End of Watch (Bill Hodges Trilogy #3) - Stephen King Page 0,94

bed. The landline. He gropes for it, drops it, picks it up off the duvet, and manages a furry approximation of hello.

‘Figured you’d have your cell on do not disturb,’ Pete Huntley says. He sounds wide awake and weirdly jovial. Hodges squints at the bedside clock but can’t read it. His bottle of painkillers, already half empty, is blocking the digital readout. Jesus, how many did he take yesterday?

‘I don’t know how to do that, either.’ Hodges struggles to a sitting position. He can’t believe the pain has gotten so bad so fast. It’s as if it was just waiting to be identified before pouncing with all its claws out.

‘You need to get a life, Kerm.’

A little late for that, he thinks, swinging his legs out of bed.

‘Why are you calling at …’ He moves the bottle of pills. ‘At twenty to seven in the morning?’

‘Couldn’t wait to give you the good news,’ Pete says. ‘Brady Hartsfield is dead. A nurse discovered him on morning rounds.’

Hodges shoots to his feet, producing a stab of pain he hardly feels. ‘What? How?’

‘There’ll be an autopsy later today, but the doctor who examined him is leaning toward suicide. There’s a residue of something on his tongue and gums. The doc on call took a sample, and a guy from the ME’s office is taking another as we speak. They’re going to rush the analysis, Hartsfield being such a rock star and all.’

‘Suicide,’ Hodges says, running a hand through his already crazed hair. The news is simple enough, but he still can’t seem to take it in. ‘Suicide?’

‘He was always a fan,’ Pete says. ‘I believe you might have said that yourself, and more than once.’

‘Yeah, but …’

But what? Pete’s right, Brady was a fan of suicide, and not just the other guy’s. He had been ready to die at the City Center Job Fair in 2009, if things worked out that way, and a year later he rolled a wheelchair into Mingo Auditorium with three pounds of plastic explosive strapped to the seat. Which put his ass at ground zero. Only that was then, and things have changed. Haven’t they?

‘But what?’

‘I don’t know,’ Hodges says.

‘I do. He finally found a way to do it. Simple as that. In any case, if you thought Hartsfield was somehow involved in the deaths of Ellerton, Stover, and Scapelli – and I have to tell you I had my own thoughts along that line – you can stop worrying. He’s a gone goose, a toasty turkey, a baked buzzard, and we all say hooray.’

‘Pete, I need to process this a little.’

‘No doubt,’ Pete says. ‘You had quite the history with him. Meanwhile, I have to call Izzy. Get her day started on the good foot.’

‘Will you call me when you get back the analysis of whatever he swallowed?’

‘Indeed I will. Meanwhile, sayonara Mr Mercedes, right?’

‘Right, right.’

Hodges hangs up the phone, walks into the kitchen, and puts on a pot of coffee. He should have tea, coffee will burn the shit out of his poor struggling innards, but right now he doesn’t care. And he won’t take any pills, not for awhile. He needs to be as clearheaded about this as he possibly can.

He snatches his mobile off the charger and calls Holly. She answers at once, and he wonders briefly what time she gets up. Five? Even earlier? Maybe some questions are best left unanswered. He tells her what Pete just told him, and for once in her life, Holly Gibney does not gild her profanity.

‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!’

‘Not unless Pete was kidding, and I don’t think he was. He doesn’t try joking until mid-afternoon, and he’s not very good at it then.’

Silence for a moment, and then Holly asks, ‘Do you believe it?’

‘That he’s dead, yes. It could hardly be a case of mistaken identity. That he committed suicide? To me that seems …’ He fishes for the right phrase, can’t find it, and repeats what he said to his old partner not five minutes before. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Is it over?’

‘Maybe not.’

‘That’s what I think, too. We have to find out what happened to the Zappits that were left over after the company went broke. I don’t understand how Brady Hartsfield could have had anything to do with them, but so many of the connections go back to him. And to the concert he tried to blow up.’

‘I know.’ Hodges is again picturing a web with a big old spider at the center