by Stephen King
As it turned out, Holly did not fly business class, although she could have if she had opted for the 10:15 Delta flight, which would have put her in Cap City at 12:30. Because she wanted some extra time in Ohio, however, she booked an arduous three-stage trip on puddle-jumpers that would probably bounce her all over the uneasy July air. Cramped and not particularly pleasant, but bearable. What she found less bearable was the knowledge that she wouldn't arrive in Flint City until six PM, and that was if all her arrangements worked out perfectly. The meeting at Attorney Gold's office was scheduled for seven, and if there was one thing Holly hated above all others, it was being late for a scheduled appointment. Being late was the wrong way to get off on the right foot.
She packed her few things, checked out of the hotel, and drove the thirty miles to Regis. She went first to the house where Heath Holmes had been staying with his mother on his vacation. It was closed up, the windows boarded across, likely because vandals had been using them for target practice. On the lawn, which badly needed mowing, was a sign that read FOR SALE CONTACT FIRST NATIONAL BANK OF DAYTON.
Holly looked at the house, knew that the local kids would soon be whispering that it was haunted (if they weren't already), and mused on the nature of tragedy. Like measles, mumps, or rubella, tragedy was contagious. Unlike those diseases, there was no vaccine. The death of Frank Peterson in Flint City had infected his unfortunate family and spread through the entire town. She doubted if that was quite the case in this suburban community, where fewer people had long-term ties, but the Holmes family was certainly gone; nothing left of them but this empty house.
She debated taking a photo of the boarded-up house with the FOR SALE sign in the foreground--a picture of sorrow and loss if there ever was one--and decided not to. Some of the people she was going to meet might understand, might feel those things, but most of them probably would not. To them it would just be a picture.
She drove from the Holmes residence to the Peaceful Rest Cemetery, on the outskirts of town. Here she found the family reunited: father, mother, and only son. There were no flowers, and the stone marking the resting place of Heath Holmes had been pushed over. She imagined the same thing might have happened to Terry Maitland's stone. Sorrow was catching; so was anger. His was a small marker, nothing on it but the name, the dates, and a bit of dried scum that might have been the residue of a thrown egg. With some effort, she set it up again. She had no illusions that it would stay that way, but a person did what a person could.
"You didn't kill anyone, Mr. Holmes, did you? You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time." She found some posies on a nearby grave, and borrowed a few to scatter on Heath's. Picked flowers were a poor remembrance--they died--but better than nothing. "You're stuck with it, though. Nobody here would ever believe the truth. I don't think the people I'm going to meet tonight will believe it, either."
She would try to convince them, just the same. A person did what a person could, whether it was setting up gravestones or trying to convince twenty-first-century men and women that there were monsters in the world, and their greatest advantage was the unwillingness of rational people to believe.
Holly looked around and saw a vault on a nearby low hill (in this part of Ohio, all the hills were low). She walked to it, gazed at the name chiseled in the granite over the lintel--GRAVES, how appropriate--and walked down the three stone steps. She peered inside at the stone benches, where one could sit and meditate on the Graves of yesteryear here entombed. Had the outsider hidden here after his filthy work was done? She didn't believe so, because anyone--maybe even one of the vandals who had pushed over Heath Holmes's stone--might wander over for a peek inside. Also, the sun would shine into the meditation area for an hour or two in the afternoons, giving it a bit of fugitive warmth. If the outsider was what she believed he was, he would prefer darkness. Not always, no, but for certain periods of time. Certain crucial periods. She hadn't finished her research yet, but she was almost sure of that much. And something else: murder might be its life's work, but sorrow was its food. Sorrow and anger.
No, it hadn't taken its rest in this vault, but she believed it had been in this cemetery, perhaps even before the deaths of Mavis Holmes and her son. Holly thought (she knew it might only be a fancy) she could smell its presence. Brady Hartsfield had had that same smell about him, the stink of the unnatural. Bill had known it; the nurses who had cared for Hartsfield had known it, too, even though he was supposedly in a state of semi-catatonia.
