by Stephen King
He gets out of bed, walks slowly to the bathroom, and takes the giant economy-sized bottle of Gelusil out of the medicine cabinet, careful not to look at himself in the mirror. He chugalugs four big swallows, then leans over, waiting to see if his stomach will accept it or hit the ejector button, as it did with the chicken soup.
It stays down and the pain actually begins to recede. Sometimes Gelusil does that. Not always.
He thinks about going back to bed, but he's afraid that dull throb will return as soon as he's horizontal. He shuffles into his office instead and turns on his computer. He knows this is the very worst time to start checking out the possible causes for his symptoms, but he can no longer resist. His desktop wallpaper comes up (another picture of Allie as a kid). He mouses down to the bottom of the screen, meaning to open Firefox, then freezes. There's something new in the dock. Between the balloon icon for text messaging and the camera icon for FaceTime, there's a blue umbrella with a red 1 sitting above it.
"A message on Debbie's Blue Umbrella," he says. "I'll be damned."
A much younger Jerome Robinson downloaded the Blue Umbrella app to his computer almost six years ago. Brady Hartsfield, aka Mr. Mercedes, wanted to converse with the cop who had failed to catch him, and, although retired, Hodges was very willing to talk. Because once you got dirtbags like Mr. Mercedes talking (there weren't very many like him, and thank God for that), they were only a step or two from being caught. This was especially true of the arrogant ones, and Hartsfield had been arrogance personified.
They both had their reasons for communicating on a secure, supposedly untraceable chat site with servers located someplace in deepest, darkest Eastern Europe. Hodges wanted to goad the perpetrator of the City Center Massacre into making a mistake that would help identify him. Mr. Mercedes wanted to goad Hodges into killing himself. He had succeeded with Olivia Trelawney, after all.
What kind of life do you have? he had written in his first communication to Hodges--the one that had arrived by snail-mail. What kind, now that the "thrill of the hunt" is behind you? And then: Want to get in touch with me? Try Under Debbie's Blue Umbrella. I even got you a username: "kermitfrog19."
With plenty of help from Jerome Robinson and Holly Gibney, Hodges tracked Brady down, and Holly clobbered him. Jerome and Holly got free city services for ten years; Hodges got a pacemaker. There were sorrows and loss Hodges doesn't want to think about--not even now, all these years later--but you'd have to say that for the city, and especially for those who had been attending the concert at the Mingo that night, all ended well.
At some point between 2010 and now, the blue umbrella icon disappeared from the dock at the bottom of his screen. If Hodges ever wondered what happened to it (he can't remember that he ever did), he probably assumed either Jerome or Holly dumped it in the trash on one of their visits to fix whatever current outrage he had perpetrated on his defenseless Macintosh. Instead, one of them must have tucked it into the apps folder, where the blue umbrella has remained, just out of sight, all these years. Hell, maybe he even did the dragging himself and has forgotten. Memory has a way of slipping a few gears after sixty-five, when people round the third turn start down the home stretch.
He mouses to the blue umbrella, hesitates, then clicks. His desktop screen is replaced by a young couple on a magic carpet floating over an endless sea. Silver rain is falling, but the couple is safe and dry beneath a protective blue umbrella.
Ah, such memories this brings back.
He enters kermitfrog19 as both his username and his password--isn't that how he did it before, as per Hartsfield's instructions? He can't remember for sure, but there's one way to find out. He bangs the return key.
The machine thinks for a second or two (it seems longer), and then, presto, he's in. He frowns at what he sees. Brady Hartsfield used merckill as his handle, short for Mercedes Killer--Hodges has no trouble remembering that--but this is someone else. Which shouldn't surprise him, since Holly turned Hartsfield's fucked-up brain to oatmeal, but somehow it still does.
Z-Boy wants to chat with you!
Do you want to chat with Z-Boy?
Y N
Hodges hits Y, and a moment later a message appears. Just a single sentence, half a dozen words, but Hodges reads them over and over again, feeling not fear but excitement. He is onto something here. He doesn't know what it is, but it feels big.
Z-Boy: He's not done with you yet.
