End of Watch

by Stephen King

  "Hello?"

  She listens.

  "Yes, this is she."

  She listens, her free hand rising to cover her mouth and stifle whatever sound wants to come out. She hears herself ask, "Are you sure it's my daughter? Barbara Rosellen Robinson?"

  The policeman who has called to notify her says yes. He's sure. They found her ID in the street. What he doesn't tell her is that they had to wipe off the blood to see the name.

  11

  Hodges knows something's amiss as soon as he steps out of the skyway that connects Kiner Memorial proper to the Lakes Region Traumatic Brain Injury Clinic, where the walls are painted a soothing pink and soft music plays day and night. The usual patterns have been disrupted, and very little work seems to be getting done. Lunch carts stand marooned, filled with congealing plates of noodly stuff that might once have been the cafeteria's idea of Chinese. Nurses cluster, murmuring in low tones. One appears to be crying. Two interns have their heads together by the water fountain. An orderly is talking on his cell phone, which is technically cause for suspension, but Hodges thinks he's safe enough; no one is paying him any mind.

  At least Ruth Scapelli is nowhere in sight, which might improve his chances of getting in to see Hartsfield. It's Norma Wilmer at the duty desk, and along with Becky Helmington, Norma was his source for all things Brady before Hodges quit visiting Room 217. The bad news is that Hartsfield's doctor is also at the duty desk. Hodges has never been able to establish a rapport with him, although God knows he's tried.

  He ambles down to the water fountain, hoping Babineau hasn't spotted him and will soon be off to look at PET scans or something, leaving Wilmer alone and approachable. He gets a drink (wincing and placing a hand to his side as he straightens up), then speaks to the interns. "Is something going on here? The place seems a little riled up."

  They hesitate and glance at each other.

  "Can't talk about it," says Intern One. He still has the remains of his adolescent acne, and looks about seventeen. Hodges shudders at the thought of him assisting in a surgery job more difficult than removing a thumb splinter.

  "Something with a patient? Hartsfield, maybe? I only ask because I used to be a cop, and I'm sort of responsible for putting him here."

  "Hodges," says Intern Two. "Is that your name?"

  "Yeah, that's me."

  "You caught him, right?"

  Hodges agrees instantly, although if it had been left up to him, Brady would have bagged a lot more in Mingo Auditorium than he managed to get at City Center. No, it was Holly and Jerome Robinson who stopped Brady before he could detonate his devil's load of homemade plastic explosive.

  The interns exchange another glance and then One says, "Hartsfield's the same as ever, just gorking along. It's Nurse Ratched."

  Intern Two gives him an elbow. "Speak no ill of the dead, asshole. Especially when the guy listening might have loose lips."

  Hodges immediately runs a thumbnail across his mouth, as if sealing his dangerous lips shut.

  Intern One looks flustered. "Head Nurse Scapelli, I mean. She committed suicide last night."

  All the lights in Hodges's head come on, and for the first time since yesterday he forgets that he's probably going to die. "Are you sure?"

  "Sliced her arms and wrists and bled out," says Two. "That's what I'm hearing, anyway."

  "Did she leave a note?"

  They have no idea.

  Hodges heads for the duty desk. Babineau is still there, going over files with Wilmer (who looks flustered at her apparent battlefield promotion), but he can't wait. This is Hartsfield's dirt. He doesn't know how that can be, but it has Brady written all over it. The fucking suicide prince.

  He almost calls Nurse Wilmer by her first name, but instinct makes him shy from that at the last moment. "Nurse Wilmer, I'm Bill Hodges." A thing she knows very well. "I worked both the City Center case and the Mingo Auditorium thing. I need to see Mr. Hartsfield."

  She opens her mouth, but Babineau is there ahead of her. "Out of the question. Even if Mr. Hartsfield were allowed visitors, which he is not by order of the District Attorney's office, he wouldn't be allowed to see you. He needs peace and calm. Each of your previous unauthorized visits has shattered that."

  "News to me," Hodges says mildly. "Every time I've been to see him, he just sits there. Bland as a bowl of oatmeal."

  Norma Wilmer's head goes back and forth. She's like a woman watching a tennis match.