She walked slowly to the little parking lot outside the cemetery gates with her bag banging against her hip. Her Prius waited alone in the sizzling summer heat. She walked past it, then turned a slow three-sixty, studying every aspect of the surrounding area. She was close to farm country--she could smell the fertilizer--but this was a transitional belt of industrial abandonment, ugly and barren. There would be no pictures of it in the Chamber of Commerce promotional brochures (assuming Regis had a Chamber of Commerce). There were no points of interest. There was nothing to attract the eye; it was repelled instead, as if the very earth was saying go away, there is nothing for you here, goodbye, don't come again. Well, there was the cemetery, but few people would visit Peaceful Rest once winter came, and the north wind would freeze those few away after the briefest of visits to make their manners to the dead.
Yonder to the north were train tracks, but the rails were rusty and there were weeds growing up between the crossties. There was a long-deserted train station, its windows boarded up like those of the Holmes house. Beyond it, on a spur, stood two lonely boxcars, their wheels buried in vines. They looked as if they had been there since the Vietnam era. Near the deserted station were long-abandoned storage facilities and what she assumed were obsolete repair sheds. Beyond those, a broken factory stood hip-deep in sunflowers and bushes. A swastika had been spray-painted on crumbling pink bricks that had been red a long, long time ago. On one side of the highway that would take her back to town, a leaning billboard proclaimed ABORTION STOPS A BEATING HEART! CHOOSE LIFE! On the other side was a long low building with a sign on its roof reading SPE DY ROBO CAR WASH. In its empty parking lot was another sign, one she'd seen once already today: FOR SALE CONTACT FIRST NATIONAL BANK OF DAYTON.
I think you were here. Not in the vault, but close by. Where you could smell tears when the wind was right. Where you could hear the laughter of the men or boys who pushed over Heath Holmes's stone and then likely urinated on his grave.
In spite of the day's heat, Holly felt cold. Given more time, she might have investigated those empty places. There was no danger; the outsider was long gone from Ohio. Very likely gone from Flint City, too.
She snapped four pictures: the train station, the boxcars, the factory, the deserted car wash. She reviewed them and decided they would do. They'd have to. She had a plane to catch.
Yes, and people to convince.
If she could, that was. She felt very small and lonely just now. It was easy to imagine laughter and ridicule; thinking of such things came naturally to her. But she would try. She had to. For the murdered children, yes--Frank Peterson and the Howard girls and all the ones who had come before them--but also for Terry Maitland and Heath Holmes. A person did what a person could.
She had one more stop to make. Luckily, it was on her way.
2
An old man sitting on a bench in Trotwood Community Park was happy to give her directions to the place where the bodies of "those poor gals" had been found. It wasn't far, he said, and she would know it when she got there.
She did.
Holly pulled over, got out, and gazed at a ravine which mourners--and thrill-seekers masquerading as mourners--had attempted to turn into a shrine. There were glittery cards upon which words like SORROW and HEAVEN predominated. There were balloons, some deflating, some fresh and new, even though Amber and Jolene Howard had been discovered here three months earlier. There was a statue of Mary, which some wag had decorated with a mustache. There was a teddy bear that made H
olly shudder. Its plump brown body was covered with mold.
She raised her iPad, took a picture.
There was no whiff of that smell she had gotten (or imagined she'd gotten) at the cemetery, but she had no doubt the outsider would have visited this place at some point after the bodies of Amber and Jolene had been discovered, sampling the grief of the pilgrims to this makeshift shrine like a fine old Burgundy. Also the excitement of those--not many, but a few, there were always a few--who came to meditate on what it might be like to do such things as had been done to the Howard girls, and listen to their screams.
Yes, you came, but not too soon. Not until you could do so without attracting unwanted attention, the way you did on the day Frank Peterson's brother shot Terry Maitland.
"Only that time you couldn't resist, could you?" Holly murmured. "It would have been like a starving man trying to resist a Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings."
A minivan pulled in ahead of Holly's Prius. On one side of the bumper was a sticker reading MOM'S TAXI. The one on the other side read I BELIEVE IN THE 2ND AMENDMENT, AND I VOTE. The woman who got out was well-dressed, plump, pretty, in her thirties. She was holding a bouquet of flowers. She knelt, put them beside a wooden cross with LITTLE GIRLS on one arm and WITH JESUS on the other. Then she stood up.
