End of Watch: A Novel (The Bill Hodges Trilogy Book 3)

by Stephen King

  It is as if Scapelli feels that, no matter what is wrong with them, the patients of the Traumatic Brain Injury Clinic must bear part of the responsibility for their current condition, and if they only tried harder, they would surely regain at least some of their faculties. She does her job, though, and for the most part she does it well, perhaps better than Becky Helmington, who was far better liked. If told this, Scapelli would have said she was not here to be liked. She was here to care for her patients, end of story, full stop.

  There is, however, one long-term patient in the Bucket whom she hates. That patient is Brady Hartsfield. It isn’t because she had a friend or relative who was hurt or killed at City Center; it’s because she thinks he’s shamming. Avoiding the punishment he so richly deserves. Mostly she stays away and lets other staff members deal with him, because just seeing him often infuses her with a daylong rage that the system should be so easily gamed by this vile creature. She stays away for another reason, too: she doesn’t entirely trust herself when she’s in his room. On two occasions she has done something. The kind of thing that, were it discovered, might result in her being the one fired. But on this early January afternoon, just as Hodges and Holly are finishing their lunch, she is drawn down to Room 217 as if by an invisible cable. Only this morning she was forced to go in there, because Dr. Babineau insists she accompany him on rounds, and Brady is his star patient. He marvels at how far Brady has come.

  “He should never have emerged from his coma at all,” Babineau told her shortly after she came on staff at the Bucket. He’s a cold fish, but when he speaks of Brady he becomes almost jolly. “And look at him now! He’s able to walk short distances—with help, I grant you—he can feed himself, and he can respond either verbally or with signs to simple questions.”

  He’s also prone to poking himself in the eye with his fork, Ruth Scapelli could have added (but doesn’t), and his verbal responses all sound like wah-wah and gub-gub to her. Then there’s the matter of waste. Put a Depends on him and he holds it. Take it off, and he urinates in his bed, regular as clockwork. Defecates in it, if he can. It’s as if he knows. She believes he does know.

  Something else he knows—of this there can be no doubt—is that Scapelli doesn’t like him. This very morning, after the exam was finished and Dr. Babineau was washing his hands in the en suite bathroom, Brady raised his head to look at her and lifted one hand to his chest. He curled it into a loose, trembling fist. From it his middle finger slowly extended.

  At first Scapelli could barely comprehend what she was seeing: Brady Hartsfield, giving her the finger. Then, as she heard the water go off in the bathroom, two buttons popped from the front of her uniform, exposing the center of her sturdy Playtex 18-Hour Comfort Strap Bra. She doesn’t believe the rumors she’s heard about this waste of humanity, refuses to believe them, but then …

  He smiled at her. Grinned at her.

  Now she walks down to Room 217 while soothing music wafts from the speakers overhead. She’s wearing her spare uniform, the pink one she keeps in her locker and doesn’t like much. She looks both ways to make sure no one is paying any attention to her, pretends to study Brady’s chart just in case there’s a set of prying eyes she’s missed, and slips inside. Brady sits in his chair by the window, where he always sits. He’s dressed in one of his four plaid shirts and a pair of jeans. His hair has been combed and his cheeks are baby-smooth. A button on his breast pocket proclaims I WAS SHAVED BY NURSE BARBARA!

  He’s living like Donald Trump, Ruth Scapelli thinks. He killed eight people and wounded God knows how many more, he tried to kill thousands of teenage girls at a rock-and-roll concert, and here he sits with his meals brought to him by his own personal staff, his clothes laundered, his face shaved. He gets a massage three times a week. He visits the spa four times a week, and spends time in the hot tub.

  Living like Donald Trump? Huh. More like a desert chieftain in one of those oil-rich Mideast countries.

  And if she told Babineau that he gave her the finger?

  Oh no, he’d say. Oh no, Nurse Scapelli. What you saw was nothing but an involuntary muscle twitch. He’s still incapable of the thought processes that would lead to such a gesture. Even if that were not the case, why would he make such a gesture to you?

  “Because you don’t like me,” she says, bending forward with her hands on her pink-skirted knees. “Do you, Mr. Hartsfield? And that makes us even, because I don’t like you.”