  "You don't see what we see after you've left." Color is rising in Babineau's stubble-flecked cheeks. And there are dark circles under his eyes. Hodges remembers a cartoon from his Sunday school Living with Jesus workbook, back in the prehistoric era when cars had fins and girls wore bobby sox. Brady's doc has the same look as the guy in the cartoon, but Hodges doubts if he's a chronic masturbator. On the other hand, he remembers Becky telling him that the neuro doctors are often crazier than the patients.

  "And what would that be?" Hodges asks. "Little psychic tantrums? Do things have a way of falling over after I'm gone? The toilet in his bathroom flushes by itself, maybe?"

  "Ridiculous. What you leave is psychic wreckage, Mr. Hodges. He's not so brain damaged that he doesn't know you're obsessed with him. Malevolently so. I want you to leave. We've had a tragedy, and many of the patients are upset."

  Hodges sees Wilmer's eyes widen slightly at this, and knows that the patients capable of cognition--many here in the Bucket are not--have no idea that the head nurse has offed herself.

  "I only have a few questions for him, and then I'll be out of your hair."

  Babineau leans forward. The eyes behind his gold-rimmed glasses are threaded with snaps of red. "Listen closely, Mr. Hodges. One, Mr. Hartsfield is not capable of answering your questions. If he could answer questions, he would have been brought to trial for his crimes by now. Two, you have no official standing. Three, if you don't leave now, I will call security and have you escorted from the premises."

  Hodges says, "Pardon me for asking, but are you all right?"

  Babineau draws back as if Hodges has brandished a fist in his face. "Get out!"

  The little clusters of medical personnel stop talking and look around.

  "Gotcha," Hodges says. "Going. All good."

  There's a snack alcove near the entrance to the skyway. Intern Two is leaning there, hands in pockets. "Ooh, baby," he says. "You been schooled."

  "So it would seem." Hodges studies the wares in the Nibble-A-Bit machine. He sees nothing in there that won't set his guts on fire, but that's okay; he's not hungry.

  "Young man," he says, without turning around, "if you would like to make fifty dollars for doing a simple errand that will cause you no trouble, then get with me."

  Intern Two, a fellow who looks like he might actually attain adulthood at some point in the not-too-distant future, joins him at the Nibble-A-Bit. "What's the errand?"

  Hodges keeps his pad in his back pocket, just as he did when he was a Detective First Class. He scribbles two words--Call me--and adds his cell number. "Give this to Norma Wilmer once Smaug spreads his wings and flies away."

  Intern Two takes the note and folds it into the breast pocket of his scrubs. Then he looks expectant. Hodges takes out his wallet. Fifty is a lot for delivering a note, but he has discovered at least one good thing about terminal cancer: you can toss your budget out the window.

  12

  Jerome Robinson is balancing boards on his shoulder under the hot Arizona sun when his cell phone rings. The houses they are building--the first two already framed--are in a low-income but respectable neighborhood on the southern outskirts of Phoenix. He puts the boards across the top of a handy wheelbarrow and plucks his phone from his belt, thinking it will be Hector Alonzo, the job foreman. This morning one of the workmen (a workwoman, actually) tripped and fell into a stack of rebar. She broke her collarbone and suffered an ugly facial laceration. Alonzo took her to the St. Luke's ER, appointing Jerome temporary foreman in his absence.

  I
t's not Alonzo's name he sees in the little window, but Holly Gibney's face. It's a photo he took himself, catching her in one of her rare smiles.

  "Hey, Holly, how are you? I'll have to call you back in a few, it's been a crazy morning here, but--"

  "I need you to come home," Holly says. She sounds calm, but Jerome knows her of old, and in just those six words he can sense strong emotions held in check. Fear chief among them. Holly is still a very fearful person. Jerome's mother, who loves her dearly, once called fear Holly's default setting.

  "Home? Why? What's wrong?" His own fear suddenly grips him. "Is it my dad? Mom? Is it Barbie?"

  "It's Bill," she says. "He has cancer. A very bad cancer. Pancreatic. If he doesn't get treatment he'll die, he'll probably die anyway, but he could have time and he told me it was just a little ulcer because . . . because . . ." She takes a great ragged breath that makes Jerome wince. "Because of Brady Fracking Hartsfield!"