"So sad, isn't it?" she said to Holly.
"Yes."
"I'm a Christian, but I'm glad the man who did it is dead. Glad. And I'm glad he's in hell. Is that awful of me?"
"He's not in hell," Holly said.
The woman recoiled as if she had been slapped.
"He brings hell."
Holly drove to the Dayton Airport. She was running a bit behind, but resisted the urge to exceed the speed limit. Laws were laws for a reason.
3
Having to fly on the commuter planes (Tin Can Airways was what Bill had called them) had its advantages. For one, the final leg put her down at Kiowa Airfield in Flint County, saving her a seventy-mile drive from Cap City. Leapfrog travel also gave her a chance to continue her researches. During her brief layovers between flights, she used airport Wi-Fi to download as much information as she could, and as fast as she could. During the flights themselves she read what she had downloaded, scrolling fast and concentrating fiercely, barely hearing the dismayed yelps when her second flight, a thirty-seat turboprop, hit an air pocket and dropped like an elevator.
She arrived at her destination only five minutes late, and by putting on a burst of speed, was first to Hertz, earning a dirty look from the overburdened salesman type she beat out with a final sprint. On the way into town, seeing how close she was shaving it, she gave in to temptation and broke the speed limit. But only by five miles an hour.
4
"That's her. Got to be."
Howie Gold and Alec Pelley were standing outside the building where Howie kept his offices. Howie was pointing to a slim woman in a gray business suit and white blouse trotting up the sidewalk, a big totebag banging against one slim hip. Her hair was cut close to her small face, with graying bangs that stopped just short of her eyebrows. There was a touch of fading lipstick on her mouth, but she wore no other makeup. The sun was sinking, but what remained of the day was still hot, and a trickle of sweat ran down one of her cheeks.
"Ms. Gibney?" Howie asked, stepping forward.
"Yes," she panted. "Am I late?"
"Two minutes early, actually," Alec said. "May I take your bag? It looks heavy."
"I'm fine," she said, looking from the stocky, balding lawyer to the investigator who had hired her. Pelley was at least six inches taller than his boss, with graying hair combed straight back, tonight dressed in tan slacks and a white shirt open at the neck. "Are the others here?"
"Most," Alec said. "Detective Anderson--ah, speak of the devil."
Holly turned and saw three people approaching. One was a woman, holding the remains of her youthful good looks quite well into her middle age, although the circles under her eyes, only partially concealed by foundation and a bit of powder, suggested she might not have been sleeping well lately. To her left was a skinny, nervous-looking man with a cowlick coming loose from the back of his otherwise rigidly controlled hair. And on her right . . .
Detective Anderson was a tall man with sloping shoulders and the beginnings of what would probably become a paunch if he didn't start exercising more and watching what he ate. His head was slightly thrust forward, his eyes, bright blue, taking her in from top to bottom and stem to stern. It wasn't Bill, of course it wasn't, Bill was two years dead and never coming back. Also, this man was much younger than Bill had been when Holly first met him. It was the eager curiosity in his face that was the same. He was holding the woman's hand, which suggested she was Mrs. Anderson. Interesting that she should have come with him.
There were introductions all around. The slender man with the cowlick, it turned out, was Flint County district attorney William ("Please call me Bill") Samuels.
"Let's go upstairs and get out of this heat," Howie said.
Mrs. Anderson--Jeanette--asked Holly if she had had a good flight, and Holly made the appropriate response. Then she turned to Howie and asked if there was perhaps audio-visual capability in the room they would be using. He told her there certainly was, and she was welcome to use it if she had material to present. When they stepped out of the elevator, Holly enquired about the women's room. "I could use a minute or two. I came directly from the airport."
"Absolutely. End of the hall, turn left. Should be unlocked."
Holly was afraid Mrs. Anderson would volunteer to go with her, but Jeanette didn't. Which was good. Holly did have to pee ("spend a penny," was how her mother always put it), but she had something more important in mind, a matter that could only be attended to in complete private.
