بخش 04 - فصل 31

31

The wood in the fireplace is burning well and throwing a stuporous heat. Gasping for breath, the snow on his borrowed hat melting and running down his face in slushy streams, Hodges gets to the middle of the room and then goes to his knees, having to cradle Holly’s neck in the crook of his elbow because of his broken wrist, which is swelling up like a sausage. He manages to keep her head from banging on the hardwood floor, and that’s good. Her head has taken enough abuse tonight.

Brady has removed his coat, the night-vision goggles, and the balaclava. It’s Babineau’s face and Babineau’s silvery hair (now in unaccustomed disarray), but it’s Brady Hartsfield, all right. Hodges’s last doubts have departed.

“Has she got a gun?”

“No.”

The man who looks like Felix Babineau smiles. “Well, here’s what I’m going to do, Bill. I’ll search her pockets, and if I do find a gun, I’ll blow her narrow ass into the next state. How’s that for a deal?”

“It’s a .38,” Hodges says. “She’s right-handed, so if she brought it, it’s probably in the right front pocket of her coat.”

Brady bends, keeping the Scar trained on Hodges as he does so, finger on the trigger and the butt-plate braced against the right side of his chest. He finds the revolver, examines it briefly, then tucks it into his belt at the small of his back. In spite of his pain and despair, Hodges feels a certain sour amusement. Brady’s probably seen badass dudes do that in a hundred TV shows and action movies, but it really only works with automatics, which are flat.

On the hooked rug, Holly makes a snoring sound deep in her throat. One foot gives a spastic jerk, then goes still.

“What about you?” Brady asks. “Any other weapons? The ever-popular throwdown gun strapped to your ankle, perhaps?”

Hodges shakes his head.

“Just to be on the safe side, why don’t you hoist up your pants­legs for me?”

Hodges does it, revealing soaked shoes, wet socks, and nothing else.

“Excellent. Now take off your coat and throw it on the couch.”

Hodges unzips it and manages to keep quiet while he shrugs out of it, but when he tosses it, a bull’s horn gores him from crotch to heart and he groans.

Babineau’s eyes widen. “Real pain or fake? Live or Memorex? Judging from a quite striking weight loss, I’m going to say it’s real. What’s up, Detective Hodges? What’s going on with you?”

“Cancer. Pancreatic.”

“Oh, goodness, that’s bad. Not even Superman can beat that one. But cheer up, I may be able to shorten your suffering.”

“Do what you want with me,” Hodges says. “Just let her alone.”

Brady looks at the woman on the floor with great interest. “This would not by any chance be the woman who smashed in what used to be my head, is it?” The locution strikes him funny and he laughs.

“No.” The world has become a camera lens, zooming in and out with every beat of his laboring, pacemaker-assisted heart. “Holly Gibney was the one who thumped you. She’s gone back to live with her parents in Ohio. That’s Kara Winston, my assistant.” The name comes to him from nowhere, and there’s no hesitation as he speaks it.

“An assistant who just decided to come with you on a do-or-die mission? I find that a little hard to believe.”

“I promised her a bonus. She needs the money.”

“And where, pray tell, is your nigger lawnboy?”

Hodges briefly considers telling Brady the truth—that Jerome is back in the city, that he knows Brady has probably gone to the hunting camp, that he will pass this information on to the police soon, if he hasn’t already. But will any of those things stop Brady? Of course not.

“Jerome is in Arizona, building houses. Habitat for Humanity.”

“How socially conscious of him. I was hoping he’d be with you. How badly hurt is his sister?”

“Broken leg. She’ll be up and walking in no time.”

“That’s a shame.”

“She was one of your test cases, wasn’t she?”

“She got one of the original Zappits, yes. There were twelve of them. Like the twelve Apostles, you might say, going forth to spread the word. Sit in the chair in front of the TV, Detective Hodges.”

“I’d rather not. All my favorite shows are on Monday.”

Brady smiles politely. “Sit.”

Hodges sits, bracing his good hand on the table beside the chair. Going down is agony, but once he actually makes it, sitting is a little better. The TV is off, but he stares at it, anyway. “Where’s the camera?”

“On the signpost where the road splits. Above the arrows. You don’t have to feel bad about missing it. It was covered with snow, nothing sticking out but the lens, and your headlights were off by then.”

“Is there any Babineau left inside you?”

He shrugs. “Bits and pieces. Every now and then there’s a small scream from the part that thinks it’s still alive. It will stop soon.”

“Jesus,” Hodges mutters.