  Jerome has no idea what connection Brady Hartsfield can have to Bill's terrible diagnosis, but he knows what he's seeing right now: trouble. On the far side of the building site, two hard-hatted young men--Habitat for Humanity college volunteers like Jerome himself--are giving a beeping, backing cement truck conflicting directions. Disaster looms.

  "Holly, give me five minutes and I'll call you back."

  "But you'll come, won't you? Say you'll come. Because I don't think I can talk to him about this on my own and he has to get into treatment right away!"

  "Five minutes," he says, and kills the call. His thoughts are spinning so fast that he's afraid the friction will catch his brains on fire, and the blaring sun isn't helping. Bill? With cancer? On one hand it doesn't seem possible, but on the other it seems completely possible. He was in top form during the Pete Saubers business, where Jerome and Holly partnered with him, but he'll be seventy soon, and the last time Jerome saw him, before leaving for Arizona in October, Bill didn't look all that well. Too thin. Too pale. But Jerome can't go anywhere until Hector gets back. It would be like leaving the inmates to run the asylum. And knowing the Phoenix hospitals, where the ERs are overrun twenty-four hours a day, he may be stuck here until quitting time.

  He sprints for the cement truck, bawling "Hold up! Hold UP, for Jesus' sake!" at the top of his lungs.

  He gets the clueless volunteers to halt the cement truck they've been misdirecting less than three feet from a freshly dug drainage ditch, and he's bending over to catch his breath when his phone rings again.

  Holly, I love you, Jerome thinks, pulling it from his belt once more, but sometimes you drive me absolutely bugfuck.

  Only this time it's not Holly's picture he sees. It's his mother's.

  Tanya is crying. "You have to come home," she says, and Jerome has just long enough to think of something his grandfather used to say: bad luck keeps bad company.

  It's Barbie after all.

  13

  Hodges is in the lobby and headed for the door when his phone vibrates. It's Norma Wilmer.

  "Is he gone?" Hodges asks.

  Norma doesn't have to ask who he's talking about. "Yes. Now that he's seen his prize patient, he can relax and do the rest of his rounds."

  "I was sorry to hear about Nurse Scapelli." It's true. He didn't care for her, but it's still true.

  "I was, too. She ran the nursing staff like Captain Bligh ran the Bounty, but I hate to think of anyone doing . . . that. You get the news and your first reaction is oh no, not her, never. It's the shock of it. Your second reaction is oh yes, that makes perfect sense. Never married, no close friends--not that I knew of, anyway--nothing but the job. Where everybody sort of loathed her."

  "All the lonely people," Hodges says, stepping out into the cold and turning toward the bus stop. He buttons his coat one-handed and then begins to massage his side.

  "Yes. There are a lot of them. What can I do for you, Mr. Hodges?"

  "I have a few questions. Could you meet me for a drink?"

  There's a long pause. Hodges thinks she's going to tell him no. Then she says, "I don't suppose your questions could lead to trouble for Dr. Babineau?"

  "Anything is possible, Norma."

  "That would be nice, but I guess I owe you one, regardless. For not letting on to him that we know each other from back in the Becky Helmington days. There's a watering hole on Revere Avenue. Got a clever name, Bar Bar Black Sheep, and most of the staff drinks closer to the hospital. Can you find it?"

  "Yeah."

  "I'm off at five. Meet me there at five thirty. I like a nice cold vodka martini."

  "It'll be waiting."

  "Just don't expect me to get you in to see Hartsfield. It would mean my job. Babineau was always intense, but these days he's downright weird. I tried to tell him about Ruth, and he blew right past me. Not that he's apt to care when he finds out."

  "Got a lot of love for him, don't you?"

  She laughs. "For that you owe me two drinks."

  "Two it is."

  He's slipping his phone back into his coat pocket when it buzzes again. He sees the call is from Tanya Robinson and his thoughts immediately flash to Jerome, building houses out there in Arizona. A lot of things can go wrong on building sites.

  He takes the call. Tanya is crying, at first too hard for him to understand what she's saying, only that Jim is in Pittsburgh and she doesn't want to call him until she knows more. Hodges stands at the curb, one palm plastered against his non-phone ear to muffle the sound of traffic.

  "Slow down. Tanya, slow down. Is it Jerome? Did something happen to Jerome?"

  "No, Jerome's fine. Him I did call. It's Barbara. She was in Lowtown--"

  "What in God's name was she doing in Lowtown, and on a school day?"

