Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King

and his legs really are better. Thank God. He remembers reading somewhere that older men, especially older overweight men, should not sit too long. A blood clot can form behind the knee. You get up, the released clot does its own lethal windsprint up to the heart, and it’s angel, angel, down we go.
    She walks with him to the door. Hodges finds himself thinking of the private nurse whose job it was to watch over Mrs. T.’s mother. What was her name? Harris? No, Harris was the housekeeper. The nurse was Greene. When Mrs. Wharton wanted to go into the living room, or visit the jakes, did Mrs. Greene escort her the way Elaine is escorting him now? Of course she did.
    â€œElaine, I’m fine,” he says. “Really. Sober mind. Body in balance.” He holds his arms out to demonstrate.
    â€œAll right,” she says. “Come see us again, and next time don’t wait so long.”
    â€œIt’s a promise.”
    He looks at his watch as he pushes out into the bright sunshine. Past two. He’s missing his afternoon shows, and doesn’t mind a bit. The lady judge and the Nazi psychologist can go fuck themselves. Or each other.
    21
    He walks slowly into the parking lot, where the only cars left, other than his, likely belong to the restaurant staff. He takes his keys out and jingles them on his palm. Unlike Mrs. T.’s, the key to his Toyota is on a ring. And yes, there’s a fob—a rectangle of plastic with a picture of his daughter beneath. Allie at seventeen, smiling and wearing her City High lacrosse uni.
    In the matter of the Mercedes key, Mrs. Trelawney never recanted. Through all the interviews, she continued to insist she’d only ever had the one. Even after Pete Huntley showed her the invoice, with PRIMARY KEYS (2) on the list of items that went with her new car when she took possession back in 2004, she continued to insist. She said the invoice was mistaken. Hodges remembers the iron certainty in her voice.
    Pete would say that she copped to it in the end. There was no need of a note; suicide is a confession by its very nature. Her wall of denial finally crumbled. Like when the guy who hit and ran finally gets it off his chest. Yes, okay, it was a kid, not a dog. It was a kid and I was looking at my cell phone to see whose call I missed and I killed him.
    Hodges remembers how their subsequent interviews with Mrs. T. had produced a weird kind of amplifying effect. The more she denied, the more they disliked. Not just Hodges and Huntley but the whole squad. And the more they disliked, the more stridently she denied. Because she knew how they felt. Oh yes. She was self-involved, but not stu—
    Hodges stops, one hand on the sun-warmed doorhandle of his car, the other shading his eyes. He’s looking into the shadows beneath the turnpike overpass. It’s almost mid-afternoon, and the denizens of Lowtown have begun to rise from their crypts. Four of them are in those shadows. Three big ’uns and one little ’un. The big ’uns appear to be pushing the little ’un around. The little ’un is wearing a pack, and as Hodges watches, one of the big ’uns rips it from his back. This provokes a burst of troll-like laughter.
    Hodges strolls down the broken sidewalk to the overpass. He doesn’t think about it and he doesn’t hurry. He stuffs his hands in his sportcoat pockets. Cars and trucks drone by on the turnpike extension, projecting their shapes on the street below in a series of shadow-shutters. He hears one of the trolls asking the little kid how much money he’s got.
    â€œAin’t got none,” the little kid says. “Lea me lone.”
    â€œTurn out your pockets and we see,” Troll Two says.
    The kid tries to run instead. Troll Three wraps his arms around the kid’s skinny chest from behind. Troll One grabs at the kid’s pockets and squeezes. “Yo, yo, I hear foldin money,” he says, and the little