End of Watch

Although Hodges has officially made Holly a full partner in Finders Keepers, and there’s a spare office (small, but with a street view), she has elected to remain based in the reception area. She’s seated there, peering at the screen of her computer, when Hodges comes in at quarter to eleven. And although she’s quick to sweep something into the wide drawer above the kneehole of her desk, Hodges’s olfactories are still in good working order (unlike some of his malfunctioning equipment further south), and he catches an unmistakable whiff of half-eaten Twinkie.

‘What’s the story, Hollyberry?’

‘You picked that up from Jerome, and you know I hate it. Call me Hollyberry again and I’ll go see my mother for a week. She keeps asking me to visit.’

As if, Hodges thinks. You can’t stand her, and besides, you’re on the scent, my dear. As hooked as a heroin addict.

‘Sorry, sorry.’ He looks over her shoulder and sees an article from Bloomberg Business dated April of 2014. The headline reads ZAPPIT ZAPPED. ‘Yeah, the company screwed the pooch and stepped out the door. Thought I told you that yesterday.’

‘You did. What’s interesting, to me at least, is the inventory.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Thousands of unsold Zappits, maybe tens of thousands. I wanted to know what happened to them.’

‘And did you find out?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Maybe they got shipped to the poor children in China, along with all the vegetables I refused to eat as a child.’

‘Starving children are not funny,’ she says, looking severe.

‘No, of course not.’

Hodges straightens up. He filled a prescription for painkillers on his way back from Stamos’s office – heavy-duty, but not as heavy as the stuff he may be taking soon – and he feels almost okay. There’s even a faint stirring of hunger in his belly, which is a welcome change. ‘They were probably destroyed. That’s what they do with unsold paperback books, I think.’

‘That’s a lot of inventory to destroy,’ she says, ‘considering the gadgets are loaded with games and still work. The top of the line, the Commanders, even came equipped with WiFi. Now tell me about your tests.’

Hodges manufactures a smile he hopes will look both modest and happy. ‘Good news, actually. It’s an ulcer, but just a little one. I’ll have to take a bunch of pills and be careful about my diet. Dr Stamos says if I do that, it should heal on its own.’

She gives him a radiant smile that makes Hodges feel good about this outrageous lie. Of course, it also makes him feel like dogshit on an old shoe.

‘Thank God! You’ll do what he says, won’t you?’

‘You bet.’ More dogshit; all the bland food in the world won’t cure what ails him. Hodges is not a giver-upper, and under other circumstances he would be in the office of gastroenterologist Henry Yip right now, no matter how bad the odds of beating pancreatic cancer. The message he received on the Blue Umbrella site has changed things, however.

‘Well, that’s fine. Because I don’t know what I’d do without you, Bill. I just don’t.’

‘Holly—’

‘Actually, I do. I’d go back home. And that would be bad for me.’

No shit, Hodges thinks. The first time I met you, in town for your aunt Elizabeth’s funeral, your mom was practically leading you around like a mutt on a leash. Do this, Holly, do that, Holly, and for Christ’s sake don’t do anything embarrassing.

‘Now tell me,’ she says. ‘Tell me the something new. Tell me tell me tell me!’

‘Give me fifteen minutes, then I’ll spill everything. In the meantime, see if you can find out what happened to all those Commander consoles. It’s probably not important, but it might be.’

‘Okay. Wonderful news about your tests, Bill.’

‘Yeah.’

He goes into his office. Holly swivels her chair to look after him for a moment, because he rarely closes the door when he’s in there. Still, it’s not unheard of. She returns to her computer.

‘He’s not done with you yet.’

Holly repeats it in a soft voice. She puts her half-eaten veggie burger down on its paper plate. Hodges has already demolished his, talking between bites. He doesn’t mention waking with pain; in this version he discovered the message because he got up to net-surf when he couldn’t sleep.

‘That’s what it said, all right.’

‘From Z-Boy.’

‘Yeah. Sounds like some superhero’s sidekick, doesn’t it? “Follow the adventures of Z-Man and Z-Boy, as they keep the streets of Gotham City safe from crime!”’

‘That’s Batman and Robin. They’re the ones who patrol Gotham City.’

‘I know that, I was reading Batman comics before you were born. I was just saying.’

She picks up her veggie burger, extracts a shred of lettuce, puts it down again. ‘When is the last time you visited Brady Hartsfield?’

Right to the heart of the matter, Hodges thinks admiringly. That’s my Holly.

‘I went to see him just after the business with the Saubers family, and once more later on. Midsummer, that would have been. Then you and Jerome cornered me and said I had to stop. So I did.’

‘We did it for your own good.’

‘I know that, Holly. Now eat your sandwich.’

She takes a bite, dabs mayo from the corner of her mouth, and asks him how Hartsfield seemed on his last visit.

‘The same… mostly. Just sitting there, looking out at the parking garage. I talk, I ask him questions, he says nothing. He gives Academy Award brain damage, no doubt about that. But there have been stories about him. That he has some kind of mind-power. That he can turn the water on and off in his bathroom, and does it sometimes to scare the staff. I’d call it bullshit, but when Becky Helmington was the head nurse, she said she’d actually seen stuff on a couple of occasions – rattling blinds, the TV going on by itself, the bottles on his IV stand swinging back and forth. And she’s what I’d call a credible witness. I know it’s hard to believe—’

‘Not so hard. Telekinesis, sometimes called psychokinesis, is a documented phenomenon. You never saw anything like that yourself during any of your visits?’

‘Well…’ He pauses, remembering. ‘Something did happen on my second-to-last visit. There was a picture on the table beside his bed – him and his mother with their arms around each other and their cheeks pressed together. On vacation somewhere. There was a bigger version in the house on Elm Street. You probably remember it.’

‘Of course I do. I remember everything we saw in that house, including some of the cheesecake photos of her he had on his computer.’ She crosses her arms over her small bosom and makes a moue of distaste. ‘That was a very unnatural relationship.’

‘Tell me about it. I don’t know if he ever actually had sex with her—’

‘Oough!’

‘—but I think he probably wanted to, and at the very least she enabled his fantasies. Anyway, I grabbed the picture and talked some smack about her, trying to get a rise out of him, trying to get him to respond. Because he’s in there, Holly, and I mean all present and accounted for. I was sure of it then and I’m sure of it now. He just sits there, but inside he’s the same human wasp that killed those people at City Center and tried to kill a whole lot more at Mingo Auditorium.’

‘And he used Debbie’s Blue Umbrella to talk with you, don’t forget that.’

‘After last night I’m not likely to.’

‘Tell me the rest of what happened that time.’

‘For just a second he stopped looking out his window at the parking garage across the way. His eyes… they rolled in their sockets, and he looked at me. Every hair on the nape of my neck stood up at attention, and the air felt… I don’t know… electric.’ He forces himself to say the rest. It’s like pushing a big rock up a steep hill. ‘I arrested some bad doers when I was on the cops, some very bad doers – one was a mother who killed her three-year-old for insurance that didn’t amount to a hill of beans – but I never felt the presence of evil in any of them once they were caught. It’s like evil’s some kind of vulture that flies away once these mokes are locked up. But I felt it that day, Holly. I really did. I felt it in Brady Hartsfield.’

‘I believe you,’ she says in a voice so small it’s barely a whisper.

‘And he had a Zappit. That’s the connection I was trying to make. If it is a connection, and not just a coincidence. There was a guy, I don’t know his last name, everyone just called him Library Al, who used to hand Zappits out along with Kindles and paperbacks when he made his rounds. I don’t know if Al was an orderly or a volunteer. Hell, he might even have been one of the janitors, doing a little good deed on the side. I think the only reason I didn’t pick up on that right away was the Zappit you found at the Ellerton house was pink. The one in Brady’s room was blue.’

‘How could what happened to Janice Ellerton and her daughter have anything to do with Brady Hartsfield? Unless… has anyone reported any telekinetic activity outside of his room? Have there been rumors of that?’

‘Nope, but right around the time the Saubers business finished up, a nurse committed suicide in the Brain Injury Clinic. Sliced her wrists in a bathroom right down the hall from Hartsfield’s room. Her name was Sadie MacDonald.’

‘Are you thinking…’

She’s picking at her sandwich again, shredding the lettuce and dropping it into her plate. Waiting for him.

‘Go on, Holly. I’m not going to say it for you.’

‘You’re thinking Brady talked her into it somehow? I don’t see how that could be possible.’

‘I don’t, either, but we know Brady has a fascination with suicide.’

‘This Sadie MacDonald… did she happen to have one of those Zappit things?’

‘God knows.’

‘How… how did…’

This time he does help. ‘With a scalpel she filched from one of the surgical suites. I got that from the ME’s assistant. Slipped her a gift card to DeMasio’s, the Italian joint.’

Holly shreds more lettuce. Her plate is starting to look like confetti at a leprechaun birthday party. It’s driving Hodges a little nuts, but he doesn’t stop her. She’s working her way up to saying it. And finally does. ‘You’re going to see Hartsfield.’

‘Yeah, I am.’

‘Do you really think you’ll get anything out of him? You never have before.’

‘I know a little more now.’ But what, really, does he know? He’s not even sure what he suspects. But maybe Hartsfield isn’t a human wasp, after all. Maybe he’s a spider, and Room 217 at the Bucket is the center of his web, where he sits spinning.

Or maybe it’s all coincidence. Maybe the cancer is already eating into my brain, sparking a lot of paranoid ideas.

That’s what Pete would think, and his partner – hard to stop thinking of her as Miss Pretty Gray Eyes, now that it’s in his head – would say it right out loud.

He stands up. ‘No time like the present.’

She drops her sandwich onto the pile of mangled lettuce so she can grasp his arm. ‘Be careful.’

‘I will.’

‘Guard your thoughts. I know how crazy that sounds, but I am crazy, at least some of the time, so I can say it. If you should have any ideas about… well, harming yourself… call me. Call me right away.’

‘Okay.’

She crosses her arms and grasps her shoulders – that old fretful gesture he sees less often now. ‘I wish Jerome was here.’ Jerome Robinson is in Arizona, taking a semester off from college, building houses as part of a Habitat for Humanity crew. Once, when Hodges used the phrase garnishing his résumé in relation to this activity, Holly scolded him, telling him Jerome was doing it because he was a good person. With that, Hodges has to agree – Jerome really is a good person.

‘I’m going to be fine. And this is probably nothing. We’re like kids worrying that the empty house on the corner is haunted. If we said anything about it to Pete, he’d have us both committed.’

Holly, who actually has been committed (twice), believes some empty houses really might be haunted. She removes one small and ringless hand from one shoulder long enough to grasp his arm again, this time by the sleeve of his overcoat. ‘Call me when you get there, and call me again when you leave. Don’t forget, because I’ll be worrying and I can’t call you because—’

‘No cell phones allowed in the Bucket, yeah, I know. I’ll do it, Holly. In the meantime, I’ve got a couple of things for you.’ He sees her hand dart toward a notepad and shakes his head. ‘No, you don’t need to write this down. It’s simple. First, go on eBay or wherever you go to buy stuff that’s no longer available retail and order one of those Zappit Commanders. Can you do that?’

‘Easy. What’s the other thing?’

‘Sunrise Solutions bought out Zappit, then went bankrupt. Someone will be serving as the trustee in bankruptcy. The trustee hires lawyers, accountants, and liquidators to help squeeze every cent out of the company. Get a name and I’ll make a call later today or tomorrow. I want to know what happened to all those unsold Zappit consoles, because somebody gave one to Janice Ellerton a long time after both companies were out of business.’

She lights up. ‘That’s fracking brilliant!’

Not brilliant, just police work, he thinks. I may have terminal cancer, but I still remember how the job is done, and that’s something.

That’s something good.

As he exits the Turner Building and heads for the bus stop (the Number 5 is a quicker and easier way to get across town than retrieving his Prius and driving himself), Hodges is a deeply preoccupied man. He is thinking about how he should approach Brady – how he can open him up. He was an ace in the interrogation room when he was on the job, so there has to be a way. Previously he has only gone to Brady to goad him and confirm his gut belief that Brady is faking his semi-catatonic state. Now he has some real questions, and there must be some way he can get Brady to answer them.

I have to poke the spider, he thinks.

Interfering with his efforts to plan the forthcoming confrontation are thoughts of the diagnosis he’s just received, and the inevitable fears that go with it. For his life, yes. But there are also questions of how much he may suffer a bit further down the line, and how he will inform those who need to know. Corinne and Allie will be shaken up by the news but basically okay. The same goes for the Robinson family, although he knows Jerome and Barbara, his kid sister (not such a kid now; she’ll turn sixteen in a few months) will take it hard. Mostly, though, it’s Holly he worries about. She isn’t crazy, despite what she said in the office, but she’s fragile. Very. She’s had two breakdowns in her past, one in high school and one in her early twenties. She’s stronger now, but her main sources of support over these last few years have been him and the little company they run together. If they go, she’ll be at risk. He can’t afford to kid himself about that.

I won’t let her break, Hodges thinks. He walks with his head down and his hands stuffed in his pockets, blowing out white vapor. I can’t let that happen.

Deep in these thoughts, he misses the primer-spotted Chevy Malibu for the third time in two days. It’s parked up the street, opposite the building where Holly is now hunting down the Sunrise Solutions bankruptcy trustee. Standing on the sidewalk next to it is an elderly man in an old Army surplus parka that has been mended with masking tape. He watches Hodges get on the bus, then takes a cell phone from his coat pocket and makes a call.

Holly watches her boss – who happens to be the person she loves most in the world – walk to the bus stop on the corner. He looks so slight now, almost a shadow of the burly man she first met six years ago. And he has his hand pressed to his side as he walks. He does that a lot lately, and she doesn’t think he’s even aware of it.

Nothing but a small ulcer, he said. She’d like to believe that – would like to believe him – but she’s not sure she does.

The bus comes and Bill gets on. Holly stands by the window watching it go, gnawing at her fingernails, wishing for a cigarette. She has Nicorette gum, plenty of it, but sometimes only a cigarette will do.

Quit wasting time, she tells herself. If you really mean to be a rotten dirty sneak, there’s no time like the present.

So she goes into his office.

His computer is dark, but he never turns it off until he goes home at night; all she has to do is refresh the screen. Before she can, her eye is caught by the yellow legal pad beside the keyboard. He always has one handy, usually covered with notes and doodles. It’s how he thinks.

Written at the top of this one is a line she knows well, one that has resonated with her ever since she first heard the song on the radio: All the lonely people. He has underlined it. Beneath are names she knows.

