by Stephen King
He’s leaving the bathroom, reminding himself to straighten up and stop pressing his side, when his phone buzzes. Pete wanting to resume his bitch-a-thon, he thinks, but it’s not. It’s Norma Wilmer.
“I found that file,” she says. “The one the late great Ruth Scapelli—”
“Yeah,” he says. “The visitors list. Who’s on it?”
“There is no list.”
He leans against the wall and closes his eyes. “Ah, sh—”
“But there is a single memo with Babineau’s letterhead on it. It says, and I quote, ‘Frederica Linklatter to be admitted both during and after visiting hours. She is aiding in B. Hartsfield’s recovery.’ Does that help?”
Some girl with a Marine haircut, Hodges thinks. A ratty chick with a bunch of tats.
It rang no bells at the time, but there was that faint vibration, and now he knows why. He met a skinny girl with buzz-cut hair at Discount Electronix back in 2010, when he, Jerome, and Holly were closing in on Brady. Even six years later he can remember what she said about her co-worker on the Cyber Patrol: It’s something with his mom, betcha anything. He’s freaky about her.
“Are you still there?” Norma sounds irritated.
“Yeah, but I have to go.”
“Didn’t you say there’d be some extra money if—”
“Yeah. I’ll take care of you, Norma.” He ends the call.
The pills are doing their work, and he’s able to manage a medium-fast walk back to the office. Holly and Jerome are at the window overlooking Lower Marlborough Street, and he can tell by their expressions when they turn to the sound of the opening door that they’ve been talking about him, but he has no time to think about that. Or brood on it. What he’s thinking about are those rigged Zappits. The question ever since they started to put things together was how Brady could have had anything to do with modifying them when he was stuck in a hospital room and barely able to walk. But he knew somebody who almost certainly had the skills to do it for him, didn’t he? Someone he used to work with. Somebody who came to visit him in the Bucket, with Babineau’s written approval. A punky chick with a lot of tats and a yard of attitude.
“Brady’s visitor—his only visitor—was a woman named Frederica Linklatter. She—”
“Cyber Patrol!” Holly nearly screams. “He worked with her!”
“Right. There was also a third guy—the boss, I think. Do either of you remember his name?”
Holly and Jerome look at each other, then shake their heads.
“That was a long time ago, Bill,” Jerome says. “And we were concentrating on Hartsfield by then.”
“Yeah. I only remember Linklatter because she was sort of unforgettable.”
“Can I use your computer?” Jerome asks. “Maybe I can find the guy while Holly looks for the girl’s addy.”
“Sure, go for it.”
Holly is at hers already, sitting bolt upright and clicking away. She’s also talking out loud as she often does when she’s deeply involved in something. “Frack. Whitepages doesn’t have a number or address. Long shot, anyway, a lot of single women don’t … wait, hold the fracking phone … here’s her Facebook page …”
“I’m not really interested in her summer vacation snaps or how many friends she’s got,” Hodges says.
“Are you sure about that? Because she’s only got six friends, and one of them is Anthony Frobisher. I’m pretty sure that was the name of the—”
“Frobisher!” Jerome yells from Hodges’s office. “Anthony Frobisher was the third Cyber Patrol guy!”
“Beat you, Jerome,” Holly says. She looks smug. “Again.”
6
Unlike Frederica Linklatter, Anthony Frobisher is listed, both as himself and as Your Computer Guru. Both numbers are the same—his cell, Hodges assumes. He evicts Jerome from his office chair and settles there himself, doing it slowly and carefully. The explosion of pain he felt while sitting on the toilet is still fresh in his mind.
The phone is answered on the first ring. “Computer Guru, Tony Frobisher speaking. How can I help you?”
“Mr. Frobisher, this is Bill Hodges. You probably don’t remember me, but—”
“Oh, I remember you, all right.” Frobisher sounds wary. “What do you want? If it’s about Hartsfield—”
“It’s about Frederica Linklatter. Do you have a current address for her?”
“Freddi? Why would I have any address for her? I haven’t seen her since DE closed.”
“Really? According to her Facebook page, you and she are friends.”
