Mr. Mercedes: A Novel (17 page)

Another drip is trickling down Hodges’s ice cream. This time he doesn’t notice it even when it reaches his hand and pools there. “In the . . .”

“Glove compartment, yes. My dad said it was careless, and my mom said . . .” Jerome leans forward, his brown eyes fixed on Hodges’s gray ones. “
She said she didn’t even know it was there
. That’s when he said it was just like a woman. Which didn’t make her happy.”

“Bet it didn’t.” In Hodges’s brain, all sorts of gears are engaging.

“Dad says, Honey, all you have to do is forget once and leave your car unlocked. Some crack addict comes along, sees the buttons up, and decides to toss it in case there’s anything worth stealing. He checks the glove compartment for money, sees the key in the plastic bag, and away he goes to find out who wants to buy a low-mileage Malibu for cash.”

“What did your mother say to that?”

Jerome grins. “First thing, she turned it around. No one does that any better than my moms. She says,
You
bought the car and
you
brought it home.
You
should have told me. I’m eating my breakfast while they’re having this little discussion and thought of saying, If you’d ever checked the owner’s manual, Mom, maybe just to see what all those cute little lights on the dashboard signify, but I kept my mouth shut. My mom and dad don’t get into it often, but when they do, a wise person steers clear. Even the Barbster knows that, and she’s only nine.”

It occurs to Hodges that when he and Corinne were married, this is something Alison also knew.

“The other thing she said was that she
never
forgets to lock her car. Which, so far as I know, is true. Anyway, that key is now hanging on one of the hooks in our kitchen. Safe, sound, and ready to go if the primary ever gets lost.”

Hodges sits looking at the skateboarders but not seeing them. He’s thinking that Jerome’s mom had a point when she said her husband should have either presented her with the spare key or at least told her about it. You don’t just assume people will do an inventory and find things by themselves. But Olivia Trelawney’s case was different. She bought her own car, and should have known.

Only the salesman had probably overloaded her with info about her expensive new purchase; they had a way of doing that. When to change the oil, how to use the cruise control, how to use the GPS, don’t forget to put your spare key in a safe place, here’s how you plug in your cell phone, here’s the number to call roadside assistance if you need it, click the headlight switch all the way to the left to engage the twilight function.

Hodges could remember buying his first new car and letting the guy’s post-sales tutorial wash over him—uh-huh, yep, right, gotcha—just anxious to get his new purchase out on the road, to dig the rattle-free ride and inhale that incomparable new-car smell, which to the buyer is the aroma of money well spent. But Mrs. T. was obsessive-compulsive. He could believe she’d overlooked the spare key and left it in the glove compartment, but if she had taken her primary key that Thursday night, wouldn’t she also have locked the car doors? She said she did, had maintained that to the very end, and really, think about it—

“Mr. Hodges?”

“With the new smart keys, it’s a simple three-step process, isn’t it?” he says. “Step one, turn off the engine. Step two, remove the key from the ignition. If your mind’s on something else and you forget step two, there’s a chime to remind you. Step three, close the door and push the button stamped with the padlock icon. Why would you forget that, with the key right there in your hand? Theft-Proofing for Dummies.”

“True-dat, Mr. H., but some dummies forget, anyway.”

Hodges is too lost in thought for reticence. “She was no dummy. Nervous and twitchy but not stupid. If she took her key, I almost have to believe she locked her car. And the car wasn’t broken into. So even if she
did
leave the spare in her glove compartment, how did the guy get to it?”

“So it’s a locked-car mystery instead of a locked room. Dis be a
fo’
-pipe problem!”

Hodges doesn’t reply. He’s going over it and over it. That the spare might have been in the glove compartment now seems obvious, but did either he or Pete ever raise the possibility? He’s pretty sure they didn’t. Because they thought like men? Or because they were pissed at Mrs. T.’s carelessness and wanted to blame her? And she
was
to blame, wasn’t she?

Not if she really did lock her car, he thinks.

“Mr. Hodges, what does that Blue Umbrella website have to do with the Mercedes Killer?”

Hodges comes back out of his own head. He’s been in deep, and it’s a pretty long trudge. “I don’t want to talk about that just now, Jerome.”

