Page 168 of The Edge

“But I’d go to prison.”

“Where exactly do you thinkI’vebeen all these years?” she screamed at him.

“I know this has been so hard for you, so hard.”

“Then do the right thing. Let me go and call the police and tell them what you did.”

He shook his head. “I’ve worked too hard to lose all this.”

“All what? A funeral home? You spend all your time with dead people. Maybe that’s the problem.”

He grimaced. “People have always made fun of what I do, but it’s a necessary service—”

“I don’t care!” she shouted. “I don’t give a fuck about you or what you do, okay? Just do what you’re going to do to me and go on with your pathetic life.” She closed her eyes, and the tears curved over her quivering cheeks.

“You won’t feel a thing. I’m going to sedate you before, of course. It’ll be over soon, okay? I promise. I wish things could have turned out differently, okay?”

She didn’t bother to answer him.

He returned to the equipment and started to key in information in front of a screen that was attached to the cremation system. A few minutes later he looked over at her. “It’s all computerized now. Input the weight and other necessary factors, and algorithms determine the temperature and time.”

Alex’s eyes were still closed and she was now mumbling something under her breath.

He continued, turning back to his work. “Anyway, the body is 65 percent water, and it requires a large amount of thermal energy to vaporize it, which must be done first, in the primary chamber. That chamber vaporizes the water, and the secondary chamber takes care of any leftover organic matter. Then the cremulator reduces whatever is left over to ash. That’s what we put in the urns to give to the families. I thought I would scatter your ashes over Jocelyn Point. Is that okay? You always loved it there, right?”

He paused and looked at her again. She was still mumbling but only in a louder voice.

“What’s that you’re saying?” he said.

A minute later he walked over and leaned in closer. “What are you saying?”

She didn’t answer.

He put his arms under her, lifted her up, and carried her over to a long cardboard box set on a conveyor belt. He laid her inside it.

He put a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll sedate you first, of course. Then it’ll all be over in about an hour.”

He went back over to the control panel and worked away. A minute later Alex lifted her head slightly and looked around. Her gaze held on where the conveyor belt led—a large metal chamber. “They’ll know. They’ll find out the truth, Fred.”

Bing looked over at her. “They’ll only find out what I want them to, which is my uncle was obsessed with you. He kidnapped you and took you somewhere. And no one will ever find out where. Then he came here and tried to kill me because I had tried to stop him. But I shot him instead. I’ll be a hero.” He next looked at the chamber into which he would be sending Alex on the conveyor belt. “And you can’t get DNA or anything else from ashes. It will be like you never existed.”

“You’re sick!” she cried out.

“No, I’m just very careful.”

Alex closed her eyes and started mumbling loudly, rocking from side to side, banging into the sides of the cardboard box.

Bing glanced over and saw this. “Alex, please stop.”

He hurried over to a table, snatched a syringe off it, and uncapped the needle. “Just a little pinch, then you won’t feel anything else.” But when he tried to administer it she was gyrating so fiercely he couldn’t do it.

“Stop it, stop it, Alex.” He set the syringe down and gripped her shoulders. “What are you doing?” he barked. “Are you having another seizure?”

Her eyes popped open and her right hand broke free of the cut ropes as she sat up and plunged the knife Devine had given her into Bing’s shoulder. Then with a long scream she twisted it in the gaping wound and jerked it upward.

Bing cried out in pain, looked at the blade quivering in his flesh, and struck Alex so hard she toppled out of the box and fell to the floor, where she lay stunned.

“Omigod, omigod,” panted Bing. “Why did you do that? It hurts. Oh God, it hurts.”

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