And others. Her own, of course; she is also a spinster. Pete Huntley, who’s divorced. And Hodges himself, also divorced.

Single people are twice as likely to commit suicide. Divorced people, four times as likely.

‘Brady Hartsfield enjoyed suicide,’ she murmurs. ‘It was his hobby.’

Below the names, circled, is a jotted note she doesn’t understand: Visitors list? What visitors?

She hits a random key and Bill’s computer lights up, showing his desktop screen with all his files scattered helter-skelter across it. She has scolded him about this time and again, has told him it’s like leaving the door of your house unlocked and your valuables all laid out on the dining room table with a sign on them saying PLEASE STEAL ME, and he always says he will do better, and he never does. Not that it would have changed things in Holly’s case, because she also has his password. He gave it to her himself. In case something ever happened to him, he said. Now she’s afraid something has.

One look at the screen is enough to tell her the something is no ulcer. There’s a new file folder there, one with a scary title. Holly clicks on it. The terrible gothic letters at the top are enough to confirm that the document is indeed the last will and testament of one Kermit William Hodges. She closes it at once. She has absolutely no desire to paw through his bequests. Knowing that such a document exists and that he has been reviewing it this very day is enough. Too much, actually.

She stands there clutching at her shoulders and nibbling her lips. The next step would be worse than snooping. It would be prying. It would be burglary.

You’ve come this far, so go ahead.

‘Yes, I have to,’ Holly whispers, and clicks on the postage stamp icon that opens his email, telling herself there will probably be nothing. Only there is. The most recent message likely came in while they were talking about what he found early this morning under Debbie’s Blue Umbrella. It’s from the doctor he went to see. Stamos, his name is. She opens the email and reads: Here is a copy of your most recent test results, for your files.

Holly uses the password in the email to open the attachment, sits in Bill’s chair, and leans forward, her hands clenched tightly in her lap. By the time she scrolls down to the second of the eight pages, she is crying.

Hodges has no more than settled in his seat at the back of the Number 5 when glass breaks in his coat pocket and the boys cheer the home run that just broke Mrs O’Leary’s living room window. A man in a business suit lowers his Wall Street Journal and looks disapprovingly at Hodges over the top of it.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ Hodges says. ‘Keep meaning to change it.’

‘You should make it a priority,’ the businessman says, and raises his paper again.

The text is from his old partner. Again. Feeling a strong sense of déjà vu, Hodges calls him.

‘Pete,’ he says, ‘what’s with all the texts? It isn’t as if you don’t have my number on speed dial.’

‘Figured Holly probably programmed your phone for you and put on some crazy ringtone,’ Pete says. ‘That’d be her idea of a real knee-slapper. Also figured you’d have it turned up to max volume, you deaf sonofabitch.’

‘The text alert’s the one on max,’ Hodges says. ‘When I get a call, the phone just has a mini-orgasm against my leg.’

‘Change the alert, then.’

Hours ago he found out he has only months to live. Now he’s discussing the volume of his cell phone.

‘I’ll absolutely do that. Now tell me why you called.’

‘Got a guy in computer forensics who landed on that game gadget like a fly on shit. He loved it, called it retro. Can you believe that? Gadget was probably manufactured all of five years ago and now it’s retro.’

‘The world is speeding up.’

‘It’s sure doing something. Anyway, the Zappit is zapped. When our guy plugged in fresh batteries, it popped half a dozen bright blue flashes, then died.’

‘What’s wrong with it?’

‘Some kind of virus is technically possible, the thing supposedly has WiFi and that’s mostly how those bugs get downloaded, but he says it’s more likely a bad chip or a fried circuit. The point is, it means nothing. Ellerton couldn’t have used it.’

‘Then why did she keep the charger cord for it plugged in right there in her daughter’s bathroom?’

That silences Pete for a moment. Then he says, ‘Okay, so maybe it worked for awhile and then the chip died. Or whatever they do.’

It worked, all right, Hodges thinks. She played solitaire on it at the kitchen table. Lots of different kinds, like Klondike and Pyramid and Picture. Which you would know, Peter my dear, if you’d talked to Nancy Alderson. That must still be on your bucket list.

‘All right,’ Hodges says. ‘Thanks for the update.’

‘It’s your final update, Kermit. I have a partner I’ve worked with quite successfully since you pulled the pin, and I’d like her to be at my retirement party instead of sitting at her desk and sulking over how I preferred you to her right to the bitter end.’

Hodges could pursue this, but the hospital is only two stops away now. Also, he discovers, he wants to separate himself from Pete and Izzy and go his own way on this thing. Pete plods, and Izzy actually drags her feet. Hodges wants to run with it, bad pancreas and all.

‘I hear you,’ he says. ‘Again, thanks.’

‘Case closed?’

‘Finito.’

His eyes flick up and to the left.

Nineteen blocks from where Hodges is returning his iPhone to his overcoat pocket, there is another world. Not a very nice one. Jerome Robinson’s sister is there, and she is in trouble.

Pretty and demure in her Chapel Ridge school uniform (gray wool coat, gray skirt, white kneesocks, red scarf wrapped around her neck), Barbara walks down Martin Luther King Avenue with a yellow Zappit Commander in her gloved hands. On it the Fishin’ Hole fish dart and swim, although they are almost invisible in the cold bright light of midday.

MLK is one of two main thoroughfares in the part of the city known as Lowtown, and although the population is predominantly black and Barbara is herself black (make that café au lait), she has never been here before, and that single fact makes her feel stupid and worthless. These are her people, their collective ancestors might have toted barges and lifted bales on the same plantation back in the day, for all she knows, and yet she has never been here one single time. She has been warned away not only by her parents but by her brother.

‘Lowtown’s where they drink the beer and then eat the bottle it came in,’ he told her once. ‘No place for a girl like you.’

A girl like me, she thinks. A nice upper-middle-class girl like me, who goes to a nice private school and has nice white girlfriends and plenty of nice preppy clothes and an allowance. Why, I even have a bank card! I can withdraw sixty dollars from an ATM any time I want! Amazeballs!

She walks like a girl in a dream, and it’s a little like a dream because it’s all so strange and it’s less than two miles from home, which happens to be a cozy Cape Cod with an attached two-car garage, mortgage all paid off. She walks past check cashing joints and pawnshops filled with guitars and radios and gleaming pearl-handled straight razors. She walks past bars that smell of beer even with the doors closed against the January cold. She walks past hole-in-the-wall restaurants that smell of grease. Some sell pizza by the slice, some sell Chinese. In the window of one is a propped sign reading HUSH PUPPYS AND COLLARD GREENS LIKE YOUR MOMMA USED TO MAKE.

Not my momma, Barbara thinks. I don’t even know what a collard green is. Spinach? Cabbage?

On the corners – every corner, it seems – boys in long shorts and loose jeans are hanging out, sometimes standing close to rusty firebarrels to keep warm, sometimes playing hacky sack, sometimes just jiving in their gigantic sneakers, their jackets hung open in spite of the cold. They shout Yo to their homies and hail passing cars and when one stops they hand small glassine envelopes through the open window. She walks block after block of MLK (nine, ten, maybe a dozen, she’s lost count) and each corner is like a drive-thru for drugs instead of for hamburgers or tacos.

She passes shivering women dressed in hotpants, short fake fur jackets, and shiny boots; on their heads they wear amazing wigs of many colors. She passes empty buildings with boarded-up windows. She passes a car that has been stripped to the axles and covered with gang tags. She passes a woman with a dirty bandage over one eye. The woman is dragging a screeching toddler by the arm. She passes a man sitting on a blanket who drinks from a bottle of wine and wiggles his gray tongue at her. It’s poor and it’s desperate and it’s been right here all along and she never did anything about it. Never did anything? Never even thought about it. What she did was her homework. What she did was talk on the phone and text with her BFFs at night. What she did was update her Facebook status and worry about her complexion. She is your basic teen parasite, dining in nice restaurants with her mother and father while her brothers and sisters, right here all along, less than two miles from her nice suburban home, drink wine and take drugs to blot out their terrible lives. She is ashamed of her hair, hanging smoothly to her shoulders. She is ashamed of her clean white kneesocks. She is ashamed of her skin color because it’s the same as theirs.

‘Hey, blackish!’ It’s a yell from the other side of the street. ‘What you doin down here? You got no bi’ness down here!’

Blackish.

It’s the name of a TV show, they watch it at home and laugh, but it’s also what she is. Not black but blackish. Living a white life in a white neighborhood. She can do that because her parents make lots of money and own a home on a block where people are so screamingly non-prejudiced that they cringe if they hear one of their kids call another one dumbhead. She can live that wonderful white life because she is a threat to no one, she no rock-a da boat. She just goes her way, chattering with her friends about boys and music and boys and clothes and boys and the TV programs they all like and which girl they saw walking with which boy at the Birch Hill Mall.

She is blackish, a word that means the same as useless, and she doesn’t deserve to live.

‘Maybe you should just end it. Let that be your statement.’

The idea is a voice, and it comes to her with a kind of revelatory logic. Emily Dickinson said her poem was her letter to the world that never wrote to her, they read that in school, but Barbara herself has never written a letter at all. Plenty of stupid essays and book reports and emails, but nothing that really matters.

‘Maybe it’s time that you did.’

Not her voice, but the voice of a friend.

She stops outside a shop where fortunes are read and the Tarot is told. In its dirty window she thinks she sees the reflection of someone standing beside her, a white man with a smiling, boyish face and a tumble of blond hair on his forehead. She glances around, but there’s no one there. It was just her imagination. She looks back down at the screen of the game console. In the shade of the fortune-telling shop’s awning, the swimming fish are bright and clear again. Back and forth they go, every now and then obliterated by a bright blue flash. Barbara looks back the way she came and sees a gleaming black truck rolling toward her along the boulevard, moving fast and weaving from lane to lane. It’s the kind with oversized tires, the kind the boys at school call a Bigfoot or a Gangsta Large.

‘If you’re going to do it, you better get to it.’

It’s as if someone really is standing beside her. Someone who understands. And the voice is right. Barbara has never considered suicide before, but at this moment the idea seems perfectly rational.

‘You don’t even need to leave a note,’ her friend says. She can see his reflection in the window again. Ghostly. ‘The fact that you did it down here will be your letter to the world.’

True.

‘You know too much about yourself now to go on living,’ her friend points out as she returns her gaze to the swimming fish. ‘You know too much, and all of it is bad.’ Then it hastens to add, ‘Which isn’t to say you’re a horrible person.’ She thinks, No, not horrible, just useless.

Blackish.

The truck is coming. The Gangsta Large. As Jerome Robinson’s sister steps toward the curb, ready to meet it, her face lights in an eager smile.

Dr Felix Babineau is wearing a thousand-dollar suit beneath the white coat that goes flying out behind him as he strides down the hallway of the Bucket, but he now needs a shave worse than ever and his usually elegant white hair is in disarray. He ignores a cluster of nurses who are standing by the duty desk and talking in low, agitated tones.

Nurse Wilmer approaches him. ‘Dr Babineau, have you heard—’

He doesn’t even look at her, and Norma has to sidestep quickly to keep from being bowled over. She looks after him in surprise.

Babineau takes the red DO NOT DISTURB card he always keeps in the pocket of his exam coat, hangs it on the doorknob of Room 217, and goes in. Brady Hartsfield does not look up. All of his attention is fixed on the game console in his lap, where the fish swim back and forth. There is no music; he has muted the sound.

Often when he enters this room, Felix Babineau disappears and Dr Z takes his place. Not today. Dr Z is just another version of Brady, after all – a projection – and today Brady is too busy to project.

His memories of trying to blow up the Mingo Auditorium during the ’Round Here concert are still jumbled, but one thing has been clear since he woke up: the face of the last person he saw before the lights went out. It was Barbara Robinson, the sister of Hodges’s nigger lawnboy. She was sitting almost directly across the aisle from Brady. Now she’s here, swimming with the fish they share on their two screens. Brady got Scapelli, the sadistic cunt who twisted his nipple. Now he will take care of the Robinson bitch. Her death will hurt her big brother, but that’s not the most important thing. It will put a dagger in the old detective’s heart. That’s the most important thing.

The most delicious thing.

He comforts her, tells her she’s not a horrible person. It helps to get her moving. Something is coming down MLK, he can’t be sure what it is because a down-deep part of her is still fighting him, but it’s big. Big enough to do the job.

‘Brady, listen to me. Z-Boy called.’ Z-Boy’s actual name is Brooks, but Brady refuses to call him that anymore. ‘He’s been watching, as you instructed. That cop… ex-cop, whatever he is—’

‘Shut up.’ Not raising his head, his hair tumbled across his brow. In the strong sunlight he looks closer to twenty than thirty.

Babineau, who is used to being heard and who still has not entirely grasped his new subordinate status, pays no attention. ‘Hodges was on Hilltop Court yesterday, first at the Ellerton house and then snooping around the one across the street where—’

‘I said shut up!’

‘Brooks saw him get on a Number 5 bus, which means he’s probably coming here! And if he’s coming here, he knows!’

Brady looks at him for just a moment, his eyes blazing, then returns his attention to the screen. If he slips now, allows this educated idiot to divert his concentration—

But he won’t allow it. He wants to hurt Hodges, he wants to hurt the nigger lawnboy, he owes them, and this is the way to do it. Nor is it just a matter of revenge. She’s the first test subject who was at the concert, and she’s not like the others, who were easier to control. But he is controlling her, all he needs is ten more seconds, and now he sees what’s coming for her. It’s a truck. A big black one.

Hey, honey, Brady Hartsfield thinks. Your ride is here.

Barbara stands on the curb, watching the truck approach, timing it, but just as she flexes her knees, hands grab her from behind.

‘Hey, girl, what’s up?’

She struggles, but the grip on her shoulders is strong and the truck passes by in a blare of Ghostface Killah. She whirls around, pulling free, and faces a skinny boy about her own age, wearing a Todhunter High letter jacket. He’s tall, maybe six and a half feet, so she has to look up. He has a tight cap of brown curls and a goatee. Around his neck is a thin gold chain. He’s smiling. His eyes are green and full of fun.

‘You good-lookin, that’s a fact as well as a compliment, but not from around here, correct? Not dressed like that, and hey, didn’t your mom ever tell you not to jaywalk the block?’

‘Leave me alone!’ She’s not scared; she’s furious.

He laughs. ‘And tough! I like a tough girl. Want a slice and a Coke?’