  He doesn’t look at her, or give any sign that he’s heard her. He only looks out the window at the parking garage across the way. But he does hear her, she’s sure he does, and his failure to acknowledge her in any way infuriates her more. When she talks, people are supposed to listen.

  “Am I to believe you popped the buttons on my uniform this morning by some kind of mind control?”

  Nothing.

  “I know better. I’d been meaning to replace that one. The bodice was a bit too tight. You may fool some of the more credulous staff members, but you don’t fool me, Mr. Hartsfield. All you can do is sit there. And make a mess in your bed every time you get the chance.”

  Nothing.

  She glances around at the door to make sure it’s shut, then removes her left hand from her knee and reaches out with it. “All those people you hurt, some of them still suffering. Does that make you happy? It does, doesn’t it? How would you like it? Shall we find out?”

  She first touches the soft ridge of a nipple beneath his shirt, then grasps it between her thumb and index finger. Her nails are short, but she digs in with what she has. She twists first one way, then the other.

  “That’s pain, Mr. Hartsfield. Do you like it?”

  His face remains as bland as ever, which makes her angrier still. She bends closer, until their noses are almost touching. Her face more like a fist than ever. Her blue eyes bulge behind her glasses. There are tiny spit-buds at the corners of her lips.

  “I could do this to your testicles,” she whispers. “Perhaps I will.”

  Yes. She just might. It’s not as if he can tell Babineau, after all. He has four dozen words at most, and few people can understand what he does manage to say. I want more corn comes out Uh-wan-mo-ko, which sounds like fake Indian talk in an old Western movie. The only thing he says that’s perfectly clear is I want my mother, and on several occasions Scapelli has taken great pleasure in re-informing him that his mother is dead.

  She twists his nipple back and forth. Clockwise, then counterclockwise. Pinching as hard as she can, and her hands are nurse’s hands, which means they are strong.

  “You think Dr. Babineau is your pet, but you’ve got that backwards. You’re his pet. His pet guinea pig. He thinks I don’t know about the experimental drugs he’s been giving you, but I do. Vitamins, he says. Vitamins, my fanny. I know everything that goes on around here. He thinks he’s going to bring you all the way back, but that will never happen. You’re too far gone. And what if it did? You’d stand trial and go to jail for the rest of your life. And they don’t have hot tubs in Waynesville State Prison.”

  She’s pinching his nipple so hard the tendons on her wrist stand out, and he still shows no sign that he feels anything—just looks out at the parking garage, his face a blank. If she keeps on, one of the nurses is apt to see bruising, swelling, and it will go on his chart.

  She lets go and steps back, breathing hard, and the venetian blind at the top of his window gives an abrupt, bonelike rattle. The sound makes her jump and look around. When she turns back to him, Hartsfield is no longer looking at the parking garage. He’s looking at her. His eyes are clear and aware. Scapelli feels a bright spark of fear and takes a step back.

  “I could report Babineau,” she says, “but doctors have a way of wiggling out of things, especially when it’s their word against a nurse’s, even a head nurse’s. And why would I? Let him experiment on you all he wants. Even Waynesville is too good for you, Mr. Hartsfield. Maybe he’ll give you something that will kill you. That’s what you des
erve.”

  A food trolley rumbles by in the corridor; someone is getting a late lunch. Ruth Scapelli jerks like a woman awaking from a dream and backs toward the door, looking from Hartsfield to the now silent venetian blind and then back to Hartsfield again.

  “I’ll leave you to your thoughts, but I want to tell you one more thing before I go. If you ever show me your middle finger again, it will be your testicles.”

  Brady’s hand rises from his lap to his chest. It trembles, but that’s a motor control issue; thanks to ten sessions a week downstairs in Physical Therapy, he’s gotten at least some muscle tone back.

  Scapelli stares, unbelieving, as the middle finger rises and tilts toward her.

  With it comes that obscene grin.

  “You’re a freak,” she says in a low voice. “An aberration.”

  But she doesn’t approach him again. She’s suddenly, irrationally afraid of what might happen if she did.

