by Stephen King
Still, a ghost of memory: Zappit.
He knows he has heard that before.
His stomach gives a warning twinge, and he remembers the doctor’s appointment he blew off. He’ll have to take care of that, but tomorrow should be soon enough. He has an idea that Dr. Stamos is going to tell him he has an ulcer, and for that news he can wait.
8
Holly has a fresh box of Nicorette by her telephone, but doesn’t need to use a single chew. The first Alderson she calls turns out to be the housekeeper’s sister-in-law, who of course wants to know why someone from a company called Finders Keepers wants to get in touch with Nan.
“Is it a bequest, or something?” she asks hopefully.
“One moment,” Holly says. “I have to put you on hold while I get my boss.” Hodges is not her boss, he made her a full partner after the Pete Saubers business last year, but it’s a fiction she often falls back on when she’s stressed.
Hodges, who has been using his own computer to read up on Zappit Game Systems, picks up the phone while Holly lingers by his desk, gnawing at the neck of her sweater. Hodges hovers his finger over the hold button on his phone long enough to tell Holly that eating wool probably isn’t good for her, and certainly not for the Fair Isle she’s wearing. Then he connects with the sister-in-law.
“I’m afraid I have some bad news for Nancy,” he says, and fills her in quickly.
“Oh my God,” Linda Alderson says (Holly has jotted the name on his pad). “She’s going to be devastated to hear that, and not just because it means the end of the job. She’s been working for those ladies since 2012, and she really likes them. She had Thanksgiving dinner with them just last November. Are you with the police?”
“Retired,” he says, “but working with the team assigned to the case. I was asked to get in touch with Ms. Alderson.” He doesn’t think this lie will come back to haunt him, since Pete opened the door by inviting him to the scene. “Can you tell me how to get in touch with her?”
“I’ll give you her cell number. She went to Chagrin Falls for her brother’s birthday party on Saturday. It was the big four-oh, so Harry’s wife made a fuss about it. She’s staying until Wednesday or Thursday, I think—at least that was the plan. I’m sure this news will bring her back. Nan lives alone since Bill died—Bill was my husband’s brother—with only her cat for company. Mrs. Ellerton and Ms. Stover were sort of a surrogate family. This will just make her so sad.”
Hodges takes the number down and calls immediately. Nancy Alderson picks up on the first ring. He identifies himself, then gives her the news.
After a moment of shocked silence, she says, “Oh, no, that can’t be. You’ve made a mistake, Detective Hodges.”
He doesn’t bother to correct her, because this is interesting. “Why do you say that?”
“Because they’re happy. They get along so well, watching TV together—they love movies on the DVD player, and those shows about cooking, or where women sit around talking about fun things and having celebrity guests. You wouldn’t believe it, but there’s a lot of laughter in that house.” Nancy Alderson hesitates, then says, “Are you sure you’re talking about the right people? About Jan Ellerton and Marty Stover?”
“Sorry to say I am.”
“But … she had accepted her condition! Marty, I’m talking about. Martine. She used to say that getting used to being paralyzed was actually easier than getting used to being a spinster. She and I used to talk about that all the time—being on our own. Because I lost my husband, you know.”
“So there was never a Mr. Stover.”
“Yes there was, Janice had an earlier marriage. Very short, I believe, but she said she never regretted it because she got Martine. Marty did have a boyfriend not long before her accident, but he had a heart attack. Carried him right off. Marty said he was very fit, used to exercise three days a week at a health club downtown. She said it was being so fit that killed him. Because his heart was strong, and when it backfired, it just blew apart.”
Hodges, a coronary survivor, thinks, Reminder to self: no fitness club.
“Marty used to say that being alone after someone you love passes on was the worst kind of paralysis. I didn’t feel exactly the same way about my Bill, but I knew what she meant. Reverend Henreid came in to see her often—Marty calls him her spiritual adviser—and even when he didn’t, she and Jan did daily devotions and prayers. Every day at noon. And Marty was thinking about taking an accounting course online—they have special courses for people with her kind of disability, did you know that?”
