End of Watch (Bill Hodges Trilogy #3)(18)

‘He should never have emerged from his coma at all,’ Babineau told her shortly after she came on staff at the Bucket. He’s a cold fish, but when he speaks of Brady he becomes almost jolly. ‘And look at him now! He’s able to walk short distances – with help, I grant you – he can feed himself, and he can respond either verbally or with signs to simple questions.’

He’s also prone to poking himself in the eye with his fork, Ruth Scapelli could have added (but doesn’t), and his verbal responses all sound like wah-wah and gub-gub to me. Then there’s the matter of waste. Put a Depends on him and he holds it. Take it off, and he urinates in his bed, regular as clockwork. Defecates in it, if he can. It’s as if he knows. She believes he does know.

Something else he knows – of this there can be no doubt – is that Scapelli doesn’t like him. This very morning, after the exam was finished and Dr Babineau was washing his hands in the en suite bathroom, Brady raised his head to look at her and lifted one hand to his chest. He curled it into a loose, trembling fist. From it his middle finger slowly extended.

At first Scapelli could barely comprehend what she was seeing: Brady Hartsfield, giving her the finger. Then, as she heard the water go off in the bathroom, two buttons popped from the front of her uniform, exposing the center of her sturdy Playtex 18-Hour Comfort Strap Bra. She doesn’t believe the rumors she’s heard about this waste of humanity, refuses to believe them, but then …

He smiled at her. Grinned at her.

Now she walks down to Room 217 while soothing music wafts from the speakers overhead. She’s wearing her spare uniform, the pink one she keeps in her locker and doesn’t like much. She looks both ways to make sure no one is paying any attention to her, pretends to study Brady’s chart just in case there’s a set of prying eyes she’s missed, and slips inside. Brady sits in his chair by the window, where he always sits. He’s dressed in one of his four plaid shirts and a pair of jeans. His hair has been combed and his cheeks are baby-smooth. A button on his breast pocket proclaims I WAS SHAVED BY NURSE BARBARA!

He’s living like Donald Trump, Ruth Scapelli thinks. He killed eight people and wounded God knows how many more, he tried to kill thousands of teenage girls at a rock-and-roll concert, and here he sits with his meals brought to him by his own personal staff, his clothes laundered, his face shaved. He gets a massage three times a week. He visits the spa four times a week, and spends time in the hot tub.

Living like Donald Trump? Huh. More like a desert chieftain in one of those oil-rich Mideast countries.

And if she told Babineau that he gave her the finger?

Oh no, he’d say. Oh no, Nurse Scapelli. What you saw was nothing but an involuntary muscle twitch. He’s still incapable of the thought processes that would lead to such a gesture. Even if that were not the case, why would he make such a gesture to you?

‘Because you don’t like me,’ she says, bending forward with her hands on her pink-skirted knees. ‘Do you, Mr Hartsfield? And that makes us even, because I don’t like you.’

He doesn’t look at her, or give any sign that he’s heard her. He only looks out the window at the parking garage across the way. But he does hear her, she’s sure he does, and his failure to acknowledge her in any way infuriates her more. When she talks, people are supposed to listen.

‘Am I to believe you popped the buttons on my uniform this morning by some kind of mind control?’

Nothing.

‘I know better. I’d been meaning to replace that one. The bodice was a bit too tight. You may fool some of the more credulous staff members, but you don’t fool me, Mr Hartsfield. All you can do is sit there. And make a mess in your bed every time you get the chance.’

Nothing.

She glances around at the door to make sure it’s shut, then removes her left hand from her knee and reaches out with it. ‘All those people you hurt, some of them still suffering. Does that make you happy? It does, doesn’t it? How would you like it? Shall we find out?’

She first touches the soft ridge of a nipple beneath his shirt, then grasps it between her thumb and index finger. Her nails are short, but she digs in with what she has. She twists first one way, then the other.

‘That’s pain, Mr Hartsfield. Do you like it?’

His face remains as bland as ever, which makes her angrier still. She bends closer, until their noses are almost touching. Her face more like a fist than ever. Her blue eyes bulge behind her glasses. There are tiny spit-buds at the corners of her lips.

‘I could do this to your testicles,’ she whispers. ‘Perhaps I will.’

Yes. She just might. It’s not as if he can tell Babineau, after all. He has four dozen words at most, and few people can understand what he does manage to say. I want more corn comes out Uh-wan-mo-ko, which sounds like fake Indian talk in an old Western movie. The only thing he says that’s perfectly clear is I want my mother, and on several occasions Scapelli has taken great pleasure in reinforming him that his mother is dead.

She twists his nipple back and forth. Clockwise, then counterclockwise. Pinching as hard as she can, and her hands are nurse’s hands, which means they are strong.

‘You think Dr Babineau is your pet, but you’ve got that backwards. You’re his pet. His pet guinea pig. He thinks I don’t know about the experimental drugs he’s been giving you, but I do. Vitamins, he says. Vitamins, my fanny. I know everything that goes on around here. He thinks he’s going to bring you all the way back, but that will never happen. You’re too far gone. And what if it did? You’d stand trial and go to jail for the rest of your life. And they don’t have hot tubs in Waynesville State Prison.’