by Stephen King
"Yeah, safest part of the city. They may have a kid in for booking, and if my information is right, he deserves a medal instead."
"Got a name?"
"No, but I know what he looks like. Tall, green eyes, goatee." He replays what Barbara said and adds, "He could be wearing a Todhunter High jacket. The arresting officers probably have him for pushing a girl in front of a truck. He actually pushed her out of the way, so she only got clipped instead of mashed."
"You know this for a fact?"
"Yeah." This isn't quite the truth, but he believes Barbara. "Find out his name and ask the cops to hold him, okay? I want to talk to him."
"I think I can do that."
"Thanks, Cassie. I owe you one."
He ends the call and looks at his watch. If he means to talk to the Todhunter kid and still keep his appointment with Norma, time is too tight to be messing around with the city bus service.
One thing Barbara said keeps replaying in his mind: I don't want to die, after all. I don't know what was wrong with me!
He calls Holly.
15
She's standing outside the 7-Eleven near the office, holding a pack of Winstons in one hand and plucking at the cellophane with the other. She hasn't had a cigarette in almost five months, a new record, and she doesn't want to start again now, but what she saw on Bill's computer has torn a hole in the middle of a life she has spent the last five years mending. Bill Hodges is her touchstone, the way she measures her ability to interact with the world. Which is only another way of saying that he is the way she measures her sanity. Trying to imagine her life with him gone is like standing on top of a skyscraper and looking at the sidewalk sixty stories below.
Just as she begins to pull the strip on the cellophane, her phone rings. She drops the Winstons into her purse and fishes it out. It's him.
Holly doesn't say hello. She told Jerome she didn't think she could talk to him on her own about what she's discovered, but now--standing on this windy city sidewalk and shivering inside her good winter coat--she has no choice. It just spills out. "I looked on your computer and I know that snooping's a lousy thing to do but I'm not sorry. I had to because I thought you were lying about it just being an ulcer and you can fire me if you want, I don't care, just as long as you let them fix what's wrong with you."
Silence at the other end. She wants to ask if he's still there, but her mouth feels frozen and her heart is beating so hard she can feel it all over her body.
At last he says, "Hols, I don't think it can be fixed."
"At least let them try!"
"I love you," he says. She hears the heaviness in his voice. The resignation. "You know that, right?"
"Don't be stupid, of course I know." She starts to cry.
"I'll try the treatments, sure. But I need a couple of days before I check into the hospital. And right now I need you. Can you come and pick me up?"
"Okay." Crying harder than ever, because she knows he's telling the truth about needing her. And being needed is a great thing. Maybe the great thing. "Where are you?"
He tells her, then says, "Something else."
"What?"
"I can't fire you, Holly. You're not an employee, you're my partner. Try to remember that."
"Bill?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm not smoking."
"That's good, Holly. Now come on over here. I'll be waiting in the lobby. It's freezing outside."
"I'll come as fast as I can while still obeying the speed limit."
She hurries to the corner lot where she parks her car. On the way, she drops the unopened pack of cigarettes into a litter basket.
16
Hodges sketches in his visit to the Bucket for Holly on the ride to the Strike Avenue police station, beginning with the news of Ruth Scapelli's suicide and ending with the odd thing Barbara said before they wheeled her away.
"I know what you're thinking," Holly says, "because I'm thinking it, too. That it all leads back to Brady Hartsfield."
"The suicide prince." Hodges has helped himself to another couple of painkillers while waiting for Holly, and he feels pretty much okay. "That's what I'm calling him. Got a ring to it, don't you think?"
"I guess so. But you told me something once." She's sitting bolt upright behind the wheel of her Prius, eyes darting everywhere as they drive deeper into Lowtown. She swerves to avoid a shopping cart someone has abandoned in the middle of the street. "You said coincidence doesn't equal conspiracy. Do you remember saying that?"
"Yeah." It's one of his faves. He has quite a few.
"You said you can investigate a conspiracy forever and come up with nothing if it's actually just a bunch of coincidences all strung together. If you can't find something concrete in the next two days--if we can't--you need to give up and start those treatments. Promise me you will."
