AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“All right.” Immi sounds interested. “What next?”
“Go to English Department Faculty. You should see pictures, some men and some women.”
“Yes, okay, I’m there.”
Holly is biting her lips. Here comes the big one. “Do you see the woman who cleaned out Ellen’s trailer?”
Imani doesn’t keep her in suspense. “Goddam! It’s her. Younger, but I’m almost positive.”
A defense lawyer would tear a big hole in that almost in court, but they’re not in court now.
“It says her name is Emily Harris.”
“Yes,” Holly says, and does a little dance in front of the window looking out on Frederick Street. “Thank you.”
“What was a college professor doing cleaning out El’s trailer?”
“That’s a good question, isn’t it?”
12
Holly writes a preliminary report, setting out everything that she’s discovered, partly through her own investigations and partly because the universe threw her a couple of ropes. She likes to think (but doesn’t quite believe) there’s a kind of providence at work in matters of right and wrong, blind but powerful, like that statue of Lady Justice holding out her scales. That there’s a force in the affairs of men and women standing on the side of the weak and unsuspecting, and against evil. It may be too late for Bonnie and the others, but if there are no future victims, that’s a win.
She likes to think of herself as one of the good guys. Smoking aside, of course.
The report is slow work, full of suppositions, and it’s late afternoon by the time it’s done. She considers who she should send it to. Not Penny; that needs to be an in-person debriefing, not bad news—terrible news—that comes in an email filled with stilted phrases like Investigator Gibney ascertained and According to Jet Mart store clerk Herrera. Ordinarily she would send a copy to her partner’s agency address, but Pete is in the hospital and she doesn’t want to trouble him with her current case… which he advised her against taking in the first place.
Except that’s bullshit.
She doesn’t want to send it to him or anyone, at least not yet. Holly has come a long way from the shy introvert Bill Hodges met lurking outside a funeral home all those years ago, but that woman still lives inside her and always will. That woman is terrified of being wrong and still believes she is wrong as often as she’s right. It’s a quantum advance from the woman who thought she was always wrong, but the insecurity remains. At sixty and seventy—at eighty, if she lives that long, which she probably won’t if she keeps smoking—she will still be getting up from her bed three or four nights a week to make sure she turned off the stove burners and locked the doors, even though she knows very well that she’s done those things. If a case is like an egg, she is, too. One with a fragile shell. She is still afraid of being laughed at. Still afraid of being called Jibba-Jibba. This is what she carries.
I need to see the van, if it’s there. Then I can be sure.
Yes. Getting a look at the van, plus Immi McGuire’s identification of Emily Harris as the woman who cleaned out Ellen Craslow’s trailer, will be enough to satisfy her. Then she can tell Bonnie’s mother everything tonight at nine. She can give Penny the choice of having her continue the investigation, or the two of them going to Isabelle Jaynes of the city police. Holly will recommend the latter, because Izzy can have the Harrises brought in for questioning. According to their Wikipedia entries they are childless, but you can’t trust everything you read on Wiki. What she believes—no, what she knows—is that these two old people are protecting somebody.
She doesn’t try to fool herself into believing that the Harrises are harmless just because they’re in their eighties; almost any human or animal will fight when cornered, old or not. But Rodney Harris no longer bowls because of his bad hips, and according to Imani, his wife suffers from sciatica. Holly thinks she’s a match for them. Assuming she takes care. Of course if they catch her snooping around their garage they could report her to the police… but if the disability van is in their garage, and a potential mine of DNA evidence, would they?
Holly realizes she’s been sitting in front of her preliminary report for almost forty-five minutes, going over and over her options like a gerbil on an exercise wheel. Bill would say it’s time to shit or git. She saves her report and sends it to nobody. If something should happen to her—unlikely, but possible—Pete will find it. Or Jerome, when he comes back from his great adventure.
She opens the wall safe and takes out the .38 Smith & Wesson. It’s a Victory model that was Bill’s, and his father’s before him. Now it’s Holly’s. When Bill was on the cops, his service weapon was a Glock automatic, but he preferred the S&W. Because, he said, a revolver never jams. There’s also a box of shells in the safe. She loads the gun, leaving the chamber under the hammer empty as per Bill’s instructions, and closes the cylinder. She drops the gun into her shoulder bag.
There’s something else of Bill’s in the safe, something she’s taught herself to use with Pete’s help. She takes out a flat alligator-skin case, nine inches by three, its surface rubbed smooth. She puts it in her bag with the gun (not to mention her few cosmetics, her ChapStick, her Kleenex, her little flashlight, her small can of pepper spray, her Bic lighter, and a fresh pack of cigarettes).
She asks Siri what time the sun sets, and Siri—accommodating and knowledgeable as ever, she even knows jokes—tells her it will be at 8:48 PM. She can’t wait that long if she wants to get a good picture of the hoped-for van, but she thinks dusk is a good time for dirty work. The Harrises will probably be in their living room, either watching a movie or the Olympic games going on in Tokyo. Holly hates to wait, but since she has to, she decides to go home and kill time there.
On the way out of the office she thinks of an ad she’s seen on TV. Teenagers are running from a guy who looks like Leatherface. One suggests hiding in the attic. Another in the basement. The third says, “Why can’t we just get in the running car?” and points to it. The fourth, her boyfriend, says, “Are you crazy? Let’s hide behind the chainsaws.” So they do. The announcer intones, “When you’re in a horror movie, you make poor decisions.” Holly isn’t in a horror movie, though, and she tells herself she isn’t making a poor decision. She has her spray, and if she needs it, she has Bill’s gun.
In her deepest heart, she knows better… but she also knows she needs to see.
13
At home, Holly makes something to eat and can’t eat it. She calls Jerome and he picks up at once, sounding euphoric. “Guess where I am!”
“On top of the Empire State Building.”
“No.”
“Times Square.”
