Mr. Mercedes

‘There were at first,’ she says, ‘and I thought I might sell it. I had it painted instead. That was my idea, not Dr Leibowitz’s.’ She looks at them proudly. ‘I didn’t even ask her.’

‘And now?’ Jerome is still holding her hand. He has come to love Holly, difficult as she sometimes is. They have both come to love her.

‘Blue is the color of forgetting,’ she says. ‘I read that in a poem once.’ She pauses. ‘Bill, why are you crying? Are you thinking about Janey?’

Yes. No. Both.

‘I’m crying because we’re here,’ he says. ‘On a beautiful fall day that feels like summer.’

‘Dr Leibowitz says crying is good,’ Holly says matter-of-factly. ‘She says tears wash the emotions.’

‘She could be right about that.’ Hodges is thinking about how Janey wore his hat. How she gave it just the right tilt. ‘Now are we going to have some of that champagne or not?’

Jerome holds the bottle while Holly pours. They hold up their glasses.

‘To us,’ Hodges says.

They echo it. And drink.

2

On a rain-soaked evening in November of 2011, a nurse hurries down the corridor of the Lakes Region Traumatic Brain Injury Clinic, an adjunct to John M. Kiner Memorial, the city’s premier hospital. There are half a dozen charity cases at the TBI, including one who is infamous … although his infamy has already begun to fade with the passage of time.

The nurse is afraid the clinic’s chief neurologist will have left, but he’s still in the doctor’s lounge, going through case files.

‘You may want to come, Dr Babineau,’ she says. ‘It’s Mr Hartsfield. He’s awake.’ This only makes him look up, but what the nurse says next gets him to his feet. ‘He spoke to me.’

‘After seventeen months? Extraordinary. Are you sure?’

The nurse is flushed with excitement. ‘Yes, Doctor, absolutely.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He says he has a headache. And he’s asking for his mother.’

September 14, 2013

AUTHOR’S NOTE

While there is indeed such a thing as ‘stealing the peek’ (as in PKE), it would be impossible to do so with any of the cars identified in the book, including the Mercedes-Benz SL500 made during the passive keyless entry age. SL500s, like all Benzes, are high-performance cars with high-performance security features.

Thanks are due to Russ Dorr and Dave Higgins, who provided research assistance. Also to my wife, Tabitha, who knows more about cell phones than I do, and to my son, the novelist Joe Hill, who helped me solve the problems Tabby pointed out. If I got it right, thank my support crew. If I got it wrong, chalk it up to my failure to understand.

Nan Graham of Scribner did her usual sterling editorial job, and my son Owen followed up with a valuable second pass. My agent, Chuck Verrill, is a Yankees fan, but I love him anyway.

Don’t miss REVIVAL by STEPHEN KING

available from Hodder & Stoughton from November, 2014

REVIVAL is a spectacularly dark and electrifying novel about addiction, religion, music and what might happen on the other side of life.

In a small New England town, a shadow falls over a small boy playing with his toy soldiers. Jamie Morton looks up to see the charismatic new minister, Charles Jacobs, who introduces him to simple experiments with electricity.

Decades later, wed to his guitar and addicted to drugs, Jamie sees showman Jacobs on stage – creating dazzling ‘portraits in lightning’. Jacobs rescues Jamie from his addiction. But for every cure there is a price. The price of the shocking after-effects …

This is a masterpiece from King in the great tradition of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe.

‘Not since Dickens has a writer had so many readers by the throat’ Guardian

To find out more about Stephen King please visit www.hodder.co.uk, www.stephenking.co.uk and www.facebook.com/stephenkingbooks