  11

  Tom Saubers is more than willing to do the favor Hodges has asked of him, even though it means rescheduling a couple of afternoon appointments. He owes Bill Hodges a lot more than a tour through an empty house up in Ridgedale; after all, the ex-cop—with the help of his friends Holly and Jerome—saved the lives of his son and daughter. Possibly his wife’s, as well.

  He punches off the alarm in the foyer, reading the numbers from a slip of paper clipped to the folder he carries. As he leads Hodges through the downstairs rooms, their footfalls echoing, Tom can’t help going into his spiel. Yes, it’s quite a long way out from the city center, can’t argue the point, but what that means is you get all the city services—water, plowing, garbage removal, school buses, municipal buses—without all the city noise. “The place is cable-ready, and way above code,” he says.

  “Great, but I don’t want to buy it.”

  Tom looks at him curiously. “What do you want?”

  Hodges sees no reason not to tell him. “To know if anyone has been using it to keep an eye on that house across the street. There was a murder-suicide there this past weekend.”

  “In 1601? Jesus, Bill, that’s awful.”

  It is, Hodges thinks, and I believe you’re already wondering who you should talk to about becoming the selling agent on that one.

  Not that he holds that against the man, who went through his own hell as a result of the City Center Massacre.

  “See you’ve left the cane behind,” Hodges comments as they climb to the second floor.

  “I sometimes use it at night, especially if the weather is rainy,” Tom says. “The scientists claim that stuff about your joints hurting more in wet weather is bullshit, but I’m here to tell you that’s one old wives’ tale you can take to the bank. Now, this is the master bedroom, and you can see how it’s set up to catch the morning light. The bathroom is nice and big—the shower has pulsing jets—and just down the hall here …”

  Yes, it’s a fine house, Hodges would expect nothing else here in Ridgedale, but there’s no sign anyone has been in it lately.

  “Seen enough?” Tom asks.

  “I think so, yes. Did you notice anything out of place?”

  “Not a thing. And the alarm is a good one. If someone had broken in—”

  “Yeah,” Hodges says. “Sorry to get you out on such a cold day.”

  “Nonsense. I had to be out and about anyway. And it’s good to see you.” They step out the kitchen door, which Tom relocks. “Although you’re looking awfully thin.”

  “Well, you know what they say—you can’t be too thin or too rich.”

  Tom, who in the wake of his City Center injuries was too thin and too poor, gives this oldie an obligatory smile and starts around to the front of the house. Hodges follows a few steps, then stops.

  “Could we look in the garage?”

  “Sure, but there’s nothing in there.”

  “Just a peek.”

  “Cross every t and dot every i, huh? Roger that, just let me get the right key.”

  Only he doesn’t need the key, because the garage door is standing two inches ajar. The two men look at the splinters around the lock silently. At last Tom says, “Well. How about that.”

  “The alarm system doesn’t cover the garage, I take it.”

  “You take it right. There’s nothing to protect.”

  Hodges steps into a rectangle with bare wood walls and a poured concrete floor. There are boot prints visible on the concrete. Hodges can see his breath, and he can see something else, as well. In front of the left overhead door is a chair. Someone sat here, looking out.

  Hodges has been feeling a growing discomfort on the left side of his midsection, one that’s putting out tentacles that curl around to his lower back, but this sort of pain is almost an old friend by now, and it’s temporarily overshadowed by excitement.

  Someone sat here looking out at 1601, he thinks. I’d bet the farm on it, if I had a farm.

  He walks to the front of the garage and sits where the watcher sat. There are three windows running horizontally across the middle of the door, and the one on the far right has been wiped clean of dust. The view is a straight shot to the big living room window of 1601.

  “Hey, Bill,” Tom says. “Something under the chair.”

  Hodges bends to look, although doing so turns up the heat in his gut. What he sees is a black disc, maybe three inches across. He picks it up by the edges. Embossed on it in gold is a single word: STEINER.

  “Is it from a camera?” Tom asks.

  “From a pair of binoculars. Police departments with fat budgets use Steiner binocs.”

