03 End of Watch by Stephen King

Author:Stephen King [King, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

3

Freddi Linklatter – once a computer-repair colleague of Brady’s before the world discovered Brady Hartsfield was a monster – sits at her kitchen table, spinning a silver flask with one finger as she waits for the man with the fancy briefcase.

Dr Z is what he calls himself, but Freddi is no fool. She knows the name that goes with the briefcase initials: Felix Babineau, head of neurology at Kiner Memorial.

Does he know that she knows? She’s guessing he does, and doesn’t care. But it’s weird. Very. He’s in his sixties, an authentic golden oldie, but he reminds her of somebody much younger. Someone who is, in fact, this Dr Babineau’s most famous (infamous, really) patient.

Around and around goes the flask. Etched on the side is GH & FL, 4Ever. Well, 4Ever lasted just about two years, and Gloria Hollis has been gone for quite awhile now. Babineau – or Dr Z, as he styles himself, like the villain in a comic book – was part of the reason why.

‘He’s creepy,’ Gloria said. ‘The older guy is, too. And the money’s creepy. It’s too much. I don’t know what they got you into, Fred, but sooner or later it’s going to blow up in your face, and I don’t want to be part of the collateral damage.’

Of course Gloria had also met someone else – someone quite a bit better-looking than Freddi, with her angular body and lantern jaw and pitted cheeks – but she didn’t want to talk about that part of it, oh no.

Around and around goes the flask.

It all seemed so simple at first, and how could she refuse the money? She never saved much when she worked on the Discount Electronix Cyber Patrol, and the work she’d been able to find as an independent IT when the store closed had barely been enough to keep her off the street. It might have been different if she’d had what Anthony Frobisher, her old boss, liked to call ‘people skills,’ but those had never been her forte. When the old geezer who called himself Z-Boy made his offer (and dear God, that was really a comic book handle), it had been like a gift from God. She had been living in a shitty apartment on the South Side, in the part of town commonly referred to as Hillbilly Heaven, and a month behind on the rent in spite of the cash the guy had already given her. What was she supposed to do? Refuse five thousand dollars? Get real.

Around and around goes the flask.

The guy is late, maybe he’s not coming at all, and that might be for the best.

She remembers the geezer casting his eyes around the two-room apartment, most of her possessions in paper bags with handles (all too easy to see those bags gathered around her as she tried to sleep beneath a Crosstown Expressway underpass). ‘You’ll need a bigger place,’ he said.

‘Yeah, and the farmers in California need rain.’ She remembers peering into the envelope he handed her.

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