End of Watch (Bill Hodges Trilogy #3)(88)

‘Hold it, go back,’ Jerome says. ‘Are you really saying that a respected neurosurgeon got involved in this shit?’

‘That’s what I’m saying, yeah. Your sister ID’d him, and we already know the respected neurosurgeon was using Brady Hartsfield as a lab rat.’

‘But now Hartsfield’s dead,’ Holly says. ‘Which leaves Babineau, who may also be dead.’

‘Or not,’ Hodges says. ‘There was blood in his car, but no body. Wouldn’t be the first time some doer tried to fake his own death.’

‘I’ve got to check something on my computer,’ Holly says. ‘If those free Zappits are getting a new program as of today, then maybe …’ She hurries out.

Jerome begins, ‘I don’t understand how any of this can be, but—’

‘Babineau will be able to tell us,’ Hodges says. ‘If he’s still alive.’

‘Yes, but wait a minute. Barb talked about hearing a voice, telling her all sorts of awful things. I didn’t hear any voice, and I sure don’t feel like offing myself.’

‘Maybe you’re immune.’

‘I’m not. That screen got me, Bill, I mean I was gone. I heard words in the little tune, and I think there were words in the blue flashes, too. Like subliminal messages. But … no voice.’

There could be all sorts of reasons for that, Hodges thinks, and just because Jerome didn’t hear the suicide voice, it doesn’t mean that most of the kids who got those free games won’t.

‘Let’s say this repeater gadget was only turned on during the last fourteen hours,’ Hodges says. ‘We know it can’t have been earlier than when I tried out Dinah’s game, or I would have seen the number-fish and the blue flashes. So here’s a question: can those demo screens be amped up even if the gadgets are off?’

‘No way,’ Jerome says. ‘They have to be turned on. But once they are …’

‘It’s active!’ Holly shouts. ‘That fracking zeetheend site is active!’

Jerome rushes to her desk in the outer office. Hodges follows more slowly.

Holly turns up the volume on her computer, and music fills the offices of Finders Keepers. Not ‘By the Beautiful Sea’ this time, but ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper.’ As it spools out – forty thousand men and women every day, another forty thousand coming every day – Hodges sees a candlelit funeral parlor and a coffin buried in flowers. Above it, smiling young men and women come and go, moving side to side, crisscrossing, fading, reappearing. Some of them wave; some flash the peace sign. Below the coffin is a series of messages in letters that swell and contract like a slowly beating heart.

AN END TO PAIN

AN END TO FEAR

NO MORE ANGER

NO MORE DOUBT

NO MORE STRUGGLE

PEACE

PEACE

PEACE

Then a stuttering series of blue flashes. Embedded in them are words. Or call them what they really are, Hodges thinks. Drops of poison.

‘Turn it off, Holly.’ Hodges doesn’t like the way she’s looking at the screen – that wide-eyed stare, so much like Jerome’s a few minutes ago.

She moves too slowly to suit Jerome. He reaches over her shoulder and crashes her computer.

‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ she says reproachfully. ‘I could lose data.’

‘That’s exactly what the fucking website is for,’ Jerome says. ‘To make you lose data. To make you lose your shit. I could read the last one, Bill. In the blue flash. It said do it now.’

Holly nods. ‘There was another one that said tell your friends.’

‘Does the Zappit direct them to that … that thing?’ Hodges asks.

‘It doesn’t have to,’ Jerome says. ‘Because the ones who find it – and plenty will, including kids who never got a free Zappit – will spread the word on Facebook and all the rest.’

‘He wanted a suicide epidemic,’ Holly says. ‘He set it in motion somehow, then killed himself.’

‘Probably to get there ahead of them,’ Jerome says. ‘So he can meet them at the door.’

Hodges says, ‘Am I supposed to believe a rock song and a picture of a funeral is going to get kids to kill themselves? The Zappits, I can accept that. I’ve seen how they work. But this?’

Holly and Jerome exchange a glance, one that Hodges can read easily: How do we explain this to him? How do you explain a robin to someone who’s never seen a bird? The glance alone is almost enough to convince him.

‘Teenagers are vulnerable to stuff like this,’ Holly says. ‘Not all of them, no, but plenty. I would have been when I was seventeen.’

‘And it’s catching,’ Jerome says. ‘Once it starts … if it starts …’ He finishes with a shrug.

‘We need to find that repeater gadget and turn it off,’ Hodges says. ‘Limit the damage.’

‘Maybe it’s at Babineau’s house,’ Holly says. ‘Call Pete. Find out if there’s any computer stuff there. If there is, make him pull all the plugs.’

‘If he’s with Izzy, he’ll let it go to voicemail,’ Hodges says, but he makes the call and Pete picks up on the first ring. He tells Hodges that Izzy has gone back to the station with the SKIDs to await the first forensics reports. Library Al Brooks is already gone, taken into custody by the first responding cops, who will get partial credit for the bust.