End of Watch (Bill Hodges Trilogy #3)(14)

Not long after that rather humiliating encounter, Holly and Jerome Robinson cornered him and staged a mini-intervention, telling Hodges that his visits to Brady had to end. Jerome had been especially serious that day, his usual cheerful patter nowhere to be found.

‘There’s nothing you can do in that room but hurt yourself,’ Jerome had said. ‘We always know when you’ve been to see him, because you go around with a little gray cloud over your head for the next two days.’

‘More like a week,’ Holly added. She wouldn’t look at him, and she was twisting her fingers in a way that made Hodges want to grab them and make her stop before she broke something. Her voice, however, was firm and sure. ‘There’s nothing left inside him, Bill. You need to accept that. And if there was, he’d be happy every time you showed up. He’d see what he’s doing to you and be happy.’

That was the convincer, because Hodges knew it was the truth. So he stays away. It was kind of like quitting smoking: hard at first, easier as time went by. Now whole weeks sometimes pass without thoughts of Brady and Brady’s terrible crimes.

There’s nothing left inside him.

Hodges reminds himself of that as he drives back into the heart of the city, where Holly will kick her computer into high gear and start hunting down Nancy Alderson. Whatever happened in that house at the end of Hilltop Court – the chain of thoughts and conversations, of tears and promises, all ending in the dissolved pills injected into the feeding tube and the tank of helium with the laughing children decaled on the side – it can have nothing to do with Brady Hartsfield, because Holly literally bashed his brains out. If Hodges sometimes doubts, it’s because he can’t stand the idea that Brady has somehow escaped punishment. That in the end, the monster eluded him. Hodges didn’t even get to swing the ball bearing-loaded sock he calls his Happy Slapper, because he was busy suffering a heart attack at the time.

Still, a ghost of memory: Zappit.

He knows he has heard that before.

His stomach gives a warning twinge, and he remembers the doctor’s appointment he blew off. He’ll have to take care of that, but tomorrow should be soon enough. He has an idea that Dr Stamos is going to tell him he has an ulcer, and for that news he can wait.





8


Holly has a fresh box of Nicorette by her telephone, but doesn’t need to use a single chew. The first Alderson she calls turns out to be the housekeeper’s sister-in-law, who of course wants to know why someone from a company called Finders Keepers wants to get in touch with Nan.

‘Is it a bequest, or something?’ she asks hopefully.

‘One moment,’ Holly says. ‘I have to put you on hold while I get my boss.’ Hodges is not her boss, he made her a full partner after the Pete Saubers business last year, but it’s a fiction she often falls back on when she’s stressed.

Hodges, who has been using his own computer to read up on Zappit Game Systems, picks up the phone while Holly lingers by his desk, gnawing at the neck of her sweater. Hodges hovers his finger over the hold button on his phone long enough to tell Holly that eating wool probably isn’t good for her, and certainly not for the Fair Isle she’s wearing. Then he connects with the sister-in-law.

‘I’m afraid I have some bad news for Nancy,’ he says, and fills her in quickly.

‘Oh my God,’ Linda Alderson says (Holly has jotted the name on his pad). ‘She’s going to be devastated to hear that, and not just because it means the end of the job. She’s been working for those ladies since 2012, and she really likes them. She had Thanksgiving dinner with them just last November. Are you with the police?’

‘Retired,’ he says, ‘but working with the team assigned to the case. I was asked to get in touch with Ms Alderson.’ He doesn’t think this lie will come back to haunt him, since Pete opened the door by inviting him to the scene. ‘Can you tell me how to get in touch with her?’

‘I’ll give you her cell number. She went to Chagrin Falls for her brother’s birthday party on Saturday. It was the big four-oh, so Harry’s wife made a fuss about it. She’s staying until Wednesday or Thursday, I think – at least that was the plan. I’m sure this news will bring her back. Nan lives alone since Bill died – Bill was my husband’s brother – with only her cat for company. Mrs Ellerton and Ms Stover were sort of a surrogate family. This will just make her so sad.’

Hodges takes the number down and calls immediately. Nancy Alderson picks up on the first ring. He identifies himself, then gives her the news.

After a moment of shocked silence, she says, ‘Oh, no, that can’t be. You’ve made a mistake, Detective Hodges.’

He doesn’t bother to correct her, because this is interesting. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because they’re happy. They get along so well, watching TV together – they love movies on the DVD player, and those shows about cooking, or where women sit around talking about fun things and having celebrity guests. You wouldn’t believe it, but there’s a lot of laughter in that house.’ Nancy Alderson hesitates, then says, ‘Are you sure you’re talking about the right people? About Jan Ellerton and Marty Stover?’

‘Sorry to say I am.’

‘But … she had accepted her condition! Marty, I’m talking about. Martine. She used to say that getting used to being paralyzed was actually easier than getting used to being a spinster. She and I used to talk about that all the time – being on our own. Because I lost my husband, you know.’