End of Watch (Bill Hodges Trilogy #3)(9)

‘What do you make of it?’ Pete asks.

Hodges considers. ‘It’s her suicide note,’ he says at last. ‘Z is the final letter of the alphabet. If she’d known Greek, it might have been omega.’

‘That’s what I think, too,’ Izzy says. ‘Kind of elegant, when you think of it.’

‘Z is also the mark of Zorro,’ Holly informs them. ‘He was a masked Mexican cavalier. There have been a great many Zorro movies, one starring Anthony Hopkins as Don Diego, but it wasn’t very good.’

‘Do you find that relevant?’ Izzy asks. Her face expresses polite interest, but there’s a barb in her tone.

‘There was also a television series,’ Holly goes on. She’s looking at the photo as though hypnotized by it. ‘It was produced by Walt Disney, back in the black-and-white days. Mrs Ellerton might have watched it when she was a girl.’

‘Are you saying she maybe took refuge in childhood memories while she was getting ready to off herself?’ Pete sounds dubious, which is how Hodges feels. ‘I guess it’s possible.’

‘Bullshit, more likely,’ Izzy says, rolling her eyes.

Holly takes no notice. ‘Can I look in the bathroom? I won’t touch anything, even with these.’ She holds up her small gloved hands.

‘Be our guest,’ Izzy says at once.

In other words, Hodges thinks, buzz off and let the adults talk. He doesn’t care for Izzy’s ’tude when it comes to Holly, but since it seems to bounce right off her, he sees no reason to make an issue of it. Besides, Holly really is a bit skitzy this morning, going off in all directions. Hodges supposes it was the pictures. Dead people never look more dead than in police photos.

She wanders off to check out the bathroom. Hodges sits back, hands laced at the nape of his neck, elbows winged out. His troublesome gut hasn’t been quite so troublesome this morning, maybe because he switched from coffee to tea. If so, he’ll have to stock up on PG Tips. Hell, buy stock. He’s really tired of the constant stomachache.

‘Want to tell me what we’re doing here, Pete?’

Pete raises his eyebrows and tries to look innocent. ‘Whatever can you mean, Kermit?’

‘You were right when you said this would make the paper. It’s the kind of sad soap-opera shit people love, it makes their own lives look better to them—’

‘Cynical but probably true,’ Izzy says with a sigh.

‘—but any connection to the Mercedes Massacre is casual rather than causal.’ Hodges isn’t entirely sure that means what he thinks it means, but it sounds good. ‘What you’ve got here is your basic mercy killing committed by an old lady who just couldn’t stand to see her daughter suffer anymore. Probably Ellerton’s last thought when she turned on the helium was I’ll be with you soon, honey, and when I walk the streets of heaven, you’ll be walking right beside me.’

Izzy snorts at that, but Pete looks pale and thoughtful. Hodges suddenly remembers that a long time ago, maybe thirty years, Pete and his wife lost their first child, a baby daughter, to SIDS.

‘It’s sad, and the papers lap it up for a day or two, but it happens somewhere in the world every day. Every hour, for all I know. So tell me what the deal is.’

‘Probably nothing. Izzy says it is nothing.’

‘Izzy does,’ she confirms.

‘Izzy probably thinks I’m going soft in the head as I approach the finish line.’

‘Izzy doesn’t. Izzy just thinks that it’s time you stop letting the bee known as Brady Hartsfield buzz around in your bonnet.’

She switches those misty gray eyes to Hodges.

‘Ms Gibney there may be a bundle of nervous tics and strange associations, but she stopped Hartsfield’s clock most righteously, and I give her full credit for it. He’s zonked out in that brain trauma clinic at Kiner, where he’ll probably stay until he catches pneumonia and dies, thereby saving the state a whole potful of money. He’s never going to stand trial for what he did, we all know that. You didn’t catch him for the City Center thing, but Gibney stopped him from blowing up two thousand kids at Mingo Auditorium a year later. You guys need to accept that. Call it a win and move on.’

‘Whew,’ Pete says. ‘How long have you been holding that in?’

Izzy tries not to smile, but can’t help it. Pete smiles in return, and Hodges thinks, They work as well together as Pete and I did. Shame to break up that combination. It really is.

‘Quite awhile,’ Izzy says. ‘Now go on and tell him.’ She turns to Hodges. ‘At least it’s not little gray men from The X-Files.’

‘So?’ Hodges asks.

‘Keith Frias and Krista Countryman,’ Pete says. ‘Both were also at City Center on the morning of April tenth, when Hartsfield did his thing. Frias, age nineteen, lost most of his arm, plus suffered four broken ribs and internal injuries. He also lost seventy percent of the vision in his right eye. Countryman, age twenty-one, suffered broken ribs, a broken arm, and spinal injuries that resolved after all sorts of painful therapy I don’t even want to think about.’

Hodges doesn’t, either, but he’s brooded over Brady Hartsfield’s victims many times. Mostly on how the work of seventy wicked seconds could change the lives of so many for years … or, in the case of Martine Stover, forever.