‘I don’t want anything from you!’

Her friend has left, probably disgusted with her. It’s not my fault, she thinks. It’s this boy’s fault. This lout.

Lout! A blackish word if ever there was one. She feels her face heat up and drops her gaze to the fish on the Zappit screen. They will comfort her, they always do. To think she almost threw the game console away after that man gave it to her! Before she found the fish! The fish always take her away, and sometimes they bring her friend. But she only gets a momentary look before the console vanishes. Poof! Gone! The lout has got it in his long-fingered hands and is staring down at the screen, fascinated.

‘Whoa, this is old-school!’

‘It’s mine!’ Barbara shouts. ‘Give it back!’

Across the street a woman laughs and yells in a whiskey voice, ‘Tell im, sister! Bring down that high neck!’

Barbara grabs for the Zappit. Tall Boy holds it over his head, smiling at her.

‘Give it back, I said! Stop being a prick!’

More people are watching now, and Tall Boy plays to the audience. He jinks left, then stutter-steps to the right, probably a move he uses all the time on the basketball court, never losing that indulgent smile. His green eyes sparkle and dance. Every girl at Todhunter is probably in love with those eyes, and Barbara is no longer thinking about suicide, or being blackish, or what a socially unconscious bag of waste she is. Right now she’s only mad, and him being cute makes her madder. She plays varsity soccer at Chapel Ridge and now she hoicks her best penalty kick into Tall Boy’s shin.

He yells in pain (but it’s somehow amused pain, which infuriates her even more, because that was a really hard kick), and bends over to grab his ouchy. It brings him down to her level, and Barbara snatches the precious rectangle of yellow plastic. She wheels, skirt flaring, and runs into the street.

‘Honey look out!’ the whiskey-voiced woman screams.

Barbara hears a shriek of brakes and smells hot rubber. She looks to her left and sees a panel truck bearing down on her, the front end heeling to the left as the driver stamps on the brake. Behind the dirty windshield, his face is all dismayed eyes and open mouth. She throws up her hands, dropping the Zappit. All at once the last thing in the world Barbara Robinson wants is to die, but here she is, in the street after all, and it’s too late.

She thinks, My ride is here.

Brady shuts down the Zappit and looks up at Babineau with a wide smile. ‘Got her,’ he says. His words are clear, not the slightest bit mushy. ‘Let’s see how Hodges and the Harvard jungle bunny like that.’

Babineau has a good idea who she is, and he supposes he should care, but he doesn’t. What he cares about is his own skin. How did he ever allow Brady to pull him into this? When did he stop having a choice?

‘It’s Hodges I’m here about. I’m quite sure he’s on his way right now. To see you.’

‘Hodges has been here many times,’ Brady says, although it’s true the old Det-Ret hasn’t been around for awhile. ‘He never gets past the catatonic act.’

‘He’s started putting things together. He’s not stupid, you said as much yourself. Did he know Z-Boy when he was just Brooks? He must have seen him around here when he came to visit you.’

‘No idea.’ Brady is wrung out, sated. What he really wants now is to savor the death of the Robinson girl, then take a nap. There is a lot to be done, great things are afoot, but at the moment he needs rest.

‘He can’t see you like this,’ Babineau says. ‘Your skin is flushed and you’re covered with sweat. You look like someone who just ran the City Marathon.’

‘Then keep him out. You can do that. You’re the doctor and he’s just another half-bald buzzard on Social Security. These days he doesn’t even have the legal authority to ticket a car at an expired parking meter.’ Brady’s wondering how the nigger lawnboy will take the news. Jerome. Will he cry? Will he sink to his knees? Will he rend his garments and beat his breast?

Will he blame Hodges? Unlikely, but that would be best. That would be wonderful.

‘All right,’ Babineau says. ‘Yes, you’re right, I can do that.’ He’s talking to himself as much as to the man who was supposed to be his guinea pig. That turned out to be quite the joke, didn’t it? ‘For now, at least. But he must still have friends on the police, you know. Probably lots of them.’

‘I’m not afraid of them, and I’m not afraid of him. I just don’t want to see him. At least, not now.’ Brady smiles. ‘After he finds out about the girl. Then I’ll want to see him. Now get out of here.’

Babineau, who is at last beginning to understand who is the boss, leaves Brady’s room. As always, it’s a relief to do that as himself. Because every time he comes back to Babineau after being Dr Z, there’s a little less Babineau to come back to.

Tanya Robinson calls her daughter’s cell for the fourth time in the last twenty minutes and for the fourth time gets nothing but Barbara’s chirpy voicemail.

‘Disregard my other messages,’ Tanya says after the beep. ‘I’m still mad, but mostly what I am right now is worried sick. Call me. I need to know you’re okay.’

She drops her phone on her desk and begins pacing the small confines of her office. She debates calling her husband and decides not to. Not yet. He’s apt to go nuclear at the thought of Barbara skipping school, and he’ll assume that’s what she’s doing. Tanya at first made that assumption herself when Mrs Rossi, the Chapel Ridge attendance officer, called to ask if Barbara was home sick. Barbara has never played hooky before, but there’s always a first time for bad behavior, especially with teenagers. Only she never would have skipped alone, and after further consultation with Mrs Rossi, Tanya has confirmed that all of Barb’s close friends are in school today.

Since then her mind has turned to darker thoughts, and one image keeps haunting her: the sign over the Crosstown Expressway the police use for Amber Alerts. She keeps seeing BARBARA ROBINSON on that sign, flashing on and off like some hellish movie marquee.

Her phone chimes the first few notes of ‘Ode to Joy’ and she races to it, thinking Thank God, oh thank God, I’ll ground her for the rest of the win—

Only it’s not her daughter’s smiling face in the window. It’s an ID: CITY POLICE DEPT. MAIN BRANCH. Terror rolls through her stomach and her bowels loosen. For a moment she can’t even take the call, because her thumb won’t move. At last she manages to press the green ACCEPT button and silence the music. Everything in her office, especially the family photo on her desk, is too bright. The phone seems to float up to her ear.

‘Hello?’

She listens.

‘Yes, this is she.’

She listens, her free hand rising to cover her mouth and stifle whatever sound wants to come out. She hears herself ask, ‘Are you sure it’s my daughter? Barbara Rosellen Robinson?’

The policeman who has called to notify her says yes. He’s sure. They found her ID in the street. What he doesn’t tell her is that they had to wipe off the blood to see the name.

Hodges knows something’s amiss as soon as he steps out of the skyway that connects Kiner Memorial proper to the Lakes Region Traumatic Brain Injury Clinic, where the walls are painted a soothing pink and soft music plays day and night. The usual patterns have been disrupted, and very little work seems to be getting done. Lunch carts stand marooned, filled with congealing plates of noodly stuff that might once have been the cafeteria’s idea of Chinese. Nurses cluster, murmuring in low tones. One appears to be crying. Two interns have their heads together by the water fountain. An orderly is talking on his cell phone, which is technically cause for suspension, but Hodges thinks he’s safe enough; no one is paying him any mind.

At least Ruth Scapelli is nowhere in sight, which might improve his chances of getting in to see Hartsfield. It’s Norma Wilmer at the duty desk, and along with Becky Helmington, Norma was his source for all things Brady before Hodges quit visiting Room 217. The bad news is that Hartsfield’s doctor is also at the duty desk. Hodges has never been able to establish a rapport with him, although God knows he’s tried.

He ambles down to the water fountain, hoping Babineau hasn’t spotted him and will soon be off to look at PET scans or something, leaving Wilmer alone and approachable. He gets a drink (wincing and placing a hand to his side as he straightens up), then speaks to the interns. ‘Is something going on here? The place seems a little riled up.’

They hesitate and glance at each other.

‘Can’t talk about it,’ says Intern One. He still has the remains of his adolescent acne, and looks about seventeen. Hodges shudders at the thought of him assisting in a surgery job more difficult than removing a thumb splinter.

‘Something with a patient? Hartsfield, maybe? I only ask because I used to be a cop, and I’m sort of responsible for putting him here.’

‘Hodges,’ says Intern Two. ‘Is that your name?’

‘Yeah, that’s me.’

‘You caught him, right?’

Hodges agrees instantly, although if it had been left up to him, Brady would have bagged a lot more in Mingo Auditorium than he managed to get at City Center. No, it was Holly and Jerome Robinson who stopped Brady before he could detonate his devil’s load of homemade plastic explosive.

The interns exchange another glance and then One says, ‘Hartsfield’s the same as ever, just gorking along. It’s Nurse Ratched.’

Intern Two gives him an elbow. ‘Speak no ill of the dead, asshole. Especially when the guy listening might have loose lips.’

Hodges immediately runs a thumbnail across his mouth, as if sealing his dangerous lips shut.

Intern One looks flustered. ‘Head Nurse Scapelli, I mean. She committed suicide last night.’

All the lights in Hodges’s head come on, and for the first time since yesterday he forgets that he’s probably going to die. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Sliced her arms and wrists and bled out,’ says Two. ‘That’s what I’m hearing, anyway.’

‘Did she leave a note?’

They have no idea.

Hodges heads for the duty desk. Babineau is still there, going over files with Wilmer (who looks flustered at her apparent battlefield promotion), but he can’t wait. This is Hartsfield’s dirt. He doesn’t know how that can be, but it has Brady written all over it. The fucking suicide prince.

He almost calls Nurse Wilmer by her first name, but instinct makes him shy from that at the last moment. ‘Nurse Wilmer, I’m Bill Hodges.’ A thing she knows very well. ‘I worked both the City Center case and the Mingo Auditorium thing. I need to see Mr Hartsfield.’

She opens her mouth, but Babineau is there ahead of her. ‘Out of the question. Even if Mr Hartsfield were allowed visitors, which he is not by order of the District Attorney’s office, he wouldn’t be allowed to see you. He needs peace and calm. Each of your previous unauthorized visits has shattered that.’

‘News to me,’ Hodges says mildly. ‘Every time I’ve been to see him, he just sits there. Bland as a bowl of oatmeal.’

Norma Wilmer’s head goes back and forth. She’s like a woman watching a tennis match.

‘You don’t see what we see after you’ve left.’ Color is rising in Babineau’s stubble-flecked cheeks. And there are dark circles under his eyes. Hodges remembers a cartoon from his Sunday school Living with Jesus workbook, back in the prehistoric era when cars had fins and girls wore bobby sox. Brady’s doc has the same look as the guy in the cartoon, but Hodges doubts if he’s a chronic masturbator. On the other hand, he remembers Becky telling him that the neuro doctors are often crazier than the patients.

‘And what would that be?’ Hodges asks. ‘Little psychic tantrums? Do things have a way of falling over after I’m gone? The toilet in his bathroom flushes by itself, maybe?’

‘Ridiculous. What you leave is psychic wreckage, Mr Hodges. He’s not so brain damaged that he doesn’t know you’re obsessed with him. Malevolently so. I want you to leave. We’ve had a tragedy, and many of the patients are upset.’

Hodges sees Wilmer’s eyes widen slightly at this, and knows that the patients capable of cognition – many here in the Bucket are not – have no idea that the Head Nurse has offed herself.

‘I only have a few questions for him, and then I’ll be out of your hair.’

Babineau leans forward. The eyes behind his gold-rimmed glasses are threaded with snaps of red. ‘Listen closely, Mr Hodges. One, Mr Hartsfield is not capable of answering your questions. If he could answer questions, he would have been brought to trial for his crimes by now. Two, you have no official standing. Three, if you don’t leave now, I will call security and have you escorted from the premises.’

Hodges says, ‘Pardon me for asking, but are you all right?’

Babineau draws back as if Hodges has brandished a fist in his face. ‘Get out!’

The little clusters of medical personnel stop talking and look around.

‘Gotcha,’ Hodges says. ‘Going. All good.’

There’s a snack alcove near the entrance to the skyway. Intern Two is leaning there, hands in pockets. ‘Ooh, baby,’ he says. ‘You been schooled.’

‘So it would seem.’ Hodges studies the wares in the Nibble-A-Bit machine. He sees nothing in there that won’t set his guts on fire, but that’s okay; he’s not hungry.

‘Young man,’ he says, without turning around, ‘if you would like to make fifty dollars for doing a simple errand that will cause you no trouble, then get with me.’

Intern Two, a fellow who looks like he might actually attain adulthood at some point in the not-too-distant future, joins him at the Nibble-A-Bit. ‘What’s the errand?’

Hodges keeps his pad in his back pocket, just as he did when he was a Detective First Class. He scribbles two words – Call me – and adds his cell number. ‘Give this to Norma Wilmer once Smaug spreads his wings and flies away.’

Intern Two takes the note and folds it into the breast pocket of his scrubs. Then he looks expectant. Hodges takes out his wallet. Fifty is a lot for delivering a note, but he has discovered at least one good thing about terminal cancer: you can toss your budget out the window.

Jerome Robinson is balancing boards on his shoulder under the hot Arizona sun when his cell phone rings. The houses they are building – the first two already framed – are in a low-income but respectable neighborhood on the southern outskirts of Phoenix. He puts the boards across the top of a handy wheelbarrow and plucks his phone from his belt, thinking it will be Hector Alonzo, the job foreman. This morning one of the workmen (a workwoman, actually) tripped and fell into a stack of rebar. She broke her collarbone and suffered an ugly facial laceration. Alonzo took her to the St Luke’s ER, appointing Jerome temporary foreman in his absence.

It’s not Alonzo’s name he sees in the little window, but Holly Gibney’s face. It’s a photo he took himself, catching her in one of her rare smiles.

‘Hey, Holly, how are you? I’ll have to call you back in a few, it’s been a crazy morning here, but—’

‘I need you to come home,’ Holly says. She sounds calm, but Jerome knows her of old, and in just those six words he can sense strong emotions held in check. Fear chief among them. Holly is still a very fearful person. Jerome’s mother, who loves her dearly, once called fear Holly’s default setting.

‘Home? Why? What’s wrong?’ His own fear suddenly grips him. ‘Is it my dad? Mom? Is it Barbie?’

‘It’s Bill,’ she says. ‘He has cancer. A very bad cancer. Pancreatic. If he doesn’t get treatment he’ll die, he’ll probably die anyway, but he could have time and he told me it was just a little ulcer because… because…’ She takes a great ragged breath that makes Jerome wince. ‘Because of Brady Fracking Hartsfield!’

