a little now. He was a very old cat.
Dan sat on the side of the bed and gently rubbed the cloth over the part of Fred Carling’s face that was still relatively whole.
“How bad’s the pain?”
That rasp again. Carling’s left hand was a twisted snarl of broken fingers, so Dan took the right one. “You don’t need to talk, just tell me.”
(not so bad now)
Dan nodded. “Good. That’s good.”
(but I’m scared)
“There’s nothing to be scared of.”
He saw Fred at the age of six, swimming in the Saco with his brother, Fred always snatching at the back of his suit to keep it from falling off because it was too big, it was a hand-me-down like practically everything else he owned. He saw him at fifteen, kissing a girl at the Bridgton Drive-In and smelling her perfume as he touched her breast and wished this night would never end. He saw him at twenty-five, riding down to Hampton Beach with the Road Saints, sitting astride a Harley FXB, the Sturgis model, so fine, he’s full of bennies and red wine and the day is like a hammer, everybody looking as the Saints tear by in a long and glittering caravan of fuck-you noise; life is exploding like fireworks. And he sees the apartment where Carling lives—lived—with his little dog, whose name is Brownie. Brownie ain’t much, just a mutt, but he’s smart. Sometimes he jumps up in the orderly’s lap and they watch TV together. Brownie troubles Fred’s mind because he will be waiting for Fred to come home, take him for a little walk, then fill up his bowl with Gravy Train.
“Don’t worry about Brownie,” Dan said. “I know a girl who’d be glad to take care of him. She’s my niece, and it’s her birthday.”
Carling looked up at him with his one functioning eye. The rattle of his breath was very loud now; he sounded like an engine with dirt in it.
(can you help me please doc can you help me)
Yes. He could help. It was his sacrament, what he was made for. It was quiet now in Rivington House, very quiet indeed. Somewhere close, a door was swinging open. They had come to the border. Fred Carling looked up him, asking what. Asking how. But it was so simple.
“You only need to sleep.”
(don’t leave me)
“No,” Dan said. “I’m here. I’ll stay here until you sleep.”
Now he clasped Carling’s hand in both of his. And smiled.
“Until you sleep,” he said.
May 1, 2011–July 17, 2012
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June 2014
DET.-RET.
13
The waiter returns to ask if there will be anything else. Hodges starts to say no, then orders another cup of coffee. He just wants to sit here awhile, savoring double happiness: it wasn’t Mr. Mercedes and it was Donnie Davis, the sanctimonious cocksucker who killed his wife and then had his lawyer set up a reward fund for information leading to her whereabouts. Because, oh Jesus, he loved her so much and all he wanted was for her to come home so they could start over.
He also wants to think about Olivia Trelawney, and Olivia Trelawney’s stolen Mercedes. That it was stolen no one doubts. But in spite of all her protests to the contrary, no one doubts that she enabled the thief.
Hodges remembers a case that Isabelle Jaynes, then freshly arrived from San Diego, told them about after they brought her up to speed on Mrs. Trelawney’s inadvertent part in the City Center Massacre. In Isabelle’s story it was a gun. She said she and her partner had been called to a home where a nine-year-old boy had shot and killed his four-year-old sister. They had been playing with an automatic pistol their father had left on his bureau.
“The father wasn’t charged, but he’ll carry that for the rest of his life,” she said. “This will turn out to be the same kind of thing, wait and see.”
That was a month before the Trelawney woman swallowed the pills, maybe less, and nobody on the Mercedes Killer case had given much of a shit. To them—and him—Mrs. T. had just been a self-pitying rich lady who refused to accept her part in what had happened.
The Mercedes SL was downtown when it was stolen, but Mrs. Trelawney, a widow who lost her wealthy husband to a heart attack, lived in Sugar Heights, a suburb as rich as its name where lots of gated drives led up to fourteen- and