“I didn’t,” Hodges says. On his pad he prints STOVER PLANNING TO TAKE ACCOUNTING COURSE BY COMPUTER and turns it so Holly can read it. She raises her eyebrows.
“There were tears and sadness from time to time, of course there was, but for the most part they were happy. At least … I don’t know …”
“What are you thinking about, Nancy?” He makes the switch to her first name—another old cop trick—without thinking about it.
“Oh, it’s probably nothing. Marty seemed as happy as ever—she’s a real love-bug, that one, you wouldn’t believe how spiritual she is, always sees the good side of everything—but Jan did seem a little withdrawn lately, as if she had something weighing on her mind. I thought it might be money worries, or maybe just the after-Christmas blues. I never dreamed …” She sniffles. “Excuse me, I have to blow.”
“Sure.”
Holly grabs his pad. Her printing is small—constipated, he often thinks—and he has to hold the pad almost touching his nose to read Ask her about Zappit!
There’s a honking sound in his ear as Alderson blows her nose. “Sorry.”
“That’s all right. Nancy, would you know if Mrs. Ellerton happened to have a small handheld game console? It would have been pink.”
“Goodness sakes, how did you know that?”
“I really don’t know anything,” Hodges says truthfully. “I’m just a retired detective with a list of questions I’m supposed to ask.”
“She said a man gave it to her. He told her the game gadget was free as long as she promised to fill out a questionnaire and send it back to the company. The thing was a little bit bigger than a paperback book. It just sat around the house awhile—”
“When was this?”
“I can’t remember exactly, but before Christmas, for sure. The first time I saw it, it was on the coffee table in the living room. It just stayed there with the questionnaire folded up beside it until after Christmas—I know because their little tree was gone—and then I spied it one day on the kitchen table. Jan said she turned it on just to see what it would do, and found out there were solitaire games on it, maybe as many as a dozen different kinds, like Klondike and Picture and Pyramid. So, since she was using it, she filled out the questionnaire and sent it in.”
“Did she charge it in Marty’s bathroom?”
“Yes, because that was the most convenient place. She was in that part of the house so much, you know.”
“Uh-huh. You said that Mrs. Ellerton became withdrawn—”
“A little withdrawn,” Alderson corrects at once. “Mostly she was the same as always. A love-bug, just like Marty.”
“But something was on her mind.”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Weighing on her mind.”
“Well …”
“Was this around the same time she got the handheld game machine?”
“I guess it was, now that I think about it, but why in the world would playing solitaire on a little pink tablet depress her?”
“I don’t know,” Hodges says, and prints DEPRESSED on his pad. He thinks there’s a significant jump between being withdrawn and being depressed.
“Have their relations been told?” Alderson asks. “There aren’t any in the city, but there are cousins in Ohio, I know that, and I think some in Kansas, too. Or maybe it was Indiana. The names would be in her address book.”
“The police will be doing that as we s
peak,” Hodges says, although he will call Pete later on to make sure. It will probably annoy his old partner, but Hodges doesn’t care. Nancy Alderson’s distress is in every word she utters, and he wants to offer what comfort he can. “May I ask one more question?”
“Of course.”
“Did you happen to notice anyone hanging around the house? Anyone without an obvious reason to be there?”
Holly is nodding vigorously.
“Why would you ask that?” Alderson sounds astonished. “Surely you don’t think some outsider—”
“I don’t think anything,” Hodges says smoothly. “I’m just helping the police because there’s been such a staff reduction in the last few years. Citywide budget cuts.”
“I know, it’s awful.”
“So they gave me this list of questions, and that’s the last one.”