Jerome has no idea what connection Brady Hartsfield can have to Bill’s terrible diagnosis, but he knows what he’s seeing right now: trouble. On the far side of the building site, two hard-hatted young men – Habitat for Humanity college volunteers like Jerome himself – are giving a beeping, backing cement truck conflicting directions. Disaster looms.

‘Holly, give me five minutes and I’ll call you back.’

‘But you’ll come, won’t you? Say you’ll come. Because I don’t think I can talk to him about this on my own and he has to get into treatment right away!’

‘Five minutes,’ he says, and kills the call. His thoughts are spinning so fast that he’s afraid the friction will catch his brains on fire, and the blaring sun isn’t helping. Bill? With cancer? On one hand it doesn’t seem possible, but on the other it seems completely possible. He was in top form during the Pete Saubers business, where Jerome and Holly partnered with him, but he’ll be seventy soon, and the last time Jerome saw him, before leaving for Arizona in October, Bill didn’t look all that well. Too thin. Too pale. But Jerome can’t go anywhere until Hector gets back, it would be like leaving the inmates to run the asylum. And knowing the Phoenix hospitals, where the ERs are overrun twenty-four hours a day, he may be stuck here until quitting time.

He sprints for the cement truck, bawling ‘Hold up! Hold UP, for Jesus’ sake!’ at the top of his lungs.

He gets the clueless volunteers to halt the cement truck they’ve been misdirecting less than three feet from a freshly dug drainage ditch, and he’s bending over to catch his breath when his phone rings again.

Holly, I love you, Jerome thinks, pulling it from his belt once more, but sometimes you drive me absolutely bugfuck.

Only this time it’s not Holly’s picture he sees. It’s his mother’s.

Tanya is crying. ‘You have to come home,’ she says, and Jerome has just long enough to think of something his grandfather used to say: bad luck keeps bad company.

It’s Barbie after all.

Hodges is in the lobby and headed for the door when his phone vibrates. It’s Norma Wilmer.

‘Is he gone?’ Hodges asks.

Norma doesn’t have to ask who he’s talking about. ‘Yes. Now that he’s seen his prize patient, he can relax and do the rest of his rounds.’

‘I was sorry to hear about Nurse Scapelli.’ It’s true. He didn’t care for her, but it’s still true.

‘I was, too. She ran the nursing staff like Captain Bligh ran the Bounty, but I hate to think of anyone doing… that. You get the news and your first reaction is oh no, not her, never. It’s the shock of it. Your second reaction is oh yes, that makes perfect sense. Never married, no close friends – not that I knew of, anyway – nothing but the job. Where everybody sort of loathed her.’

‘All the lonely people,’ Hodges says, stepping out into the cold and turning toward the bus stop. He buttons his coat one-handed and then begins to massage his side.

‘Yes. There are a lot of them. What can I do for you, Mr Hodges?’

‘I have a few questions. Could you meet me for a drink?’

There’s a long pause. Hodges thinks she’s going to tell him no. Then she says, ‘I don’t suppose your questions could lead to trouble for Dr Babineau?’

‘Anything is possible, Norma.’

‘That would be nice, but I guess I owe you one, regardless. For not letting on to him that we know each other from back in the Becky Helmington days. There’s a watering hole on Revere Avenue. Got a clever name, Bar Bar Black Sheep, and most of the staff drinks closer to the hospital. Can you find it?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I’m off at five. Meet me there at five thirty. I like a nice cold vodka martini.’

‘It’ll be waiting.’

‘Just don’t expect me to get you in to see Hartsfield. It would mean my job. Babineau was always intense, but these days he’s downright weird. I tried to tell him about Ruth, and he blew right past me. Not that he’s apt to care when he finds out.’

‘Got a lot of love for him, don’t you?’

She laughs. ‘For that you owe me two drinks.’

‘Two it is.’

He’s slipping his phone back into his coat pocket when it buzzes again. He sees the call is from Tanya Robinson and his thoughts immediately flash to Jerome, building houses out there in Arizona. A lot of things can go wrong on building sites.

He takes the call. Tanya is crying, at first too hard for him to understand what she’s saying, only that Jim is in Pittsburgh and she doesn’t want to call him until she knows more. Hodges stands at the curb, one palm plastered against his non-phone ear to muffle the sound of traffic.

‘Slow down. Tanya, slow down. Is it Jerome? Did something happen to Jerome?’

‘No, Jerome’s fine. Him I did call. It’s Barbara. She was in Lowtown—’

‘What in God’s name was she doing in Lowtown, and on a school day?’

‘I don’t know! All I know is that some boy pushed her into the street and a truck hit her! They’re taking her to Kiner Memorial. I’m on my way there now!’

‘Are you driving?’

‘Yes, what does that have to do with—’

‘Get off the phone, Tanya. And slow down. I’m at Kiner now. I’ll meet you in the ER.’

He hangs up and heads back to the hospital, breaking into a clumsy trot. He thinks, This goddam place is like the Mafia. Every time I think I’m out, it pulls me back in.

An ambulance with its lights flashing is just backing into one of the ER bays. Hodges goes to meet it, pulling out the police ID he still keeps in his wallet. When the paramedic and the EMT pull the stretcher out of the back, he flashes the ID with his thumb placed over the red RETIRED stamp. Technically speaking this is a felony crime – impersonating an officer – and consequently it’s a fiddle he uses sparingly, but this time it seems absolutely appropriate.

Barbara is medicated but conscious. When she sees Hodges, she grasps his hand tightly. ‘Bill? How did you get here so fast? Did Mom call you?’

‘Yeah. How are you?’

‘I’m okay. They gave me something for the pain. I have… they say I have a broken leg. I’m going to miss the basketball season and I guess it doesn’t matter because Mom will ground me until I’m, like, twenty-five.’ Tears begin to leak from her eyes.

He doesn’t have long with her, so questions about what she was doing on MLK Ave, where there are sometimes as many as four drive-by shootings a week, will have to wait. There’s something more important.

‘Barb, do you know the name of the boy who pushed you in front of the truck?’

Her eyes widen.

‘Or get a good look at him? Could you describe him?’

‘Pushed…? Oh, no, Bill! No, that’s wrong!’

‘Officer, we gotta go,’ the paramedic says. ‘You can question her later.’

‘Wait!’ Barbara shouts, and tries to sit up. The EMT pushes her gently back down, and she’s grimacing with pain, but Hodges is heartened by that shout. It was good and strong.

‘What is it, Barb?’

‘He only pushed me after I ran into the street! He pushed me out of the way! I think he might have saved my life, and I’m glad.’ She’s crying hard now, but Hodges doesn’t believe for a minute it’s because of her broken leg. ‘I don’t want to die, after all. I don’t know what was wrong with me!’

‘We really have to get her in an exam room, Chief,’ the paramedic says. ‘She needs an X-ray.’

‘Don’t let them do anything to that boy!’ Barbara calls as the ambo guys roll her through the double doors. ‘He’s tall! He’s got green eyes and a goatee! He goes to Todhunter—’

She’s gone, the doors clapping back and forth behind her. Hodges walks outside, where he can use his cell phone without being scolded, and calls Tanya back. ‘I don’t know where you are, but slow down and don’t run any red lights getting here. They just took her in, and she’s wide awake. She has a broken leg.’

‘That’s all? Thank God! What about internal injuries?’

‘That’s for the doctors to say, but she was pretty lively. I think maybe the truck just grazed her.’

‘I need to call Jerome. I’m sure I scared the hell out of him. And Jim needs to know.’

‘Call them when you get here. For now, get off your phone.’

‘You can call them, Bill.’

‘No, Tanya, I can’t. I have to call someone else.’

He stands there, breathing out plumes of white vapor, the tips of his ears going numb. He doesn’t want the someone else to be Pete, because Pete is a tad pissed at him right now, and that goes double for Izzy Jaynes. He thinks about his other choices, but there’s only one: Cassandra Sheen. He partnered up with her several times when Pete was on vacation, and on one occasion when Pete took six weeks of unexplained personal time. That was shortly after Pete’s divorce, and Hodges surmised he was in a spin-dry center, but never asked and Pete never volunteered the information.

He doesn’t have Cassie’s cell number, so he calls Detective Division and asks to be connected, hoping she’s not in the field. He’s in luck. After less than ten seconds of McGruff the Crime Dog, she’s in his ear.

‘Is this Cassie Sheen, the Botox Queen?’

‘Billy Hodges, you old whore! I thought you were dead!’

Soon enough, Cassie, he thinks.

‘I’d love to bullshit with you, hon, but I need a favor. They haven’t closed the Strike Avenue station yet, have they?’

‘Nope. It’s on the docket for next year, though. Which makes perfect sense. Crime in Lowtown? What crime, right?’

‘Yeah, safest part of the city. They may have a kid in for booking, and if my information is right, he deserves a medal instead.’

‘Got a name?’

‘No, but I know what he looks like. Tall, green eyes, goatee.’ He replays what Barbara said and adds, ‘He could be wearing a Todhunter High jacket. The arresting officers probably have him for pushing a girl in front of a truck. He actually pushed her out of the way, so she only got clipped instead of mashed.’

‘You know this for a fact?’

‘Yeah.’ This isn’t quite the truth, but he believes Barbara. ‘Find out his name and ask the cops to hold him, okay? I want to talk to him.’

‘I think I can do that.’

‘Thanks, Cassie. I owe you one.’

He ends the call and looks at his watch. If he means to talk to the Todhunter kid and still keep his appointment with Norma, time is too tight to be messing around with the city bus service.

One thing Barbara said keeps replaying in his mind: I don’t want to die, after all. I don’t know what was wrong with me.

He calls Holly.

She’s standing outside the 7-Eleven near the office, holding a pack of Winstons in one hand and plucking at the cellophane with the other. She hasn’t had a cigarette in almost five months, a new record, and she doesn’t want to start again now, but what she saw on Bill’s computer has torn a hole in the middle of a life she has spent the last five years mending. Bill Hodges is her touchstone, the way she measures her ability to interact with the world. Which is only another way of saying that he is the way she measures her sanity. Trying to imagine her life with him gone is like standing on top of a skyscraper and looking at the sidewalk sixty stories below.

Just as she begins to pull the strip on the cellophane, her phone rings. She drops the Winstons into her purse and fishes it out. It’s him.

Holly doesn’t say hello. She told Jerome she didn’t think she could talk to him on her own about what she’s discovered, but now – standing on this windy city sidewalk and shivering inside her good winter coat – she has no choice. It just spills out. ‘I looked on your computer and I know that snooping’s a lousy thing to do but I’m not sorry. I had to because I thought you were lying about it just being an ulcer and you can fire me if you want, I don’t care, just as long as you let them fix what’s wrong with you.’

Silence at the other end. She wants to ask if he’s still there, but her mouth feels frozen and her heart is beating so hard she can feel it all over her body.

At last he says, ‘Hols, I don’t think it can be fixed.’

‘At least let them try!’

‘I love you,’ he says. She hears the heaviness in his voice. The resignation. ‘You know that, right?’

‘Don’t be stupid, of course I know.’ She starts to cry.

‘I’ll try the treatments, sure. But I need a couple of days before I check into the hospital. And right now I need you. Can you come and pick me up?’

‘Okay.’ Crying harder than ever, because she knows he’s telling the truth about needing her. And being needed is a great thing. Maybe the great thing. ‘Where are you?’

He tells her, then says, ‘Something else.’

‘What?’

‘I can’t fire you, Holly. You’re not an employee, you’re my partner. Try to remember that.’

‘Bill?’

‘Yeah?’

‘I’m not smoking.’

‘That’s good, Holly. Now come on over here. I’ll be waiting in the lobby. It’s freezing outside.’

‘I’ll come as fast as I can while still obeying the speed limit.’ She hurries to the corner lot where she parks her car. On the way, she drops the unopened pack of cigarettes into a litter basket.

Hodges sketches in his visit to the Bucket for Holly on the ride to the Strike Avenue police station, beginning with the news of Ruth Scapelli’s suicide and ending with the odd thing Barbara said before they wheeled her away.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Holly says, ‘because I’m thinking it, too. That it all leads back to Brady Hartsfield.’

‘The suicide prince.’ Hodges has helped himself to another couple of painkillers while waiting for Holly, and he feels pretty much okay. ‘That’s what I’m calling him. Got a ring to it, don’t you think?’

‘I guess so. But you told me something once.’ She’s sitting bolt upright behind the wheel of her Prius, eyes darting everywhere as they drive deeper into Lowtown. She swerves to avoid a shopping cart someone has abandoned in the middle of the street. ‘You said coincidence doesn’t equal conspiracy. Do you remember saying that?’

‘Yeah.’ It’s one of his faves. He has quite a few.

‘You said you can investigate a conspiracy forever and come up with nothing if it’s actually just a bunch of coincidences all strung together. If you can’t find something concrete in the next two days – if we can’t – you need to give up and start those treatments. Promise me you will.’

‘It might take a little longer to—’

She cuts him off. ‘Jerome will be back, and he’ll help. It will be like the old days.’

Hodges flashes on the title of an old mystery novel, Trent’s Last Case, and smiles a little. She catches it from the corner of her eye, takes it for acquiescence, and smiles back, relieved.

‘Four days,’ he says.

‘Three. No more. Because every day you don’t do something about what’s going on inside you, the odds get longer. And they’re long already. So don’t start your poopy bargaining stuff, Bill. You’re too good at it.’

‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Three days. If Jerome will help.’

Holly says, ‘He will. And let’s try to make it two.’

The Strike Avenue cop shop looks like a medieval castle in a country where the king has fallen and anarchy rules. The windows are heavily barred; the motor pool is protected by chainlink fencing and concrete barriers. Cameras bristle in every direction, covering all angles of approach, and still the gray stone building has been gang-tagged, and one of the globes hanging over the main doors has been shattered.

Hodges and Holly empty the contents of their pockets and Holly’s purse into plastic baskets and go through a metal detector that beeps reproachfully at Hodges’s metal watchband. Holly sits on a bench in the main lobby (which is also being scanned by multiple cameras) and opens her iPad. Hodges goes to the desk, states his business, and after a few moments is met by a slim, gray-haired detective who looks a little like Lester Freamon on The Wire – the only cop show Hodges can watch without wanting to throw up.

‘Jack Higgins,’ the detective says, offering his hand. ‘Like the book-writer, only not white.’

Hodges shakes with him and introduces Holly, who gives a little wave and her usual muttered hello before returning her attention to her iPad.

‘I think I remember you,’ Hodges says. ‘You used to be at Marlborough Street station, didn’t you? When you were in uniform?’