"It might take a little longer to--"
She cuts him off. "Jerome will be back, and he'll help. It will be like the old days."
Hodges flashes on the title of an old mystery novel, Trent's Last Case, and smiles a little. She catches it from the corner of her eye, takes it for acquiescence, and smiles back, relieved.
"Four days," he says.
"Three. No more. Because every day you don't do something about what's going on inside you, the odds get longer. And they're long already. So don't start your poopy bargaining stuff, Bill. You're too good at it."
"Okay," he says. "Three days. If Jerome will help."
Holly says, "He will. And let's try to make it two."
17
The Strike Avenue cop shop looks like a medieval castle in a country where the king has fallen and anarchy rules. The windows are heavily barred; the motor pool is protected by chain-link fencing and concrete barriers. Cameras bristle in every direction, covering all angles of approach, and still the gray stone building has been gang-tagged, and one of the globes hanging over the main doors has been shattered.
Hodges and Holly empty the contents of their pockets and Holly's purse into plastic baskets and go through a metal detector that beeps reproachfully at Hodges's metal watchband. Holly sits on a bench in the main lobby (which is also being scanned by multiple cameras) and opens her iPad. Hodges goes to the desk, states his business, and after a few moments is met by a slim, gray-haired detective who looks a little like Lester Freamon on The Wire--the only cop show Hodges can watch without wanting to throw up.
"Jack Higgins," the detective says, offering his hand. "Like the book-writer, only not white."
Hodges shakes with him and introduces Holly, who gives a little wave and her usual muttered hello before returning her attention to her iPad.
"I think I remember you," Hodges says. "You used to be at Marlborough Street station, didn't you? When you were in uniform?"
"A long time ago, when I was young and randy. I remember you, too. You caught the guy who killed those two women in McCarron Park."
"That was a group effort, Detective Higgins."
"Make it Jack. Cassie Sheen called. We've got your guy in an interview room. His name is Dereece Neville." Higgins spells the first name. "We were going to turn him loose, anyway. Several people who saw the incident corroborate his story--he was jiving around with the girl, she took offense and ran into the street. Neville saw the truck coming, ran after her, tried to push her out of the way, mostly succeeded. Plus, practically everyone down here knows this kid. He's a star on the Todhunter basketball team, probably going to get an athletic scholarship to a Division I school. Great grades, honor student."
"What was Mr. Great Grades doing on the street in the middle of a school day?"
"Ah, they were all out. Heating system at the high school shit the bed again. Third time this winter, and it's only January. The mayor says everything's cool down here in the Low, lots of jobs, lots of prosperity, shiny happy people. We'll see him when he runs for reelection. Riding in that armored SUV of his."
"Was the Neville kid hurt?"
"Scraped palms and
nothing else. According to a lady across the street--she was closest to the scene--he pushed the girl and then, I quote, 'Went flyin over the top of her like a bigass bird.'"
"Does he understand he's free to go?"
"He does, and agreed to stay. Wants to know if the girl's okay. Come on. Have your little chat with him, and then we'll send him on his way. Unless you see some reason not to."
Hodges smiles. "I'm just following up for Miss Robinson. Let me ask him a couple of questions, and we're both out of your hair."
18
The interview room is small and stifling hot, the overhead heating pipes clanking away. Still, it's probably the nicest one they've got, because there's a little sofa and no perp table with a cuff-bolt sticking out of it like a steel knuckle. The sofa has been mended with tape in a couple of places, and that makes Hodges think of the man Nancy Alderson says she saw on Hilltop Court, the one with the mended coat.
Dereece Neville is sitting on the sofa. In his chino pants and white button-up shirt, he looks neat and squared away. His goatee and gold neck chain are the only real dashes of style. His school jacket is folded over one arm of the sofa. He stands when Hodges and Higgins come in, and offers a long-fingered hand that looks designed expressly for working with a basketball. The pad of the palm has been painted with orange antiseptic.
