بخش 01 - فصل 19

19

Hodges and Holly get together with Pete and Isabelle at Dave’s Diner, a greasy spoon a block down from the morning madhouse known as Starbucks. With the early breakfast rush over, they have their pick of tables and settle at one in the back. In the kitchen a Badfinger song is playing on the radio and waitresses are laughing.

“All I’ve got is half an hour,” Hodges says. “Then I have to run to the doctor’s.”

Pete leans forward, looking concerned. “Nothing serious, I hope.”

“Nope. I feel fine.” This morning he actually does—like forty-five again. That message on his computer, cryptic and sinister though it was, seems to have been better medicine than the Gelusil. “Let’s get to what we’ve found. Holly, they’ll want Exhibit A and Exhibit B. Hand em over.”

Holly has brought her small tartan briefcase to the meeting. From it (and not without reluctance) she brings the Zappit Commander and the lens cap from the garage at 1588. Both are in plastic bags, although the lens cap is still wrapped in tissues.

“What have you two been up to?” Pete asks. He’s striving for humorous, but Hodges can hear a touch of accusation there, as well.

“Investigating,” Holly says, and although she isn’t ordinarily one for eye contact, she shoots a brief look at Izzy Jaynes, as if to say Get the point?

“Explain,” Izzy says.

Hodges does so while Holly sits beside him with her eyes cast down, her decaf—all she drinks—untouched. Her jaws are moving, though, and Hodges knows she’s back on the Nicorette.

“Unbelievable,” Izzy says when Hodges has finished. She pokes at the bag with the Zappit inside. “You just took this. Wrapped it up in newspaper like a piece of salmon from the fish market and carried it out of the house.”

Holly appears to shrink in her chair. Her hands are so tightly clasped in her lap that the knuckles are white.

Hodges usually likes Isabelle well enough, even though she once nearly tripped him up in an interrogation room (this during the Mr. Mercedes thing, when he had been hip-deep in an unauthorized investigation), but he doesn’t like her much now. He can’t like anyone who makes Holly shrink like that.

“Be reasonable, Iz. Think it through. If Holly hadn’t found that thing—and purely by accident—it would still be there. You guys weren’t going to search the house.”

“You probably weren’t going to call the housekeeper, either,” Holly says, and although she still won’t look up, there’s metal in her voice. Hodges is glad to hear it.

“We would have gotten to the Alderson woman in time,” Izzy says, but those misty gray eyes of hers flick up and to the left as she says it. It’s a classic liar’s tell, and Hodges knows when he sees it that she and Pete haven’t even discussed the housekeeper yet, although they probably would have gotten around to her eventually. Pete Huntley may be a bit of a plodder, but plodders are usually thorough, you had to give them that.

“If there were any fingerprints on that gadget,” Izzy says, “they’re gone now. Kiss them goodbye.”

Holly mutters something under her breath, making Hodges remember that when he first met her (and completely underestimated her), he thought of her as Holly the Mumbler.

Izzy leans forward, her gray eyes suddenly not misty at all. “What did you say?”

“She said that’s silly,” Hodges says, knowing perfectly well that the word was actually stupid. “She’s right. It was shoved down between the arm of Ellerton’s chair and the cushion. Any fingerprints on it would be blurred, and you know it. Also, were you going to search the whole house?”

“We might have,” Isabelle says, sounding sulky. “Depending on what we get back from forensics.”

Other than in Martine Stover’s bedroom and bathroom, there were no forensics. They all know this, Izzy included, and there’s no need for Hodges to belabor the point.

“Take it easy,” Pete says to Isabelle. “I invited Kermit and Holly out there, and you agreed.”

“That was before I knew they were going to walk out with . . .”

She trails off. Hodges waits with interest to see how she will finish. Is she going to say with a piece of the evidence? Evidence of what? An addiction to computer solitaire, Angry Birds, and Frogger?

“With a piece of Mrs. Ellerton’s property,” she finishes lamely.

“Well, you’ve got it now,” Hodges says. “Can we move on? Perhaps discuss the man who gave it to her in the supermarket, claiming the company was eager for user input on a gadget that’s no longer made?”

“And the man who was watching them,” Holly says, still without looking up. “The man who was watching them from across the street with binoculars.”

Hodges’s old partner pokes the bag with the wrapped lens cap inside. “I’ll have this dusted for fingerprints, but I’m not real hopeful, Kerm. You know how people take these caps on and off.”