‘A long time ago, when I was young and randy. I remember you, too. You caught the guy who killed those two women in McCarron Park.’

‘That was a group effort, Detective Higgins.’

‘Make it Jack. Cassie Sheen called. We’ve got your guy in an interview room. His name is Dereece Neville.’ Higgins spells the first name. ‘We were going to turn him loose, anyway. Several people who saw the incident corroborate his story – he was jiving around with the girl, she took offense and ran into the street. Neville saw the truck coming, ran after her, tried to push her out of the way, mostly succeeded. Plus, practically everyone down here knows this kid. He’s a star on the Todhunter basketball team, probably going to get an athletic scholarship to a Division I school. Great grades, honor student.’

‘What was Mr Great Grades doing on the street in the middle of a schoolday?’

‘Ah, they were all out. Heating system at the high school shit the bed again. Third time this winter, and it’s only January. The mayor says everything’s cool down here in the Low, lots of jobs, lots of prosperity, shiny happy people. We’ll see him when he runs for reelection. Riding in that armored SUV of his.’

‘Was the Neville kid hurt?’

‘Scraped palms and nothing else. According to a lady across the street – she was closest to the scene – he pushed the girl and then, I quote, “Went flyin over the top of her like a bigass bird.”’

‘Does he understand he’s free to go?’

‘He does, and agreed to stay. Wants to know if the girl’s okay. Come on. Have your little chat with him, and then we’ll send him on his way. Unless you see some reason not to.’

Hodges smiles. ‘I’m just following up for Miss Robinson. Let me ask him a couple of questions, and we’re both out of your hair.’

The interview room is small and stifling hot, the overhead heating pipes clanking away. Still, it’s probably the nicest one they’ve got, because there’s a little sofa and no perp table with a cuff-bolt sticking out of it like a steel knuckle. The sofa has been mended with tape in a couple of places, and that makes Hodges think of the man Nancy Alderson says she saw on Hilltop Court, the one with the mended coat.

Dereece Neville is sitting on the sofa. In his chino pants and white button-up shirt, he looks neat and squared away. His goatee and gold neck chain are the only real dashes of style. His school jacket is folded over one arm of the sofa. He stands when Hodges and Higgins come in, and offers a long-fingered hand that looks designed expressly for working with a basketball. The pad of the palm has been painted with orange antiseptic.

Hodges shakes with him carefully, mindful of the scrapes, and introduces himself. ‘You’re in absolutely no trouble here, Mr Neville. In fact, Barbara Robinson sent me to say thanks and make sure you were okay. She and her family are longtime friends of mine.’

‘Is she okay?’

‘Broken leg,’ Hodges says, pulling over a chair. His hand creeps to his side and presses there. ‘It could have been a lot worse. I’m betting she’ll be back on the soccer field next year. Sit down, sit down.’

When the Neville boy sits, his knees seem to come almost up to his jawline. ‘It was my fault, in a way. I shouldn’t have been goofing with her, but she was just so pretty and all. Still… I ain’t blind.’ He pauses, corrects himself. ‘Not blind. What was she on? Do you know?’

Hodges frowns. The idea that Barbara might have been high hasn’t crossed his mind, although it should have; she’s a teenager, after all, and those years are the Age of Experimentation. But he has dinner with the Robinsons three or four times a month, and he’s never seen anything in her that registered as drug use. Maybe he’s just too close. Or too old.

‘What makes you think she was on something?’

‘Just her being down here, for one thing. Those were Chapel Ridge duds she was wearing. I know, because we play em twice every year. Blow em out, too. And she was like in a daze. Standing there on the curb near Mamma Stars, that fortune-telling place, looking like she was gonna walk right out into traffic.’ He shrugs. ‘So I chatted her up, teased her about jaywalking. She got mad, went all Kitty Pryde on my ass. I thought that was cute, so then…’ He looks at Higgins, then back at Hodges. ‘This is the fault part, and I’m being straight with you about it, okay?’

‘Okay,’ Hodges says.

‘Well, look – I grabbed her game. Just for a joke, you know. Held it up over my head. I never meant to keep it. So then she kicked me – good hard kick for a girl – and grabbed it back. She sure didn’t look stoned then.’

‘How did she look, Dereece?’ The switch to the boy’s first name is automatic.

‘Oh, man, mad! But also scared. Like she just figured out where she was, on a street where girls like her – ones in private school uniforms – don’t go, especially by themselves. MLK Ave? Come on, I mean bitch, please.’ He leans forward, long-fingered hands clasped between his knees, face earnest. ‘She didn’t know I was just playing, you see what I mean? She was like in a panic, get me?’

‘I do,’ Hodges says, and although he sounds engaged (at least he hopes so), he’s on autopilot for the moment, stuck on what Neville has just said: I grabbed her game. Part of him thinks it can’t be connected to Ellerton and Stover. Most of him thinks it must be, it’s a perfect fit. ‘That must have made you feel bad.’

Neville raises his scratched palms toward the ceiling in a philosophical gesture that says What can you do? ‘It’s this place, man. It’s the Low. She stopped being on cloud nine and realized where she was, is all. Me, I’m getting out as soon as I can. While I can. Gonna play Div I, keep my grades up so I can get a good job afterward if I ain’t – aren’t – good enough to go pro. Then I’m getting my family out. It’s just me and my mom and my two brothers. My mom’s the only reason I’ve got as far as I have. She ain’t never let none of us play in the dirt.’ He replays what he just said and laughs. ‘She heard me say ain’t never, she be in my face.’

Hodges thinks, Kid’s too good to be true. Except he is. Hodges is sure of it, and doesn’t like to think what might have happened to Jerome’s kid sister if Dereece Neville had been in school today.

Higgins says, ‘You were wrong to be teasing that girl, but I have to say you made it right. Will you think about what almost happened if you get an urge to do something like that again?’

‘Yes, sir, I sure will.’

Higgins holds a hand up. Rather than slap it, Neville taps it gently, with a slightly sarcastic smile. He’s a good kid, but this is still Lowtown, and Higgins is still po-po.

Higgins stands. ‘Are we good to go, Detective Hodges?’

Hodges nods his appreciation at the use of his old title, but he isn’t quite finished. ‘Almost. What kind of game was it, Dereece?’

‘Old-school.’ No hesitation. ‘Like a Game Boy, but my little brother had one of those – Mom got it in a rumble sale, or whatever they call those things – and the one the girl had wasn’t the same. It was bright yellow, I know that. Not the kind of color you’d expect a girl to like. Not the ones I know, at least.’

‘Did you happen to see the screen?’

‘Just a glance. It was a bunch of fish swimming around.’

‘Thanks, Dereece. How sure are you that she was high? On a scale of one to ten, ten being absolutely positive.’

‘Well, say five. I would’ve said ten when I walked up to her, because she acted like she was going to walk right out into the street, and there was a bigass truck coming, a lot bigger than the panel job that come along behind and whumped her. I was thinking not coke or meth or molly, more something mellow, like ecstasy or pot.’

‘But when you started goofing with her? When you took her game?’

Dereece Neville rolls his eyes. ‘Man, she woke up fast.’

‘Okay,’ Hodges says. ‘All set. And thank you.’

Higgins adds his thanks, then he and Hodges start toward the door.

‘Detective Hodges?’ Neville is on his feet again, and Hodges practically has to crane his neck to look at him. ‘You think if I wrote down my number, you could give it to her?’

Hodges thinks it over, then takes his pen from his breast pocket and hands it to the tall boy who probably saved Barbara Robinson’s life.

Holly drives them back to Lower Marlborough Street. He tells her about his conversation with Dereece Neville on the way.

‘In a movie, they’d fall in love,’ Holly says when he finishes. She sounds wistful.

‘Life is not a movie, Hol… Holly.’ He stops himself from saying Hollyberry at the last second. This is not a day for levity.

‘I know,’ she says. ‘That’s why I go to them.’

‘I don’t suppose you know if Zappit consoles came in yellow, do you?’

As is often the case, Holly has the facts at her fingertips. ‘They came in ten different colors, and yes, yellow was one of them.’

‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking? That there’s a connection between what happened to Barbara and what happened to those women on Hilltop Court?’

‘I don’t know what I’m thinking. I wish we could sit down with Jerome the way we did when Pete Saubers got into trouble. Just sit down and talk it all out.’

‘If Jerome gets here tonight, and if Barbara’s really okay, maybe we can do that tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow’s your second day,’ she says as she pulls to the curb outside the parking lot they use. ‘The second of three.’

‘Holly—’

‘No!’ she says fiercely. ‘Don’t even start! You promised!’ She shoves the gearshift into park and turns to face him. ‘You believe Hartsfield has been faking, isn’t that right?’

‘Yeah. Maybe not from the first time he opened his eyes and asked for his dear old mommy, but I think he’s come a long way back since then. Maybe all the way. He’s faking the semi-catatonic thing to keep from going to trial. Although you’d think Babineau would know. They must have tests, brain scans and things—’

‘Never mind that. If he can think, and if he were to find out that you delayed treatment and died because of him, how do you think he’d feel?’

Hodges makes no answer, so Holly answers for him.

‘He’d be happy happy happy! He’d be fracking delighted!’

‘Okay,’ Hodges says. ‘I hear you. The rest of today and two more. But forget about my situation for a minute. If he can somehow reach out beyond that hospital room… that’s scary.’

‘I know. And nobody would believe us. That’s scary, too. But nothing scares me as much as the thought of you dying.’

He wants to hug her for that, but she’s currently wearing one of her many hug-repelling expressions, so he looks at his watch instead. ‘I have an appointment, and I don’t want to keep the lady waiting.’

‘I’m going to the hospital. Even if they won’t let me see Barbara, Tanya will be there, and she’d probably like to see a friendly face.’

‘Good idea. But before you go, I’d like you to take a shot at tracking down the Sunrise Solutions bankruptcy trustee.’

‘His name is Todd Schneider. He’s part of a law firm six names long. Their offices are in New York. I found him while you were talking to Mr Neville.’

‘You did that on your iPad?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re a genius, Holly.’

‘No, it’s just computer research. You were the smart one, to think of it in the first place. I’ll call him, if you want.’ Her face shows how much she dreads the prospect.

‘You don’t have to do that. Just call his office and see if you can make an appointment for me to talk to him. As early tomorrow as possible.’

She smiles. ‘All right.’ Then her smile fades. She points to his midsection. ‘Does it hurt?’

‘Only a little.’ For now that’s true. ‘The heart attack was worse.’ That is true, too, but may not be for long. ‘If you get in to see Barbara, say hi for me.’

‘I will.’

Holly watches him cross to his car, noting the way his left hand goes to his side after he turns up his collar. Seeing that makes her want to cry. Or maybe howl with outrage. Life can be very unfair. She’s known that ever since high school, when she was the butt of everyone’s joke, but it still surprises her. It shouldn’t, but it does.

Hodges drives back across town, fiddling with the radio, looking for some good hard rock and roll. He finds The Knack on BAM-100, singing ‘My Sharona,’ and cranks the volume. When the song ends, the deejay comes on, talking about a big storm moving east out of the Rockies.

Hodges pays no attention. He’s thinking about Brady, and about the first time he saw one of those Zappit game consoles. Library Al handed them out. What was Al’s last name? He can’t remember. If he ever knew it at all, that is.

When he arrives at the watering hole with the amusing name, he finds Norma Wilmer seated at a table in back, far from the madding crowd of businessmen at the bar, who are bellowing and backslapping as they jockey for drinks. Norma has ditched her nurse’s uniform in favor of a dark green pantsuit and low heels. There’s already a drink in front of her.

‘I was supposed to buy that,’ Hodges says, sitting down across from her.

‘Don’t worry,’ she says. ‘I’m running a tab, which you will pay.’

‘Indeed I will.’

‘Babineau couldn’t get me fired or even transferred if someone saw me talking to you here and reported back to him, but he could make my life difficult. Of course, I could make his a bit difficult, too.’

‘Really?’

‘Really. I think he’s been experimenting on your old friend Brady Hartsfield. Feeding him pills that contain God knows what. Giving him shots, as well. Vitamins, he says.’

Hodges stares at her in surprise. ‘How long has this been going on?’

‘Years. It’s one of the reasons Becky Helmington transferred. She didn’t want to be the whitecap on ground zero if Babineau gave him the wrong vitamin and killed him.’

The waitress comes. Hodges orders a Coke with a cherry in it.

Norma snorts. ‘A Coke? Really? Put on your big boy pants, why don’t you?’

‘When it comes to booze, I spilled more than you’ll ever drink, honeypie,’ Hodges says. ‘What the hell is Babineau up to?’

She shrugs. ‘No idea. But he wouldn’t be the first doc to experiment on someone the world doesn’t give Shit One about. Ever hear of the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment? The US government used four hundred black men like lab rats. It went on for forty years, and so far as I know, not a single one of them ran a car into a bunch of defenseless people.’ She gives Hodges a crooked smile. ‘Investigate Babineau. Get him in trouble. I dare you.’

‘It’s Hartsfield I’m interested in, but based on what you’re saying, I wouldn’t be surprised if Babineau turned out to be collateral damage.’

‘Then hooray for collateral damage.’ It comes out clatteral dammish, and Hodges deduces she’s not on her first drink. He is, after all, a trained investigator.

When the waitress brings his Coke, Norma drains her glass and holds it up. ‘I’ll have another, and since the gentleman’s paying, you might as well make it a double.’ The waitress takes her glass and leaves. Norma turns her attention back to Hodges. ‘You said you have questions. Go ahead and ask while I can still answer. My mouth is a trifle numb, and will soon be number.’

‘Who is on Brady Hartsfield’s visitors list?’

Norma frowns at him. ‘Visitors list? Are you kidding? Who told you he had a visitors list?’

‘The late Ruth Scapelli. This was just after she replaced Becky as head nurse. I offered her fifty bucks for any rumors she heard about him – which was the going rate with Becky – and she acted like I’d just pissed on her shoes. Then she said, “You’re not even on his visitors list.”’

‘Huh.’

‘Then, just today, Babineau said—’

‘Some bullshit about the DA’s office. I heard it, Bill, I was there.’

The waitress sets Norma’s new drink in front of her, and Hodges knows he’d better finish up fast, before Norma starts to bend his ear about everything from being underappreciated at work to her sad and loveless love life. When nurses drink, they have a tendency to go all in. They’re like cops that way.