Hodges stares at it, frowning. At last he sits forward in his chair and types:
kermitfrog19: Who's not done with me? Who is this?
There's no answer.
19
Hodges and Holly get together with Pete and Isabelle at Dave's Diner, a greasy spoon a block down from the morning madhouse known as Starbucks. With the early breakfast rush over, they have their pick of tables and settle at one in the back. In the kitchen a Badfinger song is playing on the radio and waitresses are laughing.
"All I've got is half an hour," Hodges says. "Then I have to run to the doctor's."
Pete leans forward, looking concerned. "Nothing serious, I hope."
"Nope. I feel fine." This morning he actually does--like forty-five again. That message on his computer, cryptic and sinister though it was, seems to have been better medicine than the Gelusil. "Let's get to what we've found. Holly, they'll want Exhibit A and Exhibit B. Hand em over."
Holly has brought her small tartan briefcase to the meeting. From it (and not without reluctance) she brings the Zappit Commander and the lens cap from the garage at 1588. Both are in plastic bags, although the lens cap is still wrapped in tissues.
"What have you two been up to?" Pete asks. He's striving for humorous, but Hodges can hear a touch of accusation there, as well.
"Investigating," Holly says, and although she isn't ordinarily one for eye contact, she shoots a brief look at Izzy Jaynes, as if to say Get the point?
"Explain," Izzy says.
Hodges does so while Holly sits beside him with her eyes cast down, her decaf--all she drinks--untouched. Her jaws are moving, though, and Hodges knows she's back on the Nicorette.
"Unbelievable," Izzy says when Hodges has finished. She pokes at the bag with the Zappit inside. "You just took this. Wrapped it up in newspaper like a piece of salmon from the fish market and carried it out of the house."
Holly appears to shrink in her chair. Her hands are so tightly clasped in her lap that the knuckles are white.
Hodges usually likes Isabelle well enough, even though she once nearly tripped him up in an interrogation room (this during the Mr. Mercedes thing, when he had been hip-deep in an unauthorized investigation), but he doesn't like her much now. He can't like anyone who makes Holly shrink like that.
"Be reasonable, Iz. Think it through. If Holly hadn't found that thing--and purely by accident--it would still be there. You guys weren't going to search the house."
"You probably weren't going to call the housekeeper, either," Holly says, and although she still won't look up, there's metal in her voice. Hodges is glad to hear it.
"We would have gotten to the Alderson woman in time," Izzy says, but those misty gray eyes of hers flick up and to the left as she says it. It's a classic liar's tell, and Hodges knows when he sees it that she and Pete haven't even discussed the housekeeper yet, although they probably would have gotten around to her eventually. Pete Huntley may be a bit of a plodder, but plodders are usually thorough, you had to give them that.
"If there were any fingerprints on that gadget," Izzy says, "they're gone now. Kiss them goodbye."
Holly mutters something under her breath, making Hodges remember that when he first met her (and completely underestimated her), he thought of her as Holly the Mumbler.
Izzy leans forward, her gray eyes suddenly not misty at all. "What did you say?"
"She said that's silly," Hodges says, knowing perfectly well that the word was actually stupid. "She's right. It was shoved down between the arm of Ellerton's chair and the cushion. Any fing
erprints on it would be blurred, and you know it. Also, were you going to search the whole house?"
"We might have," Isabelle says, sounding sulky. "Depending on what we get back from forensics."
Other than in Martine Stover's bedroom and bathroom, there were no forensics. They all know this, Izzy included, and there's no need for Hodges to belabor the point.
"Take it easy," Pete says to Isabelle. "I invited Kermit and Holly out there, and you agreed."
"That was before I knew they were going to walk out with . . ."
She trails off. Hodges waits with interest to see how she will finish. Is she going to say with a piece of the evidence? Evidence of what? An addiction to computer solitaire, Angry Birds, and Frogger?
"With a piece of Mrs. Ellerton's property," she finishes lamely.
"Well, you've got it now," Hodges says. "Can we move on? Perhaps discuss the man who gave it to her in the supermarket, claiming the company was eager for user input on a gadget that's no longer made?"
