End of Watch (Bill Hodges Trilogy #3)(123)

‘No one gives much of a shit,’ Hodges finishes.

‘Correct. City and state cops are delighted to let him carry the weight. Izzy’s happy, and so am I. I could ask you – just between us chickens – if it was actually Babineau who died out there in the woods, but I don’t really want to know.’

‘So how does Library Al fit into this scenario?’ Hodges asks.

‘He doesn’t.’ Pete puts his paper plate aside. ‘Alvin Brooks killed himself last night.’

‘Oh, Christ,’ Hodges says. ‘While he was in County?’

‘Yes.’

‘They didn’t have him on suicide watch? After all this?’

‘They did, and none of the inmates are supposed to have anything capable of cutting or stabbing, but he got hold of a ballpoint pen somehow. Might have been a guard who gave it to him, but it was probably another inmate. He drew Zs all over the walls, all over his bunk, and all over himself. Then he took the pen’s metal cartridge out of the barrel and used it to—’

‘Stop,’ Barbara says. She looks very pale in the winterlight falling on them from above. ‘We get the idea.’

Hodges says, ‘So the thinking is … what? He was Babineau’s accomplice?’

‘Fell under his influence,’ Pete says. ‘Or maybe both of them fell under someone else’s influence, but let’s not go there, okay? The thing to concentrate on now is that the three of you are in the clear. There won’t be any citations this time, or city freebies—’

‘It’s okay,’ Jerome says. ‘Me n Holly have still got at least four years left on our bus passes, anyway.’

‘Not that you ever use yours now that you’re hardly ever here,’ Barbara says. ‘You should give it to me.’

‘It’s non-transferrable,’ Jerome says smugly. ‘I better hold onto it. Wouldn’t want you to get in any trouble with the law. Besides, soon you’ll be going places with Dereece. Just don’t go too far, if you know what I mean.’

‘You’re being childish.’ Barbara turns to Pete. ‘How many suicides were there in all?’

Pete sighs. ‘Fourteen over the last five days. Nine of them had Zappits, which are now as dead as their owners. The oldest was twenty-four, the youngest thirteen. One was a boy from a family that was, according to the neighbors, fairly weird about religion – the kind that makes fundamentalist Christians look liberal. He took his parents and kid brother with him. Shotgun.’

The five of them fall silent for a moment. At the table on the left, the card players burst into howls of laughter over something.

Pete breaks the silence. ‘And there have been over forty attempts.’

Jerome whistles.

‘Yeah, I know. It’s not in the papers, and the TV stations are sitting on it, even Murder and Mayhem.’ This is a police nickname for WKMM, an indie station that has taken If it bleeds, it leads as an article of faith. ‘But of course a lot of those attempts – maybe even most of them – end up getting blabbed about on the social media sites, and that breeds still more. I hate those sites. But this will settle. Suicide clusters always do.’

‘Eventually,’ Hodges says. ‘But with social media or without it, with Brady or without him, suicide is a fact of life.’

He looks over at the card players as he says this, especially the two baldies. One looks good (as Hodges himself looks good), but the other is cadaverous and hollow-eyed. One foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel, Hodges’s father would have said. And the thought that comes to him is too complicated – too fraught with a terrible mixture of anger and sorrow – to be articulated. It’s about how some people carelessly squander what others would sell their souls to have: a healthy, pain-free body. And why? Because they’re too blind, too emotionally scarred, or too self-involved to see past the earth’s dark curve to the next sunrise. Which always comes, if one continues to draw breath.

‘More cake?’ Barbara asks.

‘Nope. Gotta split. But I will sign your cast, if I may.’

‘Please,’ Barbara says. ‘And write something witty.’

‘That’s far beyond Pete’s pay grade,’ Hodges says.

‘Watch your mouth, Kermit.’ Pete drops to one knee, like a swain about to propose, and begins writing carefully on Barbara’s cast. When he’s finished, he stands up and looks at Hodges. ‘Now tell me the truth about how you’re feeling.’

‘Damn good. I’ve got a patch that controls the pain a lot better than the pills, and they’re kicking me loose tomorrow. I can’t wait to sleep in my own bed.’ He pauses, then says: ‘I’m going to beat this thing.’

Pete’s waiting for the elevator when Holly catches up to him. ‘It meant a lot to Bill,’ she says. ‘That you came, and that you still want him to give that toast.’

‘It’s not so good, is it?’ Pete says.

‘No.’ He reaches out to hug her, but Holly steps back. She does allow him to take her hand and give it a brief squeeze. ‘Not so good.’

‘Crap.’

‘Yes, crap. Crap is right. He doesn’t deserve this. But since he’s stuck with it, he needs his friends to stand by him. You will, won’t you?’