‘You’ve been working the Bucket for as long as I’ve been coming there—’

‘A lot longer. Twelve years.’ Yearsh. She raises her glass in a toast and swallows half of her drink. ‘And now I have been promoted to head nurse, at least temporarily. Twice the responsibility at the same old salary, no doubt.’

‘Seen anybody from the DA’s office lately?’

‘Nope. There was a whole briefcase brigade at first, along with pet doctors just itching to declare the son of a bitch competent, but they went away discouraged once they saw him drooling and trying to pick up a spoon. Came back a few times just to double-check, fewer briefcase boys every time, but nothing lately. ’S’far’s they’re concerned, he’s a total gork. Badda-boop, badda-bang, over and out.’

‘So they don’t care.’ And why would they? Except for the occasional retrospective on slow news days, interest in Brady Hartsfield has died down. There’s always fresh roadkill to pick over.

‘You know they don’t.’ A lock of hair has fallen in her eyes. She blows it back. ‘Did anyone try to stop you, all the times you were in to visit him?’

No, Hodges thinks, but it’s been a year and a half since I dropped by. ‘If there is a visitors list—’

‘It’d be Babineau’s, not the DA’s. When it comes to the Mercedes Killer, DA is like honeybadger, Bill. He don’t give a shit.’

‘Huh?’

‘Never mind.’

‘Could you check and see if there is such a list? Now that you’ve been promoted to head nurse?’

She considers, then says, ‘It wouldn’t be on the computer, that would be too easy to check, but Scapelli kept a couple of file folders in a locked drawer at the duty desk. She was a great one for keeping track of who’s naughty and who’s nice. If I found something, would it be worth twenty to you?’

‘Fifty, if you could call me tomorrow.’ Hodges isn’t sure she’ll even remember this conversation tomorrow. ‘Time is of the essence.’

‘If such a list exists, it’s probably just power-tripping bullshit, you know. Babineau likes to keep Hartsfield to his little old self.’

‘But you’ll check?’

‘Yeah, why not? I know where she hides the key to her locked drawer. Shit, most of the nurses on the floor know. Hard to get used to the idea old Nurse Ratched’s dead.’

Hodges nods.

‘He can move things, you know. Without touching them.’ Norma’s not looking at him; she’s making rings on the table with the bottom of her glass. It looks like she’s trying to replicate the Olympic logo.

‘Hartsfield?’

‘Who are we talking about? Yeah. He does it to freak out the nurses.’ She raises her head. ‘I’m drunk, so I’ll tell you something I’d never say sober. I wish Babineau would kill him. Just give him a hot shot of something really toxic and boot him out the door. Because he scares me.’ She pauses, then adds, ‘He scares all of us.’

Holly reaches Todd Schneider’s personal assistant just as he’s getting ready to shut up shop and leave for the day. The PA says Mr Schneider should be available between eight thirty and nine tomorrow. After that he has meetings all day.

Holly hangs up, washes her face in the tiny lavatory, reapplies deodorant, locks the office, and gets rolling toward Kiner Memorial just in time to catch the worst of the evening rush hour. It’s six o’clock and full dark by the time she arrives. The woman at the information desk checks her computer and tells her that Barbara Robinson is in Room 528 of Wing B.

‘Is that Intensive Care?’ Holly asks.

‘No, ma’am.’

‘Good,’ Holly says, and sets sail, sensible low heels clacking.

The elevator doors open on the fifth floor and there, waiting to get on, are Barbara’s parents. Tanya has her cell phone in her hand, and looks at Holly as if at an apparition. Jim Robinson says he’ll be damned.

Holly shrinks a little. ‘What? Why are you looking at me that way? What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing,’ Tanya says. ‘It’s just that I was going to call you—’

The elevator doors start to close. Jim sticks out an arm and they bounce back. Holly gets out.

‘—as soon as we got down to the lobby,’ Tanya resumes, and points to a sign on the wall. It shows a cell phone with a red line drawn through it.

‘Me? Why? I thought it was just a broken leg. I mean, I know a broken leg is serious, of course it is, but—’

‘She’s awake and she’s fine,’ Jim says, but he and Tanya exchange a glance which suggests that isn’t precisely true. ‘It’s a pretty clean break, actually, but they found a nasty bump on the back of her head and decided to keep her overnight just to be on the safe side. The doc who fixed her leg said he’s ninety-nine percent sure she’ll be good to go in the morning.’

‘They did a tox screen,’ Tanya said. ‘No drugs in her system. I wasn’t surprised, but it was still a relief.’

‘Then what’s wrong?’

‘Everything,’ Tanya says simply. She looks ten years older than when Holly saw her last. ‘Hilda Carver’s mom drove Barb and Hilda to school, it’s her week, and she said Barbara was fine in the car – a little quieter than usual, but otherwise fine. Barbara told Hilda she had to go to the bathroom, and that was the last Hilda saw of her. She said Barb must have left by one of the side doors in the gym. The kids actually call those the skip doors.’

‘What does Barbara say?’

‘She won’t tell us anything.’ Her voice shakes, and Jim puts an arm around her. ‘But she says she’ll tell you. That’s why I was going to call you. She says you’re the only one who might understand.’

Holly walks slowly down the corridor to Room 528, which is all the way at the end. Her head is down, and she’s thinking hard, so she almost bumps into the man wheeling the cart of well-thumbed paperback books and Kindles with PROPERTY OF KINER HOSP taped below the screens.

‘Sorry,’ Holly tells him. ‘I wasn’t looking where I was going.’

‘That’s all right,’ Library Al says, and goes on his way. She doesn’t see him pause and look back at her; she is summoning all her courage for the conversation to come. It’s apt to be emotional, and emotional scenes have always terrified her. It helps that she loves Barbara.

Also, she’s curious.

She taps on the door, which is ajar, and peeps around it when there’s no answer. ‘Barbara? It’s Holly. Can I come in?’

Barbara offers a wan smile and puts down the battered copy of Mockingjay she’s been reading. Probably got it from the man with the cart, Holly thinks. She’s cranked up in the bed, wearing pink pajamas instead of a hospital johnny. Holly guesses her mother must have packed the PJs, along with the ThinkPad she sees on Barb’s night table. The pink top lends Barbara a bit of vivacity, but she still looks dazed. There’s no bandage on her head, so the bump mustn’t have been all that bad. Holly wonders if they are keeping Barbara overnight for some other reason. She can only think of one, and she’d like to believe it’s ridiculous, but she can’t quite get there.

‘Holly! How did you get here so fast?’

‘I was coming to see you.’ Holly enters and closes the door behind her. ‘When somebody’s in the hospital, you go to see them if it’s a friend, and we’re friends. I met your parents at the elevator. They said you wanted to talk to me.’

‘Yes.’

‘How can I help, Barbara?’

‘Well… can I ask you something? It’s pretty personal.’

‘Okay.’ Holly sits down in the chair next to the bed. Gingerly, as if the seat might be wired for electricity.

‘I know you had some bad times. You know, when you were younger. Before you worked for Bill.’

‘Yes,’ Holly says. The overhead light isn’t on, just the lamp on the night table. Its glow encloses them and gives them their own little place to be. ‘Some very bad ones.’

‘Did you ever try to kill yourself?’ Barbara gives a small, nervous laugh. ‘I told you it was personal.’

‘Twice.’ Holly says it without hesitation. She feels surprisingly calm. ‘The first time, I was just about your age. Because kids at school were mean to me, and called me mean names. I couldn’t cope. But I didn’t try very hard. I just took a handful of aspirin and decongestant tablets.’

‘Did you try harder the second time?’

It’s a tough question, and Holly thinks it over carefully. ‘Yes and no. It was after I had some trouble with my boss, what they call sexual harassment now. Back then they didn’t call it much of anything. I was in my twenties. I took stronger pills, but still not enough to do the job and part of me knew that. I was very unstable back then, but I wasn’t stupid, and the part that wasn’t stupid wanted to live. Partly because I knew Martin Scorsese would make some more movies, and I wanted to see them. Martin Scorsese is the best director alive. He makes long movies like novels. Most movies are only like short stories.’

‘Did your boss, like, attack you?’

‘I don’t want to talk about it, and it doesn’t matter.’ Holly doesn’t want to look up, either, but reminds herself that this is Barbara and forces herself to. Because Barbara has been her friend in spite of all of Holly’s ticks and tocks, all of Holly’s bells and whistles. And is now in trouble herself. ‘The reasons never matter, because suicide goes against every human instinct, and that makes it insane.’

Except maybe in certain cases, she thinks. Certain terminal cases. But Bill isn’t terminal.

I won’t let him be terminal.

‘I know what you mean,’ Barbara says. She turns her head from side to side on her pillow. In the lamplight, tear-tracks gleam on her cheeks. ‘I know.’

‘Is that why you were in Lowtown? To kill yourself?’

Barbara closes her eyes, but tears squeeze through the lashes. ‘I don’t think so. At least not at first. I went there because the voice told me to. My friend.’ She pauses, thinks. ‘But he wasn’t my friend, after all. A friend wouldn’t want me to kill myself, would he?’

Holly takes Barbara’s hand. Touching is ordinarily hard for her, but not tonight. Maybe it’s because she feels they are enclosed in their own secret place. Maybe it’s because this is Barbara. Maybe both. ‘What friend is this?’

Barbara says, ‘The one with the fish. The one inside the game.’

It’s Al Brooks who wheels the library cart through the hospital’s main lobby (passing Mr and Mrs Robinson, who are waiting for Holly), and it’s Al who takes another elevator up to the skyway that connects the main hospital to the Traumatic Brain Injury Clinic. It’s Al who says hello to Nurse Rainier at the duty desk, a long-timer who hellos him back without looking up from her computer screen. It’s still Al rolling his cart down the corridor, but when he leaves it in the hall and steps into Room 217, Al Brooks disappears and Z-Boy takes his place.

Brady is in his chair with his Zappit in his lap. He doesn’t look up from the screen. Z-Boy takes his own Zappit from the left pocket of his loose gray tunic and turns it on. He taps the Fishin’ Hole icon and on the starter screen the fish begin to swim: red ones, yellow ones, gold ones, every now and then a fast-moving pink one. The tune tinkles. And every now and then the console gives off a bright flash that paints his cheeks and turns his eyes into blue blanks.

They remain that way for almost five minutes, one sitting and one standing, both staring at the swimming fish and listening to the tinkling melody. The blinds over Brady’s window rattle restlessly. The coverlet on his bed snaps down, then back up again. Once or twice Z-Boy nods his understanding. Then Brady’s hands loosen and let go of the game console. It slides down his wasted legs, then between them, and clatters to the floor. His mouth falls open. His eyelids drop to half-mast. The rise and fall of his chest inside his checked shirt becomes imperceptible.

Z-Boy’s shoulders straighten. He gives himself a little shake, clicks off his Zappit, and drops it back into the pocket from which it came. From his right pocket he takes an iPhone. A person with considerable computer skills has modified it with several state-of-the-art security devices, and the built-in GPS has been turned off. There are no names in the Contacts folder, only a few initials. Z-Boy taps FL.

The phone rings twice and FL answers in a fake Russian accent. ‘Ziss iss Agent Zippity-Doo-Dah, comrade. I avait your commands.’

‘You haven’t been paid to make bad jokes.’

Silence. Then: ‘All right. No jokes.’

‘We’re moving ahead.’

‘We’ll move ahead when I get the rest of my money.’

‘You’ll have it tonight, and you’ll go to work immediately.’

‘Roger-dodger,’ FL says. ‘Give me something hard next time.’

There’s not going to be a next time, Z-Boy thinks.

‘Don’t screw this up.’

‘I won’t. But I don’t work until I see the green.’

‘You’ll see it.’

Z-Boy breaks the connection, drops the phone into his pocket, and leaves Brady’s room. He heads back past the duty desk and Nurse Rainier, who is still absorbed in her computer. He leaves the cart in the snack alcove and crosses the skyway. He walks with a spring in his step, like a much younger man.

In an hour or two, Rainier or one of the other nurses will find Brady Hartsfield either slumped in his chair or sprawled on the floor on top of his Zappit. There won’t be much concern; he has slipped into total unconsciousness many times before, and always comes out of it.

Dr Babineau says it’s part of the rebooting process, that each time Hartsfield returns, he’s slightly improved. Our boy is getting well, Babineau says. You might not believe it to look at him, but our boy is really getting well.

You don’t know the half of it, thinks the mind now occupying Library Al’s body. You don’t know the fucking half of it. But you’re starting to, Dr B. Aren’t you?

Better late than never.

‘That man who yelled at me on the street was wrong,’ Barbara says. ‘I believed him because the voice told me to believe him, but he was wrong.’

Holly wants to know about the voice from the game, but Barbara may not be ready to talk about that yet. So she asks who the man was, and what he yelled.

‘He called me blackish, like on that TV show. The show is funny, but on the street it’s a put-down. It’s—’

‘I know the show, and I know how some people use it.’

‘But I’m not blackish. Nobody with a dark skin is, not really. Not even if they live in a nice house on a nice street like Teaberry Lane. We’re all black, all the time. Don’t you think I know how I get looked at and talked about at school?’

‘Of course you do,’ says Holly, who has been looked at and talked about plenty in her own time; her high school nickname was Jibba-Jibba.

‘The teachers talk about gender equality, and racial equality. They have a zero tolerance policy, and they mean it – at least most of them do, I guess – but anyone can walk through the halls when the classes are changing and pick out the black kids and the Chinese transfer students and the Muslim girl, because there’s only two dozen of us and we’re like a few grains of pepper that somehow got into the salt shaker.’

She’s picking up steam now, her voice outraged and indignant but also weary.

‘I get invited to parties, but there are a lot of parties I don’t get invited to, and I’ve only been asked out on dates twice. One of the boys who asked me was white, and everyone looked at us when we went into the movies, and someone threw popcorn at the back of our heads. I guess at the AMC 12, racial equality stops when the lights go down. And one time when I was playing soccer? Here I go, dribbling the ball up the sideline, got a clear shot, and this white dad in a golf shirt tells his daughter, “Guard that jig!” I pretended I didn’t hear it. The girl kind of smirked. I wanted to knock her over, right there where he could see it, but I didn’t. I swallowed it. And once, when I was a freshman, I left my English book on the bleachers at lunch, and when I went back to get it, someone had put a note in it that said BUCKWHEAT’S GIRLFRIEND. I swallowed that, too. For days it can be good, weeks, even, and then there’s something to swallow. It’s the same with Mom and Dad, I know it is. Maybe it’s different for Jerome at Harvard, but I bet sometimes even he has to swallow it.’

