End of Watch (Bill Hodges Trilogy #3)(105)

Brady goes back to the laptop and confirms that zeetheend is still up and running. He checks the visitors’ count. Over nine thousand now, and most of them (but by no means all) will be teenagers interested in suicide. That interest peaks in January and February, when dark comes early and it seems spring will never arrive. Plus, he’s got Zappit Zero, and with that he can work on plenty of kids personally. With Zappit Zero, getting to them is as easy as shooting fish in a barrel.

Pink fish, he thinks, and snickers.

Calmer now that he sees a way of dealing with the old Det-Ret should he try showing up like the cavalry in the last reel of a John Wayne western, Brady picks up the Zappit and turns it on. As he studies the fish, a fragment of some poem read in high school occurs to him, and he speaks it aloud.

‘Oh do not ask what is it, let us go and make our visit.’

He closes his eyes. The zipping pink fish become zipping red dots, each one a bygone concertgoer who is at this very moment studying his or her gift Zappit and hoping to win prizes.

Brady picks one, brings it to a halt, and watches it bloom. Like a rose.





17


‘Sure, there’s a police computer forensics squad,’ Hodges says, in answer to Holly’s question. ‘If you want to call three part-time crunchers a squad, that is. And no, they won’t listen to me. I’m just a civilian these days.’ Nor is that the worst of it. He’s a civilian who used to be a cop, and when retired cops try meddling in police business, they are called uncles. It is not a term of respect.

‘Then call Pete and have him do it,’ Holly says. ‘Because that fracking suicide site has to come down.’

The two of them are back in Freddi Linklatter’s version of Mission Control. Jerome is in the living room with Freddi. Hodges doesn’t think she’s apt to flee – Freddi’s terrified of the probably fictional men posted outside her building – but stoner behavior is difficult to predict. Other than how they usually want to get more stoned, that is.

‘Call Pete and tell him to have one of the computer geeks call me. Any cruncher with half a brain will be able to doss the site and knock it down that way.’

‘Doss it?’

‘Big D, little o, big S. Stands for Denial of Services. The guy needs to connect to a BOT network and …’ She sees Hodges’s mystified expression. ‘Never mind. The idea is to flood the suicide site with requests for services – thousands, millions. Choke the fracking thing and crash the server.’

‘You can do that?’

‘I can’t, and Freddi can’t, but a police department geek freak will be able to tap enough computing power. If he can’t do it from the police computers, he’ll get Homeland Security to do it. Because this is a security issue, right? Lives are at stake.’

They are, and Hodges makes the call, but Pete’s cell goes directly to voicemail. Next he tries his old pal Cassie Sheen, but the desk officer who takes his call tells him Cassie’s mother had some sort of diabetic crisis and Cassie took her to the doctor.

Out of other options, he calls Isabelle.

‘Izzy, it’s Bill Hodges. I tried to get Pete, but—’

‘Pete’s gone. Done. Kaput.’

For one awful moment Hodges thinks she means he’s dead.

‘Left a memo on my desk. It said he was going to go home, turn off his cell, pull the plug on the landline, and sleep for the next twenty-four hours. He further shared that today was his last day as working police. He can do it, too, doesn’t even have to touch his vacation time, of which he has piles. He’s got enough personal days to see him through to retirement. And I think you better scratch that retirement party off your calendar. You and your weirdo partner can hit a movie that night, instead.’

‘You’re blaming me?’

‘You and your Brady Hartsfield fixation. You infected Pete with it.’

‘No. He wanted to chase the case. You were the one who wanted to hand it off, then duck down in the nearest foxhole. Gotta say I’m kind of on Pete’s side when it comes to that one.’

‘See? See? That’s exactly the attitude I’m talking about. Wake up, Hodges, this is the real world. I’m telling you for the last time to quit sticking your long beak into what isn’t your busi—’

‘And I’m telling you that if you want to have any fucking chance of promotion, you need to get your head out of your ass and listen to me.’

The words are out before he can think better of them. He’s afraid she’ll hang up, and if she does, where will he go then? But there’s only shocked silence.

‘Suicides. Have any been reported since you got back from Sugar Heights?’

‘I don’t kn—’

‘Well, look! Right now!’

He can hear the faint tapping of Izzy’s keyboard for five seconds or so. Then: ‘One just came over the wire. Kid in Lakewood shot himself. Did it in front of his father, who called it in. Hysterical, as you might expect. What’s that got to do with—’

‘Tell the cops on the scene to look for a Zappit game console. Just like the one Holly found at the Ellerton house.’

‘That again? You’re like a broken rec—’

‘They’ll find one. And you may have more Zappit suicides before the day’s over. Possibly a lot more.’