بخش 04 - فصل 30

30

Hodges makes his way toward the lights of Heads and Skins one plodding step at a time. Snow flicks his face and coats his eyelids. That burning arrow is back, lighting him up inside. Frying him. His face is running with sweat.

At least my feet aren’t hot, he thinks, and that’s when he stumbles over a snow-covered log and goes sprawling. He lands squarely on his left side and buries his face in the arm of his coat to keep from screaming. Hot liquid spills into his crotch.

Wet my pants, he thinks. Wet my pants just like a baby.

When the pain recedes a little, he gathers his legs under him and tries to stand. He can’t do it. The wetness is turning cold. He can actually feel his dick shriveling to get away from it. He grabs a low-hanging branch and tries again to get up. It snaps off. He looks at it stupidly, feeling like a cartoon character—Wile E. Coyote, maybe—and tosses it aside. As he does, a hand hooks into his armpit.

His surprise is so great he almost screams. Then Holly is whispering in his ear. “Upsa-daisy, Bill. Come on.”

With her help, he’s finally able to make it to his feet. The lights are close now, no more than forty yards through the ­screening trees. He can see the snow frosting her hair and lighting on her cheeks. All at once he finds himself remembering the office of an antique bookdealer named Andrew Halliday, and how he, Holly, and Jerome had discovered Halliday lying dead on the floor. He told them to stay back, but—

“Holly. If I told you to go back, would you do it?”

“No.” She’s whispering. They both are. “You’ll probably have to shoot him, and you can’t get there without help.”

“You’re supposed to be my backup, Holly. My insurance policy.” The sweat is pouring off him like oil. Thank God his coat is a long one. He doesn’t want Holly to know he pissed himself.

“Jerome is your insurance policy,” she says. “I’m your partner. That’s why you brought me, whether you know it or not. And it’s what I want. It’s all I ever wanted. Now come on. Lean on me. Let’s finish this.”

They move slowly through the remaining trees. Hodges can’t believe how much of his weight she’s taking. They pause at the edge of the clearing that surrounds the house. There are two lighted rooms. Judging by the subdued glow coming from the one closest to them, Hodges thinks it must be the kitchen. A single light on in there, maybe the one over the stove. Coming from the other window he can make out an unsteady flicker that probably means a fireplace.

“That’s where we’re going,” he says, pointing, “and from here on we’re soldiers on night patrol. Which means we crawl.”

“Can you?”

“Yeah.” It might actually be easier than walking. “See the chandelier?”

“Yes. It looks all bony. Oough.”

“That’s the living room, and that’s where he’ll probably be. If he’s not, we’ll wait until he shows. If he’s got one of those ­Zappits, I intend to shoot him. No hands up, no lie down and put your hands behind your back. Do you have a problem with that?”

“Absolutely not.”

They drop to their hands and knees. Hodges leaves the Glock in his coat pocket, not wanting to dunk it in the snow.

“Bill.” Her whisper so low he can barely hear it over the rising wind.

He turns to look at her. She’s holding out one of her gloves.

“Too small,” he says, and thinks of Johnnie Cochran saying, If the glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit. Crazy what goes through a person’s mind at times like this. Only has there ever in his life been a time like this?

“Force it,” she whispers. “You need to keep your gun hand warm.”

She’s right, and he manages to get it most of the way on. It’s too short to get over all of his hand, but his fingers are covered, and that’s all that matters.

They crawl, Hodges slightly in the lead. The pain is still bad, but now that he’s off his feet, the arrow in his guts is smoldering rather than burning.

Got to save some energy, though, he thinks. Just enough.

It’s forty or fifty feet from the edge of the woods to the window with the chandelier hanging in it, and his uncovered hand has lost all feeling by the time they’re halfway there. He can’t believe he’s brought his best friend to this place and this moment, crawling through the snow like children playing a war game, miles from any help. He had his reasons, and they made sense back in that Airport Hilton. Now, not so much.

He looks left, at the silent hulk of Library Al’s Malibu. He looks right, and sees a snow-covered woodpile. He starts to look ahead again, at the living room window, then snaps his head back to the woodpile, alarm bells ringing just a little too late.

There are tracks in the snow. The angle was wrong to see them from the edge of the woods, but he can see them clearly now. They lead from the back of the house to that stack of fireplace fuel. He came outside through the kitchen door, Hodges thinks. That’s why the light was on in there. I should have guessed. I would have, if I hadn’t been so sick.

He scrabbles for the Glock, but the too-small glove slows his grip, and when he finally gets hold of it and tries to pull it out, the gun snags in the pocket. Meanwhile, a dark shape has risen from behind the woodpile. The shape covers the fifteen feet between it and them in four great looping strides. The face is that of an alien in a horror movie, featureless except for the round, projecting eyes.

“Holly, look out!”

She lifts her head just as the butt of the Scar comes down to meet it. There’s a sickening crack and she drops face-first into the snow with her arms thrown out to either side: a puppet with its strings cut. Hodges frees the Glock from his coat pocket just as the butt comes down again. Hodges both feels and hears his wrist break; he sees the Glock land in the snow and almost disappear.

Still on his knees, Hodges looks up and sees a tall man—much taller than Brady Hartsfield—standing in front of ­Holly’s motionless form. He’s wearing a balaclava and night-vision goggles.

He saw us as soon as we came out of the trees, Hodges thinks dully. For all I know, he saw us in the trees, while I was pulling on Holly’s glove.

“Hello, Detective Hodges.”

Hodges doesn’t reply. He wonders if Holly is still alive, and if she’ll ever recover from the blow she’s just been dealt, if she is. But of course, that’s stupid. Brady isn’t going to give her any chance to recover.

“You’re coming inside with me,” Brady says. “The question is whether or not we bring her, or leave her out here, to turn into a Popsicle.” And, as if he’s read Hodges’s mind (for all Hodges knows, he can do that): “Oh, she’s still alive, at least for now. I can see her back going up and down. Although after a hit that hard, and with her face in the snow, who knows for how long?”

“I’ll carry her,” Hodges says, and he will. No matter how much it hurts.

“Okay.” No pause to think it over, and Hodges knows it’s what Brady expected and what Brady wanted. He’s one step ahead. Has been all along. And whose fault is that?

Mine. Entirely mine. It’s what I get for playing the Lone Ranger yet again . . . but what else could I do? Who would ever have believed it?

“Pick her up,” Brady says. “Let’s see if you really can. Because, tell you what, you look mighty shaky to me.”

Hodges gets his arms under Holly. In the woods, he couldn’t make it to his feet after he fell, but now he gathers everything he has left and does a clean-and-jerk with her limp body. He staggers, almost goes down, and finds his balance again. The burning arrow is gone, incinerated in the forest fire it has touched off inside him. But he hugs her to his chest.

“That’s good.” Brady sounds genuinely admiring. “Now let’s see if you can make it to the house.”

Somehow, Hodges does.