Finders Keepers (45 page)

TRUNK

Hodges walks the path through the undeveloped land from the Birch Street end, and finds Pete sitting on the bank of the stream with his knees hugged to his chest. Nearby, a scrubby tree juts over the water, which is down to a trickle after a long, hot summer. Below the tree, the hole where the trunk was buried has been reexcavated. The trunk itself is sitting aslant on the bank nearby. It looks old and tired and rather ominous, a time traveler from a year when disco was still in bloom. A photographer's tripod stands nearby. There are also a couple of bags that look like the kind pros carry when they travel.

“The famous trunk,” Hodges says, sitting down next to Pete.

Pete nods. “Yeah. The famous trunk. The picture guy and his assistant have gone to lunch, but I think they'll be back pretty soon. Didn't seem crazy about any of the local restaurant choices. They're from New York.” He shrugs, as if that explains everything. “At first the guy wanted me sitting on it, with my chin on my fist. You know, like that famous statue. I talked him out of it, but it wasn't easy.”

“This is for the local paper?”

Pete shakes his head, starting to smile. “That's my good news, Mr. Hodges. It's for
The New Yorker
. They want an article about what happened. Not a little one, either. They want it for what they call ‘the well,' which means the middle of the magazine. A really big piece, maybe the biggest they've ever done.”

“That's great!”

“It will be if I don't fuck it up.”

Hodges studies him for a moment. “Wait.
You're
going to write it?”

“Yeah. At first they wanted to send out one of their writers—George Packer, he's a really good one—to interview me and write the story. It's a big deal because John Rothstein was one of their fiction stars in the old days, right up there with John Updike, Shirley Jackson . . . you know the ones I mean.”

Hodges doesn't, but he nods.

“Rothstein was sort of the go-to guy for teenage angst, and then middle-class angst. Sort of like John Cheever. I'm reading Cheever now. Do you know his story ‘The Swimmer'?”

Hodges shakes his head.

“You should. It's awesome. Anyhow, they want the story of the notebooks. The whole thing, from beginning to end. This was after they had three or four handwriting analysts check out the photocopies I made, and the fragments.”

Hodges
does
know about the fragments. There were enough charred scraps in the burned-out basement to validate Pete's claim that the lost notebooks really had been Rothstein's work. Police backtrailing Morris Bellamy had further buttressed Pete's story. Which Hodges never doubted in the first place.

“You said no to Packer, I take it.”

“I said no to
anyone
. If the story's going to get written, I have to be the one to do it. Not just because I was there, but because reading John Rothstein changed my . . .”

He stops and shakes his head.

“No. I was going to say his work changed my life, but that's not right. I don't think a teenager has much of a life to change. I just turned eighteen last month. I guess what I mean is his work changed my
heart
.”

Hodges smiles. “I get that.”

“The editor in charge of the story said I was too young—better than saying I had no talent, right?—so I sent him writing samples. That helped. Also, I stood up to him. It wasn't all that hard. Negotiating with a magazine guy from New York didn't seem like such a big deal after facing Bellamy.
That
was a negotiation.”

Pete shrugs.

“They'll edit it the way they want, of course, I've read enough to know the process, and I'm okay with that. But if they want to publish it, it'll be my name over my story.”

“Tough stance, Pete.”

He stares at the trunk, for a moment looking much older than eighteen. “It's a tough world. I found that out after my dad got run down at City Center.”

No reply seems adequate, so Hodges keeps silent.

“You know what they want most at
The New Yorker
, right?”

Hodges didn't spend almost thirty years as a detective for nothing. “A summary of the last two books would be my guess. Jimmy Gold and his sister and all his friends. Who did what to who, and how, and when, and how it all came out in the wash.”

“Yeah. And I'm the only one who knows those things. Which brings me to the apology part.” He looks at Hodges solemnly.

“Pete, no apology's necessary. There are no legal charges against you, and I'm not bearing even a teensy grudge about anything. Holly and Jerome aren't, either. We're just glad your mom and sis are okay.”

“They almost weren't. If I hadn't stonewalled you that day in the car, then ducked out through the drugstore, I bet Bellamy never would have come to the house. Tina still has nightmares.”

“Does she blame you for them?”

“Actually . . . no.”

“Well, there you are,” Hodges says. “You were under the gun. Literally as well as figuratively. Halliday scared the hell out of you, and you had no way of knowing he was dead when you went to his shop that day. As for Bellamy, you didn't even know he was still alive, let alone out of prison.”

“That's all true, but Halliday threatening me wasn't the only reason I wouldn't talk to you. I still thought I had a chance to keep the notebooks, see?
That's
why I wouldn't talk to you. And why I ran away. I wanted to keep them. It wasn't the top thing on my mind, but it was there underneath, all right. Those notebooks . . . well . . . and I have to say this in the piece I write for
The New Yorker
 . . . they cast a spell over me. I need to apologize because I really wasn't so different from Morris Bellamy.”

Hodges takes Pete by the shoulders and looks directly into his eyes. “If that were true, you never would have gone to the Rec prepared to burn them.”

“I dropped the lighter by accident,” Pete says quietly. “The gunshot startled me. I
think
I would have done it anyway—if he'd shot Tina—but I'll never know for sure.”

“
I
know,” Hodges says. “And I'm sure enough for both of us.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. So how much are they paying you for this?”

“Fifteen thousand dollars.”

Hodges whistles.

