Mr. Mercedes (Bill Hodges Trilogy, #1)(88)

“Don’t tell my mother. She thinks I quit.”

“Your secret’s safe with me,” Hodges says, thinking that Holly is surely too old to worry about Mommy’s disapproval of what is probably her only bad habit. “Can I share your step?”

“Shouldn’t you be inside with Janey?” But she moves over to make room.

“Just taking a breather. With the exception of Janey herself, I don’t know any of those people.”

She looks him over with the bald curiosity of a child. “Are you and my cousin lovers?”

He’s embarrassed, not by the question but by the perverse fact that it makes him feel like laughing. He sort of wishes he’d just left her to smoke her illicit cigarette. “Well,” he says, “we’re good friends. Maybe we should leave it at that.”

She shrugs and shoots smoke from her nostrils. “It’s all right with me. I think a woman should have lovers if she wants them. I don’t, myself. Men don’t interest me. Not that I’m a lesbian. Don’t get that idea. I write poetry.”

“Yeah? Do you?”

“Yes.” And with no pause, as if it’s all the same thing: “My mother doesn’t like Janey.”

“Really?”

“She doesn’t think Janey should have gotten all that money from Olivia. She says it isn’t fair. It probably isn’t, but I don’t care, myself.”

She’s biting her lips in a way that gives Hodges an unsettling sense of déjà vu, and it takes only a second to realize why: Olivia Trelawney did the same thing during her police interviews. Blood tells. It almost always does.

“You haven’t been inside,” he says.

“No, and I’m not going, and she can’t make me. I’ve never seen a dead person, and I’m not going to start now. It would give me nightmares.”

She kills her cigarette on the side of the step, not rubbing it but plunging it out, stabbing it until the sparks fly and the filter splits. Her face is as pale as milk glass, she’s started to quiver (her knees are almost literally knocking), and if she doesn’t stop chewing her lower lip, it’s going to split open.

“This is the worst part,” she says, and she’s not mumbling now. In fact, if her voice doesn’t stop rising it will soon be a scream. “This is the worst part, this is the worst part, this is the worst part!”

He puts an arm around her vibrating shoulders. For a moment the vibration grows to a whole-body shake. He fully expects her to flee (perhaps lingering just long enough to call him a masher and slap his face). Then the shaking subsides and she actually puts her head on his shoulder. She’s breathing rapidly.

“You’re right,” he says. “This is the worst part. Tomorrow will be better.”

“Will the coffin be closed?”

“Yeah.” He’ll tell Janey it will have to be, unless she wants her cuz sitting out here with the hearses again.

Holly looks at him out of her naked face. She doesn’t have a damn thing going for her, Hodges thinks, not a single scrap of wit, not a single wile. He will come to regret this misperception, but for now he finds himself once more musing on Olivia Trelawney. How the press treated her and how the cops treated her. Including him.

“Do you promise it’ll be closed?”

“Yes.”

“Double promise?”

“Pinky swear, if you want.” Then, still thinking of Olivia and the computer-poison Mr. Mercedes fed her: “Are you taking your medication, Holly?”

Her eyes widen. “How do you know I take Lexapro? Did she tell you?”

“Nobody told me. Nobody had to. I used to be a detective.” He tightens the arm around her shoulders a little and gives her a small, friendly shake. “Now answer my question.”

“It’s in my purse. I haven’t taken it today, because . . .” She gives a small, shrill giggle. “Because it makes me have to pee.”

“If I get a glass of water, will you take it now?”

“Yes. For you.” Again that naked stare, the look of a small child sizing up an adult. “I like you. You’re a good guy. Janey’s lucky. I’ve never been lucky in my life. I’ve never even had a boyfriend.”

“I’ll get you some water,” Hodges says, and stands up. At the corner of the building, he looks back. She’s trying to light another cigarette, but it’s hard going because the shakes are back. She’s holding her disposable Bic in both hands, like a shooter on the police gun range.

Inside, Janey asks where he’s been. He tells her, and asks if the coffin can be closed at the memorial service the following day. “I think it’s the only way you’ll get her inside,” he says.

Janey looks at her aunt, now at the center of a group of elderly women, all of them talking animatedly. “That bitch hasn’t even noticed Holly’s not in here,” she says. “You know what, I just decided the coffin’s not even going to be here tomorrow. I’ll have the funeral director stash it in the back, and if Auntie C doesn’t like it, she can go spit. Tell Holly that, okay?”

The discreetly hovering funeral director shows Hodges into the next room, where drinks and snacks have been arranged. He gets a bottle of Dasani water and takes it out to the parking lot. He passes on Janey’s message and sits with Holly until she takes one of her little white happy-caps. When it’s down, she smiles at him. “I really do like you.”