“Did you have someone at the dealership check on what I was curious about?” Hodges asked him.
“No need,” McGrory said. “I’ve worked at Ross since 1987. Must have seen a thousand Mercs go out the door since then, and I can tell you they all go out with two keys.”
“Thanks,” Hodges said. “We’ll be there soon. Got some more questions for you.”
“I’ll be here. This is terrible. Terrible.”
Hodges ended the call and passed on what McGrory had said.
“Are you surprised?” Pete asked. Ahead was an orange DETOUR sign that would vector them around City Center . . . unless they wanted to light their blues, that was, and neither did. What they needed now was to talk.
“Nope,” Hodges said. “It’s standard operating procedure. Like the Brits say, an heir and a spare. They give you two keys when you buy your new car—”
“—and tell you to put one in a safe place, so you can lay hands on it if you lose the one you carry around. Some people, if they need the spare a year or two later, they’ve forgotten where they put it. Women who carry big purses—like that suitcase the Trelawney woman had—are apt to dump both keys into it and forget all about the extra one. If she’s telling the truth about not putting it on a fob, she was probably using them interchangeably.”
“Yeah,” Hodges said. “She gets to her mother’s, she’s preoccupied with the thought of spending another night dealing with Mom’s pain, she’s juggling the boxes and her purse . . .”
“And left the key in the ignition. She doesn’t want to admit it—not to us and not to herself—but that’s what she did.”
“Although the warning chime . . .” Hodges said doubtfully.
“Maybe a big noisy truck was going by as she was getting out and she didn’t hear the chime. Or a police car, winding its siren. Or maybe she was just so deep in her own thoughts she ignored it.”
It made sense then and even more later when McGrory told them the deathcar hadn’t been jimmied to gain entry or hotwired to start. What troubled Hodges—the only thing that troubled him, really—was how much he wanted it to make sense. Neither of them had liked Mrs. Trelawney, she of the boatneck tops, perfectly plucked brows, and squeaky widder-titter. Mrs. Trelawney who hadn’t asked for any news of the dead and injured, not so much as a single detail. She wasn’t the doer—no way was she—but it would be good to stick her with some of the blame. Give her something to think about besides veggie dinners from B’hai.
“Don’t complicate what’s simple,” his partner repeated. The traffic snarl had cleared and he put the pedal down. “She was given two keys. She claims she only had one. And now it’s the truth. The bastard who killed those people probably threw the one she left in the ignition down a handy sewer when he walked away. The one she showed us was the spare.”
That had to be the answer. When you heard hoofbeats, you didn’t think zebras.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
My first book with Scribner was Bag of Bones, in 1998. Anxious to please my new partners, I went out on tour for that novel. At one of the autographing sessions, some guy asked, “Hey, any idea what happened to the kid from The Shining?”
This was a question I’d often asked myself about that old book—along with another: What would have happened to Danny’s troubled father if he had found Alcoholics Anonymous instead of trying to get by with what people in AA call “white-knuckle sobriety”?
As with Under the Dome and 11/22/63, this was an idea that never quite left my mind. Every now and then—while taking a shower, watching a TV show, or making a long turnpike drive—I would find myself calculating Danny Torrance’s age, and wondering where he was. Not to mention his mother, one more basically good human being left in Jack Torrance’s destructive wake. Wendy and Danny were, in the current parlance, codependents, people bound by ties of love and responsibility to an addicted family member. At some point in 2009, one of my recovering alcoholic friends told me a one-liner that goes like this: “When a codependent is drowning, somebody else’s life flashes before his eyes.” That struck me as too true to be funny, and I think it was at that point that Doctor Sleep became inevitable. I had to know.
Did I approach the book with trepidation? You better believe it. The Shining is one of those novels people always mention (along with ’Salem’s Lot, Pet Sematary, and It) when they talk about which of my books really scared the bejeezus out of them. Plus, of course, there was Stanley Kubrick’s movie, which many seem to remember—for reasons I have never quite understood—as one of the scariest films they have ever seen. (If you have seen the movie but not read the novel, you should note that Doctor Sleep follows the latter, which is, in my opinion, the True History of the Torrance Family.)
I like to think I’m still pretty good at what I do, but nothing can live up to the memory of a good scare, and I mean nothing, especially if administered to one who is young and impressionable. There has been at least one brilliant sequel to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (Mick Garris’s Psycho IV, with Anthony Perkins reprising his role as Norman Bates), but people who’ve seen that—or any of the others—will only shake their heads and say no, no, not as good. They remember the first time they experienced Janet Leigh, and no remake or sequel can top that moment when the curtain is pulled back and the knife starts to do its work.
And people change. The man who wrote Doctor Sleep is very different from the well-meaning alcoholic who wrote The Shining, but both remain interested in the same thing: telling a kickass story. I enjoyed finding Danny Torrance again and following his adventures. I hope you did, too. If that’s the case, Constant Reader, we’re all good.
Before letting you go, let me thank the people who need to be thanked, okay?
Nan Graham edited the book. Righteously. Thanks, Nan.
Chuck Verrill, my agent, sold the book. That’s important, but he also took all my phone calls and fed me spoonfuls of soothing syrup. Those things are indispensable.
Russ Dorr did the research, but for what’s wrong, blame me for misunderstanding. He’s a great physician’s assistant and a Nordic monster of inspiration and good cheer.
Chris Lotts supplied Italian when Italian was needed. Yo, Chris.
Rocky Wood was my go-to guy for all things Shining, providing me with names and dates I had either forgotten or plain got wrong. He also provided reams of info on every recreational vehicle and camper under the sun (the coolest was Rose’s EarthCruiser). The Rock knows my work better than I do myself. Look him up on the Web sometime. He’s got it going on.
My son Owen read the book and suggested valuable changes. Chief among them was his insistence that we see Dan reach what recovered alcoholics call “the bottom.”
My wife also read Doctor Sleep and helped to make it better. I love you, Tabitha.
Thanks to you guys and girls who read my stuff, too. May you have long days and pleasant nights.
Let me close with a word of caution: when you’re on the turnpikes and freeways of America, watch out for those Winnebagos and Bounders.
STEPHEN KING is the author of more than fifty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His novel 11/22/63 was named a top ten book of 2011 by The New York Times Book Review and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller as well as the Best Hardcover Novel award from the International Thriller Writers. He is the recipient of the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King.