End of Watch (Bill Hodges Trilogy #3)(87)

At last Jerome says, ‘Okay, I guess. Since it’s you, Hollyberry.’

‘Here we go. Ten … nine … eight … you’re coming back … seven … six … five … waking up …’

Jerome raises his head. His eyes are aimed at Hodges, but Hodges isn’t sure the boy is seeing him.

‘Four … three … almost there … two … one … wake up!’ She claps her hands together.

Jerome gives a hard jerk. One hand brushes Dinah’s Zappit and knocks it to the floor. Jerome looks at Holly with an expression of surprise so exaggerated it would be funny under other circumstances.

‘What just happened? Did I go to sleep?’

Holly collapses into the chair ordinarily reserved for clients. She takes a deep breath and wipes her cheeks, which are damp with sweat.

In a way,’ Hodges says. ‘The game hypnotized you. Like it hypnotized your sister.’

‘Are you sure?’ Jerome asks, then looks at his watch. ‘I guess you are. I just lost fifteen minutes.’

‘Closer to twenty. What do you remember?’

‘Tapping the pink fish and turning them into numbers. It’s surprisingly hard to do. You have to watch closely, really concentrate, and the blue flashes don’t help.’

Hodges picks the Zappit up off the floor.

‘I wouldn’t turn that on,’ Holly says sharply.

‘Not going to. But I did last night, and I can tell you there were no blue flashes, and you could tap pink fish until your finger went numb without getting any numbers. Also, the tune is different now. Not much, but a little.’

Holly sings, pitch perfect: ‘“By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea, you and me, you and me, oh how happy we’ll be!”’ My mother used to sing it to me when I was little.’

Jerome is staring at her with more intensity than she can deal with, and she looks away, flustered. ‘What? What is it?’

‘There were words,’ he says, ‘but not those.’

Hodges heard no words, only the tune, but doesn’t say so. Holly asks Jerome if he can remember them.

His pitch isn’t as good as hers, but it’s close enough for them to be sure that yes, it’s the tune they heard. ‘“You can sleep, you can sleep, it’s a beautiful sleep …”’ He stops. ‘That’s all I can remember. If I’m not just making it up, that is.’

Holly says, ‘Now we know for sure. Someone amped the Fishin’ Hole screen.’

‘Shot it full of ’roids,’ Jerome adds.

‘What does that even mean?’ Hodges asks.

Jerome nods to Holly and she says, ‘Someone loaded a stealth program into the demo, which is mildly hypnotic to begin with. The program was dormant when Dinah had the Zappit, and still dormant when you looked at it last night, Bill – which was lucky for you – but someone turned it on after that.’

‘Babineau?’

‘Him or someone else, if the police are right and Babineau is dead.’

‘It could have been a preset,’ Jerome says to Holly. Then, to Hodges: ‘You know, like an alarm clock.’

‘Let me get this straight,’ Hodges says. ‘The program was in there all along, and only became active once Dinah’s Zappit was turned on today?’

‘Yes,’ Holly says. ‘There’s probably a repeater at work, don’t you think, Jerome?’

‘Yeah. A computer program that pumps out the update constantly, waiting for some schlub – me, in this case – to turn on a Zappit and activate the WiFi.’

‘This could happen with all of them?’

‘If the stealth program is in all of them, sure,’ Jerome says. ‘Brady set this up.’ Hodges begins to pace, hand going to his side as if to contain the pain and hold it in. ‘Brady fucking Hartsfield.’

‘How?’ Holly asks.

‘I don’t know, but it’s the only thing that fits. He tries to blow up the Mingo during that concert. We stop him. The audience, most of them young girls, is saved.’

‘By you, Holly,’ Jerome says.

‘Be quiet, Jerome. Let him tell it.’ Her eyes suggest she knows where Hodges is going.

‘Six years pass. Those young girls, most of them in elementary or middle school in 2010, are in high school. Maybe in college. ’Round Here is long gone and the girls are young women now, they’ve moved on to other kinds of music, but then they get an offer they can’t refuse. A free game console, and all they have to do is be able to prove they were at the ’Round Here show that night. The console probably looks as out-of-date to them as a black-and-white TV, but what the hell, it’s free.’

‘Yes!’ Holly says. ‘Brady was still after them. This is his revenge, but not just on them. It’s his revenge on you, Bill.’

Which makes me responsible, Hodges thinks bleakly. Except what else could I do? What else could any of us do? He was going to bomb the place.

‘Babineau, going under the name of Myron Zakim, bought eight hundred of those consoles. It had to be him, because he’s loaded. Brady was broke and I doubt Library Al could have fronted even twenty thousand dollars from his retirement savings. Those consoles are out there now. And if they all get this amped-up program once they’re turned on …’