Holly

August 18, 2021

There’s a balcony outside Holly’s apartment, just big enough for two chairs and a small table. At eleven o’clock on this Wednesday morning she’s sitting out there, having a cup of coffee. She’d like to have a cigarette to go with it, but the urge is fading. It’s been over three weeks since her last one, and with God’s grace there will never be another. It’s a warm morning, but not oppressive; the heatwave that blanketed the city for most of July and the first two weeks of August seems to have broken.

Ordinarily Holly would be in the office at this hour, dressed in one of her many pantsuits and wearing light makeup, but this morning—and most other mornings since her enforced twenty-four-hour stay in Kiner—she’s in her pajamas and slippers. According to the answering machine and the website, the office is closed for staff vacations and will re-open on September 6th. In truth, Holly’s not sure Finders Keepers will ever re-open.

Pete, fully recovered, is visiting his son and daughter-in-law in Saginaw. He’ll be back at the end of the month, but has started to talk about full retirement. He has his pension from the PD, and after twenty-five years on the job it’s a good one. If that’s his decision, Holly will be happy to add a very decent severance package. If she decides to sell the business (which she could, and for a good price), it will be more than decent.

As for herself, she is a new millionaire who can afford a mai-tai in any of the city’s priciest watering holes. In fact, she could buy a pricey watering hole, if she desired. Which she doesn’t. The thought of retiring and living on the money her mother and uncle hid from her has occurred to her frequently in the weeks following her time in the Harrises’ basement cage.

She has told herself she’s still too young to retire, and it’s probably true. She has told herself that she wouldn’t know what to do with herself, and that’s probably also true. But she keeps thinking of what Izzy Jaynes said that day in the chapel, after telling Penny Dahl that, euphemisms aside, her daughter had not only been killed, she had been eaten. The best parts of her, at least; the rest finished up as red paste and bone fragments in a plastic bag at the end of a woodchipper’s hose.

Just when you think you’ve seen the worst human beings have to offer, you find out you’re wrong, Izzy said. Then added the kicker: There’s no end to evil.

Holly supposes she already knew that, and better than Izzy. The outsider masquerading as Terry Maitland was evil. So was the one masquerading as Chet Ondowsky. The same was true of Brady Hartsfield, who found a way to go on doing dirt (Bill’s phrase) even after he should have been rendered harmless. Rendered that way by Holly herself.

But Roddy and Emily Harris were worse.

Why? Because there was nothing supernatural about them. Because you couldn’t say their evil came from outside, and comfort yourself with the idea that if there were malign outside forces, there were probably good ones, as well. The Harrises’ evil was both prosaic and outlandish, like a crazy mother putting her baby in a microwave oven because he won’t stop crying, or a child of twelve going on a shooting rampage and killing half a dozen of his classmates.

Holly isn’t sure she wants to revisit a world capable of holding people like Rodney. Or like Emily, who was even worse: more calculating and at the same time much, much crazier.

Some things have come clear, partly as a result of Emily’s diaries. They now understand why the Steinman boy came so close on the heels of Ellen Craslow. Ellen was a vegan and refused to eat the liver (referred to in the diaries as THG, standing for the holy grail). She went on refusing even when she was dying of thirst. In the end, none of the others held out. Holly wasn’t sure she could have, but Ellen did, and God bless her for it. Rodney ended up shooting her like a recalcitrant steer. Following Ellen’s death, Emily filled pages with vituperative rage; jungle bunny lesbo cunt was the least of it.

They even know the fake name Emily used at the trailer park: Dickinson, as in Emily.

Holly had to keep reminding herself that the woman who wrote all those vile things had been a respected faculty member, a winner of awards, a patron of the Reynolds Library, and an influential member of the English Department even after her retirement. In 2004 she had received a plaque announcing her as the city’s Woman of the Year. There was a banquet at which Emily spoke of women’s empowerment.

Izzy had told her something else: the gun Roddy used to shoot Ellen Craslow was a Ruger Security-9, with an extended fifteen-round clip. If Emily had gotten that one instead of Bill’s revolver, she would have had ten more chances to finish Holly… who could only have dodged for so long in that cage.

“But it was upstairs,” Izzy said, “and she had a broken arm as well as a bad back. Lucky for you.”

Yes, lucky for her. Lucky Holly Gibney, who had not only survived but was now a millionaire. She could close up shop and move on to another phase of her life. One where people like the Harrises would only be cable news fodder, which could be muted or turned off in favor of a romcom.