Frobisher laughs incredulously. “Who else has she got listed? Kim Jong-un? Charles Manson? Listen, Mr. Hodges, that smartmouth bitch has no friends. The closest thing to one was Hartsfield, and I just got a news push on my phone saying he’s dead.”
Hodges has no idea what a news push is, and no desire to learn. He thanks Frobisher and hangs up. He’s guessing that none of Freddi Linklatter’s half dozen Facebook friends are real friends, that she just added them to keep from feeling like a total outcast. Holly might have done that same thing, once upon a time, but now she actually has friends. Lucky for her, and lucky for them. Which begs the question: how does he locate Freddi Linklatter?
The outfit he and Holly runs isn’t called Finders Keepers for nothing, but most of their specialized search engines are constructed to locate bad people with bad friends, long police records, and colorful want sheets. He can find her, in this computerized age few people are able to drop entirely off the grid, but he needs it to happen fast. Every time some kid turns on one of those free Zappits, it’s loading up pink fish, blue flashes, and—based on Jerome’s experience—a subliminal message suggesting that a visit to zeetheend would be in order.
You’re a detective. One with cancer, granted, but still a detective. So let go of the extraneous shit and detect.
It’s hard, though. The thought of all those kids—the ones Brady tried and failed to kill at the ’Round Here concert—keeps getting in the way. Jerome’s sister was one of them, and if not for Dereece Neville, Barbara might be dead now instead of just in a leg cast. Maybe hers was a test model. Maybe the Ellerton woman’s was, too. That makes a degree of sense. But now there are all those other Zappits, a flood of them, and they must have gone somewhere, goddammit.
That finally turns on a lightbulb.
“Holly! I need a phone number!”
7
Todd Schneider is in, and affable. “I understand you folks are in for quite a storm, Mr. Hodges.”
“So they say.”
“Having any luck tracking down those defective consoles?”
“That’s actually why I’m calling. Do you happen to have the address that consignment of Zappit Commanders was sent to?”
“Of course. Can I call you back with it?”
“How about if I hang on? It’s rather urgent.”
“An urgent consumer advocacy issue?” Schneider sounds bemused. “That sounds almost un-American. Let me see what I can do.”
A click and Hodges is on hold, complete with soothing strings that fail to soothe. Holly and Jerome are both in the office now, crowding the desk. Hodges makes an effort not to put his hand to his side. The seconds stretch out and form a minute. Then two. Hodges thinks, Either he’s on another call and forgotten me, or he can’t find it.
The hold music disappears. “Mr. Hodges? Still there?”
“Still here.”
“I have that address. It’s Gamez Unlimited—Gamez with a Z, if you remember—at 442 Maritime Drive. Care of Ms. Frederica Linklatter. Does that help?”
“It sure does. Thank you, Mr. Schneider.” He hangs up and looks at his two associates, one slender and winter-pale, the other bulked up from his house-building stint in Arizona. Along with his daughter Allie, now living on the other side of the country, they are the people he loves most at this end of his life.
He says, “Let’s take a ride, kids.”
8
Brady turns off SR-79 and
onto Vale Road at Thurston’s Garage, where a number of local plow-for-pay boys are gassing their trucks, loading up with salted sand, or just standing around, drinking coffee and jabbering. It crosses Brady’s mind to pull in and see if he can get some studded snow tires on Library Al’s Malibu, but given the crowd the storm has brought to the garage, it would probably take all afternoon. He’s close to his destination now, and decides to go for it. If he gets snowed in once he’s there, who gives a shit? Not him. He’s been out to the camp twice already, mostly to scope the place out, but the second time he also laid in some supplies.
There’s a good three inches of snow on Vale Road, and the going is greasy. The Malibu slides several times, once almost all the way to the ditch. He’s sweating heavily, and Babineau’s arthritic fingers are throbbing from Brady’s deathgrip on the steering wheel.
At last he sees the tall red posts that are his final landmark. Brady pumps the brakes and makes the turn at walking pace. The last two miles are on an unnamed, one-lane camp road, but thanks to the overarching trees, the driving here is the easiest he’s had in the last hour. In some places the road is still bare. That won’t last once the main body of the storm arrives, which will happen around eight o’clock tonight, according to the radio.
