End of Watch (Bill Hodges Trilogy #3) - Stephen King Page 0,127

unpleasant ideas they implant in a person’s mind, has no interest in standing by while Freddi tries to dicker with Bill. The Swiss Army Knife he carried on his belt while in Arizona has been retrieved from his luggage and is now back in his pocket. He unfolds the biggest blade, shoves the repeater off its shelf, and slices the cables mating it to Freddi’s system. It falls to the floor with a moderate crash, and an alarm begins to bong from the CPU under the desk. Holly bends down, pushes something, and the alarm shuts up.

‘There’s a switch, moron!’ Freddi shouts. ‘You didn’t have to do that!’

‘You know what, I did,’ Jerome says. ‘One of those fucking Zappits almost got my sister killed.’ He steps toward her, and Freddi cringes back. ‘Did you have any idea what you were doing? Any fucking idea at all? I think you must have. You look stoned but not stupid.’

Freddi begins to cry. ‘I didn’t. I swear I didn’t. Because I didn’t want to.’

Hodges takes a deep breath, which reawakens the pain. ‘Start from the beginning, Freddi, and take us through it.’

‘And as quickly as you can,’ Holly adds.

12

Jamie Winters was nine when he attended the ’Round Here concert at the Mac with his mother. Only a few subteen boys were there that night; the group was one of those dismissed by most boys his age as girly stuff. Jamie, however, liked girly stuff. At nine he hadn’t yet been sure that he was gay (wasn’t even sure he knew what that meant). All he knew was that when he saw Cam Knowles, ’Round Here’s lead singer, he felt funny in the pit of his stomach.

Now he’s pushing sixteen and knows exactly what he is. With certain boys at school, he prefers to leave off the last letter of his first name because with those boys he likes to be Jami. His father knows what he is, as well, and treats him like some kind of freak. Lenny Winters – a man’s man if ever there was one – owns a successful building company, but today all four of Winters Construction’s current jobs are shut down because of the impending storm. Lenny is in his home office instead, up to his ears in paperwork and stewing over the spreadsheets covering his computer screen.

‘Dad!’

‘What do you want?’ Lenny growls without looking up. ‘And why aren’t you in school? Was it canceled?’

‘Dad!’

This time Lenny looks around at the boy he sometimes refers to (when he thinks Jamie isn’t in earshot) as ‘the family queer.’ The first thing he’s aware of is that his son is wearing lipstick, rouge, and eye shadow. The second thing is the dress. Lenny recognizes it as one of his wife’s. The kid is too tall for it, and it stops halfway down his thighs.

‘What the fuck!’

Jamie is smiling. Jubilant. ‘It’s how I want to be buried!’

‘What are you—’ Lenny gets up so fast his chair tumbles over. That’s when he sees the gun the boy is holding. He must have taken it from Lenny’s side of the closet in the master bedroom.

‘Watch this, Dad!’ Still smiling. As if about to demonstrate a really cool magic trick. He raises the gun and places the muzzle against his right temple. His finger is curled around the trigger. The nail has been carefully coated with sparkle polish.

‘Put that down, Son! Put it—’

Jamie – or Jami, which is how he has signed his brief suicide note – pulls the trigger. The gun is a .357, and the report is deafening. Blood and brains fly in a fan and decorate the doorframe with gaud. The boy in his mother’s dress and makeup falls forward, the left side of his face pushed out like a balloon.

Lenny Winters gives voice to a series of high, wavering screams. He screams like a girl.

13

Brady disconnects from Jamie Winters just as the boy puts the gun to his head, afraid – terrified, actually – of what may happen if he’s still in there when the bullet enters the head he’s been messing with. Would he be spit out like a seed, as he was when he was inside the half-hypnotized dumbo mopping the floor in 217, or would he die along with the kid?

For a moment he thinks he’s left it until too late, and the steady chiming he hears is what everyone hears when they exit this life. Then he’s back in the main room of Heads and Skins