She hears her phone ring—her personal, not the office line. The office line had rung a lot in the wake of Holly’s new—or renewed—celebrity, but now the calls have thankfully tapered off. She gets up and goes into her office, carrying her coffee cup. The photo on her phone’s screen is Barbara Robinson.

“Hi, Barbara. How’s it going?”

Silence, but Holly can hear Barbara’s breathing, and feels a stab of alarm. “Barb? Are you okay?”

“Yes… yes. Just stunned. Mom and Dad aren’t here, and Jerome—”

“In New York again, I know.”

“So I called you. I had to call somebody.”

“What happened?”

“I won.”

“Won what?”

“The Penley. The Penley Prize. Random House is going to publish Stitching the Sky Closed.” Now that Barbara has passed on her news, she begins to cry. “I’m going to dedicate it to Olivia. God, I wish she were alive to know.”

“Barbara, that’s so wonderful. There’s a cash award, too, right?”

“Twenty-five thousand dollars. But it will be the advance against royalties, that’s what the email I got said, and poetry books never sell many copies.”

“Don’t tell that to Amanda Gorman,” Holly says.

Barbara laughs even though she’s still crying. “Not the same thing. Her poems, like the one she read at the Inauguration, are optimistic. Mine are… well…”

“Different,” Holly says.

Barbara has given her some of them to read, and Holly knows them for what they are: a kind of coping mechanism. An effort for Barbara to reconcile her good and generous heart with the horror she experienced in an elevator the previous year. The horror of Chet Ondowsky. Not to mention the horror of finding her friend in a cage with her face smeared in blood and two dead bodies nearby.

Holly has seen more, experienced more—she was, after all, in that cage—and has no poetry as a safety valve; the best she ever managed was (let’s face it) pretty bad. But she has started enjoying horror movies again, and those harmless scares might be a start. She knows some people would consider that perverse, but it really isn’t.

“You have to call Jerome,” Holly says. “First Jerome, then your folks.”

“Yes, right away. But I’m glad I talked to you first.”

“I’m pleased that you did.” More than pleased, actually.

“Do you know anything more? About… the business?”

That’s what Barbara calls it these days: the business.

“No. If you’re talking about their… I don’t know… their descent, we may never know it all. It’s good we were able to stop them when we did—”

“You,” Barbara says. “You stopped them.”

Holly knows there were a lot of people involved, from Keisha Stone to Emilio Herrera at the Jet Mart, but doesn’t say so.

“In the end, it’s probably pretty prosaic,” she says. “They stepped over a line, that’s all, which made it easier the next time. And the placebo effect played a part. His mind was crumbling, and in a way, hers was, too. They would have been caught eventually, but probably not before they did it again. Maybe more than once. Serial killers start to speed up, and it was happening to them. Let’s just say all’s well that ends well… as well as could be, maybe.”

It would certainly be nice to think so, she thinks.

“I’d rather talk about your big prize. Are you the youngest ever to win it?”

“Yes, by six years! The letter said they found my essay refreshing. Can you believe that shit?”

“Yes. Barb, I can believe it. And I’m so happy for you. Now go on and make the rest of your calls.”

“I will. I love you, Holly.”

“I love you, too,” Holly says. “So much.”

She puts the phone back on its charger and heads to the kitchen to refresh her coffee. Before she can get there, the office line starts ringing. She hasn’t answered that one since the end of July, just let the phone robot pick up, or the service. Most of the calls have been requests for interviews, several from tabloids with big money attached. She listens to the messages but has answered none of them. She doesn’t need their money.

Now she stands by her desk, looking at the office phone. Five rings and it will go to the robot. It’s already on number three.

Just when you think you’ve seen the worst human beings have to offer, Holly thinks, and There’s no end to evil.

This is the call, she thinks. This is the one I’ve been waiting for.

She can pick it up and go on with the business of investigating. That means touching evil, of which there is no end. Or she can let it go to voicemail, and if she does that, she’s not just blue-skying the idea of retirement; she really means to pull the pin and live on her riches.

Four rings.

She asks herself what Bill Hodges would do. But there’s a more important question—what would Bill want her to do?

Halfway through the fifth ring, she picks up the phone.

“Hello, this is Holly Gibney. How can I help?”

^{_{August 14, 2021–June 2, 2022}}