Brady drops to one knee, the barrel of the Scar resting on his thigh and still pointing at Hodges. He pulls down the back of Holly’s coat and examines the tag. “H. Gibney,” he says. “Printed in indelible ink. Very tidy. Won’t wash off in the laundry. I like a person who takes care of her things.”

Hodges closes his eyes. The pain is very bad, and he would give everything he owns to get away from it, and from what is going to happen next. He would give anything to just sleep, and sleep, and sleep. But he opens them again and forces himself to look at Brady, because you play the game to the end. That’s how it works; play to the end.

“I have a lot of stuff to do in the next forty-eight or seventy-two hours, Detective Hodges, but I’m going to put it on hold in order to deal with you. Does that make you feel special? It should. Because I owe you so much for fucking me over.”

“You need to remember that you came to me,” Hodges says. “You were the one who started the ball rolling, with that stupid, bragging letter. Not me. You.”

Babineau’s face—the craggy face of an older character actor—darkens. “I suppose you might have a point, but look who’s on top now. Look who wins, Detective Hodges.”

“If you call getting a bunch of stupid, confused kids to commit suicide winning, I guess you’re the winner. Me, I think doing that is about as challenging as striking out the pitcher.”

“It’s control! I assert control! You tried to stop me and you couldn’t! You absolutely couldn’t! And neither could she!” He kicks Holly in the side. Her body rolls a boneless half a turn toward the fireplace, then rolls back again. Her face is ashen, her closed eyes sunk deep in their sockets. “She actually made me better! Better than I ever was!”

“Then for Christ’s sake, stop kicking her!” Hodges shouts.

Brady’s anger and excitement have caused Babineau’s face to flush. His hands are tight on the assault rifle. He takes a deep, steadying breath, then another. And smiles.

“Got a soft spot for Ms. Gibney, do you?” He kicks her again, this time in the hip. “Are you fucking her? Is that it? She’s not much in the looks department, but I guess a guy your age has to take what he can get. You know what we used to say? Put a flag over her face and fuck her for Old Glory.”

He kicks Holly again, and bares his teeth at Hodges in what he may think is a smile.

“You used to ask me if I was fucking my mother, remember? All those visits you made to my room, asking if I was fucking the only person who ever cared a damn for me. Talking about how hot she looked, and was she a hoochie mama. Asking if I was faking. Telling me how much you hoped I was suffering. And I just had to sit there and take it.”

He’s getting ready to kick poor Holly again. To distract him, Hodges says, “There was a nurse. Sadie MacDonald. Did you nudge her into killing herself? You did, didn’t you? She was the first one.”

Brady likes that, and shows even more of Babineau’s expensive dental work. “It was easy. It always is, once you get inside and start pulling the levers.”

“How do you do that, Brady? How do you get inside? How did you manage to get those Zappits from Sunrise Solutions, and rig them? Oh, and the website, how about that?”

Brady laughs. “You’ve read too many of those mystery stories where the clever private eye keeps the insane murderer talking until help arrives. Or until the murderer’s attention wavers and the private eye can grapple with him and get his gun away. I don’t think help is going to arrive, and you don’t look capable of grappling with a goldfish. Besides, you know most of it already. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t. Freddi spilled her guts, and—not to sound like Snidely Whiplash—she will pay for that. Eventually.”

“She claims she didn’t set up the website.”

“I didn’t need her for that. I did it all by myself, in Babineau’s study, on Babineau’s laptop. During one of my vacations from Room 217.”

“What about—”

“Shut up. See that table beside you, Detective Hodges?”

It’s cherrywood, like the buffet, and looks expensive, but there are faded rings all over it, from glasses that were put down without benefit of coasters. The doctors who own this place may be meticulous in operating rooms, but out here they’re slobs. On top of it now is the TV remote and a ceramic skull penholder.

“Open the drawer.”

Hodges does. Inside is a pink Zappit Commander sitting on top of an ancient TV Guide with Hugh Laurie on the cover.

“Take it out and turn it on.”

“No.”

“All right, fine. I’ll just take care of Ms. Gibney, then.” He lowers the barrel of the Scar and points it at the back of Holly’s neck. “On full auto, this will rip her head right off. Will it fly into the fireplace? Let’s find out.”

“Okay,” Hodges says. “Okay, okay, okay. Stop.”

He takes the Zappit and finds the button at the top of the console. The welcome screen lights up; the diagonal downstroke of the red Z fills the screen. He is invited to swipe and access the games. He does so without being prompted by Brady. Sweat pours down his face. He has never been so hot. His broken wrist throbs and pulses.