He comes to a fork where wooden arrows nailed to a huge old-growth fir point in different directions. The one on the right reads BIG BOB’S BEAR CAMP. The one on the left reads HEADS AND SKINS. Ten feet or so above the arrows, already wearing a thin hood of snow, a security camera peers down.
Brady turns left and finally allows his hands to relax. He’s almost there.
9
In the city, the snow is still light. The streets are clear and traffic is moving well, but the three of them pile into Jerome’s Jeep Wrangler just to be on the safe side. 442 Maritime Drive turns out to be one of the condos that sprang up like mushrooms on the south side of the lake in the go-go eighties. Back then they were a big deal. Now most are half empty. In the foyer, Jerome finds F. LINKLATTER in 6-A. He reaches for the buzzer, but Hodges stops him before he can push it.
“What?” Jerome asks.
Holly says primly, “Watch and learn, Jerome. This is how we roll.”
Hodges pushes other buttons at random, and gets a male voice in return on the fourth try. “Yeah?”
“FedEx,” Hodges says.
“Who’d send me something by FedEx?” The voice sounds mystified.
“Couldn’t tell you, buddy. I don’t make the news, I just report it.”
The door to the lobby gives out an ill-tempered rattle. Hodges pushes through and holds it for the others. There are two elevators, one with an out-of-order sign taped to it. On the one that works someone has posted a note that reads, Whoever has the barking dog on 4, I will find you.
“I find that rather ominous,” Jerome says.
The elevator door opens and as they get in, Holly begins to rummage in her purse. She finds her box of Nicorette and pops one. When the elevator opens on the sixth floor, Hodges says, “If she’s there, let me do the talking.”
6-A is directly across from the elevator. Hodges knocks. When there’s no answer, he raps. When there’s still no answer, he hammers with the side of his fist.
“Go away.” The voice on the other side of the door sounds weak and thin. The voice of a little girl with the flu, Hodges thinks.
He hammers again. “Open up, Ms. Linklatter.”
“Are you the police?”
He could say yes, it wouldn’t be the first time since retiring from the force that he impersonated a police officer, but instinct tells him not to do it this time.
“No. My name is Bill Hodges. We met before, briefly, back in 2010. It was when you worked at—”
“Yeah, I remember.”
One lock turns, then another. A chain falls. The door opens, and the tangy smell of pot wafts into the corridor. The woman in the doorway has got a half-smoked fatty tweezed between the thumb and forefinger of her left hand. She’s thin almost to the point of emaciation, and pale as milk. She’s wearing a strappy tee-shirt with BAD BOY BAIL BONDS, BRADENTON FLA on the front. Below this is the motto IN JAIL? WE BAIL!, but that part is hard to read because of the bloodstain.
“I should have called you,” Freddi says, and although she’s looking at Hodges, he has an idea it’s really herself she’s speaking to. “I would have, if I’d thought of it. You stopped him before, right?”
“Jesus, lady, what happened?” Jerome asks.
“I probably packed too much.” Freddi gestures at a pair of mismatched suitcases standing behind her in the living room. “I should have listened to my mother. She said to always travel light.”
“I don’t think he’s talking about the suitcases,” Hodges says, cocking a thumb at the fresh blood on Freddi’s shirt. He steps in, Jerome and Holly right behind him. Holly closes the door.
“I know what he’s talking about,” Freddi says. “Fucker shot me. Bleeding started again when I hauled the suitcases out of the bedroom.”
“Let me see,” Hodges says, but when he steps toward her, Freddi takes a compensatory step back and crosses her arms in front of her, a Holly-esque gesture that touches Hodges’s heart.
“No. I’m not wearing a bra. Hurts too much.”
Holly pushes past Hodges. “Show me where the bathroom is. Let me look.” She sounds okay to Hodges—calm—but she’s chewing the shit out of that nicotine gum.
Freddi takes Holly by the wrist and leads her past the suitcases, pausing a moment to hit the joint. She lets the smoke out in a series of smoke signals as she talks. “The equipment is in the spare room. On your right. Get a good look.” And then, returning to her original scripture: “If I hadn’t packed so much, I’d be gone now.”
