End of Watch (Bill Hodges Trilogy #3) - Stephen King Page 0,29

have to watch carefully. You can’t take your eyes off the screen.’

‘Dr Babineau, are you all right?’

It’s her voice, but it seems to be coming from far away. He makes no reply, just keeps looking at the screen. Scapelli is looking, too. Those fish are interesting. And the little tune, that’s sort of hypnotic. There’s a flash of blue light from the screen. She blinks, and then the fish are back. Swimming to and fro. Flicking their flippy tails and sending up burbles of bubbles.

‘Each time you see a pink fish, tap it and a number will come up. Nine pink fish, nine numbers. Then you will be done and all this will be behind us. Do you understand?’

She thinks of asking him if she’s supposed to write the numbers down or just remember them, but that seems too hard, so she just says yes.

‘Good.’ He hands her the gadget. ‘Nine fish, nine numbers. But just the pink ones, mind.’

Scapelli stares at the screen where the fish swim: red and green, green and blue, blue and yellow. They swim off the left side of the little rectangular screen, then back on at the right. They swim off the right side of the screen, then back on at the left.

Left, right.

Right, left.

Some high, some low.

But where are the pink ones? She needs to tap the pink ones and when she’s tapped nine of them, all of this will be behind her.

From the corner of one eye she sees Babineau refastening the clasps on his briefcase. He picks it up and leaves the room. He’s going. It doesn’t matter. She has to tap the pink fish, and then all of this will be behind her. A flash of blue light from the screen, and then the fish are back. They swim left to right and right to left. The tune plays: By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea, you and me, you and me, oh how happy we’ll be.

A pink one! She taps it! The number 11 appears! Eight more to go!

She taps a second pink fish as the front door quietly closes, and a third as Dr Babineau’s car starts outside. She stands in the middle of her living room, lips parted as if for a kiss, staring down at the screen. Colors shift and move on her cheeks and forehead. Her eyes are wide and unblinking. A fourth pink fish swims into view, this one moving slowly, as if inviting the tap of her finger, but she only stands there.

‘Hello, Nurse Scapelli.’

She looks up to see Brady Hartsfield sitting in her easy chair. He’s shimmering a bit at the edges, ghostly, but it’s him, all right. He’s wearing what he was wearing when she visited him in his room that afternoon: jeans and a checked shirt. On the shirt is that button reading I WAS SHAVED BY NURSE BARBARA! But the vacant gaze everyone in the Bucket has grown used to is gone. He’s looking at her with lively interest. She remembers her brother looking at his ant farm that way when they were children back in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

He must be a ghost, because fish are swimming in his eyes.

‘He’ll tell,’ Hartsfield says. ‘And it won’t just be his word against yours, don’t get that idea. He had a nanny-cam planted in my room so he can watch me. Study me. It’s got a wide-angle lens so he can see the whole room. That kind of lens is called a fish-eye.’

He smiles to show he’s made a pun. A red fish swims across his right eye, disappears, and then appears in his left one. Scapelli thinks, His brain is full of fish. I’m seeing his thoughts.

‘The camera is hooked up to a recorder. He’ll show the board of directors the footage of you torturing me. It didn’t actually hurt that much, I don’t feel pain the way I used to, but torture is what he’ll call it. It won’t end there, either. He’ll put it on YouTube. And Facebook. And Bad Medicine dot-com. It will go viral. You’ll be famous. The Torturing Nurse. And who will come to your defense? Who will stand up for you? No one. Because nobody likes you. They think you’re awful. And what do you think? Do you think you’re awful?’

Now that the idea has been brought fully to her attention, she supposes she is. Anyone who would threaten to twist the testicles of a brain-damaged man must be awful. What was