In the stall, with her skirt up and her bag between her sensible loafers, she closed her eyes. Mindful that tiled rooms like this were natural amplifiers, she prayed silently.
This is Holly Gibney again, and I need help. You know I'm not good with strangers even one at a time, and tonight I have six of them to deal with. Seven, if Mr. Maitland's widow is here. I'm not terrified, but I'd be lying if I didn't say I was scared. Bill could do things like this, but I'm not him. Just help me to do it the way he would. Help me to understand their natural disbelief and not be afraid of it.
She finished aloud, but in a whisper. "Please God, help me not to frack up." She paused, then added, "I'm not smoking."
5
The meeting took place in Howard Gold's conference room, and while it was smaller than the one on The Good Wife (Holly had watched all seven seasons, and had now moved on to the sequel), it was very nice. Tasteful pictures, polished mahogany table, leather chairs. Mrs. Maitland had indeed come. She was sitting at Mr. Gold's right as Howie took his place at the head of the table and asked who was watching her girls.
Marcy gave him a wan smile. "Lukesh and Chandra Patel volunteered. Their son was on Terry's team. In fact, Baibir was on third base when . . ." She looked at Detective Anderson. "When your men arrested him. Baibir was heartbroken. He didn't understand."
Anderson crossed his arms and said nothing. His wife put a hand on his shoulder and murmured something no one else was meant to hear. Anderson nodded.
"I'm going to call this meeting to order," Mr. Gold said. "I have no agenda, but perhaps our visitor would like to begin. This is Holly Gibney, a private detective Alec hired to investigate the Dayton end of this business, assuming the two cases really are connected. That's one of the things we're here to determine, if possible."
"I'm not a private detective," Holly demurred. "My partner, Peter Huntley, is the one with the private investigator's license. What our company mostly does is repo work and skip-tracing. We do take on an occasional criminal investigation where we're unlikely to be scolded by the police. We've had good luck with missing pets, for instance."
That sounded lame, and she felt blood heating her face.
"Ms. Gib
ney is being a trifle too modest," Alec said. "I believe you were involved with running a violent fugitive named Morris Bellamy to earth."
"That was my partner's case," Holly said. "My first partner. Bill Hodges. He's since passed away, Mr. Pelley--Alec--as you know."
"Yes," Alec said. "I'm sorry for your loss."
The Latino man Detective Anderson had introduced as Yunel Sablo of the State Police now cleared his throat. "I believe," he said, "that you and Mr. Hodges were also involved in a case of mass vehicular homicide and intended terrorism. A young man named Hartsfield. And that you, Ms. Gibney, were personally responsible for stopping him before he could cause an explosion in a crowded auditorium. One that might have killed thousands of young people."
A murmur went around the table. Holly felt her face growing hotter. She would have liked to tell them that she had failed, that she had only halted Brady's homicidal ambitions for awhile, that he had come back to cause yet more deaths before being stopped for good, but this was neither the time nor the place.
Lieutenant Sablo wasn't finished. "I think you received a commendation from the city?"
"There were actually three of us who got commendations, but all it amounted to was a gold key and a bus pass good for ten years." She looked around at them, unhappily aware that she was still blushing like a sixteen-year-old. "That was a long time ago. As for this case, I'd rather save my report for last. And my conclusions."
"Like the final chapter in one of those old British drawing-room mysteries," Mr. Gold said, smiling. "We all tell what we know, then you stand up and astound us with an explanation of who done it, and how."
"Good luck with that," Bill Samuels said. "Just thinking about the Peterson case makes my head hurt."
"I believe we have most of the pieces," Holly said, "but I don't believe they're all out on the table, even now. What I keep remembering--I'm sure you'll think it's silly--is that old saying about how Macy's doesn't tell Gimbels. But now Macy's and Gimbels are both here--"
"Not to mention Saks, Nordstrom's, and Needless Markup," Howie said. Then, seeing Holly's expression: "I'm not joshing you, Ms. Gibney, I'm agreeing with you. Everything on the table. Who starts?"