Finders Keepers

The nurse on duty – Norma Wilmer, according to her badge – gives him a visitor’s pass. As he clips it to his shirt, Hodges says, just passing the time, ‘I understand you had a tragedy on the ward yesterday.’

‘I can’t talk about that,’ Nurse Wilmer says.

‘Were you on duty?’

‘No.’ She goes back to her paperwork and her monitors.

That’s okay; he may learn more from Becky, once she gets back and has time to tap her sources. If she goes through with her plan to transfer (in Hodges’s mind, that’s the best sign yet that something real may be going on here), he will find someone else to help him out a little. Some of the nurses are dedicated smokers, in spite of all they know about the habit, and these are always happy to earn butt-money.

Hodges ambles down to Room 217, aware that his heart is beating harder and faster than normal. Another sign that he has begun to take this seriously. The news story in the morning paper shook him up more than a little.

He meets Library Al on the way, pushing his little trolley, and gives his usual greeting: ‘Hi, guy. How you doin?’

Al doesn’t reply at first. Doesn’t even seem to see him. The bruised-looking circles under his eyes are more prominent than ever, and his hair – usually neatly combed – is in disarray. Also, his damn badge is on upside-down. Hodges wonders again if Al is starting to lose the plot.

‘Everything all right, Al?’

‘Sure,’ Al says emptily. ‘Never so good as what you don’t see, right?’

Hodges has no idea how to reply to this non sequitur, and Al has continued on his way before he can think of one. Hodges looks after him, puzzled, then moves on.

Brady is sitting in his usual place by the window, wearing his usual outfit: jeans and a checked shirt. Someone has given him a haircut. It’s a bad one, a real butch job. Hodges doubts if his boy cares. It’s not like he’s going out boot scootin’ anytime soon.

‘Hello, Brady. Long time no see, as the ship’s chaplain said to the Mother Superior.’

Brady just looks out the window, and the same old questions join hands and play ring-a-rosie in Hodges’s head. Is Brady seeing anything out there? Does he know he has company? If so, does he know it’s Hodges? Is he thinking at all? Sometimes he thinks – enough to speak a few simple sentences, anyway – and in the physio center he’s able to shamble along the seventy feet or so the patients call Torture Avenue, but what does that really mean? Fish swim in an aquarium, but that doesn’t mean they think.

Hodges thinks, Never so good as what you don’t see.

Whatever that means.

He picks up the silver-framed photo of Brady and his mother with their arms around each other, smiling to beat the band. If the bastard ever loved anyone, it was dear old mommy. Hodges looks to see if there’s any reaction to his visitor having Deborah A

‘She looks hot, Brady. Was she hot? Was she a real hoochie-mama?’

No response.

‘I only ask because when we broke into your computer, we found some cheesecake pix of her. You know, negligees, nylons, bras and panties, that kind of thing. She looked hot to me, dressed like that. To the other cops, too, when I passed them around.’

Although he tells this lie with his usual panache, there’s still no reaction. Nada.

‘Did you fuck her, Brady? I bet you wanted to.’

Was that the barest twitch of an eyebrow? The slightest downward jerk of a lip?

Maybe, but Hodges knows it could just be his imagination, because he wants Brady to hear him. Nobody in America deserves to have more salt rubbed in more wounds than this murderous motherfucker.

‘Maybe you killed her and then fucked her. No need to be polite then, right?’

Nothing.

Hodges sits in the visitor’s chair and puts the picture back on the table next to one of the Zappit e-readers Al hands out to patients who want them. He folds his hands and looks at Brady, who should never have awakened from his coma but did.

Well.

Sort of.

‘Are you faking, Brady?’

He always asks this question, and there has never been any reply. There’s none today, either.

‘A nurse killed herself on the floor last night. In one of the bathrooms. Did you know that? Her name has been withheld for the time being, but the paper says she died of excessive bleeding. I’m guessing that means she cut her wrists, but I’m not sure. If you knew, I bet it made you happy. You always enjoyed a good suicide, didn’t you?’

He waits. Nothing.

Hodges leans forward, staring into Brady’s blank face and speaking earnestly. ‘The thing is – what I don’t understand – is how she did that. The mirrors in these bathrooms aren’t glass, they’re polished metal. I suppose she could have used the mirror in her compact, or something, but that seems like pretty small shit for a job like that. Kind of like bringing a knife to a gunfight.’ He sits back. ‘Hey, maybe she had a knife. One of those Swiss Army jobs, you know? In her purse. Did you ever have one of those?’

Nothing.

Or is there? He has a sense, very strong, that behind that blank stare, Brady is watching him.

‘Brady, some of the nurses believe you can turn the water on and off in your bathroom from here. They think you do it just to scare them. Is that true?’

Nothing. But that sense of being watched is strong. Brady did enjoy suicide, that’s the thing. You could even say suicide was his signature. Before Holly tuned him up with the Happy Slapper, Brady tried to get Hodges to kill himself. He didn’t succeed … but he did succeed with Olivia Trelawney, the woman whose Mercedes Holly Gibney now owns and plans to drive to Cinci

‘If you can, do it now. Come on. Show off a little. Strut your stuff. What do you say?’

Nothing.

Some of the nurses believe that being whopped repeatedly in the head on the night he tried to blow up Mingo Auditorium has somehow rearranged Hartsfield’s brains. That being whopped repeatedly gave him … powers. Dr Babineau says that’s ridiculous, the hospital equivalent of an urban legend. Hodges is sure he’s right, but that sense of being watched is undeniable.

So is the feeling that, somewhere deep inside, Brady Hartsfield is laughing at him.

He picks up the e-reader, this one bright blue. On his last visit to the clinic, Library Al said Brady enjoyed the demos. He stares at it for hours, Al said.

‘Like this thing, do you?’

Nothing.

‘Not that you can do much with it, right?’

Zero. Zippo. Zilch.

Hodges puts it down beside the picture and stands. ‘Let me see what I can find out about the nurse, okay? What I can’t dig up, my assistant can. We have our sources. Are you glad that nurse is dead? Was she mean to you? Did she pinch your nose or twist your tiny useless peepee, maybe because you ran down a friend or relative of hers at City Center?’

Nothing.

Nothing.

Noth—

Brady’s eyes roll in their sockets. He looks at Hodges, and Hodges feels a moment of stark, unreasoning terror. Those eyes are dead on top, but he sees something beneath that looks not quite human. It makes him think of that movie about the little girl who was possessed by Pazuzu. Then the eyes return to the window and Hodges tells himself not to be an idiot. Babineau says Brady’s come back as far as he’s ever going to, and that’s not very far. He’s your basic blank slate, and nothing is written on it but Hodges’s own feelings for this man, the most despicable creature he has encountered in all his years of law enforcement.

I want him to be in there so I can hurt him, Hodges thinks. That’s all it is. It’ll turn out the nurse’s husband ran off on her, or she had a drug habit and was going to be fired, or both.

‘All right, Brady,’ he says. ‘Go