“That’s where it was, down on the right side. It’s a Zappit.”
The name chimes a faint chord far back in his memory, although when it comes to computer chip–driven gadgetry, Hodges is far behind the curve. He’s always screwing up with his own home computer, and now that Jerome Robinson is away, Holly is the one who usually comes over to his house on Harper Road to straighten him out. “A whatsit?”
“A Zappit Commander. I’ve seen advertisements online, although not lately. They come pre-loaded with over a hundred simple electronic games like Tetris, Simon, and SpellTower. Nothing complicated like Grand Theft Auto. So tell me what it was doing there, Bill. Tell me what it was doing in a house where one of the women was almost eighty and the other one couldn’t turn on a light switch, let alone play video games.”
“It seems odd, all right. Not downright bizarre, but on the odd side, for sure.”
“And the cord was plugged in right next to that letter Z,” she says. “Not Z for the end, like a suicide note, but Z for Zappit. At least that’s what I think.”
Hodges considers the idea.
“Maybe.” He wonders again if he has encountered that name before, or if it’s only what the French call faux souvenir—a false memory. He could swear it has some connection to Brady Hartsfield, but he can’t trust that idea, because Brady is very much on his mind today.
How long has it been since I’ve gone to visit him? Six months? Eight? No, longer than that. Quite a bit longer.
The last time was not long after the business having to do with Pete Saubers and the cache of stolen money and notebooks Pete discovered, practically buried in his backyard. On that occasion, Hodges found Brady much the same as ever—a gorked-out young man dressed in a plaid shirt and jeans that never got dirty. He was sitting in the same chair he was always sitting in when Hodges visited Room 217 in the Brain Injury Clinic, just staring out at the parking garage across the way.
The only real difference that day had been outside Room 217. Becky Helmington, the head nurse, had moved on to the surgical wing of Kiner Memorial, thereby closing Hodges’s conduit to rumors about Brady. The new head nurse was a woman with stony scruples and a face like a closed fist. Ruth Scapelli refused Hodges’s offer of fifty dollars for any little tidbits about Brady and threatened to report him if he ever offered her money for patient information again. “You’re not even on his visitors list,” she said.
“I don’t want information about him,” Hodges had said. “I’ve got all the information about Brady Hartsfield I’m ever going to need. I just want to know what the staff is saying about him. Because there have been rumors, you know. Some of them pretty wild.”
Scapelli favored him with a disdainful look. “There’s loose talk in every hospital, Mr. Hodges, and always about patients who are famous. Or infamous, as is the case with Mr. Hartsfield. I held a staff meeting shortly after Nurse Helmington moved from Brain Injury to her current situation, and informed my people that the talk about Mr. Hartsfield was to stop immediately, and if I caught wind of more rumors, I would trace them to their source and see that the person or persons spreading them was dismissed. As for you . . .” Looking down her nose at him, the fist of her face tightening even more. “I can’t believe that a former police officer, and a decorated one at that, would resort to bribery.”
Not long after that rather humiliating encounter, Holly and Jerome Robinson cornered him and staged a mini--intervention, telling Hodges that his visits to Brady had to end. Jerome had been especially serious that day, his usual cheerful patter nowhere to be found.
“There’s nothing you can do in that room but hurt yourself,” Jerome had said. “We always know when you’ve been to see him, because you go around with a little gray cloud over your head for the next two days.”
“More like a week,” Holly added. She wouldn’t look at him, and she was twisting her fingers in a way that made Hodges want to grab them and make her stop before she broke something. Her voice, however, was firm and sure. “There’s nothing left inside him, Bill. You need to accept that. And if there was, he’d be happy every time you showed up. He’d see what he’s doing to you and be happy.”
That was the convincer, because Hodges knew it was the truth. So he stays away. It was kind of like quitting smoking: hard at first, easier as time went by. Now whole weeks sometimes pass without thoughts of Brady and Brady’s terrible crimes.