“Do you see the Fishin’ Hole icon?”

“Yes.”

Opening Fishin’ Hole is the last thing he wants to do, but when the alternative is just sitting here with his broken wrist and his swollen, pulsing gut and watching a stream of high-caliber bullets divide Holly’s head from her slight body? Not an option. And besides, he has read a person can’t be hypnotized against his will. It’s true that Dinah Scott’s console almost put him under, but then he didn’t know what was happening. Now he does. And if Brady thinks he’s tranced out and he’s not, then maybe . . . just maybe . . .

“I’m sure you know the drill by now,” Brady says. His eyes are bright and lively, the eyes of a boy who is about to set a spiderweb on fire so he can see what the spider will do. Will it scurry around its flaming web, looking for a way to escape, or will it just burn? “Tap the icon. The fish will swim and the music will play. Tap the pink fish and add up the numbers. In order to win the game, you have to score one hundred and twenty points in one hundred and twenty seconds. If you succeed, I’ll let Ms. Gibney live. If you fail, we’ll see what this fine automatic weapon can do. Babineau saw it demolish a stack of concrete blocks once, so just imagine what it will do to flesh.”

“You’re not going to let her live even if I score five thousand,” Hodges says. “I don’t believe that for a second.”

Babineau’s blue eyes widen in mock outrage. “But you should! All that I am, I owe to this bitch sprawled out in front of me! The least I can do is spare her life. Assuming she isn’t suffering a brain bleed and dying already, that is. Now stop playing for time. Play the game instead. Your one hundred and twenty seconds start as soon as your finger taps the icon.”

With no other recourse, Hodges taps it. The screen blanks. There’s a blue flash so bright it makes him squint, and then the fish are there, swimming back and forth, up and down, crisscrossing, sending up silvery trails of bubbles. The music begins to tinkle: By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea . . .

Only it isn’t just music. There are words mixed in. And there are words in the blue flashes, too.

“Ten seconds gone,” Brady says. “Tick-tock, tick-tock.”

Hodges taps at one of the pink fish and misses. He’s right hand–dominant, and each tap makes the throbbing in his wrist that much worse, but the pain there is nothing compared to the pain now roasting him from groin to throat. On his third try he gets a pinky—that’s how he thinks of them, as pinkies—and the fish turns into a number 5. He says it out loud.

“Only five points in twenty seconds?” Brady says. “Better step it up, Detective.”

Hodges taps faster, eyes moving left and right, up and down. He no longer has to squint when the blue flashes come, because he’s used to them. And it’s getting easier. The fish seem bigger now, also a little slower. The music seems less tinkly. Fuller, somehow. You and me, you and me, oh how happy we’ll be. Is that Brady’s voice, singing along with the music, or just his imagination? Live or Memorex? No time to think about it now. Tempus is fugiting.

He gets a seven-fish, then a four, and then—jackpot!—one turns into a twelve. He says, “I’m up to twenty-seven.” But is that right? He’s losing count.

Brady doesn’t tell him, Brady only says, “Eighty seconds to go,” and now his voice seems to have picked up a slight echo, as if it’s coming to Hodges from the far end of a long hallway. Meanwhile, a marvelous thing is happening: the pain in his gut is starting to recede.

Whoa, he thinks. The AMA should know about this.

He gets another pinky. It turns into a 2. Not so good, but there are plenty more. Plenty, plenty more.

That’s when he starts to feel something like fingers fluttering delicately inside his head, and it’s not his imagination. He’s being invaded. It was easy, Brady said of Nurse MacDonald. It always is, once you get inside and start pulling the levers.

And when Brady gets to his levers?

He’ll jump inside me the way he jumped inside Babineau, Hodges thinks . . . although this realization is now like the voice and the music, coming from the far end of a long hallway. At the end of that hallway is the door to Room 217, and the door is standing open.

Why would he want to do that? Why would he want to inhabit a body that’s turned into a cancer factory? Because he wants me to kill Holly. Not with the gun, though, he’d never trust me with that. He’ll use my hands to choke her, broken wrist and all. Then he’ll leave me to face what I’ve done.

“You’re getting better, Detective Hodges, and you still have a minute to go. Just relax and keep tapping. It’s easier when you relax.”

The voice is no longer echoing down a hallway; even though Brady is now standing right in front of him, it’s coming from a galaxy far, far away. Brady bends down and stares eagerly into Hodges’s face. Only there are fish swimming between them. Pinkies and blueies and reddies. Because Hodges is in the Fishin’ Hole now. Except it’s really an aquarium, and he’s the fish. Soon he will be eaten. Eaten alive. “Come on, Billy-boy, tap those pink fish!”