“It's on acceptance, but they'll accept it, all right. Mr. Ricker is helping me, and it's turning out pretty well. I've already got the first half done in rough draft. I'm not much at fiction, but I'm okay at stuff like this. I could make a career of it someday, maybe.”

“What are you going to do with the money? Put it in a college fund?”

He shakes his head. “I'll get to college, one way or another. I'm
not worried about that. The money is for Chapel Ridge. Tina's going this year. You can't believe how excited she is.”

“That's good,” Hodges says. “That's really good.”

They sit in silence for a little while, looking at the trunk. There are footfalls on the path, and men's voices. The two guys who appear are wearing almost identical plaid shirts and jeans that still show the store creases. Hodges has an idea they think this is how everybody dresses in flyover country. One has a camera around his neck; the other is toting a second light.

“How was your lunch?” Pete calls as they teeter across the creek on the stepping-stones.

“Fine,” the one with the camera says. “Denny's. Moons Over My Hammy. The hash browns alone were a culinary dream. Come on over, Pete. We'll start with a few of you kneeling by the trunk. I also want to get a few of you looking inside.”

“It's empty,” Pete objects.

The photographer taps himself between the eyes. “People will
imagine
. They'll think, ‘What must it have been like when he opened that trunk for the first time and saw all those literary treasures?' You know?”

Pete stands up, brushing the seat of jeans that are much more faded and more natural-looking. “Want to stick around for the shoot, Mr. Hodges? Not every eighteen-year-old gets a full-page portrait in
The New Yorker
next to an article he wrote himself.”

“I'd love to, Pete, but I have an errand to run.”

“All right. Thanks for coming out and listening to me.”

“Will you put one other thing in your story?”

“What?”

“That this didn't start with you finding the trunk.” Hodges looks at it, black and scuffed, a relic with scratched fittings and a moldy top. “It started with the man who put it there. And when
you feel like blaming yourself for how it went down, you might want to remember that thing Jimmy Gold keeps saying. Shit don't mean shit.”

Pete laughs and holds out his hand. “You're a good guy, Mr. Hodges.”

Hodges shakes. “Make it Bill. Now go smile for the camera.”

He pauses on the other side of the creek and looks back. At the photographer's direction, Pete is kneeling with one hand resting on the trunk's scuffed top. It is the classic pose of ownership, reminding Hodges of a photo he once saw of Ernest Hemingway kneeling next to a lion he bagged. But Pete's face holds none of Hemingway's complacent, smiling, stupid confidence. Pete's face says
I never owned this
.

Hold that thought, kiddo, Hodges thinks as he starts back to his car.

Hold that thought.

CLACK

He told Pete he had an errand to run. That wasn't precisely true. He could have said he had a case to work, but that isn't precisely true, either. Although it would have been closer.

Shortly before leaving for his meeting with Pete, he received a call from Becky Helmington at the Traumatic Brain Injury Clinic. He pays her a small amount each month to keep him updated on Brady Hartsfield, the patient Hodges calls “my boy.” She also updates him on any strange occurrences on the ward, and feeds him the latest rumors. Hodges's rational mind insists there's nothing to these rumors, and certain strange occurrences have rational explanations, but there's more to his mind than the rational part on top. Deep below that rational part is an underground ocean—there's one inside every head, he believes—where strange creatures swim.

“How's your son?” he asked Becky. “Hasn't fallen out of any trees lately, I hope.”

“No, Robby's fine and dandy. Read today's paper yet, Mr. Hodges?”

“Haven't even taken it out of the bag yet.” In this new era, where everything is at one's fingertips on the Internet, some days he never takes it out of the bag at all. It just sits there beside his La-Z-Boy like an abandoned child.

“Check the Metro section. Page two. Call me back.”

Five minutes later he did. “Jesus, Becky.”

“Exactly what I thought. She was a nice girl.”

“Will you be on the floor today?”

“No. I'm upstate, at my sister's. We're spending the weekend.” Becky paused. “Actually, I've been thinking about transferring to ICU in the main hospital when I get back. There's an opening, and I'm tired of Dr. Babineau. It's true what they say—sometimes the neuros are crazier than the patients.” She paused, then added: “I'd say I'm tired of Hartsfield, too, but that wouldn't be exactly right. The truth is, I'm a little scared of him. The way I used to be scared of the local haunted house when I was a girl.”

“Yeah?”

“Uh-huh. I knew there were no ghosts in there, but on the other hand, what if there were?”

•••

Hodges arrives at the hospital shortly after two PM, and on this pre-holiday afternoon, the Brain Injury Clinic is as close to deserted as it ever gets. In the daytime, at least.

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 Ann's picture in his hands. There doesn't seem to be.

“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 Cincinnati.

“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. “Gonna put an egg in my shoe and beat it. Make like a bee and buzz. But I have to say, as one friend to another, that's a really
shitty
haircut.”

No response.

“Seeya later, alligator. After awhile, crocodile.”

He leaves, closing the door gently behind him. If Brady
is
in there, slamming it might give him the pleasure of knowing he's gotten under Hodges's skin.

Which, of course, he has.

•••

When Hodges is gone, Brady raises his head. Beside the picture of his mother, the blue e-reader abruptly comes to life. Animated fish rush hither and yon while cheery, bubbly music plays. The screen switches to the Angry Birds demo, then to Barbie Fashion Walk, then to Galactic Warrior. After that, the screen goes dark again.

In the bathroom, the water in the sink gushes, then stops.

Brady looks at the picture of him and his mother, smiling with their cheeks pressed together. Stares at it. Stares at it.

The picture falls over.

Clack
.

July 26, 2014