Hodges shakes with him carefully, mindful of the scrapes, and introduces himself. "You're in absolutely no trouble here, Mr. Neville. In fact, Barbara Robinson sent me to say thanks and make sure you were okay. She and her family are longtime friends of mine."
"Is she okay?"
"Broken leg," Hodges says, pulling over a chair. His hand creeps to his side and presses there. "It could have been a lot worse. I'm betting she'll be back on the soccer field next year. Sit down, sit down."
When the Neville boy sits, his knees seem to come almost up to his jawline. "It was my fault, in a way. I shouldn't have been goofing with her, but she was just so pretty and all. Still . . . I ain't blind." He pauses, corrects himself. "Not blind. What was she on? Do you know?"
Hodges frowns. The idea that Barbara might have been high hasn't crossed his mind, although it should have; she's a teenager, after all, and those years are the Age of Experimentation. But he has dinner with the Robinsons three or four times a month, and he's never seen anything in her that registered as drug use. Maybe he's just too close. Or too old.
"What makes you think she was on something?"
"Just her being down here, for one thing. Those were Chapel Ridge duds she was wearing. I know, because we play em twice every year. Blow em out, too. And she was like in a daze. Standing there on the curb near Mamma Stars, that fortune-telling place, looking like she was gonna walk right out into traffic." He shrugs. "So I chatted her up, teased her about jaywalking. She got mad, went all Kitty Pryde on my ass. I thought that was cute, so then . . ." He looks at Higgins, then back at Hodges. "This is the fault part, and I'm being straight with you about it, okay?"
"Okay," Hodges says.
"Well, look--I grabbed her game. Just for a joke, you know. Held it up over my head. I never meant to keep it. So then she kicked me--good hard kick for a girl--and grabbed it back. She sure didn't look stoned then."
"How did she look, Dereece?" The switch to the boy's first name is automatic.
"Oh, man, mad! But also scared. Like she just figured out where she was, on a street where girls like her--ones in private school uniforms--don't go, especially by themselves. MLK Ave? Come on, I mean bitch, please." He leans forward, long-fingered hands clasped between his knees, face earnest. "She didn't know I was just playing, you see what I mean? She was like in a panic, get me?"
"I do," Hodges says, and although he sounds engaged (at least he hopes so), he's on autopilot for the moment, stuck on what Neville has just said: I grabbed her game. Part of him thinks it can't be connected to Ellerton and Stover. Most of him thinks it must be, it's a perfect fit. "That must have made you feel bad."
Neville raises his scratched palms toward the ceiling in a philosophical gesture that says What can you do? "It's this place, man. It's the Low. She stopped being on cloud nine and realized where she was, is all. Me, I'm getting out as soon as I can. While I can. Gonna play Div I, keep my grades up so I can get a good job afterward if I ain't--aren't--good enough to go pro. Then I'm getting my family out. It's just me and my mom and my two brothers. My mom's the only reason I've got as far as I have. She ain't never let none of us play in the dirt." He replays what he just said and laughs. "She heard me say ain't never, she be in my face."
Hodges thinks, Kid's too good to be true. Except he is. Hodges is sure of it, and doesn't like to think what might have happened to Jerome's kid sister if Dereece Neville had been in school today.
Higgins says, "You were wrong to be teasing that girl, but I have to say you made it right. Will you think about what almost happened if you get an urge to do something like that again?"
"Yes, sir, I sure will."
Higgins holds a hand up. Rather than slap it, Neville taps it gently, with a slightly sarcastic smile. He's a good kid, but this is still Lowtown, and Higgins is still po-po.
Higgins stands. "Are we good to go, Detective Hodges?"
Hodges nods his appreciation at the use of his old title, but he isn't quite finished. "Almost. What kind of game was it, Dereece?"
"Old-school." No hesitation. "Like a Game Boy, but my little brother had one of those--Mom got it in a rumble sale, or whatever they call those things--and the one the girl had wasn't the same. It was bright yellow, I know that. Not the kind of color you'd expect a girl to like. Not the ones I know, at least."