I can’t let him inside me, Hodges thinks, but I can’t keep him out.

He taps a pink fish, it turns into a 9, and it isn’t just fingers he feels now but another consciousness spilling into his mind. It’s spreading like ink in water. Hodges tries to fight and knows he will lose. The strength of that invading personality is incredible.

I’m going to drown. Drown in the Fishin’ Hole. Drown in Brady Hartsfield.

By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful s—

A pane of glass shatters close by. It’s followed by a jubilant chorus of boys shouting, “That’s a HOME RUN!”

The bond binding Hodges to Hartsfield is broken by the pure, unexpected surprise of the thing. Hodges jerks back in the chair and looks up as Brady wheels toward the couch, eyes wide and mouth open in startlement. The Victory .38, held against the small of his back only by its short barrel (the cylinder won’t allow it to go deeper), falls out of his belt and thumps to the bearskin rug.

Hodges doesn’t hesitate. He throws the Zappit into the fireplace.

“Don’t you do that!” Brady bellows, turning back. He raises the Scar. “Don’t you fucking da—”

Hodges grasps the nearest thing to hand, not the .38 but the ceramic penholder. There’s nothing wrong with his left wrist, and the range is short. He throws it at the face Brady has stolen, he throws it hard, and connects dead center. The ceramic skull shatters. Brady screams—pain, yes, but mostly shock—and his nose begins to gush blood. When he tries to bring up the Scar, Hodges pistons out his feet, enduring another deep gore of that bull’s horn, and smashes them into Brady’s chest. Brady backpedals, almost catches his balance, then trips over a hassock and sprawls on the bearskin rug.

Hodges tries to launch himself out of the chair and only succeeds in overturning the end table. He goes to his knees as Brady sits up, bringing the Scar around. There’s a gunshot before he can level it on Hodges, and Brady screams again. This time it’s all pain. He looks unbelievingly at his shoulder, where blood is pouring through a hole in his shirt.

Holly is sitting up. There’s a grotesque bruise over her left eye, in almost the same place as the one on Freddi’s forehead. That left eye is red, filled with blood, but the other is bright and aware. She’s holding the Victory .38 in both hands.

“Shoot him again!” Hodges roars. “Shoot him again, Holly!”

As Brady lurches to his feet—one hand clapped to the wound in his shoulder, the other holding the Scar, face slack with ­disbelief—Holly fires again. This bullet goes way high, ricocheting off the fieldstone chimney above the roaring fire.

“Stop that!” Brady shouts, ducking. At the same time he’s struggling to raise the Scar. “Stop doing that, you bi—”

Holly fires a third time. The sleeve of Brady’s shirt twitches, and he yelps. Hodges isn’t sure she’s winged him again, but she at least grooved him.

Hodges gets to his feet and tries to run at Brady, who is making another effort to raise the automatic rifle. The best he can manage is a slow plod.

“You’re in the way!” Holly cries. “Bill, you’re in the fracking way!”

Hodges drops to his knees and tucks his head. Brady turns and runs. The .38 bangs. Wood splinters fly from the doorframe a foot to Brady’s right. Then he’s gone. The front door opens. Cold air rushes in, making the fire do an excited shimmy.

“I missed him!” Holly shouts, agonized. “Stupid and useless! Stupid and useless!” She drops the Victory and slaps herself across the face.

Hodges catches her hand before she can do it again, and kneels beside her. “No, you got him at least once, maybe twice. You’re the reason we’re still alive.”

But for how long? Brady held onto that goddam grease gun, he may have an extra clip or two, and Hodges knows he wasn’t lying about the SCAR 17S’s ability to demolish concrete blocks. He has seen a similar assault rifle, the HK 416, do exactly that, at a private shooting facility in the wilds of Victory County. He went there with Pete, and on the way back they joked about how the HK should be standard police issue.

“What do we do?” Holly asks. “What do we do now?”

Hodges picks up the .38 and rolls the barrel. Two rounds left, and the .38 is only good at short range, anyway. Holly has a concussion at the very least, and he’s almost incapacitated. The bitter truth is this: they had a chance, and Brady got away.

He hugs her and says, “I don’t know.”

“Maybe we should hide.”

“I don’t think that would work,” he says, but doesn’t say why and is relieved when she doesn’t ask. It’s because there’s still a little of Brady left inside of him. It probably won’t last long, but for the time being, at least, Hodges suspects it’s as good as a homing beacon.