Holly squeezes her hand, but says nothing.

‘I’m not blackish, but the voice said I was, just because I didn’t grow up in a tenement with an abusive dad and a drug addict mom. Because I never ate a collard green, or even knew exactly what it was. Because I say pork chop instead of poke chop. Because they’re poor down there in the Low and we’re doing just fine on Teaberry Lane. I have my cash card, and my nice school, and Jere goes to Harvard, but… but, don’t you see… Holly, don’t you see that I never—’

‘You never had a choice about those things,’ Holly says. ‘You were born where you were and what you were, the same as me. The same as all of us, really. And at sixteen, you’ve never been asked to change anything but your clothes.’

‘Yes! And I know I shouldn’t be ashamed, but the voice made me ashamed, it made me feel like a useless parasite, and it’s still not all gone. It’s like it left a trail of slime inside my head. Because I never had been in Lowtown before, and it’s horrible down there, and compared to them I really am blackish, and I’m afraid that voice may never go away and my life will be spoiled.’

‘You have to strangle it.’ Holly speaks with dry, detached certainty.

Barbara looks at her in surprise.

Holly nods. ‘Yes. You have to choke that voice until it’s dead. It’s the first job. If you don’t take care of yourself, you can’t get better. And if you can’t get better, you can’t make anything else better.’

Barbara says, ‘I can’t just go back to school and pretend Lowtown doesn’t exist. If I’m going to live, I have to do something. Young or not, I have to do something.’

‘Are you thinking about some kind of volunteer work?’

‘I don’t know what I’m thinking about. I don’t know what there is for a kid like me. But I’m going to find out. If it means going back down there, my parents won’t like it. You have to help me with them, Holly. I know it’s hard for you, but please. You have to tell them that I need to shut that voice up. Even if I can’t choke it to death right away, maybe I can at least quiet it down.’

‘All right,’ Holly says, although she dreads it. ‘I will.’ An idea occurs to her and she brightens. ‘You should talk to the boy who pushed you out of the way of the truck.’

‘I don’t know how to find him.’

‘Bill will help you,’ Holly says. ‘Now tell me about the game.’

‘It broke. The truck ran over it, I saw the pieces, and I’m glad. Every time I close my eyes I can see those fish, especially the pink number-fish, and hear the little song.’ She hums it, but it rings no bells with Holly.

A nurse comes in wheeling a meds cart. She asks Barbara what her pain level is. Holly is ashamed she didn’t think to ask herself, and first thing. In some ways she is a very bad and thoughtless person.

‘I don’t know,’ Barbara says. ‘A five, maybe?’

The nurse opens a plastic pill tray and hands Barbara a little paper cup. There are two white pills in it. ‘These are custom-tailored Five pills. You’ll sleep like a baby. At least until I come in to check your pupils.’

Barbara swallows the pills with a sip of water. The nurse tells Holly she should leave soon and let ‘our girl’ get some rest.

‘Very soon,’ Holly says, and when the nurse is gone, she leans forward, face intent, eyes bright. ‘The game. How did you get it, Barb?’

‘A man gave it to me. I was at the Birch Street Mall with Hilda Carver.’

‘When was this?’

‘Before Christmas, but not much before. I remember, because I still hadn’t found anything for Jerome, and I was starting to get worried. I saw a nice sport coat in Banana Republic, but it was way expensive, and besides, he’s going to be building houses until May. You don’t have much reason to wear a sport coat when you’re doing that, do you?’

‘I guess not.’

‘Anyway, this man came up to us while Hilda and I were having lunch. We’re not supposed to talk to strangers, but it’s not like we’re little kids anymore, and besides, it was in the food court with people all around. Also, he looked nice.’

The worst ones usually do, Holly thinks.

‘He was wearing a terrific suit that must have cost mucho megabucks and carrying a briefcase. He said his name was Myron Zakim and he worked for a company called Sunrise Solutions. He gave us his card. He showed us a couple of Zappits – his briefcase was full of them – and said we could each have one free if we’d fill out a questionnaire and send it back. The address was on the questionnaire. It was on the card, too.’

‘Do you happen to remember the address?’

‘No, and I threw his card away. Besides, it was only a box number.’

‘In New York?’

Barbara thinks it over. ‘No. Here in the city.’

‘So you took the Zappits.’

‘Yes. I didn’t tell Mom, because she would have given me a big lecture about talking to that guy. I filled out the questionnaire, too, and sent it in. Hilda didn’t, because her Zappit didn’t work. It just gave out a single blue flash and went dead. So she threw it away. I remember her saying that’s all you could expect when someone said something was free.’ Barbara giggles. ‘She sounded just like her mother.’

‘But yours did work.’

‘Yes. It was old-fashioned but kind of… you know, kind of fun, in a silly way. At first. I wish mine had been broken, then I wouldn’t have the voice.’ Her eyes slip closed, then slowly reopen. She smiles. ‘Whoa! Feel like I might be floating away.’

‘Don’t float away yet. Can you describe the man?’

‘A white guy with white hair. He was old.’

‘Old-old, or just a little bit old?’

Barbara’s eyes are growing glassy. ‘Older than Dad, not as old as Grampa.’

‘Sixty-fiveish?’

‘Yeah, I guess. Bill’s age, more or less.’ Her eyes suddenly spring wide open. ‘Oh, guess what? I remember something. I thought it was a little weird, and so did Hilda.’

‘What was that?’

‘He said his name was Myron Zakim, and his card said Myron Zakim, but there were initials on his briefcase that were different.’

‘Can you remember what they were?’

‘No… sorry…’ She’s floating away, all right.

‘Will you think about that first thing when you wake up, Barb? Your mind will be fresh then, and it might be important.’

‘Okay…’

‘I wish Hilda hadn’t thrown hers away,’ Holly says. She gets no reply, nor expects one; she often talks to herself. Barbara’s breathing has grown deep and slow. Holly begins buttoning her coat.

‘Dinah has one,’ Barbara says in a faraway dreaming voice. ‘Hers works. She plays Crossy Road on it… and Plants Vs. Zombies… also, she downloaded the whole Divergent trilogy, but she said it came in all jumbled up.’

Holly stops buttoning. She knows Dinah Scott, has seen her at the Robinson house many times, playing board games or watching TV, often staying for supper. And drooling over Jerome, as all of Barbara’s friends do.

‘Did the same man give it to her?’

Barbara doesn’t answer. Biting her lip, not wanting to press her but needing to, Holly shakes Barbara by the shoulder and asks again.

‘No,’ Barbara says in the same faraway voice. ‘She got it from the website.’

‘What website was that, Barbara?’

Her only answer is a snore. Barbara is gone.

Holly knows that the Robinsons will be waiting for her in the lobby, so she hurries into the gift shop, lurks behind a display of teddy bears (Holly is an accomplished lurker), and calls Bill. She asks if he knows Barbara’s friend Dinah Scott.

‘Sure,’ he says. ‘I know most of her friends. The ones that come to the house, anyway. So do you.’

‘I think you should go to see her.’

‘You mean tonight?’

‘I mean right away. She’s got a Zappit.’ Holly takes a deep breath. ‘They’re dangerous.’ She can’t quite bring herself to say what she is coming to believe: that they are suicide machines.

In Room 217, orderlies Norm Richard and Kelly Pelham lift Brady back into bed while Mavis Rainier supervises. Norm picks up the Zappit console from the floor and stares at the swimming fish on the screen.

‘Why doesn’t he just catch pneumonia and die, like the rest of the gorks?’ Kelly asks.

‘This one’s too ornery to die,’ Mavis says, then notices Norm staring down at the swimming fish. His eyes are wide and his mouth is hung ajar.

‘Wake up, splendor in the grass,’ she says, and snatches the gadget away. She pushes the power button and tosses it into the top drawer of Brady’s nightstand. ‘We’ve got miles to go before we sleep.’

‘Huh?’ Norm looks down at his hands, as if expecting to see the Zappit still in them.

Kelly asks Nurse Rainier if maybe she wants to take Hartsfield’s blood pressure. ‘O2 looks a little low,’ he says.

Mavis considers this, then says, ‘Fuck him.’

They leave.

In Sugar Heights, the city’s poshest neighborhood, an old Chevy Malibu spotted with primer paint creeps up to a closed gate on Lilac Drive. Artfully scrolled into the wrought iron are the initials Barbara Robinson failed to remember: FB. Z-Boy gets out from behind the wheel, his old parka (a rip in the back and another in the left sleeve thriftily mended with masking tape) flapping around him. He taps the correct code into the keypad, and the gates begin to swing open. He gets back into the car, reaches under the seat, and brings out two items. One is a plastic soda bottle with the neck cut off. The interior has been packed with steel wool. The other is a .32-caliber revolver. Z-Boy slips the muzzle of the .32 into this homemade silencer – another Brady Hartsfield invention – and holds it on his lap. With his free hand he pilots the Malibu up the smooth, curving driveway.

Ahead, the porch-mounted motion lights come on.

Behind, the wrought iron gates swing silently shut.

LIBRARY AL

It didn’t take Brady long to realize he was pretty much finished as a physical being. He was born stupid but didn’t stay that way, as the saying goes.

Yes, there was physical therapy – Dr Babineau decreed it, and Brady was hardly in a position to protest – but there was only so much therapy could accomplish. He was eventually able to shamble thirty feet or so along the corridor some patients called the Torture Highway, but only with the help of Rehab Care Coordinator Ursula Haber, the bull dyke Nazi who ran the place.

‘One more step, Mr Hartsfield,’ Haber would exhort, and when he managed one more step the bitch would ask for one more and one more after that. When Brady was finally allowed to collapse into his wheelchair, trembling and soaked with sweat, he liked to imagine stuffing oil-soaked rags up Haber’s snatch and setting them on fire.

‘Good job!’ she’d cry. ‘Good job, Mr Hartsfield!’

And if he managed to gargle something that bore a passing resemblance to thank you, she would look around at whoever happened to be near, smiling proudly. Look! My pet monkey can talk!

He could talk (more and better than they knew), and he could shamble ten yards up the Torture Highway. On his best days he could eat custard without spilling too much down his front. But he couldn’t dress himself, couldn’t tie his shoes, couldn’t wipe himself after taking a shit, couldn’t even use the remote control (so reminiscent of Thing One and Thing Two back in the good old days) to watch television. He could grasp it, but his motor control wasn’t even close to good enough for him to manipulate the small buttons. If he did manage to hit the power button, he usually ended up staring at nothing but a blank screen and the SEARCHING FOR SIGNAL message. This infuriated him – in the early days of 2012, everything infuriated him – but he was careful not to show it. Angry people were angry for a reason, and gorks weren’t supposed to have reasons for anything.

Sometimes lawyers from the District Attorney’s office dropped by. Babineau protested these visits, telling the lawyers they were setting him back and therefore working against their own long-term interests, but it did no good.

Sometimes cops came with the lawyers from the DA’s office, and once a cop came on his own. He was a fat cocksucker with a crewcut and a cheerful demeanor. Brady was in his chair, so the fat cocksucker sat on Brady’s bed. The fat cocksucker told Brady that his niece had been at the ’Round Here concert. ‘Just thirteen years old and crazy about that band,’ he said, chuckling. Still chuckling, he leaned forward over his big stomach and punched Brady in the balls.

‘A little something from my niece,’ the fat cocksucker said. ‘Did you feel it? Man, I hope so.’

Brady did feel it, but not as much as the fat cocksucker probably hoped, because everything had gone kind of vague between his waist and knees. Some circuit in his brain that was supposed to be controlling that area had burned out, he supposed. That would ordinarily be bad news, but it was good news when you had to cope with a right hook to the family jewels. He sat there, his face blank. A little drool on his chin. But he filed away the fat cocksucker’s name. Moretti. It went on his list.

Brady had a long list.

He retained a thin hold over Sadie MacDonald by virtue of that first, wholly accidental safari into her brain. (He retained an even greater hold over the idiot orderly’s brain, but visiting there was like taking a vacation in Lowtown.) On several occasions Brady was able to nudge her toward the window, the site of her first seizure. Usually she only glanced out and then went about her work, which was frustrating, but one day in June of 2012, she had another of those mini-seizures. Brady found himself looking out through her eyes once more, but this time he was not content to stay on the passenger side, just watching the scenery. This time he wanted to drive.

Sadie reached up and caressed her breasts. Squeezed them. Brady felt a low tingle begin between Sadie’s legs. He was getting her a little hot. Interesting, but hardly useful.

He thought of turning her around and walking her out of the room. Going down the corridor. Getting a drink of water from the fountain. His very own organic wheelchair. Only what if someone talked to him? What would he say? Or what if Sadie took over again once she was away from the sunflashes, and started screaming that Hartsfield was inside of her? They’d think she was crazy. They might put her on leave. If they did that, Brady would lose his access to her.

He burrowed deeper into her mind instead, watching the thoughtfish go flashing back and forth. They were clearer now, but mostly uninteresting.

One, though… the red one…

It came into view as soon as he thought about it, because he was making her think of it.

Big red fish.

A fatherfish.

Brady snatched at it and caught it. It was easy. His body was next to useless, but inside Sadie’s mind he was as agile as a ballet dancer. The fatherfish had molested her regularly between the ages of six and eleven. Finally he had gone all the way and fucked her. Sadie told a teacher at school, and her father was arrested. He had killed himself while out on bail.

Mostly to amuse himself, Brady began to release his own fish into the aquarium of Sadie MacDonald’s mind: tiny poisonous blowfish that were little more than exaggerations of thoughts she herself harbored in the twilight area that exists between the conscious mind and the subconscious.

That she had led him on.

That she had actually enjoyed his attentions.

That she was responsible for his death.

That when you looked at it that way, it hadn’t been suicide at all. When you looked at it that way, she had murdered him.

Sadie jerked violently, hands flying up to the sides of her head, and turned away from the window. Brady felt that moment of nauseating, tumbling vertigo as he was ejected from her mind. She looked at him, her face pale and dismayed.

‘I think I passed out for a second or two,’ she said, then laughed shakily. ‘But you won’t tell, will you, Brady?’

Of course not, and after that he found it easier and easier to get into her head. She no longer had to look at the sunlight on the windshields across the way; all she had to do was come into the room. She was losing weight. Her vague prettiness was disappearing. Sometimes her uniform was dirty and sometimes her stockings were torn. Brady continued to plant his depth charges: you led him on, you enjoyed it, you were responsible, you don’t deserve to live.