  "I don't know! All I know is that some boy pushed her into the street and a truck hit her! They're taking her to Kiner Memorial. I'm on my way there now!"

  "Are you driving?"

  "Yes, what does that have to do with--"

  "Get off the phone, Tanya. And slow down. I'm at Kiner now. I'll meet you in the ER."

  He hangs up and heads back to the hospital, breaking into a clumsy trot. He thinks, This goddam place is like the Mafia. Every time I think I'm out, it pulls me back in.

  14

  An ambulance with its lights flashing is just backing into one of the ER bays. Hodges goes to meet it, pulling out the police ID he still keeps in his wallet. When the paramedic and the EMT pull the stretcher out of the back, he flashes the ID with his thumb placed over the red RETIRED stamp. Technically speaking this is a felony crime--impersonating an officer--and consequently it's a fiddle he uses sparingly, but this time it seems absolutely appropriate.

  Barbara is medicated but conscious. When she sees Hodges, she grasps his hand tightly. "Bill? How did you get here so fast? Did Mom call you?"

  "Yeah. How are you?"

  "I'm okay. They gave me something for the pain. I have . . . they say I have a broken leg. I'm going to miss the basketball season and I guess it doesn't matter because Mom will ground me until I'm, like, twenty-five." Tears begin to leak from her eyes.

  He doesn't have long with her, so questions about what she was doing on MLK Ave, where there are sometimes as many as four drive-by shootings a week, will have to wait. There's something more important.

  "Barb, do you know the name of the boy who pushed you in front of the truck?"

  Her eyes widen.

  "Or get a good look at him? Could you describe him?"

  "Pushed . . . ? Oh, no, Bill! No, that's wrong!"

  "Officer, we gotta go," the paramedic says. "You can question her later."

  "Wait!" Barbara shouts, and tries to sit up. The EMT pushes her gently back down, and she's grimacing with pain, but Hodges is heartened by that shout. It was good and strong.

  "What is it, Barb?"

  "He only pushed me after I ran into the street! He pushed me out of the way! I think he might have saved my life, and I'm glad." She's crying hard now, but Hodges doesn't believe for a minute
it's because of her broken leg. "I don't want to die, after all. I don't know what was wrong with me!"

  "We really have to get her in an exam room, Chief," the paramedic says. "She needs an X-ray."

  "Don't let them do anything to that boy!" Barbara calls as the ambo guys roll her through the double doors. "He's tall! He's got green eyes and a goatee! He goes to Todhunter--"

  She's gone, the doors clapping back and forth behind her.

  Hodges walks outside, where he can use his cell phone without being scolded, and calls Tanya back. "I don't know where you are, but slow down and don't run any red lights getting here. They just took her in, and she's wide awake. She has a broken leg."

  "That's all? Thank God! What about internal injuries?"

  "That's for the doctors to say, but she was pretty lively. I think maybe the truck just grazed her."

  "I need to call Jerome. I'm sure I scared the hell out of him. And Jim needs to know."

  "Call them when you get here. For now, get off your phone."

  "You can call them, Bill."

  "No, Tanya, I can't. I have to call someone else."

  He stands there, breathing out plumes of white vapor, the tips of his ears going numb. He doesn't want the someone else to be Pete, because Pete is a tad pissed at him right now, and that goes double for Izzy Jaynes. He thinks about his other choices, but there's only one: Cassandra Sheen. He partnered up with her several times when Pete was on vacation, and on one occasion when Pete took six weeks of unexplained personal time. That was shortly after Pete's divorce, and Hodges surmised he was in a spin-dry center, but never asked and Pete never volunteered the information.

  He doesn't have Cassie's cell number, so he calls Detective Division and asks to be connected, hoping she's not in the field. He's in luck. After less than ten seconds of McGruff the Crime Dog, she's in his ear.

  "Is this Cassie Sheen, the Botox Queen?"

  "Billy Hodges, you old whore! I thought you were dead!"

  Soon enough, Cassie, he thinks.

  "I'd love to bullshit with you, hon, but I need a favor. They haven't closed the Strike Avenue station yet, have they?"

  "Nope. It's on the docket for next year, though. Which makes perfect sense. Crime in Lowtown? What crime, right?"