“What you mean is can I shoot him.”
“It probably won’t come to that, but if it did, could you?”
“Yes,” Holly says, and loads the Victory’s six chambers. She pushes the cylinder back into place gingerly, lips turned down and eyes squinted into slits, as if afraid the gun will explode in her hand. “Now where’s the safety switch?”
“There isn’t any. Not on revolvers. The hammer’s down, and that’s all the safety that you need. Put it in your purse. The ammo, too.”
She does as he says, then places the bag between her feet.
“And stop biting your lips, you’re going to make them bleed.”
“I’ll try, but this is a very stressful situation, Bill.”
“I know.” They’re back in the travel lane again. The mile markers seem to float past with excruciating slowness, and the pain in his side is a hot jellyfish with long tentacles that now seem to reach everywhere, even up into his throat. Once, twenty years ago, he was shot in the leg by a thief cornered in a vacant lot. That pain had been like this, but eventually it had gone away. He doesn’t think this one ever will. The drugs may mute it for awhile, but probably not for long.
“What if we find this place and he’s not there, Bill? Have you thought about that? Have you?”
He has, and has no idea what the next step would be in that case. “Let’s not worry about it unless we have to.”
His phone rings. It’s in his coat pocket, and he hands it to Holly without looking away from the road ahead.
“Hello, this is Holly.” She listens, then mouths Miss Pretty Gray Eyes to Hodges. “Uh-huh . . . yes . . . okay, I understand . . . no, he can’t, his hands are full right now, but I’ll tell him.” She listens some more, then says, “I could tell you, Izzy, but you wouldn’t believe me.”
She closes his phone with a snap and slips it back into his pocket.
“Suicides?” Hodges asks.
“Three so far, counting the boy who shot himself in front of his father.”
“Zappits?”
“At two of the three locations. Responders at the third one haven’t had a chance to look. They were trying to save the kid, but it was too late. He hung himself. Izzy sounds half out of her mind. She wanted to know everything.”
“If anything happens to us, Jerome will tell Pete, and Pete will tell her. I think she’s almost ready to listen.”
“We have to stop him before he kills more.”
He’s probably killing more right now, Hodges thinks. “We will.”
The miles roll by. Hodges is forced to reduce his speed to fifty, and when he feels the Expedition do a loose little shimmy in the slipstream of a Walmart double box, he drops to forty-five. It’s past three o’clock and the light is starting to drain from this snowy day when Holly speaks again.
“Thank you.”
He turns his head briefly, looking a question at her.
“For not making me beg to come along.”
“I’m only doing what your therapist would want,” Hodges says. “Getting you a bunch of closure.”
“Is that a joke? I can never tell when you’re joking. You have an extremely dry sense of humor, Bill.”
“No joke. This is our business, Holly. Nobody else’s.”
A green sign looms out of the white murk.
“SR-79,” Holly says. “That’s our exit.”
“Thank God,” Hodges says. “I hate turnpike driving even when the sun’s out.”
26
Thurston’s Garage is fifteen miles east along the state highway, according to Holly’s iPad, but it takes them half an hour to get there. The Expedition handles the snow-covered road easily, but now the wind is picking up—it will be blowing at gale force by eight o’clock, according to the radio—and when it gusts, throwing sheets of snow across the road, Hodges eases down to fifteen miles an hour until he can see again.
As he turns in at the big yellow Shell sign, Holly’s phone rings. “Handle that,” he says. “I’ll be as quick as I can.”
He gets out, yanking his fedora down hard to keep it from blowing away. The wind machine-guns his coat collar against his neck as he tramps through the snow to the garage office. His entire midsection is throbbing; it feels as if he’s swallowed live coals. The gas pumps and the adjacent parking area are empty except for the idling Expedition. The plowboys have departed to spend a long night earning their money as the first big storm of the year rants and raves.
For one eerie moment, Hodges thinks it’s Library Al behind the counter: same green Dickies, same popcorn-white hair exploding around the edges of his John Deere cap.
“What brings you out on a wild afternoon like this?” the old guy asks, then peers past Hodges. “Or is it night already?”