“But maybe I can help!”

Has he ever seen Jerome this excited? Maybe once, when the debate team he captained his sophomore year won the citywide championship.

“Find out about that website and you will be helping,” Hodges says.

“You don’t want to tell me because I’m a kid. That’s it, isn’t it?”

It is part of the reason, but Hodges has no intention of saying so. And as it happens, there’s something else.

“It’s more complicated than that. I’m not a cop anymore, and investigating the City Center thing skates right up to the edge of what’s legal. If I find anything out and don’t tell my old partner, who’s now the lead on the Mercedes Killer case, I’ll be over the edge. You have a bright future ahead of you, including just about any college or university you decide to favor with your presence. What would I say to your mother and father if you got dragged into an investigation of my actions, maybe as an accomplice?”

Jerome sits quietly, digesting this. Then he gives the end of his cone to Odell, who accepts it eagerly. “I get it.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah.”

Jerome stands up and Hodges does the same. “Still friends?”

“Sure. But if you think I can help you, promise me that you’ll ask. You know what they say, two heads are better than one.”

“That’s a deal.”

They start back up the hill. At first Odell walks between them as before, then starts to pull ahead because Hodges is slowing down. He’s also losing his breath. “I’ve got to drop some weight,” he tells Jerome. “You know what? I tore the seat out of a perfectly good pair of pants the other day.”

“You could probably stand to lose ten,” Jerome says diplomatically.

“Double that and you’d be a lot closer.”

“Want to stop and rest a minute?”

“No.” Hodges sounds childish even to himself. He means it about the weight, though; when he gets back to the house, every damn snack in the cupboards and the fridge is going into the trash. Then he thinks, Make it the garbage disposal. Too easy to weaken and fish stuff out of the trash.

“Jerome, it would be best if you kept my little investigation to yourself. Can I trust your discretion?”

Jerome replies without hesitation. “Absolutely. Mum’s the word.”

“Good.”

A block ahead, the Mr. Tastey truck jingles its way across Harper Road and heads down Vinson Lane. Jerome tips a wave. Hodges can’t see if the ice cream man waves back.

“
Now
we see him,” Hodges said.

Jerome turns, gives him a grin. “Ice cream man’s like a cop.”

“Huh?”

“Never around when you need him.”

14

Brady rolls along, obeying the speed limit (twenty miles per here on Vinson Lane), hardly hearing the jingle and clang of “Buffalo Gals” from the speakers above him. He’s wearing a sweater beneath his white Mr. Tastey jacket, because the load behind him is cold.

Like my mind, he thinks. Only ice cream is
just
cold. My mind is also analytical. It’s a machine. A Mac loaded with gigs to the googolplex.

He turns it to what he has just seen, the fat ex-cop walking up Harper Road Hill with Jerome Robinson and the Irish setter with the nigger name. Jerome gave him a wave and Brady gave it right back, because that’s the way you blend in. Like listening to Freddi Linklatter’s endless rants about how tough it was to be a gay woman in a straight world.

Kermit William “I wish I was young” Hodges and Jerome “I wish I was white” Robinson. What was the Odd Couple talking about? That’s something Brady Hartsfield would like to know. Maybe he’ll find out if the cop takes the bait and strikes up a conversation on Debbie’s Blue Umbrella. It certainly worked with the rich bitch; once she started talking, nothing could stop her.

The Det-Ret and his darkie houseboy.

Also Odell. Don’t forget Odell. Jerome and his little sister love that dog. It would really break them up if something happened to it. Probably nothing will, but maybe he’ll research some more poisons on the Net when he gets home tonight.

Such thoughts are always flitting through Brady’s mind; they are the bats in his belfry. This morning at DE, as he was inventorying another load of cheap-ass DVDs (why more are coming in at the same time they’re trying to dump stock is a mystery that will never be solved), it occurred to him that he could use his suicide vest to assassinate the president, Mr. Barack “I wish I was white” Obama. Go out in a blaze of glory. Barack comes to this state often, because it’s important to his re-election strategy. And when he comes to the state, he comes to this city. Has a rally. Talks about hope. Talks about change. Rah-rah-rah, blah-blah-blah. Brady was figuring out how to avoid metal detectors and random checks when Tones Frobisher buzzed him and told him he had a service call. By the time he was on the road in one of the green Cyber Patrol VWs, he was thinking about something else. Brad Pitt, to be exact. Fucking matinee idol.