  With a good pair of Steiners—and as far as Hodges knows, there’s no such thing as a bad pair—the watcher could have put himself right into the Ellerton-Stover living room, assuming the blinds were up … and they had been when he and Holly were in that room this morning. Hell, if the women had been watching CNN, the watcher could have read the news crawl at the bottom of the screen.

  Hodges doesn’t have an evidence Baggie, but there’s a travel-sized pack of Kleenex in his coat pocket. He takes out two, carefully wraps the lens cap, and slips it into the inside pocket of his coat. He rises from the chair (provoking another twinge; the pain is bad this afternoon), then spies something else. Someone has carved a single letter into the wood upright between the two overhead doors, perhaps using a pocketknife.

  It’s the letter Z.

  12

  They are almost back to the driveway when Hodges is visited by something new: a searing bolt of agony behind his left knee. It feels as if he’s been stabbed. He cries out as much in surprise as from the pain and bends over, kneading at the throbbing knot, trying to make it let go. To loosen up a little, at least.

  Tom bends down next to him, and thus neither of them sees the elderly Chevrolet cruising slowly along Hilltop Court. Its fading blue paint is dappled with spots of red primer. The old gent behind the wheel slows down even more, so he can stare at the two men. Then the Chevrolet speeds up, sending a puff of blue exhaust from its tailpipe, and passes the Ellerton-Stover house, headed for the buttonhook turnaround at the end of the street.

  “What is it?” Tom asks. “What happened?”

  “Cramp,” Hodges says through gritted teeth.

  “Rub it.”

  Hodges gives him a look of pained humor through his tumbled hair. “What do you think I’m doing?”

  “Let me.”

  Tom Saubers, a physical therapy veteran thanks to his attendance at a certain job fair six years ago, pushes Hodges’s hand aside. He removes one of his gloves and digs in with his fingers. Hard.

  “Ow! Jesus! That fucking hurts!”

  “I know,” Tom says. “Can’t be helped. Move as much of your weight to your good leg as you can.”

  Hodges does so. The Malibu with its patches of dull red primer paint cruises slowly by once more, this time headed back down the hill. The driver helps himself to another long look, then speeds up again.

  “It’s letting go,” Hodges sa
ys. “Thank God for small favors.” It is, but his stomach is on fire and his lower back feels like he wrenched it.

  Tom is looking at him with concern. “You sure you’re all right?”

  “Yeah. Just a charley horse.”

  “Or maybe a deep vein thrombosis. You’re no kid anymore, Bill. You ought to get that checked out. If anything happened to you while you were with me, Pete would never forgive me. His sister, either. We owe you a lot.”

  “All taken care of, got a doctor’s appointment tomorrow,” Hodges says. “Come on, let’s get out of here. It’s freezing.”

  He limps the first two or three steps, but then the pain behind his knee lets go entirely and he’s able to walk normally. More normally than Tom. Thanks to his encounter with Brady Hartsfield in April of 2009, Tom Saubers will limp for the rest of his life.

  13

  When Hodges gets home, his stomach is better but he’s dog tired. He tires easily these days and tells himself it’s because his appetite has gotten so lousy, but he wonders if that’s really it. He’s heard the pane of breaking glass and the boys giving their home run cheer twice on his way back from Ridgedale, but he never looks at his phone while driving, partly because it’s dangerous (not to mention illegal in this state), mostly because he refuses to become a slave to it.

  Besides, he doesn’t need to be a mind reader to know from whom at least one of those texts came. He waits until he’s hung his coat in the front hall closet, briefly touching the inside pocket to make sure the lens cap is still safe and sound.

  The first text is from Holly. We should talk to Pete and Isabelle, but call me first. I have a Q.

  The other isn’t hers. It reads: Dr. Stamos needs to talk to you urgently. You are scheduled tomorrow at 9 AM. Please keep this appointment!

  Hodges checks his watch and sees that, although this day seems to have lasted at least a month already, it’s only quarter past four. He calls Stamos’s office and gets Marlee. He can tell it’s her by the chirpy cheerleader’s voice, which turns grave when he introduces himself. He doesn’t know what those tests showed, but it can’t be good. As Bob Dylan once said, you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.