"And the man who was watching them," Holly says, still without looking up. "The man who was watching them from across the street with binoculars."
Hodges's old partner pokes the bag with the wrapped lens cap inside. "I'll have this dusted for fingerprints, but I'm not real hopeful, Kerm. You know how people take these caps on and off."
"Yeah," Hodges says. "By the rim. And it was cold in that garage. Cold enough so I could see my breath. The guy was probably wearing gloves, anyway."
"The guy in the supermarket was most likely working some kind of short con," Izzy says. "It's got that smell. Maybe he called a week later, trying to convince her that by taking the obsolete games gadget, she was obligated to buy a more expensive current one, and she told him to go peddle his papers. Or he might have used the info from the questionnaire to hack into her computer."
"Not that computer," Holly says. "It was older than dirt."
"Had a good look around, didn't you?" Izzy says. "Did you check the medicine cabinets while you were investigating?"
This is too much for Hodges. "She was doing what you should have done, Isabelle. And you know it."
Color is rising in Izzy's cheeks. "We called you in as a courtesy, that's all, and I wish we'd never done it. You two are always trouble."
"Stop it," Pete says.
But Izzy is leaning forward, her eyes flicking between Hodges's face and the top of Holly's lowered head. "These two mystery men--if they existed at all--have nothing to do with what happened in that house. One was probably running a con, the other was a simple peeper."
Hodges knows he should stay friendly here--increase the peace, and all that--but he just can't do it. "Some pervo salivating at the thought of watching an eighty-year-old woman undress, or seeing a quadriplegic get a sponge bath? Yeah, that makes sense."
"Read my lips," Izzy says. "Mom killed daughter, then self. Even left a suicide note of sorts--Z, the end. Couldn't be any clearer."
Z-Boy, Hodges thinks. Whoever's under Debbie's Blue Umbrella this time signs himself Z-Boy.
Holly lifts her head. "There was also a Z in the garage. Carved into the wood between the doors. Bill saw it. Zappit also begins with Z, you know."
"Yes," Izzy says. "And Kennedy and Lincoln have the same number of letters, proving they were both killed by the same man."
Hodges sneaks a peek at his watch and sees he'll have to leave soon, and that's okay. Other than upsetting Holly and pissing off Izzy, this meeting has accomplished nothing. Nor can it, because he has no intention of telling Pete and Isabelle what he discovered on his own computer early this morning. That information might shift the investigation into a higher gear, but he's going to keep it on the down-low until he does a little more investigation himself. He doesn't want to think that Pete would fumble it, but--
But he might. Because being thorough is a poor substitute for being thoughtful. And Izzy? She doesn't want to open a can of worms filled with a lot of pulp-novel stuff about cryptic letters and mystery men. Not when the deaths at the Ellerton house are already on the front page of today's paper, along with a complete recap of how Martine Stover came to be paralyzed. Not when Izzy's expecting to take the next step up the police department ladder just as soon as her current partner retires.
"Bottom line," Pete says, "this is going down as a murder-suicide, and we're gonna move on. We have to move on, Kermit. I'm retiring. Iz will be left with a huge caseload and no new partner for awhile, thanks to the damn budget cuts. This stuff"--he indicates the two plastic bags--"is sort of interesting, but it doesn't change the clarity of what happened. Unless you think some master criminal set it up? One who drives an old car and mends his coat with masking tape?"
"No, I don't think that." Hodges is remembering something Holly said about Brady Hartsfield yesterday. She used the word architect. "I think you've got it right. Murder-suicide."
Holly gives him a brief look of wounded surprise before lowering her eyes again.
"But will you do something for me?"
"If I can," Pete says.
"I tried the game console, but the screen stayed blank. Probably a dead battery. I didn't want to open the battery compartment, because that little slide panel would be a place to check for fingerprints."
"I'll see that it's dusted, but I doubt--"
"Yeah, I do, too. What I really want is for one of your cyber-wonks to boot it up and check the various game applications. See if there's anything out of the ordinary."
"Okay," Pete says, and shifts slightly in his seat when Izzy rolls her eyes. Hodges can't be sure, but he thinks Pete just kicked her ankle under the table.
