Page 82

The crowd draws even further back, as if Holly were radioactive, and she realizes she’s still holding the spray can out in front of her. To the stunned bookstore girl, she says, “Take the women to the hotel. Don’t wait for me. I’ll have to talk to the police.”
5
Her conversation with the cops doesn’t take long. The Incredible Hulk (quite drunk and now more like a sobbing, three-hundred-pound child) is taken away to be booked on an assault charge, and Holly is back at the Country Inn & Suites before the hotel bar closes. She’s okay untilthe glass of white wine she’s ordered is placed in front of her, and then she gets the shakes.
So close, she thinks. And:I hate this job.
Her phone, still on mute, vibrates. It’s Corrie, wondering where she is. Five minutes later the women join her. Kate throws an arm around Holly’s neck and plants a kiss on her cheek, uncomfortably close to her mouth.
“From now on I do everything you say, Holly Gibney. I don’t know if you saved my life tonight, but you sure to God saved about twelve thousand dollars’ worth of dental work.”
Corrie slides onto a stool on Holly’s left. “Thank you,” she says quietly. “Thank you so much. My God, did you see thesizeof him?”
“The Incredible Hulk,” Holly says.
Kate throws back her head and shouts laughter. The bartender asks what Kate wants to drink, and she says Jack, no ice. Corrie says she’ll have what Holly is having. Holly isn’t surprised when the bartender asks her if he can see some ID.
Holly sips her wine. Her phone buzzes. It’s Jerome again. She thinks,I can’t talk to him tonight.She’s wiped out and keeps seeing the man in the dirty tee-shirt coming at Kate like a locomotive, the bat upraised.Except Ihaveto talk to him tonight, because I might know who the Surrogate Juror killer is.
The shakes start up again.
“If that chair hadn’t been there,” she says.
Kate looks at her quizzically, head cocked. “Whatare you saying?”
“The chair. If it hadn’t—”
Kate puts two fingers across Holly’s lips. Very gently. She says, “It wasn’t the chair. It wasyou.”
Holly pushes away the glass of wine, which she has barely tasted. The bartender comes over. “Is there something wrong with that, Miss?”
“No. It’s fine. But I have to make a call. You two should probably go to your rooms.”
Kate gives a British-style salute, back of the hand to the brow, very pukka sahib. “Aye-aye, Cap’n.”
Holly is not amused.
6
In her room, she calls Jerome and apologizes for not getting back to him sooner. “I was on the job.”
“Everything okay there?”
“Fine.”
“Did you figure out what was buggin me about that calendar page? I’ve been staring at it half the night.”
That was most of your problem, Holly thinks. “I did.”
“For reals?”
“For reals.” Although self-doubt is one of her many default positions, she has no doubt about this.
“True?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me!”