“Yeah,” Hodges says. “By the rim. And it was cold in that garage. Cold enough so I could see my breath. The guy was probably wearing gloves, anyway.”

“The guy in the supermarket was most likely working some kind of short con,” Izzy says. “It’s got that smell. Maybe he called a week later, trying to convince her that by taking the obsolete games gadget, she was obligated to buy a more expensive current one, and she told him to go peddle his papers. Or he might have used the info from the questionnaire to hack into her computer.”

“Not that computer,” Holly says. “It was older than dirt.”

“Had a good look around, didn’t you?” Izzy says. “Did you check the medicine cabinets while you were investigating?”

This is too much for Hodges. “She was doing what you should have done, Isabelle. And you know it.”

Color is rising in Izzy’s cheeks. “We called you in as a courtesy, that’s all, and I wish we’d never done it. You two are always trouble.”

“Stop it,” Pete says.

But Izzy is leaning forward, her eyes flicking between ­Hodges’s face and the top of Holly’s lowered head. “These two mystery men—if they existed at all—have nothing to do with what happened in that house. One was probably running a con, the other was a simple peeper.”

Hodges knows he should stay friendly here—increase the peace, and all that—but he just can’t do it. “Some pervo salivating at the thought of watching an eighty-year-old woman undress, or seeing a quadriplegic get a sponge bath? Yeah, that makes sense.”

“Read my lips,” Izzy says. “Mom killed daughter, then self. Even left a suicide note of sorts—Z, the end. Couldn’t be any clearer.”

Z-Boy, Hodges thinks. Whoever’s under Debbie’s Blue Umbrella this time signs himself Z-Boy.

Holly lifts her head. “There was also a Z in the garage. Carved into the wood between the doors. Bill saw it. Zappit also begins with Z, you know.”

“Yes,” Izzy says. “And Kennedy and Lincoln have the same number of letters, proving they were both killed by the same man.”

Hodges sneaks a peek at his watch and sees he’ll have to leave soon, and that’s okay. Other than upsetting Holly and pissing off Izzy, this meeting has accomplished nothing. Nor can it, because he has no intention of telling Pete and Isabelle what he discovered on his own computer early this morning. That information might shift the investigation into a higher gear, but he’s going to keep it on the down-low until he does a little more investigation himself. He doesn’t want to think that Pete would fumble it, but—

But he might. Because being thorough is a poor substitute for being thoughtful. And Izzy? She doesn’t want to open a can of worms filled with a lot of pulp-novel stuff about cryptic letters and mystery men. Not when the deaths at the Ellerton house are already on the front page of today’s paper, along with a complete recap of how Martine Stover came to be paralyzed. Not when Izzy’s expecting to take the next step up the police department ladder just as soon as her current partner retires.

“Bottom line,” Pete says, “this is going down as a murder-suicide, and we’re gonna move on. We have to move on, Kermit. I’m retiring. Iz will be left with a huge caseload and no new partner for awhile, thanks to the damn budget cuts. This stuff”—he indicates the two plastic bags—“is sort of interesting, but it doesn’t change the clarity of what happened. Unless you think some master criminal set it up? One who drives an old car and mends his coat with masking tape?”

“No, I don’t think that.” Hodges is remembering something Holly said about Brady Hartsfield yesterday. She used the word architect. “I think you’ve got it right. Murder-suicide.”

Holly gives him a brief look of wounded surprise before lowering her eyes again.

“But will you do something for me?”

“If I can,” Pete says.

“I tried the game console, but the screen stayed blank. Probably a dead battery. I didn’t want to open the battery compartment, because that little slide panel would be a place to check for fingerprints.”

“I’ll see that it’s dusted, but I doubt—”

“Yeah, I do, too. What I really want is for one of your cyber-wonks to boot it up and check the various game applications. See if there’s anything out of the ordinary.”

“Okay,” Pete says, and shifts slightly in his seat when Izzy rolls her eyes. Hodges can’t be sure, but he thinks Pete just kicked her ankle under the table.

“I have to go,” Hodges says, and grabs for his wallet. “Missed my appointment yesterday. Can’t miss another one.”

“We’ll pick up the check,” Izzy says. “After you brought us all this valuable evidence, it’s the least we can do.”

Holly mutters something else under her breath. This time Hodges can’t be sure, even with his trained Holly-ear, but he thinks it might have been bitch.