Red Screen by Stephen King

Author:Stephen King
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2021-08-31T17:18:03+00:00

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Wilson gets home at quarter of seven. Sandi’s in the living room, watching the evening news. One place is set at the kitchen table. It looks lonely.

“Hey, babe,” he calls.

“Your dinner’s in the oven. The chicken’s probably dried out. You said you’d be home by five.”

“Things came up.”

“They always do with you.”

Did he tell Sandi he’d be home by five? Wilson honestly can’t remember. But he remembers Crocker—probably now cooling his heels in Metropolitan Detention— saying It’s subtle.

He gets chicken and potatoes out of the oven and green beans out of the steamer on the stove. He thinks the potatoes will be okay, but the chicken and beans look elderly and unappetizing.

“Did you pick up the dry cleaning?”

He pauses, a slice of chicken breast half-cut. Half-sawn, actually. “What dry cleaning?”

She gets up and stands in the doorway. “Our dry cleaning. I told you last night, Frank. Jesus!”

“I—” His phone rings. He pulls it off his belt and looks at the screen. If the call was from his partner, he would decline. But it’s not. It’s from Captain Alvarez. “I have to take this.”

“Of course you do,” she says and turns back to the living room so as not to miss the latest coronavirus death count. “Honest to God.”

He thinks of going after her, trying to smooth this over, but it’s his boss, so he pushes accept. He listens to what Alvarez has to say, then sits down. “Are you shitting me? How?”

His voice brings Sandi back into the doorway. His slumped posture—phone to ear, head bent, one forearm resting on his thigh—brings her to the table.

Wilson listens some more, then hangs up. He takes his plate to the sink and dumps everything into the garbage disposal. “The perfect fucking end to a perfect fucking day.”

“What happened?” Sandi puts a hand on his arm. Her touch is light but very welcome to him.

“We had a guy in custody who killed his wife. I was at the scene, a real mess. Blood all over the kitchen, her lying in it. Back at the station, I did the preliminary interrogation. The doer was crazy as a loon. He claimed she was an alien, part of an invasion force.”

“Oh my God.”

“He killed himself. They were doing intake at MetDet. He picked up a pencil, snapped the chain it was on, and stabbed himself in the jugular vein. Alvarez says maybe it was dumb luck, but the intake sergeant says it looked like he knew right where to put it.”

“Maybe he had medical training.”

“Sandi, he was a plumber.”

That makes her laugh, and that makes Wilson laugh. He puts his forehead against hers.

“It’s not funny,” Sandi says,“but the way you said it was. Plumber.” She laughs again.

“He fought them, Alvarez said. All the time the blood was pumping out— spurting out—he fought them. When he passed out they got him to Presbyterian, but it was too late. He’d lost too much blood.”

“Turn off the TV for me,” Sandi says. “I’ll scramble you some eggs.”

“And bacon?”

“Bad for your cholesterol, but tonight…okay.

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