Sometimes, though, his ideas stick.

A chubby little boy comes running down the sidewalk, waving money. Brady pulls over.

“I want chawww-klit!”
the little boy brays.
“And I want it with springles!”

You got it, you fatass little creep, Brady thinks, and smiles his widest, most charming smile. Fuck up your cholesterol all you want, I give you until forty, and who knows, maybe you’ll survive the first heart attack. That won’t stop you, though, nope. Not when the world is full of beer and Whoppers and chocolate ice cream.

“You got it, little buddy. One chocolate with sprinkles coming right up. How was school? Get any As?”

15

That night the TV never goes on at 63 Harper Road, not even for the
Evening News
. Nor does the computer. Hodges hauls out his trusty legal pad instead. Janelle Patterson called him old school. So he is, and he doesn’t apologize for it. This is the way he has always worked, the way he’s most comfortable.

Sitting in beautiful no-TV silence, he reads over the letter Mr. Mercedes sent him. Then he reads the one Mrs. T. got. Back and forth he goes for an hour or more, examining the letters line by line. Because Mrs. T.’s letter is a copy, he feels free to jot in the margins and circle certain words.

He finishes this part of his procedure by reading the letters aloud. He uses different voices, because Mr. Mercedes has adopted two different personae. The letter Hodges received is gloating and arrogant.
Ha-ha, you broken-down old fool
, it says.
You have nothing to live for and you know it, so why don’t you just kill yourself?
The tone of Olivia Trelawney’s letter is cringing and melancholy, full of remorse and tales of childhood abuse, but here also is the idea of suicide, this time couched in terms of sympathy:
I understand. I totally get it, because I feel the same.

At last he puts the letters in a folder with MERCEDES KILLER printed on the tab. There’s nothing else in it, which means it’s mighty thin, but if he’s still any good at his job, it will thicken with page after page of his own notes.

He sits for fifteen minutes, hands folded on his too-large middle like a meditating Buddha. Then he draws the pad to him and begins writing.

I think I was right about most of the stylistic red herrings. In Mrs. T.’s letter he doesn’t use exclamation points, capitalized phrases, or many one-sentence paragraphs (the ones at the end are for dramatic effect). I was wrong about the quotation marks, he likes those. Also fond of underlining things. He may not be young after all, I could have been wrong about that . . .

But he thinks of Jerome, who has already forgotten more about computers and the Internet than Hodges himself will ever learn. And of Janey Patterson, who knew how to make a copy of her sister’s letter by scanning, and who uses Skype. Janey Patterson, who’s got to be almost twenty years younger than he is.

He picks up his pen again.

. . . but I don’t think I am. Probably not a teenager (altho can’t rule it out) but let’s say in the range 20–35. He’s smart. Good vocabulary, able to turn a phrase.

He goes through the letters yet again and jots down some of those turned phrases:
scurrying little mouse of a kid, strawberry jam in a sleeping bag, most people are sheep and sheep don’t eat meat
.

Nothing that would make people forget Philip Roth, but Hodges thinks such lines show a degree of talent. He finds one more and prints it below the others:
What have they done for you except hound you and cause you sleepless nights?

He taps the tip of his pen above this, creating a constellation of tiny dark blue dots. He thinks most people would write
give you sleepless nights
or
bring you sleepless nights
, but those weren’t good enough for Mr. Mercedes, because he is a gardener planting seeds of doubt and paranoia.
They
are out to get you, Mrs. T., and
they
have a point, don’t they? Because you
did
leave your key. The cops say so; I say so too, and I was there. How can we both be wrong?

He writes these ideas down, boxes them, then turns to a fresh sheet.

Best point of identification is still PERK for PERP, he uses it in both letters, but also note HYPHENS in the Trelawney letter.
Bee-hive
instead of beehive.
Week-days
instead of weekdays. If I am able to ID this guy and get a writing sample, I can nail him.