بخش 03 - فصل 24

24

Twenty to four.

There’s no need to park on a yellow curb now; the parents who clogged the area around the high school earlier, waiting to pick up their kids, have all departed. The buses are gone, too. Hodges, Holly, and Jerome are in a Mercedes sedan that once belonged to Holly’s cousin Olivia. It was used as a murder weapon at City Center, but none of them is thinking about that now. They have other things in mind, chiefly Thomas Saubers’s son.

‘The kid may be in trouble, but you have to admit he’s a quick thinker,’ Jerome says. After ten minutes parked down the street from City Drug, he went inside and ascertained that the boy he was tasked to follow had departed. ‘A pro couldn’t have done much better.’

‘True,’ Hodges says. The boy has turned into a challenge, certainly more of a challenge than the airplane-stealing Mr Madden. Hodges hasn’t questioned the pharmacist himself and doesn’t need to. Pete’s been getting prescriptions filled there for years, he knows the pharmacist and the pharmacist knows him. The kid made up some bullshit story, the pharmacist let him use the back door, and pop goes the weasel. They never covered Frederick Street, because there seemed to be no need.

‘Now what?’ Jerome asks.

‘I think we should go over to the Saubers house. We had a slim chance of keeping his parents out of this, per Tina’s request, but I think that just went by the boards.’

‘They must already have some idea it was him,’ Jerome says. ‘I mean, they’re his folks.’

Hodges thinks of saying There are none so blind as those who will not see, and shrugs instead.

Holly has contributed nothing to the discussion so far, has just sat behind the wheel of her big boat of a car, arms crossed over her bosom, fingers tapping lightly at her shoulders. Now she turns to Hodges, who is sprawled in the backseat. ‘Did you ask Peter about the notebook?’

‘I never got a chance,’ Hodges says. Holly’s got a bee in her hat about that notebook, and he should have asked, just to satisfy her, but the truth is, it never even crossed his mind. ‘He decided to go, and boogied. Wouldn’t even take my card.’

Holly points to the school. ‘I think we should talk to Ricky the Hippie before we leave.’ And when neither of them replies: ‘Peter’s house will still be there, you know. It’s not going to fly away, or anything.’

‘Guess it wouldn’t hurt,’ Jerome says.

Hodges sighs. ‘And tell him what, exactly? That one of his students found or stole a stack of money and doled it out to his parents like a monthly allowance? The parents should find that out before some teacher who probably doesn’t know jack-shit about anything. And Pete should be the one to tell them. It’ll let his sister off the hook, for one thing.’

‘But if he’s in some kind of jam he doesn’t want them to know about, and he still wanted to talk to someone … you know, an adult …’ Jerome is four years older than he was when he helped Hodges with the Brady Hartsfield mess, old enough to vote and buy legal liquor, but still young enough to remember how it is to be seventeen and suddenly realize you’ve gotten in over your head with something. When that happens, you want to talk to somebody who’s been around the block a few times.

‘Jerome’s right,’ Holly says. She turns back to Hodges. ‘Let’s talk to the teacher and find out if Pete asked for advice about anything. If he asks why we want to know—’

‘Of course he’ll want to know why,’ Hodges says, ‘and I can’t exactly claim confidentiality. I’m not a lawyer.’

‘Or a priest,’ Jerome adds, not helpfully.

‘You can tell him we’re friends of the family,’ Holly says firmly. ‘And that’s true.’ She opens her door.

‘You have a hunch about this,’ Hodges says. ‘Am I right?’

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘It’s a Holly-hunch. Now come on.’