At that, Freddi looks up. “What kind of voice?”
“One from the Zappit. It told her all sorts of mean things. About how she was trying to live white. About how she was denying her race. About how she was a bad and worthless person.”
“And that reminds you of someone?”
“Yes.” Jerome is thinking of the accusatory shrieks he and Holly heard coming from Olivia Trelawney’s computer long after that unfortunate lady was dead. Shrieks programmed by Brady Hartsfield, and designed to drive Trelawney toward suicide like a cow down a slaughterhouse chute. “Actually, it does.”
“Brady was fascinated by suicide,” Freddi says. “He was always reading about it on the web. He meant to kill himself with the others at that concert, you know.”
Jerome does know. He was there. “Do you really think he got in touch with my sister telepathically? Using the Zappit as . . . what? A kind of conduit?”
“If he could take over Babineau and the other guy—and he did, whether you believe it or not—then yeah, I think he could do that.”
“And the others with updated Zappits? Those two hundred and forty-something others?”
Freddi only looks at him through her veil of smoke.
“Even if we take down the website . . . what about them? What about when that voice starts telling them they’re dogshit on the world’s shoe, and the only answer is to take a long walk off a short dock?”
Before she can reply, Hodges does it for her. “We have to stop the voice. Which means stopping him. Come on, Jerome. We’re going back to the office.”
“What about me?” Freddi asks plaintively.
“You’re coming. And Freddi?”
“What?”
“Pot’s good for pain, isn’t it?”
“Opinions on that vary, as you might guess, the establishment in this fucked-up country being what it is, so all I can tell you is that for me, it makes that delicate time of the month a lot less delicate.”
“Bring it along,” Hodges says. “Also the rolling papers.”
19
They go back to Finders Keepers in Jerome’s Jeep. The back is full of Jerome’s junk, meaning Freddi has to sit on someone’s lap, and it’s not going to be Hodges’s. Not in his current condition. So he drives and Jerome gets Freddi.
“Hey, this is sort of like getting a date with John Shaft,” Freddi says with a smirk. “The big private dick who’s a sex machine to all the chicks.”
“Don’t get used to it,” Jerome says.
Holly’s cell rings. It’s a guy named Trevor Jeppson, from the police department’s Computer Forensics Squad. Holly is soon speaking in a jargon Hodges doesn’t understand—something about BOTS and the darknet. Whatever she’s getting back from the guy seems to please her, because when she breaks the connection, she’s smiling.
“He’s never dossed a website before. He’s like a kid on Christmas morning.”
“How long will it take?”
“With the password and the IP address already in hand? Not long.”
Hodges parks in one of the thirty-minute spaces in front of the Turner Building. They won’t be here long—if he gets lucky, that is—and given his recent run of bad luck, he considers the universe owes him a good turn.
He goes into his office, closes the door, then hunts through his ratty old address book for Becky Helmington’s number. Holly has offered to program the address book into his phone, but Hodges has kept putting it off. He likes his old address book. Probably never get around to making the changeover now, he thinks. Trent’s Last Case, and all that.
Becky reminds him she doesn’t work in the Bucket any longer. “Maybe you forgot that?”
“I didn’t forget. You know about Babineau?”
Her voice drops. “God, yes. I heard that Al Brooks—Library Al—killed Babineau’s wife and might have killed him. I can hardly believe it.”
I could tell you lots of stuff you’d hardly believe, Hodges thinks.
“Don’t count Babineau out yet, Becky. I think he might be on the run. He was giving Brady Hartsfield experimental drugs of some kind, and they may have played a part in Hartsfield’s death.”
“Jesus, for real?”
“For real. But he can’t be too far, not with this storm coming in. Can you think of anyplace he might have gone? Does Babineau own a summer cottage, anything like that?”
She doesn’t even need to think about it. “Not a cottage, a hunting camp. It isn’t just him, though. Four or maybe five docs co-own the place.” Her voice drops to that confidential pitch again. “I hear they do more than hunt out there. If you know what I mean.”
“Where is out there?”
“Lake Charles. The camp has some cutesy-horrible name. I can’t remember it offhand, but I bet Violet Tranh would know. She spent a weekend there once. Said it was the drunkest forty-eight hours of her life, and she came back with chlamydia.”
“Will you call her?”