Holly doesn’t say hello. She told Jerome she didn’t think she could talk to him on her own about what she’s discovered, but now—standing on this windy city sidewalk and shivering inside her good winter coat—she has no choice. It just spills out. “I looked on your computer and I know that snooping’s a lousy thing to do but I’m not sorry. I had to because I thought you were lying about it just being an ulcer and you can fire me if you want, I don’t care, just as long as you let them fix what’s wrong with you.”
Silence at the other end. She wants to ask if he’s still there, but her mouth feels frozen and her heart is beating so hard she can feel it all over her body.
At last he says, “Hols, I don’t think it can be fixed.”
“At least let them try!”
“I love you,” he says. She hears the heaviness in his voice. The resignation. “You know that, right?”
“Don’t be stupid, of course I know.” She starts to cry.
“I’ll try the treatments, sure. But I need a couple of days before I check into the hospital. And right now I need you. Can you come and pick me up?”
“Okay.” Crying harder than ever, because she knows he’s telling the truth about needing her. And being needed is a great thing. Maybe the great thing. “Where are you?”
He tells her, then says, “Something else.”
“What?”
“I can’t fire you, Holly. You’re not an employee, you’re my partner. Try to remember that.”
“Bill?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m not smoking.”
“That’s good, Holly. Now come on over here. I’ll be waiting in the lobby. It’s freezing outside.”
“I’ll come as fast as I can while still obeying the speed limit.”
She hurries to the corner lot where she parks her car. On the way, she drops the unopened pack of cigarettes into a litter basket.
16
Hodges sketches in his visit to the Bucket for Holly on the ride to the Strike Avenue police station, beginning with the news of Ruth Scapelli’s suicide and ending with the odd thing Barbara said before they wheeled her away.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Holly says, “because I’m thinking it, too. That it all leads back to Brady Hartsfield.”
“The suicide prince.” Hodges has helped himself to another couple of painkillers while waiting for Holly, and he feels pretty much okay. “That’s what I’m calling him. Got a ring to it, don’t you think?”
“I guess so. But you told me something once.” She’s sitting bolt upright behind the wheel of her Prius, eyes darting everywhere as they drive deeper into Lowtown. She swerves to avoid a shopping cart someone has abandoned in the middle of the street. “You said coincidence doesn’t equal conspiracy. Do you remember saying that?”
“Yeah.” It’s one of his faves. He has quite a few.
“You said you can investigate a conspiracy forever and come up with nothing if it’s actually just a bunch of coincidences all strung together. If you can’t find something concrete in the next two days—if we can’t—you need to give up and start those treatments. Promise me you will.”
“It might take a little longer to—”
She cuts him off. “Jerome will be back, and he’ll help. It will be like the old days.”
Hodges flashes on the title of an old mystery novel, Trent’s Last Case, and smiles a little. She catches it from the corner of her eye, takes it for acquiescence, and smiles back, relieved.
“Four days,” he says.
“Three. No more. Because every day you don’t do something about what’s going on inside you, the odds get longer. And they’re long already. So don’t start your poopy bargaining stuff, Bill. You’re too good at it.”
“Okay,” he says. “Three days. If Jerome will help.”
Holly says, “He will. And let’s try to make it two.”
17
The Strike Avenue cop shop looks like a medieval castle in a country where the king has fallen and anarchy rules. The windows are heavily barred; the motor pool is protected by chain-link fencing and concrete barriers. Cameras bristle in every direction, covering all angles of approach, and still the gray stone building has been gang-tagged, and one of the globes hanging over the main doors has been shattered.
Hodges and Holly empty the contents of their pockets and Holly’s purse into plastic baskets and go through a metal detector that beeps reproachfully at Hodges’s metal watchband. Holly sits on a bench in the main lobby (which is also being scanned by multiple cameras) and opens her iPad. Hodges goes to the desk, states his business, and after a few moments is met by a slim, gray-haired detective who looks a little like Lester Freamon on The Wire—the only cop show Hodges can watch without wanting to throw up.
“Jack Higgins,” the detective says, offering his hand. “Like the book-writer, only not white.”
Hodges shakes with him and introduces Holly, who gives a little wave and her usual muttered hello before returning her attention to her iPad.
“I think I remember you,” Hodges says. “You used to be at Marlborough Street station, didn’t you? When you were in uniform?”
“A long time ago, when I was young and randy. I remember you, too. You caught the guy who killed those two women in McCarron Park.”