Hell, it was something to do.

Sometimes the hospital got freebies, and in September of 2012 it received a dozen Zappit game consoles, either from the company that made them or from some charity organization. Admin shipped them to the tiny library next to the hospital’s nondenominational chapel. There an orderly unpacked them, looked them over, decided they were stupid and outdated, and stuck them on a back shelf. It was there that Library Al Brooks found them in November, and took one for himself.

Al enjoyed a few of the games, like the one where you had to get Pitfall Harry safely past the crevasses and poisonous snakes, but what he enjoyed most was Fishin’ Hole. Not the game itself, which was stupid, but the demo screen. He supposed people would laugh, but it was no joke to Al. When he was upset about something (his brother yelling at him about not putting out the garbage for Thursday morning pickup, or a crabby call from his daughter in Oklahoma City), those slowly gliding fish and the little tune always mellowed him out. Sometimes he lost all track of time. It was amazing.

On an evening not long before 2012 became 2013, Al had an inspiration. Hartsfield in 217 was incapable of reading, and had shown no interest in books or music on CD. If someone put earphones on his head, he clawed at them until he got them off, as if he found them confining. He would also be incapable of manipulating the small buttons below the Zappit’s screen, but he could look at the Fishin’ Hole demo. Maybe he’d like it, or some of the other demo screens. If he did, maybe some of the other patients (to his credit, Al never thought of them as gorks) would, too, and that would be a good thing, because a few of the brain-damaged patients in the Bucket were occasionally violent. If the demo screens calmed them down, the docs, nurses, and orderlies – even the janitors – would have an easier time.

He might even get a bonus. It probably wouldn’t happen, but a man could dream.

He entered Room 217 one afternoon in early December of 2012, shortly after Hartsfield’s only regular visitor had left. This was an ex-detective named Hodges, who had been instrumental in Hartsfield’s capture, although he hadn’t been the one who had actually smacked his head and damaged his brain.

Hodges’s visits upset Hartsfield. After he was gone, things fell over in 217, the water turned on and off in the shower, and sometimes the bathroom door flew open or slammed shut. The nurses had seen these things, and were sure Hartsfield was causing them, but Dr Babineau pooh-poohed that idea. He claimed it was exactly the kind of hysterical notion that got a hold on certain women (even though several of the Bucket nurses were men). Al knew the stories were true, because he had seen manifestations himself on several occasions, and he did not think of himself as a hysterical person. Quite the opposite.

On one memorable occasion he had heard something in Hartsfield’s room as he was passing, opened the door, and saw the window-blinds doing a kind of maniacal boogaloo. This was shortly after one of Hodges’s visits. It had gone on for nearly thirty seconds before the blinds stilled again.

Although he tried to be friendly – he tried to be friendly with everyone – Al did not approve of Bill Hodges. The man seemed to be gloating over Hartsfield’s condition. Reveling in it. Al knew Hartsfield was a bad guy who had murdered innocent people, but what the hell did that matter when the man who had done those things no longer existed? What remained was little more than a husk. So what if he could rattle the blinds, or turn the water on and off? Such things hurt no one.

‘Hello, Mr Hartsfield,’ Al said on that night in December. ‘I brought you something. Hope you’ll take a look.’

He turned the Zappit on and poked the screen to bring up the Fishin’ Hole demo. The fish began to swim and the tune began to play. As always, Al was soothed, and took a moment to enjoy the sensation. Before he could turn the console so Hartsfield could see, he found himself pushing his library cart in Wing A, on the other side of the hospital.

The Zappit was gone.

This should have upset him, but it didn’t. It seemed perfectly okay. He was a little tired, and seemed to be having trouble gathering his scattered thoughts, but otherwise he was fine. Happy. He looked down at his left hand and saw he had drawn a large Z on the back with the pen he always kept in the pocket of his tunic.

Z for Z-Boy, he thought, and laughed.

Brady did not make a decision to leap into Library Al; seconds after the old geezer looked down at the console in his hand, Brady was in. There was no sense of being an interloper in the library guy’s head, either. For now it was Brady’s body, as much as a Hertz sedan would have been his car for as long as he chose to drive it.

The library guy’s core consciousness was still there – someplace – but it was just a soothing hum, like the sound of a furnace in the cellar on a cold day. Yet he had access to all of Alvin Brooks’s memories and all of his stored knowledge. There was a fair amount of this latter, because before retiring from his full-time job at the age of fifty-eight, the man had been an electrician, then known as Sparky Brooks instead of Library Al. If Brady had wanted to rewire a circuit, he could have done so easily, although he understood he might no longer have this ability once he returned to his own body.

Thinking of his body alarmed him, and he bent over the man slumped in the chair. The eyes were half-closed, showing only the whites. The tongue lolled from one corner of the mouth. Brady put a gnarled hand on Brady’s chest and felt a slow rise and fall. So that was all right, but God, he looked horrible. A skin-wrapped skeleton. This was what Hodges had done to him.

He left the room and toured the hospital, feeling a species of mad exhilaration. He smiled at everyone. He couldn’t help it. With Sadie MacDonald he had been afraid of fucking up. He still was, but not so much. This was better. He was wearing Library Al like a tight glove. When he passed Anna Corey, the A Wing head housekeeper, he asked how her husband was bearing up with those radiation treatments. She told him Ellis was doing pretty well, all things considered, and thanked him for asking.

In the lobby, he parked his cart outside the men’s bathroom, went in, sat on the toilet, and examined the Zappit. As soon as he saw the swimming fish, he understood what must have happened. The idiots who had created this particular game had also created, certainly by accident, a hypnotic effect. Not everyone would be susceptible, but Brady thought plenty of people would be, and not just those prone to mild seizures, like Sadie MacDonald.

He knew from reading he’d done in his basement control room that several electronic console and arcade games were capable of initiating seizures or light hypnotic states in perfectly normal people, causing the makers to print a warning (in extremely fine print) on many of the instruction sheets: do not play for prolonged periods, do not sit closer than three feet to the screen, do not play if you have a history of epilepsy.

The effect wasn’t restricted to video games, either. At least one episode of the Pokémon cartoon series had been banned outright when thousands of kids complained of headaches, blurred vision, nausea, and seizures. The culprit was believed to be a sequence in the episode where a series of missiles were set off, causing a strobe effect. Some combination of the swimming fish and the little tune worked the same way. Brady was surprised the company that made the Zappit consoles hadn’t been deluged with complaints. He found out later that there had been complaints, but not many. He came to believe that there were two reasons for that. First, the dumbshit Fishin’ Hole game itself did not have the same effect. Second, hardly anybody bought the Zappit game consoles to begin with. In the jargon of computer commerce, it was a brick.

Still pushing his cart, the man wearing Library Al’s body returned to Room 217 and placed the Zappit on the table by the bed – it merited further study and thought. Then (and not without regret) Brady left Library Al Brooks. There was that moment of vertigo, and then he was looking up instead of down. He was curious to see what would happen next.

At first Library Al just stood there, a piece of furniture that looked like a human being. Brady reached out to him with his invisible left hand and patted his cheek. Then he reached for Al’s mind with his own, expecting to find it shut to him, as Nurse MacDonald’s had been once she came out of her fugue state.

But the door was wide open.

Al’s core consciousness had returned, but there was a bit less now. Brady suspected that some of it had been smothered by his presence. So what? People killed off brain cells when they drank too much, but they had plenty of spares. The same was true of Al. At least for now.

Brady saw the Z he had drawn on the back of Al’s hand – for no reason, just because he could – and spoke without opening his mouth.

‘Hey there, Z-Boy. Go on now. Get out. Head over to A Wing. But you won’t talk about this, will you?’

‘Talk about what?’ Al asked, looking puzzled.

Brady nodded as well as he could nod, and smiled as well as he could smile. He was already wishing to be in Al again. Al’s body was old, but at least it worked.

‘That’s right,’ he told Z-Boy. ‘Talk about what.’

2012 became 2013. Brady lost interest in trying to strengthen his telekinetic muscles. There was really no point, now that he had Al. Each time he got inside, his grip was stronger, his control better. Running Al was like running one of those drones the military used to keep an eye on the ragheads in Afghanistan… and then to bomb the living shit out of their bosses.

Lovely, really.

Once he had Z-Boy show the old Det-Ret one of the Zappits, hoping Hodges would become fascinated by the Fishin’ Hole demo. Being inside Hodges would be wonderful. Brady would make it his first priority to pick up a pencil and poke out the old Det-Ret’s eyes. But Hodges only glanced at the screen and handed it back to Library Al.

Brady tried again a few days later, this time with Denise Woods, the PT associate who came into his room twice a week to exercise his arms and legs. She took the console when Z-Boy handed it to her, and looked at the swimming fish quite a bit longer than Hodges had. Something happened, but it wasn’t quite enough. Trying to enter her was like pushing against a firm rubber diaphragm: it gave a little, enough for him to glimpse her feeding her young son scrambled eggs in his high chair, but then it pushed him back out.

She handed the Zappit back to Z-Boy and said, ‘You’re right, they’re pretty fish. Now why don’t you go hand out some books, Al, and let Brady and me work on those pesky knees of his?’

So there it was. He didn’t have the same instantaneous access to others that he’d had to Al, and a little thought was all it took for Brady to understand why. Al had been preconditioned to the Fishin’ Hole demo, had watched it dozens of times before bringing his Zappit to Brady. That was a crucial difference, and a crushing disappointment. Brady had imagined having dozens of drones among whom he could pick and choose, but that wasn’t going to happen unless there was a way to re-rig the Zappit and enhance the hypnotic effect. Might there be such a way?

As someone who had modified all sorts of gadgets in his time – Thing One and Thing Two, for instance – Brady believed there was. The Zappit was WiFi equipped, after all, and WiFi was the hacker’s best friend. Suppose, for instance, he were to program in a flashing light? A kind of strobe, like the one that had buzzed the brains of those kids exposed to the missile-firing sequence in the Pokémon episode?

The strobe could serve another purpose, as well. While taking a community college course called Computing the Future (this was just before he dropped out of school for good), Brady’s class had been assigned a long CIA report, published in 1995 and declassified shortly after 9/11. It was called ‘The Operational Potential of Subliminal Perception,’ and explained how computers could be programmed to transmit messages so rapidly that the brain recognized them not as messages per se, but as original thoughts. Suppose he were able to embed such a message inside the strobe flash? SLEEP NOW ALL OKAY, for instance, or maybe just RELAX. Brady thought those things, combined with the demo screen’s existing hypnotics, would be pretty effective. Of course he might be wrong, but he would have given his mostly useless right hand to find out.

He doubted if he ever would, because there were two seemingly insurmountable problems. One was getting people to look at the demo screen long enough for the hypnotic effect to take hold. The other was even more basic: how in God’s name was he supposed to modify anything? He had no computer access, and even if he had, what good would it be? He couldn’t even tie his fucking shoes! He considered using Z-Boy, and rejected the idea almost immediately. Al Brooks lived with his brother and his brother’s family, and if Al all of a sudden started demonstrating advanced computer knowledge and capability, there would be questions. Especially when they already had questions about Al, who had grown absentminded and rather peculiar. Brady supposed they thought he was suffering the onset of senility, which wasn’t all that far from the truth.

It seemed that Z-Boy was running out of spare brain cells after all.

Brady grew depressed. He had reached the all too familiar point where his bright ideas collided head-on with gray reality. It had happened with the Rolla vacuum cleaner; it had happened with his computer-assisted vehicle backing device; it had happened with his motorized, programmable TV monitor, which was supposed to revolutionize home security. His wonderful inspirations always came to nothing.

Still, he had one human drone to hand, and after a particularly infuriating visit from Hodges, Brady decided he might cheer up if he put his drone to work. Accordingly, Z-Boy visited an Internet café a block or two down from the hospital, and after five minutes on a computer (Brady was exhilarated to be sitting in front of a screen again), he discovered where Anthony Moretti, aka the fat testicle-punching cocksucker, lived. After leaving the Internet café, Brady walked Z-Boy into an Army surplus store and bought a hunting knife.

The next day when he left the house, Moretti found a dead dog stretched out on the welcome mat. Its throat had been cut. Written in dogblood on the windshield of his car was YOUR WIFE & KIDS ARE NEXT.

Doing this – being able to do this – cheered Brady up. Payback is a bitch, he thought, and I am that bitch.

He sometimes fantasized about sending Z-Boy after Hodges and shooting him in the belly. How good it would be to stand over the Det-Ret, watching him shudder and moan as his life ran through his fingers!

It would be great, but Brady would lose his drone, and once in custody, Al might point the police at him. There was something else, as well, something even bigger: it wouldn’t be enough. He owed Hodges more than a bullet in the belly followed by ten or fifteen minutes of suffering. Much more. Hodges needed to live, breathing toxic air inside a bag of guilt from which there was no escape. Until he could no longer stand it, and killed himself.

Which had been the original plan, back in the good old days.

No way, though, Brady thought. No way to do any of it. I’ve got Z-Boy – who’ll be in an assisted living home if he keeps on the way he’s going – and I can rattle the blinds with my phantom hand. That’s it. That’s the whole deal.

But then, in the summer of 2013, the dark funk he’d been living in was pierced by a shaft of light. He had a visitor. A real one, not Hodges or a suit from the District Attorney’s office, checking to see if he had magically improved enough to stand trial for a dozen different felony crimes, the list headed by eight counts of willful murder at City Center.

There was a perfunctory knock at the door, and Becky Helmington poked her head in. ‘Brady? There’s a young woman here to see you. Says she used to work with you, and she’s brought you something. Do you want to see her?’

Brady could think of only one young woman that might be. He considered saying no, but his curiosity had come back along with his malice (perhaps they were even the same thing). He gave one of his floppy nods, and made an effort to brush his hair out of his eyes.

His visitor entered timidly, as if there might be hidden mines under the floor. She was wearing a dress. Brady had never seen her in a dress, would have guessed she didn’t even own one. But her hair was still cropped close to her skull in a half-assed crewcut, as it had been when they had worked together on the Discount Electronix Cyber Patrol, and she was still as flat as a board in front. He remembered some comedian’s joke: If no tits count for shit, Cameron Diaz is gonna be around for a long time. But she had put on a little powder to cover her pitted skin (amazing) and even a dash of lipstick (more amazing still). In one hand she held a wrapped package.

‘Hey, man,’ Freddi Linklatter said with unaccustomed shyness. ‘How’re you doing?’

This opened all sorts of possibilities.

Brady did his best to smile.