Hodges doubts it. He thinks she would have passed out in the elevator.
10
Heads and Skins isn’t as big as the Babineau McMansion in Sugar Heights, but damned near. It’s long, low, and rambling. Beyond it, the snow-covered ground slopes down to Lake Charles, which has frozen over since Brady’s last visit.
He parks in front and walks carefully around to the west side, Babineau’s expensive loafers sliding in the accumulating snow. The hunting camp is in a clearing, so there’s a lot more snow to slip around in. His ankles are freezing. He wishes he’d thought to bring some boots, and once more reminds himself that you can’t think of everything.
He takes the key to the generator shed from inside the electric meter box, and the keys to the house from inside the shed. The gennie is a top-of-the-line Generac Guardian. It’s silent now, but will probably kick on later. Out here in the boonies, the electricity goes down in almost every storm.
Brady returns to the car for Babineau’s laptop. The camp is WiFi equipped, and the laptop is all he needs to keep him connected to his current project, and abreast of developments. Plus the Zappit, of course.
Good old Zappit Zero.
The house is dark and chilly, and his first acts upon entering are the prosaic ones any returning homeowner might perform: he turns on the lights and boosts the thermostat. The main room is huge and pine-paneled, lit by a chandelier made of polished caribou bones, from back in the days when there were still caribou in these woods. The fieldstone fireplace is a maw, almost big enough to roast a rhino in. Overhead are thick, crisscrossing beams, darkened by years of woodsmoke from the fireplace. Next to one wall stands a cherrywood buffet as long as the room itself, lined with at least fifty liquor bottles, some nearly empty, some with the seals still intact. The furniture is old, mismatched, and plushy—deep easy chairs, and a gigantic sofa where innumerable bimbos have been banged over the years. Plenty of extramarital fucking has gone on out here in addition to the hunting and fishing. The skin in front of the fireplace belonged to a bear brought down by Dr. Elton Marchant, who has now gone to that great operating room in the sky. The mounted heads and stuffed fish are trophies belonging to nearly a dozen other docs, past and present. There’s a particular
ly fine sixteen-point buck that Babineau himself brought down back when he was really Babineau. Out of season, but what the hell.
Brady puts the laptop on an antique rolltop desk at the far end of the room and fires it up before taking off his coat. First he checks in on the repeater, and is delighted to see it’s now reading 243 FOUND.
He thought he understood the power of the eye-trap, and has seen how addictive that demo screen is even before it’s juiced up, but this is success beyond his wildest expectations. Far beyond. There haven’t been any new warning chimes from zeetheend, but he goes there next anyway, just to see how it’s doing. Once again his expectations are exceeded. Over seven thousand visitors so far, seven thousand, and the number ticks up steadily even as he watches.
He drops his coat and does a nimble little dance on the bearskin rug. It tires him out fast—when he makes his next switch, he’ll be sure to choose someone in their twenties or thirties—but it warms him up nicely.
He snags the TV remote from the buffet and clicks on the enormous flatscreen, one of the camp’s few nods to life in the twenty-first century. The satellite dish pulls in God knows how many channels and the HD picture is to die for, but Brady is more interested in local programming today. He punches the source button on the remote until he’s looking back down the camp road leading to the outside world. He doesn’t expect company, but he has two or three busy days ahead of him, the most important and productive days of his life, and if someone tries to interrupt him, he wants to know about it beforehand.
The gun closet is a walk-in job, the knotty-pine walls lined with rifles and hung with pistols on pegs. The pick of the litter, as far as Brady’s concerned, is the FN SCAR 17S with the pistol grip. Capable of firing six hundred fifty rounds a minute and illegally converted to full auto by a proctologist who is also a gun nut, it is the Rolls-Royce of grease guns. Brady takes it out, along with a few extra clips and several heavy boxes of Winchester .308s, and props it against the wall beside the fireplace. He thinks about starting a fire—seasoned wood is already stacked in the hearth—but he has one other thing to do first. He goes to the site for city breaking news and scrolls down rapidly, looking for suicides. None yet, but he can remedy that.
