. Of course the dog may just have been turned loose in the Ohio countryside—or killed—but maybe not. The dog’s name is a good omen, she told Jerome. She said she was hopeful.

“You have Holly hope,” Jerome said, grinning.

“That’s right,” she replied. “Now go on, Jerome. Fetch.”

She’s got a good chance of being alone until it’s time to close the place up, but it’s only the hour between three and four that she really cares about. With one eye on the clock, she writes a starchy email to Andrew Edwards, a client who was worried that his partner was trying to hide business assets. Turns out the partner wasn’t, but Finders did the work and needs to be paid. This is our third billing , Holly writes. Please clear your account so we don’t have to turn this matter over to a collection agency .

Holly finds she can be much more forceful when she can write “our” and “we” rather than “my” and “I.” She’s working on that, but as her grandfather was wont to say, “Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was Philadelphia.”

She sends off the email— whoosh —and shuts down her computer. She glances at the clock. Seven to three. She goes to the little fridge and takes out a can of Diet Pepsi. She puts it on one of the coasters the firm gives out (YOU LOSE, WE FIND, YOU WIN), then opens the top left drawer of her desk. In here, concealed by a pile of junk paperwork, is a bag of Snickers Bites. She takes out six, one for each commercial break during her show, unwraps them, and lines them up.

Five to three. She turns on the television but mutes it. Maury Povich is currently strutting around and inciting his studio audience. She may have low tastes, but not that low. She considers eating one of her Snickers and tells herself to wait. Just as she is congratulating herself on her forbearance, she hears the elevator and rolls her eyes. It must be Pete. Jerome is way down south.

It’s Pete, all right, and smiling. “Oh, happy day,” he says. “Somebody finally got Al to send a repairman—”

“Al did nothing,” Holly said. “Jerome and I took care of it. It was just a glitch.”

“How—”

“There was a small hack involved.” She’s still got one eye on the clock: three minutes to three. “Jerome did that, but I could have.” Once more, honesty compels her. “At least I think so. Did you find the girl?”

Pete gives her two thumbs up. “At Sunrise House. My first stop. Good news, she wants to go home. She called her mom, who’s coming to get her.”

“Are you sure? Or is that what she told you?”

“I was there when she made the call. I saw the tears. This is a good resolution, Holly. I just hope Mom’s not a deadbeat like that guy Edwards.”

“Edwards will pay,” she says. “My heart is set on it.” On the TV, Maury has been replaced by a dancing bottle of diarrhea medicine. Which in Holly’s opinion is actually an improvement. “Now be quiet, Pete, my show is coming on in one minute.”

“Oh my God, are you still watching that guy?”

Holly gives him a forbidding look. “You are welcome to watch, Pete, but if you intend to make sarcastic remarks and spoil my enjoyment, I wish you would leave.”

Be assertive , Allie Winters likes to tell her. Allie is her therapist. Holly saw another therapist briefly, a man who has written three books and many scholarly articles. This was for reasons apart from the demons that have chased her out of her teens. She needed to talk about more recent demons with Dr. Carl Morton.

“No sarcastic remarks, roger that,” Pete says. “Man, I can’t believe you and Jerome bypassed Al. Took the bull by the horns, so to speak. You rock, Holly.”

“I am trying to be more assertive.”

“And you’re succeeding. Is there a Coke in the fridge?”

“Only diet.”

“Uck. That stuff tastes like—”

“Hush.”

It’s three o’clock. She unmutes the TV just as her show’s theme song starts up. It’s the Bobby Fuller Four singing “I Fought the Law.” A courtroom comes on the screen. The spectators—actually a studio audience, like Maury’s but less feral—are clapping along with the music, and the announcer intones, “Steer clear if you’re a louse, because John Law is in the house!”

“All rise!” George the bailiff cries.

The spectators get up, still clapping and swaying, as Judge John Law comes out of his chambers. He’s six-six (Holly knows this from People magazine, which she hides even better than her Snickers Bites) and bald as an eight-ball… although he’s more dark chocolate than black. He’s wearing voluminous robes that sway back and forth as he boogies his way to the bench. He grabs the gavel and tick-tocks it back and forth like a metronome, flashing a full deck of white teeth.