End of Watch (Bill Hodges Trilogy #3)(82)

‘This whole thing is going to blow up, partner, and Izzy doesn’t want to get hit with the shrapnel when it does. She’s got ambitions, see? Chief of Detectives in ten years, maybe Chief of Police in fifteen. I get it, but that doesn’t mean I like it. She called Chief Horgan behind my back, and Horgan called the SKIDs. If it’s not officially their case now, it will be by noon. They’ve got their perp, but the shit’s not right. I know it, and Izzy does, too. She just doesn’t give a rat’s ass.’

‘You need to slow down, Pete. Tell me what’s going on.’

Holly is hovering anxiously. Hodges shrugs his shoulders and raises a finger: wait.

‘Housekeeper gets here at seven thirty, okay? Nora Everly by name. And at the top of the drive she sees Babineau’s BMW on the lawn, with a bullet hole in the windshield. She looks inside, sees blood on the steering wheel and the seat, calls 911. There’s a cop car five minutes away – in the Heights there’s always one five minutes away – and when it arrives, Everly’s sitting in her car with all the doors locked, shaking like a leaf. The unis tell her to stay put, and go to the door. The place is unlocked. Mrs Babineau – Cora – is lying dead in the hall, and I’m sure the bullet the ME digs out of her will match the one forensics dug out of the Beemer. On her forehead – are you ready for this? – there’s the letter Z in black ink. More all around the downstairs, including one on the TV screen. Just like the one at the Ellerton place, and I think it was right about then my partner decided she wanted no part of this particular tarbaby.’

Hodges says, ‘Yeah, probably,’ just to keep Pete talking. He grabs the pad beside Holly’s computer and prints BABINEAU’S WIFE MURDERED in big block letters, like a newspaper headline. Her hand flies to her mouth.

‘While one of the cops is calling Division, the other one hears snores coming from upstairs. Like a chainsaw on idle, he said. So they go up, guns drawn, and in one of the three guest bedrooms, count em, three, the place is fucking huge, they find an old fart fast asleep. They wake him up and he gives his name as Alvin Brooks.’

‘Library Al!’ Hodges shouts. ‘From the hospital! The first Zappit I ever saw was one he showed me!’

‘Yeah, that’s the guy. He had a Kiner ID badge in his shirt pocket. And without prompting, he says he killed Mrs Babineau. Claims he did it while he was hypnotized. So they cuff him, take him downstairs, and sit him on the couch. That’s where Izzy and me found him when we entered the scene half an hour or so later. I don’t know what’s wrong with the guy, whether he had a nervous breakdown or what, but he’s on Planet Purple. He keeps going off on tangents, spouting all sorts of weird shit.’

Hodges recollects something Al said to him on one of his last visits to Brady’s room – right around Labor Day weekend of 2014, that would have been. ‘Never so good as what you don’t see.’

‘Yeah.’ Pete sounds surprised. ‘Like that. And when Izzy asked who hypnotized him, he said it was the fish. The ones by the beautiful sea.’

To Hodges, this now makes sense.

‘On further questioning – I did it, by then Izzy must have been in the kitchen, busy ditching the whole thing without asking for my input – he said Dr Z told him to, I quote, “make his mark.” Ten times, he said, and sure enough, there are ten Zs, including the one on the deceased’s forehead. I asked him if Dr Z was Dr Babineau, and he said no, Dr Z was Brady Hartsfield. Crazy, see?’

‘Yeah,’ Hodges says.

‘I asked him if he shot Dr Babineau, too. He just shook his head and said he wanted to go back to sleep. Right around then Izzy comes tripping back from the kitchen and says Chief Horgan called the SKIDs, on account of Dr B. is a high-profile guy and this is going to be a high-profile case, and besides, a pair of them happened to be right here in the city, waiting to be called to testify in a case, isn’t that convenient. She won’t meet my eye, she’s all flushed, and when I start pointing around at all the Zs, asking her if they don’t look familiar, she won’t talk about it.’

Hodges has never heard such anger and frustration in his old partner’s voice.

‘So then my cell rings, and … you remember when I reached out to you this morning I said the doc on call took a sample of the residue in Hartsfield’s mouth? Before the ME guy even got there?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, the phone call was from that doc. Simonson, his name is. The ME’s analysis won’t be back for two days at the soonest, but Simonson did one right away. The stuff in Hartsfield’s mouth was a combination of Vicodin and Ambien. Hartsfield wasn’t prescribed either one, and he could hardly dance his way down to the nearest med locker and score some, could he?’

Hodges, who already knows what Brady was taking for pain, agrees that that would be unlikely.

‘Right now Izzy’s in the house, probably watching from the background and keeping her mouth shut while the SKIDs question this Brooks guy, who honest-to-God can’t remember his own name unless he’s prompted. Otherwise he calls himself Z-Boy. Like something out of a Marvel comic book.’

Clutching the pen in his hand almost hard enough to snap it in two, Hodges prints more headline caps on the pad, with Holly bending over to read as he writes: LIBRARY AL LEFT THE MESSAGE ON DEBBIE’S BLUE UMBRELLA.