“Well, there was nobody. I’d have noticed, because of the breezeway between the house and the garage. The garage is heated, so that’s where the pantry and the washer-dryer are. I’m back and forth in that breezeway all the time, and I can see the street from there. Hardly anyone comes all the way up Hilltop Court, because Jan and Marty’s is the last house. It’s just the turnaround after that. Of course there’s the postman, and UPS, and sometimes FedEx, but otherwise, unless someone gets lost, we’ve got that end of the street to ourselves.”
“So there was no one at all.”
“No, sir, there sure wasn’t.”
“Not the man who gave Mrs. Ellerton the game console?”
“No, he approached her in Ridgeline Foods. That’s the grocery store at the foot of the hill, down where City Avenue crosses Hilltop Court. There’s a Kroger about a mile further on, in the City Avenue Plaza, but Janice won’t go there even though things are a little cheaper, because she says you should always buy locally if you … you …” She gives a sudden loud sob. “But she’s done shopping anywhere, isn’t she? Oh, I can’t believe this! Jan would never hurt Marty, not for the world.”
“It’s a sad thing,” Hodges says.
“I’ll have to come back today.” Alderson now talking to herself rather than to Hodges. “It may take awhile for her relatives to come, and someone will have to make the proper arrangements.”
A final housekeeping duty, Hodges thinks, and finds the thought both touching and obscurely horrible.
“I want to thank you for your time, Nancy. I’ll let you go n—”
“Of course there was that elderly fellow,” Alderson says.
“What elderly fellow was that?”
“I saw him several times outside 1588. He’d park at the curb and just stand on the sidewalk, looking at it. That’s the house across the street and down the hill a little way. You might not have noticed it, but it was for sale.”
Hodges did notice, but doesn’t say so. He doesn’t want to interrupt.
“Once he walked right up the lawn to look in the bay window—this was before the last big snowstorm. I think he was window shopping.” She gives a watery laugh. “Although my mother would have called it window wishing, because he surely didn’t look like the sort who could afford a house like that.”
“No?”
“Uh-uh. He was dressed in workman’s clothes—you know, green pants, like Dickies—and his parka was mended with a piece of masking tape. Also, his car looked very old and had spots of primer on it. My late husband used to call that poor man’s polish.”
“You don’t happen to know what kind of car it was, do you?” He flips his pad to a fresh sheet and writes, FIND DATE OF LAST BIG SNOWSTORM. Holly reads it and nods.
“No, I’m sorry. I don’t know cars. I don’t even remember the color, just those spots of primer paint. Mr. Hodges, are you sure there hasn’t been some mistake?” She’s almost begging.
“I wish I could tell you that, Nancy, but I can’t. You’ve been very helpful.”
Doubtfully: “Have I?”
Hodges gives her his number, Holly’s, and the office number. He tells her to call if anything occurs to her that they haven’t covered. He reminds her that there may be press interest because Martine was paralyzed at City Center in 2009, and tells her she isn’t obliged to talk to reporters or TV news people if she doesn’t want to.
Nancy Alderson is crying again when he breaks the connection.
9
He takes Holly to lunch at Panda Garden a block down the street. It’s early and they have the dining room almost to themselves. Holly is off meat and orders vegetable chow mein. Hodges loves the spicy shredded beef, but his stomach won’t put up with it these days, so he settles for Ma La Lamb. They both use chopsticks, Holly because she’s good with them and Hodges because they slow him down and make a post-lunch bonfire in his guts less likely.
She says, “The last big storm was December nineteenth. The weather service reported eleven inches in Government Square, thirteen in Branson Park. Not exactly huge, but the only other one so far this winter dropped just four inches.”
“Six days before Christmas. Around the same time Janice Ellerton was given the Zappit, according to Alderson’s recollection.”
“Do you think the man who gave it to her was the same one looking at that house?”
Hodges snares a piece of broccoli. It’s supposed to be good for you, like all veggies that taste bad. “I don’t think Ellerton would have accepted anything from a guy wearing a parka mended with masking tape. I’m not counting the possibility out, but it seems unlikely.”
“Eat your lunch, Bill. If I get any further ahead of you, I’ll look like a pig.”