"I have to go," Hodges says, and grabs for his wallet. "Missed my appointment yesterday. Can't miss another one."
"We'll pick up the check," Izzy says. "After you brought us all this valuable evidence, it's the least we can do."
Holly mutters something else under her breath. This time Hodges can't be sure, even with his trained Holly-ear, but he thinks it might have been bitch.
20
On the sidewalk, Holly jams an unfashionable but somehow charming plaid hunting cap down to her ears and then thrusts her hands into her coat pockets. She won't look at him, only starts walking toward the office a block away. Hodges's car is parked outside Dave's, but he hurries after her.
"Holly."
"You see how she is." Walking faster. Still not looking at him.
The pain in his gut is creeping back, and he's losing his breath. "Holly, wait. I can't keep up."
She turns to him, and he's alarmed to see her eyes are swimming with tears.
"There's more to it! More more more! But they're just going to sweep it under the rug and they didn't even say the real reason which is so Pete can have a nice retirement party without this hanging over his head the way you had to retire with the Mercedes Killer hanging over yours and so the papers don't make a big deal of it and you know there's more to it I know you do and I know you have to get your test results I want you to get them because I'm so worried, but those poor women . . . I just don't think . . . they don't deserve to . . . to just be shoveled under!"
She halts at last, trembling. The tears are already freezing on her cheeks. He tilts her face to look at him, knowing she would shrink away if anyone else tried to touch her that way--yes, even Jerome Robinson, and she loves Jerome, probably has since the day the two of them discovered the ghost-program Brady left in Olivia Trelawney's computer, the one that finally pushed her over the edge and caused her to take her own overdose.
"Holly, we're not done with this. In fact I think we might just be getting started."
She looks him squarely in the face, another thing she will do with no one else. "What do you mean?"
"Something new has come up, something I didn't want to tell Pete and Izzy. I don't know what the hell to make of it. There's no time to tell you now, but when I get back from the doctor's, I'll tell you everything."
"All right, that's fine. Go on, now. And although I don't
believe in God, I'll say a prayer for your test results. Because a little prayer can't hurt, can it?"
"No."
He gives her a quick hug--long hugs don't work with Holly--and starts back to his car, once more thinking of that thing she said yesterday, about Brady Hartsfield being an architect of suicide. A pretty turn of phrase from a woman who writes poetry in her spare time (not that Hodges has ever seen any, or is likely to), but Brady would probably sneer at it, consider it a mile short of the mark. Brady would consider himself a prince of suicide.
Hodges climbs into the Prius Holly nagged him into buying and heads for Dr. Stamos's office. He's doing a little praying himself: Let it be an ulcer. Even the bleeding kind that needs surgery to sew it up.
Just an ulcer.
Please nothing worse than that.
21
He doesn't have to spend time cooling his heels in the waiting room today. Although he's five minutes early and the room is as full as it was on Monday, Marlee the cheerleader receptionist sends him in before he even has a chance to sit down.
Belinda Jensen, Stamos's nurse, usually greets him at his yearly physicals with smiling good cheer, but she's not smiling this morning, and as Hodges steps on the scale, he remembers his yearly physical is a bit overdue. By four months. Actually closer to five.
The armature on the old-fashioned scale balances at 165. When he retired from the cops in '09, he weighed 230 at the mandatory exit physical. Belinda takes his blood pressure, pokes something in his ear to get his current temperature, then leads him past the exam rooms and directly to Dr. Stamos's office at the end of the corridor. She knocks a knuckle on the door, and when Stamos says "Please come in," she leaves Hodges at once. Usually voluble, full of tales about her fractious children and bumptious husband, she has today spoken hardly a word.
Can't be good, Hodges thinks, but maybe it's not too bad. Please God, not too bad. Another ten years wouldn't be a lot to ask for, would it? Or if You can't do that, how about five?
Wendell Stamos is a fiftysomething with a fast-receding hairline and the broad-shouldered, trim-waisted build of a pro jock who's stayed in shape after retirement. He looks at Hodges gravely and invites him to sit down. Hodges does so.