‘There must be, like, a zillion I-T guys in this city,’ she says.

Nowhere near that many, but a lot. He knows it and Hodges knows it, too, because it was Jerome who told him.

30

Hodges listens carefully to everything Jerome has to say. He’s pleased by Jerome’s praise of Holly (and hopes Holly will be pleased, too, if she’s listening), but bitterly disappointed that there’s no link to the Computer Jack who worked on Olivia’s machine. Jerome thinks it must be because Janey threw Computer Jack’s business card away. Hodges, who has a mind trained to be suspicious, thinks Mr Mercedes might have made damned sure Olivia didn’t have a card. Only that doesn’t track. Wouldn’t you ask for one, if the guy did good work? And keep it handy? Unless, that is …

He asks Jerome to put Holly on.

‘Hello?’ So faint he has to strain to hear her.

‘Holly, is there an address book on Holly’s computer?’

‘Just a minute.’ He hears faint clicking. When she comes back, her voice is puzzled. ‘No.’

‘Does that strike you as weird?’

‘Kinda, yeah.’

‘Could the guy who planted the spook sounds have deleted her address book?’

‘Oh, sure. Easy. I’m taking my Lexapro, Mr Hodges.’

‘That’s great, Holly. Can you tell how much Olivia used her computer?’

‘Sure.’

‘Let me talk to Jerome while you look.’

Jerome comes on and says he’s sorry they haven’t been able to find more.

‘No, no, you’ve done great. When you tossed her desk, you didn’t find a physical address book?’

‘Uh-uh, but lots of people don’t bother with them anymore – they keep all their contacts on their computers and phones. You know that, right?’

Hodges supposes he should know it, but the world is moving too fast for him these days. He doesn’t even know how to program his DVR.

‘Hang on, Holly wants to talk to you again.’

‘You and Holly are getting along pretty well, huh?’

‘We’re cool. Here she is.’

‘Olivia had all kinds of programs and website faves,’ Holly says. ‘She was big on Hulu and Huffpo. And her search history … it looks to me like she spent even more time browsing than I do, and I’m online a lot.’

‘Holly, why would a person who really depends on her computer not have a service card handy?’

‘Because the guy snuck in and took it after she was dead,’ Holly says promptly.

‘Maybe, but think of the risk – especially with the neighborhood security service keeping an eye on things. He’d have to know the gate code, the burglar alarm code … and even then he’d need a housekey …’ He trails off.

‘Mr Hodges? Are you still there?’

‘Yes. And go ahead and call me Bill.’

But she won’t. Maybe she can’t. ‘Mr Hodges, is he a master criminal? Like in James Bond?’

‘I think just crazy.’ And because he’s crazy, the risk might not matter to him. Look at the risk he took at City Center, plowing into that crowd of people.

It still doesn’t ring right.

‘Give me Jerome again, will you?’

She does, and Hodges tells him it’s time to get out before Aunt Charlotte and Uncle Henry come back and catch him computer-canoodling with Holly.

‘What are you going to do, Bill?’

He looks out at the street, where twilight has started to deepen the colors of the day. It’s close to seven o’clock. ‘Sleep on it,’ he says.

31

Before going to bed, Hodges spends four hours in front of the TV, watching shows that go in his eyes just fine but disintegrate before reaching his brain. He tries to think about nothing, because that’s how you open the door so the right idea can come in. The right idea always arrives as a result of the right connection, and there is a connection waiting to be made; he feels it. Maybe more than one. He will not let Janey into his thoughts. Later, yes, but for now all she can do is jam his gears.

Olivia Trelawney’s computer is the crux of the matter. It was rigged with spook sounds, and the most likely suspect is her I-T guy. So why didn’t she have his card? He could delete her computer address book at long distance – and Hodges is betting he did – but did he break into her house to steal a fucking business card after she was dead?

He gets a call from a newspaper reporter. Then from a Channel Six guy. After the third call from someone in the media, Hodges shuts his phone down. He doesn’t know who spilled his cell number, but he hopes the person was well paid for the info.

Something else keeps coming into his mind, something that has nothing to do with anything: She thinks they walk among us.

A refresher glance through his notes allows him to put his finger on who said that to him: Mr Bowfinger, the greeting-card writer. He and Bowfinger were sitting in lawn chairs, and Hodges remembers being grateful for the shade. This was while he was doing his canvass, looking for anyone who might have seen a suspicious vehicle cruising the street.

She thinks they walk among us.

Bowfinger was talking about Mrs Melbourne across the street. Mrs Melbourne who belongs to an organization of UFO nuts called NICAP, the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena.

Hodges decides it’s just one of those echoes, like a snatch of pop music, that can start resounding in an overstressed brain. He gets undressed and goes to bed and Janey comes, Janey wrinkling her nose and saying yeah, and for the first time since childhood, he actually cries himself to sleep.

He wakes up in the small hours of Thursday morning, takes a leak, starts back to bed, and stops, eyes widening. What he’s been looking for – the connection – is suddenly there, big as life.

You didn’t bother keeping a business card if you didn’t need one.

Say the guy wasn’t an independent, running a little business out of his house, but someone who worked for a company. If that was the case, you could call the company number any time you needed him, because it would be something easy to remember, like 555–9999, or whatever the numbers were that spelled out COMPUTE.

If he worked for a company, he’d make his repair calls in a company car.

Hodges goes back to bed, sure that sleep will elude him this time, but it doesn’t.

He thinks, If he had enough explosive to blow up my car, he must have more.

Then he’s under again.

He dreams about Janey.

KISSES ON THE MIDWAY

1

Hodges is up at six A.M. on Thursday morning and makes himself a big breakfast: two eggs, four slices of bacon, four slices of toast. He doesn’t want it, but he forces himself to eat every bite, telling himself it’s body gasoline. He might get a chance to eat again today, but he might not. Both in the shower and as he chews his way resolutely through his big breakfast (no one to watch his weight for now), a thought keeps recurring to him, the same one he went to sleep with the night before. It’s like a haunting.

Just how much explosive?

This leads to other unpleasant considerations. Like how the guy – the perk – means to use it. And when.

He comes to a decision: today is the last day. He wants to track Mr Mercedes down himself, and confront him. Kill him? No, not that (probably not that), but beating the shit out of him would be excellent. For Olivia. For Janey. For Janice and Patricia Cray. For all the other people Mr Mercedes killed and maimed at City Center the year before. People so desperate for jobs they got up in the middle of the night and stood waiting in a dank fog for the doors to open. Lost lives. Lost hopes. Lost souls.

So yes, he wants the sonofabitch. But if he can’t nail him today, he’ll turn the whole thing over to Pete Huntley and Izzy Jaynes and take the consequences … which, he knows, may well lead to some jail time. It doesn’t matter. He’s got plenty on his conscience already, but he guesses it can bear a little more weight. Not another mass killing, though. That would destroy what little of him there is left.