Mr. Mercedes: A Novel by Stephen King

Author:Stephen King
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Thrillers, Horror, Fiction, Suspense, General
ISBN: 9781476754468
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2014-06-03T04:00:00+00:00

24

Hodges and Janey are loaned a phone-friendly room down the hall from the hospital lobby, and there they split up the deathwork.

He’s the one who gets in touch with the funeral home (Soames, the same one that handled Olivia Trelawney’s exit rites) and makes sure the hospital is prepared to release the body when the hearse arrives. Janey, using her iPad with a casual efficiency Hodges envies, downloads an obituary form from the city paper. She fills it out quickly, speaking occasionally under her breath as she does so – once Hodges hears her murmur the phrase in lieu of flowers. When the obit’s emailed back, she produces her mother’s address book from her purse and begins making calls to the old lady’s few remaining friends. She’s warm with them, and calm, but also quick. Her voice wavers only once, while she’s talking to Althea Greene, her mother’s nurse and closest companion for almost ten years.

By six o’clock – roughly the same time Brady Hartsfield arrives home to find his mother putting the finishing touches on her tuna salad – most of the t’s have been crossed and the i’s dotted. At ten to seven, a white Cadillac hearse pulls into the hospital drive and rolls around back. The guys inside know where to go; they’ve been here plenty of times.

Janey looks at Hodges, her face pale, her mouth trembling. ‘I’m not sure I can—’

‘I’ll take care of it.’

The transaction is like any other, really; he gives the mortician and his assistant a signed death certificate, they give him a receipt. He thinks, I could be buying a car. When he comes back to the hospital lobby, he spies Janey outside, once more sitting on the bumper of the ambulance. He sits down next to her and takes her hand. She squeezes his fingers hard. They watch the white hearse until it’s out of sight. Then he leads her back to his car and they drive the two blocks to the Holiday Inn.

Henry Sirois, a fat man with a moist handshake, shows up at eight. Charlotte Gibney appears an hour later, herding an overloaded bellman ahead of her and complaining about the terrible service on her flight. And the crying babies, she says – you don’t want to know. They don’t, but she tells them anyway. She’s as skinny as her brother is fat, and regards Hodges with a watery, suspicious eye. Lurking by Aunt Charlotte’s side is her daughter Holly, a spinster roughly Janey’s age but with none of Janey’s looks. Holly Gibney never speaks above a mutter and seems to have a problem making eye contact.

‘I want to see Betty,’ Aunt Charlotte announces after a brief dry embrace with her niece. It’s as if she thinks Mrs Wharton might be laid out in the motel lobby, lilies at her head and carnations at her feet.

Janey explains that the body has already been transported to Soames Funeral Home in the city, where Elizabeth Wharton’s earthly remains will be cremated

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