Hodges eats, although he has very little appetite these days even when his stomach isn’t giving him the devil. When a bite sticks in his throat, he washes it down with tea. Maybe a good idea, since tea seems to help. He thinks about those test results he is yet to see. It occurs to him that his problem could be worse than an ulcer, that an ulcer might actually be the best-case scenario. There’s medicine for ulcers. Other things, not so much.
When he can see the middle of his plate (but Jesus, so much food left around the edges), he sets his chopsticks aside and says, “I found something out while you were hunting down Nancy Alderson.”
“Tell me.”
“I was reading about those Zappits. Amazing how these computer-based companies pop up, then disappear. They’re like dandelions in June. The Commander didn’t exactly corner the market. Too simple, too expensive, too much sophisticated competition. Zappit Inc. stock went down and they got bought out by a company called Sunrise Solutions. Two years ago that company declared bankruptcy and went dark. Which means Zappit is long gone and the guy giving out Commander consoles had to be running some kind of scam.”
Holly is quick to see where that leads. “So the questionnaire was bullpoop just to add a little whatdoyoucallit, verisimilitude. But the guy didn’t try to get money out of her, did he?”
“No. At least not that we know of.”
“Something weird is going on here, Bill. Are you going to tell Detective Huntley and Miss Pretty Gray Eyes?”
Hodges has picked up the smallest piece of lamb left on his plate, and here is an excuse to drop it. “Why don’t you like her, Holly?”
“Well, she thinks I’m crazy,” Holly says matter-of-factly. “There’s that.”
“I’m sure she doesn’t—”
“Yes. She does. She probably thinks I’m dangerous, too, because of the way I whopped Brady Hartsfield at the ’Round Here concert. But I don’t care. I’d do it again. A thousand times!”
He puts a hand over hers. The chopsticks she’s holding in her fist vibrate like a tuning fork. “I know you would, and you’d be right every time. You saved a thousand lives, and that’s a conservative estimate.”
She slides her hand from beneath his and starts picking up grains of rice. “Oh, I can deal with her thinking I’m crazy. I’ve been dealing with people thinking that all my life, starting with my parents. But there’s something else. Isabelle only sees what she sees, and she
doesn’t like people who see more, or at least look for more. She feels the same way about you, Bill. She’s jealous of you. Over Pete.”
Hodges says nothing. He’s never considered such a possibility.
She puts down her chopsticks. “You didn’t answer my question. Are you going to tell them what we’ve learned so far?”
“Not quite yet. There’s something I want to do first, if you’ll hold down the office this afternoon.”
Holly smiles down at the remainder of her chow mein. “I always do.”
10
Bill Hodges isn’t the only one who took an instant dislike to Becky Helmington’s replacement. The nurses and orderlies who work in the Traumatic Brain Injury Clinic call it the Bucket, as in Brain Bucket, and before long Ruth Scapelli has become known as Nurse Ratched. By the end of her third month, she has gotten three nurses transferred for various small infractions, and one orderly fired for smoking in a supply closet. She has banned certain colorful uniforms as “too distracting” or “too suggestive.”
The doctors like her, though. They find her swift and competent. With the patients she is also swift and competent, but she’s cold, and there’s an undertone of contempt there, as well. She will not allow even the most cataclysmically injured of them to be called a gork or a burn or a wipeout, at least not in her hearing, but she has a certain attitude.
“She knows her stuff,” one nurse said to another in the break room not long after Scapelli took up her duties. “No argument about that, but there’s something missing.”
The other nurse was a thirty-year veteran who had seen it all. She considered, then said one word … but it was le mot juste. “Mercy.”
Scapelli never exhibits coldness or contempt when she accompanies Felix Babineau, the head of Neuro, on his rounds, and he probably wouldn’t notice if she did. Some of the other doctors have noticed, but few pay any mind; the doings of such lesser beings as nurses—even head nurses—are far below their lordly gaze.
