بخش 04 - فصل 18

18

In the living room, Freddi is rolling another joint. She looks at Jerome over the top of it as she licks the paper closed. “You’re a big one, aren’t you?”

Jerome makes no reply.

“What do you go? Two-ten? Two-twenty?”

Jerome has nothing to say to this, either.

Undeterred, she sparks the joint, inhales, and holds it out to him. Jerome shakes his head.

“Your loss, big boy. This is pretty good shit. Smells like dog pee, I know, but pretty good shit, just the same.”

Jerome says nothing.

“Cat got your tongue?”

“No. I was thinking about a sociology class I took when I was a high school senior. We did a four-week mod on suicide, and there was one statistic I never forgot. Every teen suicide that makes it onto social media spawns seven attempts, five that are show and two that are go. Maybe you should think about that instead of running the tough-girl act into the ground.”

Freddi’s lower lip trembles. “I didn’t know. Not really.”

“Sure you did.”

She drops her eyes to the joint. It’s her turn to say nothing.

“My sister heard a voice.”

At that, Freddi looks up. “What kind of voice?”

“One from the Zappit. It told her all sorts of mean things. About how she was trying to live white. About how she was denying her race. About how she was a bad and worthless person.”

“And that reminds you of someone?”

“Yes.” Jerome is thinking of the accusatory shrieks he and Holly heard coming from Olivia Trelawney’s computer long after that unfortunate lady was dead. Shrieks programmed by Brady Hartsfield, and designed to drive Trelawney toward suicide like a cow down a slaughterhouse chute. “Actually, it does.”

“Brady was fascinated by suicide,” Freddi says. “He was always reading about it on the web. He meant to kill himself with the others at that concert, you know.”

Jerome does know. He was there. “Do you really think he got in touch with my sister telepathically? Using the Zappit as . . . what? A kind of conduit?”

“If he could take over Babineau and the other guy—and he did, whether you believe it or not—then yeah, I think he could do that.”

“And the others with updated Zappits? Those two hundred and forty-something others?”

Freddi only looks at him through her veil of smoke.

“Even if we take down the website . . . what about them? What about when that voice starts telling them they’re dogshit on the world’s shoe, and the only answer is to take a long walk off a short dock?”

Before she can reply, Hodges does it for her. “We have to stop the voice. Which means stopping him. Come on, Jerome. We’re going back to the office.”

“What about me?” Freddi asks plaintively.

“You’re coming. And Freddi?”

“What?”

“Pot’s good for pain, isn’t it?”

“Opinions on that vary, as you might guess, the establishment in this fucked-up country being what it is, so all I can tell you is that for me, it makes that delicate time of the month a lot less delicate.”

“Bring it along,” Hodges says. “Also the rolling papers.”