"Did you happen to see the screen?"
"Just a glance. It was a bunch of fish swimming around."
"Thanks, Dereece. How sure are you that she was high? On a scale of one to ten, ten being absolutely positive."
"Well, say five. I would've said ten when I walked up to her, because she acted like she was going to walk right out into the street, and there was a bigass truck coming, a lot bigger than the panel job that come along behind and whumped her. I was thinking not coke or meth or molly, more something mellow, like ecstasy or pot."
"But when you started goofing with her? When you took her game?"
Dereece Neville rolls his eyes. "Man, she woke up fast."
"Okay," Hodges says. "All set. And thank you."
Higgins adds his thanks, then he and Hodges start toward the door.
"Detective Hodges?" Neville is on his feet again, and Hodges practically has to crane his neck to look at him. "You think if I wrote down my number, you could give it to her?"
Hodges thinks it over, then takes his pen from his breast pocket and hands it to the tall boy who probably saved Barbara Robinson's life.
19
Holly drives them back to Lower Marlborough Street. He tells her about his conversation with Dereece Neville on the way.
"In a movie, they'd fall in love," Holly says when he finishes. She sounds wistful.
"Life is not a movie, Hol . . . Holly." He stops himself from saying Hollyberry at the last second. This is not a day for levity.
"I know," she says. "That's why I go to them."
"I don't suppose you know if Zappit consoles came in yellow, do you?"
As is often the case, Holly has the facts at her fingertips. "They came in ten different colors, and yes, yellow was one of them."
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking? That there's a connection between what happened to Barbara and what happened to those women on Hilltop Court?"
"I don't know what I'm thinking. I wish we could sit down with Jerome the way we did when Pete Saubers got into trouble. Just sit down and talk it all out."
"If Jerome gets here tonight, and if Barbara's really okay, maybe we can do that tomorrow."
"Tomorrow's your second day," she says as she pulls to the curb outside the parking lot they use. "The second of three."
"Holly--"
"No!" s
he says fiercely. "Don't even start! You promised!" She shoves the gearshift into park and turns to face him. "You believe Hartsfield has been faking, isn't that right?"
"Yeah. Maybe not from the first time he opened his eyes and asked for his dear old mommy, but I think he's come a long way back since then. Maybe all the way. He's faking the semi-catatonic thing to keep from going to trial. Although you'd think Babineau would know. They must have tests, brain scans and things--"
"Never mind that. If he can think, and if he were to find out that you delayed treatment and died because of him, how do you think he'd feel?"
Hodges makes no answer, so Holly answers for him.
"He'd be happy happy happy! He'd be fracking delighted!"
"Okay," Hodges says. "I hear you. The rest of today and two more. But forget about my situation for a minute. If he can somehow reach out beyond that hospital room . . . that's scary."
"I know. And nobody would believe us. That's scary, too. But nothing scares me as much as the thought of you dying."
He wants to hug her for that, but she's currently wearing one of her many hug-repelling expressions, so he looks at his watch instead. "I have an appointment, and I don't want to keep the lady waiting."
"I'm going to the hospital. Even if they won't let me see Barbara, Tanya will be there, and she'd probably like to see a friendly face."
"Good idea. But before you go, I'd like you to take a shot at tracking down the Sunrise Solutions bankruptcy trustee."
"His name is Todd Schneider. He's part of a law firm six names long. Their offices are in New York. I found him while you were talking to Mr. Neville."
"You did that on your iPad?"
"Yes."
"You're a genius, Holly."
"No, it's just computer research. You were the smart one, to think of it in the first place. I'll call him, if you want." Her face shows how much she dreads the prospect.
"You don't have to do that. Just call his office and see if you can make an appointment for me to talk to him. As early tomorrow as possible."
She smiles. "All right." Then her smile fades. She points to his midsection. "Does it hurt?"
"Only a little." For now that's true. "The heart attack was worse." That is true, too, but may not be for long. "If you get in to see Barbara, say hi for me."
