not looking for Ondowsky—he’s gone—but for bugs of a certain exotic type. Dangerous bugs that may be looking for a new host. She sees none. Whatever infested Ondowsky may have outlived him, but not for long. She spies a burlap sack in one corner of the cluttered, filthy basement, and stuffs Ondowsky’s clothes into it, along with the fur hat. His undershorts go last. Holly picks them up between two tweezed fingers, revulsion pulling her mouth down at the corners. She drops the shorts into the sack with a shudder and a little cry (“Oough!”) and then uses the flats of her hands to run the elevator doors closed. She relocks them with the drop-key, then hangs the key back on its hook.
She sits and waits. Once she’s sure Jerome, Barbara, and the 911 responders must be gone, she shoulders her purse and carries the bag containing Ondowsky’s clothes upstairs. She leaves by the side door. She thinks about tossing the clothes into the Dumpster, but that would be a little too close for comfort. She takes the bag with her instead, which is perfectly okay. Once she’s on the street, she’s just one more person carrying a parcel.
She’s barely started her car when she gets a call from Jerome, telling her that he and Barbara were victims of a mugging just as they were about to let themselves into the Frederick Building by the side door. They’re at Kiner Memorial, he says.
“Oh my God, that’s terrible,” Holly says. “You should have called me sooner.”
“Didn’t want to worry you,” Jerome says. “We’re basically okay, and he didn’t get anything.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Holly dumps the burlap bag containing Ondowsky’s clothes in a trashcan on her way to John M. Kiner Memorial Hospital. It’s starting to snow.
She turns on the radio, gets Burl Ives bellowing “Holly Jolly Christmas” at the top of his fracking voice, and turns it off again. She hates that song above all others. For obvious reasons.
You can’t have everything, she thinks; into every life a little poop must fall. But sometimes you do get what you need. Which is really all a sane person can ask for.
And she is.
Sane.
December 22, 2020
Holly has to give a deposition at the offices of McIntyre and Curtis at ten o’clock. It’s one of her least favorite things, but she’s just a minor witness in this custody case, which is good. It’s a Samoyed at issue, rather than a child, and that lowers the stress level a bit. There are a few nasty questions from one of the lawyers, but after what she’s been through with Chet Ondowsky—and George—the interrogation seems pretty tame. She’s done in fifteen minutes. She turns on her phone once she’s in the corridor, and sees she’s missed a call from Dan Bell.
But it isn’t Dan who answers when she calls back; it’s the grandson.
“Grampa had a heart attack,” Brad says. “Another heart attack. It’s actually his fourth. He’s in the hospital, and this time he won’t be coming out.”
There’s a long, watery intake of breath. Holly waits.
“He wants to know how things went with you. What happened with the reporter. The thing. If I could give him good news, I think it would make it easier for him to go.”
Holly looks around to make sure she’s alone. She is, but she lowers her voice anyway. “It’s dead. Tell him it’s dead.”
“Are you sure?”
She thinks of that final look of surprise and fear. She thinks of the scream as he—it—went down. And she thinks of the abandoned clothes at the bottom of the shaft.
“Oh yes,” she says. “I’m sure.”
“We helped? Grampa, he helped?”
“Couldn’t have done it without either of you. Tell him he may have saved a lot of lives. Tell him Holly says thanks.”
“I will.” Another watery intake of breath. “Do you think there are more like him?”
After Texas, Holly would have said no. Now she cannot be sure. One is a unique number. When you have two, you may be seeing the beginning of a pattern. She pauses, then gives an answer she doesn’t necessarily believe . . . but wants to believe. The old man watched for years. For decades. He deserves to go out with a win under his belt.
“I don’t think so.”
“Good,” Brad says. “That’s good. God bless, Holly. You have a merry Christmas.”
Under the circumstances she can’t wish him the same, so she simply thanks him.