End of Watch (Bill Hodges Trilogy #3)(111)

‘What if we find this place and he’s not there, Bill? Have you thought about that? Have you?’

He has, and has no idea what the next step would be in that case. ‘Let’s not worry about it unless we have to.’

His phone rings. It’s in his coat pocket, and he hands it to Holly without looking away from the road ahead.

‘Hello, this is Holly.’ She listens, then mouths Miss Pretty Gray Eyes to Hodges. ‘Uh-huh … yes … okay, I understand … no, he can’t, his hands are full right now, but I’ll tell him.’ She listens some more, then says, ‘I could tell you, Izzy, but you wouldn’t believe me.’

She closes his phone with a snap and slips it back into his pocket.

‘Suicides?’ Hodges asks.

‘Three so far, counting the boy who shot himself in front of his father.’

‘Zappits?’

‘At two of the three locations. Responders at the third one haven’t had a chance to look. They were trying to save the kid, but it was too late. He hung himself. Izzy sounds half out of her mind. She wanted to know everything.’

‘If anything happens to us, Jerome will tell Pete, and Pete will tell her. I think she’s almost ready to listen.’

‘We have to stop him before he kills more.’

He’s probably killing more right now, Hodges thinks. ‘We will.’

The miles roll by. Hodges is forced to reduce his speed to fifty, and when he feels the Expedition do a loose little shimmy in the slipstream of a Walmart double box, he drops to forty-five. It’s past three o’clock and the light is starting to drain from this snowy day when Holly speaks again.

‘Thank you.’

He turns his head briefly, looking a question at her.

‘For not making me beg to come along.’

‘I’m only doing what your therapist would want,’ Hodges says. ‘Getting you a bunch of closure.’

‘Is that a joke? I can never tell when you’re joking. You have an extremely dry sense of humor, Bill.’

‘No joke. This is our business, Holly. Nobody else’s.’

A green sign looms out of the white murk.

‘SR-79,’ Holly says. ‘That’s our exit.’

‘Thank God,’ Hodges says. ‘I hate turnpike driving even when the sun’s out.’





26


Thurston’s Garage is fifteen miles east along the state highway, according to Holly’s iPad, but it takes them half an hour to get there. The Expedition handles the snow-covered road easily, but now the wind is picking up – it will be blowing at gale force by eight o’clock, according to the radio – and when it gusts, throwing sheets of snow across the road, Hodges eases down to fifteen miles an hour until he can see again.

As he turns in at the big yellow Shell sign, Holly’s phone rings. ‘Handle that,’ he says. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’

He gets out, yanking his fedora down hard to keep it from blowing away. The wind machine-guns his coat collar against his neck as he tramps through the snow to the garage office. His entire midsection is throbbing; it feels as if he’s swallowed live coals. The gas pumps and the adjacent parking area are empty except for the idling Expedition. The plowboys have departed to spend a long night earning their money as the first big storm of the year rants and raves.

For one eerie moment, Hodges thinks it’s Library Al behind the counter: same green Dickies, same popcorn-white hair exploding around the edges of his John Deere cap.

‘What brings you out on a wild afternoon like this?’ the old guy asks, then peers past Hodges. ‘Or is it night already?’

‘A little of both,’ Hodges says. He has no time for conversation – back in the city kids may be jumping out of apartment building windows and swallowing pills – but it’s how the job is done. ‘Would you be Mr Thurston?’

‘In the flesh. Since you didn’t pull up at the pumps, I’d almost wonder if you came to rob me, but you look a little too prosperous for that. City fella?’

‘I am,’ Hodges says, ‘and in kind of a hurry.’

‘City fellas usually are.’ Thurston puts down the Field & Stream he’s been reading. ‘What is it, then? Directions? Man, I hope it’s somewhere close, the way this one’s shaping up.’

‘I think it is. A hunting camp called Heads and Skins. Ring a bell?’

‘Oh, sure,’ Thurston says. ‘The doctors’ place, right near Big Bob’s Bear Camp. Those fellas usually gas up their Jags and Porsches here, either on their way out or their way back.’ He pronounces Porsches as if he’s talking about the things old folks sit on in the evening to watch the sun go down. ‘Wouldn’t be nobody out there now, though. Hunting season ends December ninth, and I’m talking bow hunting. Gun hunting ends the last day of November, and all those docs use rifles. Big ones. I think they like to pretend they’re in Africa.’

‘Nobody stopped earlier today? Would have been driving an old car with a lot of primer on it?’

‘Nope.’

A young man comes out of the garage bay, wiping his hands on a rag. ‘I saw that car, Granddad. A Chev’alay. I was out front, talking with Spider Willis, when it went by.’ He turns his attention to Hodges. ‘I only noticed because there’s not much the way he was headed, and that car was no snowdog like the one you’ve got out there.’