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CLACK

He told Pete he had an errand to run. That wasn’t precisely true. He could have said he had a case to work, but that isn’t precisely true, either. Although it would have been closer.

Shortly before leaving for his meeting with Pete, he received a call from Becky Helmington, at the Traumatic Brain Injury Clinic. He pays her a small amount each month to keep him updated on Brady Hartsfield, the patient Hodges calls ‘my boy.’ She also updates him on any strange occurrences on the ward, and feeds him the latest rumors. Hodges’s rational mind insists there’s nothing to these rumors, and certain strange occurrences have rational explanations, but there’s more to his mind than the rational part on top. Deep below that rational part is an underground ocean – there’s one inside every head, he believes – where strange creatures swim.

‘How’s your son?’ he asked Becky. ‘Hasn’t fallen out of any trees lately, I hope.’

‘No, Robby’s fine and dandy. Read today’s paper yet, Mr Hodges?’

‘Haven’t even taken it out of the bag yet.’ In this new era, where everything is at one’s fingertips on the Internet, some days he never takes it out of the bag at all. It just sits there beside his La-Z-Boy like an abandoned child.

‘Check the Metro section. Page two. Call me back.’

Five minutes later he did. ‘Jesus, Becky.’

‘Exactly what I thought. She was a nice girl.’

‘Will you be on the floor today?’

‘No. I’m upstate, at my sister’s. We’re spending the weekend.’ Becky paused. ‘Actually, I’ve been thinking about transferring to ICU in the main hospital when I get back. There’s an opening, and I’m tired of Dr Babineau. It’s true what they say – sometimes the neuros are crazier than the patients.’ She paused, then added: ‘I’d say I’m tired of Hartsfield, too, but that wouldn’t be exactly right. The truth is, I’m a little scared of him. The way I used to be scared of the local haunted house when I was a girl.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Uh-huh. I knew there were no ghosts in there, but on the other hand, what if there were?’

Hodges arrives at the hospital shortly after two P.M. and on this pre-holiday afternoon, the Brain Injury Clinic is as close to deserted as it ever gets. In the daytime, at least.

The nurse on duty – Norma Wilmer, according to her badge – gives him a visitor’s pass. As he clips it to his shirt, Hodges says, just passing the time, ‘I understand you had a tragedy on the ward yesterday.’

‘I can’t talk about that,’ Nurse Wilmer says.

‘Were you on duty?’

‘No.’ She goes back to her paperwork and her monitors.

That’s okay; he may learn more from Becky, once she gets back and has time to tap her sources. If she goes through with her plan to transfer (in Hodges’s mind, that’s the best sign yet that something real may be going on here), he will find someone else to help him out a little. Some of the nurses are dedicated smokers, in spite of all they know about the habit, and these are always happy to earn butt-money.

Hodges ambles down to Room 217, aware that his heart is beating harder and faster than normal. Another sign that he has begun to take this seriously. The news story in the morning paper shook him up more than a little.

He meets Library Al on the way, pushing his little trolley, and gives his usual greeting: ‘Hi, guy. How you doin?’

Al doesn’t reply at first. Doesn’t even seem to see him. The bruised-looking circles under his eyes are more prominent than ever, and his hair – usually neatly combed – is in disarray. Also, his damn badge is on upside-down. Hodges wonders again if Al is starting to lose the plot.

‘Everything all right, Al?’

‘Sure,’ Al says emptily. ‘Never so good as what you don’t see, right?’

Hodges has no idea how to reply to this non sequitur, and Al has continued on his way before he can think of one. Hodges looks after him, puzzled, then moves on.

Brady is sitting in his usual place by the window, wearing his usual outfit: jeans and a checked shirt. Someone has given him a haircut. It’s a bad one, a real butch job. Hodges doubts if his boy cares. It’s not like he’s going out boot scootin’ anytime soon.

‘Hello, Brady. Long time no see, as the ship’s chaplain said to the Mother Superior.’

Brady just looks out the window, and the same old questions join hands and play ring-a-rosie in Hodges’s head. Is Brady seeing anything out there? Does he know he has company? If so, does he know it’s Hodges? Is he thinking at all? Sometimes he thinks – enough to speak a few simple sentences, anyway – and in the physio center he’s able to shamble along the seventy feet or so the patients call Torture Avenue, but what does that really mean? Fish swim in an aquarium, but that doesn’t mean they think.

Hodges thinks, Never so good as what you don’t see.

Whatever that means.

He picks up the silver-framed photo of Brady and his mother with their arms around each other, smiling to beat the band. If the bastard ever loved anyone, it was dear old mommy. Hodges looks to see if there’s any reaction to his visitor having Deborah Ann’s picture in his hands. There doesn’t seem to be.

‘She looks hot, Brady. Was she hot? Was she a real hoochie-mama?’

No response.

‘I only ask because when we broke into your computer, we found some cheesecake pix of her. You know, negligees, nylons, bras and panties, that kind of thing. She looked hot to me, dressed like that. To the other cops, too, when I passed them around.’

Although he tells this lie with his usual panache, there’s still no reaction. Nada.

‘Did you fuck her, Brady? I bet you wanted to.’

Was that the barest twitch of an eyebrow? The slightest downward jerk of a lip?

Maybe, but Hodges knows it could just be his imagination, because he wants Brady to hear him. Nobody in America deserves to have more salt rubbed in more wounds than this murderous motherfucker.

‘Maybe you killed her and then fucked her. No need to be polite then, right?’

Nothing.

Hodges sits in the visitor’s chair and puts the picture back on the table next to one of the Zappit e-readers Al hands out to patients who want them. He folds his hands and looks at Brady, who should never have awakened from his coma but did.

Well.

Sort of.

‘Are you faking, Brady?’

He always asks this question, and there has never been any reply. There’s none today, either.

‘A nurse killed herself on the floor last night. In one of the bathrooms. Did you know that? Her name has been withheld for the time being, but the paper says she died of excessive bleeding. I’m guessing that means she cut her wrists, but I’m not sure. If you knew, I bet it made you happy. You always enjoyed a good suicide, didn’t you?’

He waits. Nothing.

Hodges leans forward, staring into Brady’s blank face and speaking earnestly. ‘The thing is – what I don’t understand – is how she did that. The mirrors in these bathrooms aren’t glass, they’re polished metal. I suppose she could have used the mirror in her compact, or something, but that seems like pretty small shit for a job like that. Kind of like bringing a knife to a gunfight.’ He sits back. ‘Hey, maybe she had a knife. One of those Swiss Army jobs, you know? In her purse. Did you ever have one of those?’

Nothing.

Or is there? He has a sense, very strong, that behind that blank stare, Brady is watching him.

‘Brady, some of the nurses believe you can turn the water on and off in your bathroom from here. They think you do it just to scare them. Is that true?’

Nothing. But that sense of being watched is strong. Brady did enjoy suicide, that’s the thing. You could even say suicide was his signature. Before Holly tuned him up with the Happy Slapper, Brady tried to get Hodges to kill himself. He didn’t succeed … but he did succeed with Olivia Trelawney, the woman whose Mercedes Holly Gibney now owns and plans to drive to Cincinnati.

‘If you can, do it now. Come on. Show off a little. Strut your stuff. What do you say?’

Nothing.

Some of the nurses believe that being whopped repeatedly in the head on the night he tried to blow up Mingo Auditorium has somehow rearranged Hartsfield’s brains. That being whopped repeatedly gave him … powers. Dr Babineau says that’s ridiculous, the hospital equivalent of an urban legend. Hodges is sure he’s right, but that sense of being watched is undeniable.

So is the feeling that, somewhere deep inside, Brady Hartsfield is laughing at him.

He picks up the e-reader, this one bright blue. On his last visit to the clinic, Library Al said Brady enjoyed the demos. He stares at it for hours, Al said.

‘Like this thing, do you?’

Nothing.

‘Not that you can do much with it, right?’

Zero. Zippo. Zilch.

Hodges puts it down beside the picture and stands. ‘Let me see what I can find out about the nurse, okay? What I can’t dig up, my assistant can. We have our sources. Are you glad that nurse is dead? Was she mean to you? Did she pinch your nose or twist your tiny useless peepee, maybe because you ran down a friend or relative of hers at City Center?’

Nothing.

Nothing.

Noth—

Brady’s eyes roll in their sockets. He looks at Hodges, and Hodges feels a moment of stark, unreasoning terror. Those eyes are dead on top, but he sees something beneath that looks not quite human. It makes him think of that movie about the little girl who was possessed by Pazuzu. Then the eyes return to the window and Hodges tells himself not to be an idiot. Babineau says Brady’s come back as far as he’s ever going to, and that’s not very far. He’s your basic blank slate, and nothing is written on it but Hodges’s own feelings for this man, the most despicable creature he has encountered in all his years of law enforcement.

I want him to be in there so I can hurt him, Hodges thinks. That’s all it is. It’ll turn out the nurse’s husband ran off on her, or she had a drug habit and was going to be fired, or both.

‘All right, Brady,’ he says. ‘Gonna put an egg in my shoe and beat it. Make like a bee and buzz. But I have to say, as one friend to another, that’s a really shitty haircut.’

No response.

‘Seeya later, alligator. After awhile, crocodile.’

He leaves, closing the door gently behind him. If Brady is in there, slamming it might give him the pleasure of knowing he’s gotten under Hodges’s skin.

Which, of course, he has.

When Hodges is gone, Brady raises his head. Beside the picture of his mother, the blue e-reader abruptly comes to life. Animated fish rush hither and yon while cheery, bubbly music plays. The screen switches to the Angry Birds demo, then to Barbie Fashion Walk, then to Galactic Warrior. After that, the screen goes dark again.

In the bathroom, the water in the sink gushes, then stops.

Brady looks at the picture of him and his mother, smiling with their cheeks pressed together. Stares at it. Stares at it.

The picture falls over.

Clack.

July 26, 2014